Episode 2 · November 4, 2016 · 01:27:15

2. A Reasonable Monster

This week's challengeWatch Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview.

dobyfriday.com Apple Podcasts Overcast Patreon

Transcript

Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakes

AlexThis is Do By Friday, the weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, watch Steve Jobs, The Lost Interview.

Hey Merlin, how are you?

MerlinOh, tremendously. Well, how are you, Alex?

AlexWell, it's the anniversary of Steve Jobs' death, so I get a little weird today. Yeah. No, that's totally normal. Oh, yeah. Completely, totally normal to cry. It's even a little bit healthy. And so Max isn't with us today. But the homework I gave you was to watch Steve Jobs, The Lost Interview, which is a very weird thing. It was recorded for this show that I've never seen nor cared about called like Revenge of the Nerds or Triumph of the Nerds.

And there was this big, long interview with Steve Jobs and they only used a tiny bit of it. And apparently it was lost. And very conveniently, right after his death, it was found and they released it for, I believe, $29.99. But now it's on Netflix and you can see it everywhere.

MerlinDid I hear correctly? I only watched it once, but did I hear Cringely actually say he died yesterday? Is that what he said?

AlexI think it might have been last week.

MerlinHe introduces it. He says, okay, we did this thing called Triumph of the Nerds, which I think you might want to check out. It's on YouTube. We'll put it in notes. It's good. But yeah, they shot this 70 minutes of interviews and ended up using 10 minutes. It supposedly got lost in transit and then somebody found a Powell-based dub of it somewhere. but I need to watch this again but I swear to Christ in this very awkward uh headshot is that what they call it or stand up he's just addressing the camera directly he goes we're now presenting this since Steve Jobs died yesterday it's like wow that's weird and that's actually

Alexwhy I avoided watching it because I was just like this is it felt icky um but I I'm wondering you you said that you have a lot of questions for me um so do you want to start off with that or uh I actually have a question for you which is completely oh god this is like 9-11 uh do you remember where you were when Steve Jobs died oh my goodness um no not really uh I was probably

Merlinat home not writing a book, because that's what I was doing, I think, at the time. No, I don't remember where I was. But I also know that, gosh, how do I say this? We had a death in our family, a very important death in our family last week. It's a death that was not unanticipated. It's a very, very dear, old, elderly person in our family who was one of the, who was basically the heart of the family. And that person passed away. I'm so sorry. Thanks. Thanks. But we,

she's really old and she's been really sick and basically no holiday is complete without grandma having a trip to the emergency room. And that's just how it's been. But she's still been a pistol all the way. And, but the thing is, there's been so many health scares with her. And I have a point here. So many health scares with her that eventually we got to where I was kind of like prepping my daughter and I was saying, you know, we have to really enjoy the time that we have with grandma and it doesn't make that easier. But it's very different from when somebody who is, you know, like who's the French philosopher that walked out in the street

and got hit by a motorcycle or whatever. It's not like a 25-year-old healthy person, you know, suddenly has an anvil fall on their head. So we'd all been prepping for this for a long time, but it still had such an impact. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this because you're so much younger than me And you know a whole different Steve Jobs than I do. We're literally a generation apart, and that did not really occur to me until last night. I don't remember where I was, but I do remember feeling moved by it and hearing what people had to say.

And I personally loved the stories that were not always nice. I think it made his character so much more interesting to not just hear the stuff from interviews. I really want to see this guy in all of his facets. I think you don't get him until you see all the facets. now what now let me ask you this is kind of a 9-11 question do you remember where you were

Alexwhen we found out steve johnstein uh i i do like preschool where were you i i uh had just turned 20 years old i was in my dorm room and just started art school oh god um and suddenly i was getting a lot of texts from friends consoling me and i'm like what the hell and i immediately thought uh like my parents died and i had not checked facebook um and then i went on twitter and was immediately crushed

and it felt very weird because this is not a family member this is not you know somebody I know and um the only time I had ever felt anything like that was like 10 years prior when um there was like the sudden death of a grandparent and it it was very strange um to to deal with grief in that way um because similarly all the other deaths in my family were you know them you prepare for it and uh this this this is also something where like you we kind of all knew steve was going

yeah exactly and and i just remember uh that day like like you said there was this outpouring um of the the good stuff and the bad stuff um specifically john gruber of daring fireball writing this adorable like fictional story about um how the last time he saw steve jobs his uh famous new balance sneakers were all uh dirty from the grass and it was like maybe he was walking around with his family which is kind of cutesy but i at the time you know just burst into tears

um and then there was at the time a uh five by five special which is a network um where you have the show back to work episode seven that was really good i wish oh thanks we've never really

Merlingotten near it since a lot of and a lot of apple focus talk especially around that time so suracusa had a show there Marco had a show there I had a show there and Dan it was just kind of like it was a sort of a presence on the network that without meaning to there were a lot of shows about

AlexApple and Apple stuff yeah and it was it was like at the peak of I mean I don't know this is when god I I loved uh hypercritical so much uh John Syracuse's show um I think it's like the most

Merlinevergreen tech show out there that's a great it's actually a great way to put it I still it's still in my podcast feed and I still there's there's still there's there's two sets of episodes I still listen to a lot I listen to some of them because they're funny for the toaster stuff but the one about about trying to preserve an original copy of Star Wars is so oddly moving and the one that he did about the Walter Isaacson book about Steve Jobs which you and I were talking about texting about late last night I think are some of his best work some of his most Syracusan

AlexSyracusean work. Oh, for sure. And just it was heartbreaking. I did. Did you read the what we're talking about is Syracuse's review of the Walter Isaacson book. Did you ever read that? The book? Yeah. You don't need to. It's not very good.

MerlinNo, no, I read part of it, and then I would jump to, you know, relevant chapters and dig in. But quite honestly, I mean, I'm such an impressionable person that, you know, it's really funny because I was telling my wife that I had to watch this thing. And, you know, and she's like, oh, you know, I couldn't sleep a few months ago. And I watched that Jobs movie, the Steve Jobs movie with Fassbender. And, you know, we both had the same, you know, feeling about that. Like all this, there's all this mythology around him and the way he's presented and all the thrust of the story. And I was like, you know, I think one reason so much of the stuff on Steve Jobs drives Apple fans nuts is, like Syracuse has said, you know, the things about, like, how Next was used by Apple is not a footnote.

It's not a small detail. It's arguably the story. And if you don't tell that story, if you treat that as set dressing, you really miss out on the significance of what happened, right? So if you know things like that are awaiting you, I mean, I was less anxious, you know, looking forward to read the book, you know. Did you read it? Did you read the whole thing?

AlexOh, God, yeah.

MerlinOh, my God. I can't wait to ask you questions. Oh, my goodness.

AlexI'm sending you every year, like I said, I go a little crazy with just with sort of not really the Steve Jobs mythology, but sort of the the culture of Apple and especially how the Mac was made. And like you said, we are completely we're from different generations and you were around when when the Mac team existed.

And that was not something that I was aware of until I was like 12 years old.

MerlinYeah. And it's it's it's so funny because, I mean, we didn't have computers around. And but I do very clearly remember seeing I could be misremembering this because I do that. But we used to get Time Magazine. I feel like I very clearly remember a two-page spread about the Mac, a two-page ad, basically, in Time Magazine for the Macintosh with the mouse and everything. And I was dumbstruck by looking at that thing as an object and as a, you know. So, I mean, Apple had been around. You hear about Apple and the ridiculous success of Apple.

And, you know, like, for example, in this, that crazy throwaway line that Steve had in this interview we just saw, when he was what? When he was this age, he was worth a million dollars. The next year he was worth $10 million and the next year he was worth $100 million. I mean, that was the kind of bananas growth that was just shattering to people that that could happen. Just mind-blowing. But the weird part for me is I always forget how short what we think of as kind of the Steve Jobs glory days, how short that was. Like he was gone within two years of the Mac coming out. And that seems so weird.

I still can never reconcile that fact in my mind. It feels like he had to have been there. But you're really talking about the Apple II is what made them in so many ways, right?

AlexI mean, I feel like there's also this weird mythology around the Apple II. I actually, the one thing I liked about this interview, as well as I sent you a picture of my stack of Apple books, and Wozniak talks about this in his ghost-ridden autobiography. like the the apple one and the apple the apple one was just like a circuit board um and then the apple two it's baffling i actually the the thing that i took out of um that interview that he

mentioned very early on was seeing the first uh hp computer that was actually contained like there wasn't you know the big uh tape discs on the side and that felt like it was um it it wasn't just that he was such a great businessman and he knew that this is what the market was eventually going to want but like that left a huge impact as a little little little steve should i should i have wadier

Merlinyou a little bit about your apple background because you seem to have a very strong i'm i i'm not trying to be funny you seem to have a very very strong uh i don't know how else to put it emotional and like this means something to you there's something about steve jobs apple macintosh there's something about that that that it hits you it sounds like on a very profound level is

Alexthat true yeah uh it's super weird and and i don't mean to say it's weird but i mean like it's weird what what describe it and where does it come from um well like most kids uh i i don't trust anybody who had a good experience in middle school like there's something wrong with you if you were very happy all throughout middle school. But I went to a small parochial school that weirdly had all Macs. And this was, you know, basically in the 90 days until bankruptcy type time. And it was clear

that the parents in our school were kind of like, well, I mean, the Gateway 2000 just came out. like what why these kids aren't going to be using max in their life but um i had sort of a really yeah i had a very eccentric um computer teacher and so from actually i think the time this interview was uh taken like 1995 uh until uh 2000 it we were all on um not classic max i wish i remember i remembered what uh what was in the 90s i should look that up was it the was it the classic

form factor? Yes. They were very gross and there was lovely beige.

MerlinWasn't this by the time that they were separating it into, they had the performas, they had the quadras, they had broken it out into business. At one point, I remember we had a bunch of LC2s, whatever they're called, the pizza boxes. Most people where I worked had that. But didn't they have a line? God, they had a line for Sears. Didn't they have a line that was just

Alexfor education at the time? They did. And we, I think we had a mix of the LC that sort of kind of looked like a classic Mac, but also with the, the like sandwich box bottom. It was like, they just kept buying new ones when they broke. Oh yeah, here we are. The Apple IIe's. But I think it was uh that's a lie I know exactly what year it was it was 2012 uh Christmas day and my parents

did this really shitty thing where every year they pretended to get me a puppy but didn't get me a puppy and instead they instead spoiled me with some other something like another cool electronic or video game um because I was but uh not a puppy and they this was the most elaborate scheme uh this has a point i swear they they uh they got a toy dog that sounded it like it rattled

the box and sounded like these people are monsters yep they are absolute monsters and this was the most elaborate scheme and i'm like okay i'm 12 i can take care of a puppy this is happening um and they had put it in a a uh an imac box um and it was the snow white imac it was not the original one so it was a post hockey puck mouse but still only um one click um and this i was like i i for the first time i was not heartbroken and i was like oh holy shit um because up until that time

i was using a gateway 2000 with uh windows 95 and that was you know as as a a like 10 year old um all these amazing point and click adventure games uh this is when microsoft word still worked and a 10 year old could understand it um and it was it was just like this this is my thing um and i i remember um i set it up in my room it did we had a dsl at that point but this did not have

an airport card because you know clearly a 12 year old is going to like look up all the porn um so I didn't have that so what I would do was uh download music on the uh the Gateway 2000 and then burn it onto a CD and bring it back upstairs and put it in iTunes uh and I mean I it really was like uh this was my friend um I was that typical person who who did not was was a nerd

And I had a weird lisp because I had an expander. But, oh, man, this was also when iLife came out. And, man, iMovie.

MerlinOh, God, of course.

AlexOh, it was like magic for me.

MerlinSo it wasn't, you know, you think about there's lots of kids will have this aspirational kind of, whether it's about automobiles or technology or, you know, planes, guitars. You had this aspirational desire where you could get very into guitars without ever owning a guitar. But in this instance, it sounds like for you, it started with, so you used the Macs at school, but then having one is what made you a fanatic.

AlexYeah, because I didn't really have any sort of aspirations at that time except to be a good student and to be a good Catholic. Those were my aspirations. and then I got this beautiful magic box that how that allowed me to make things and make anything I want um and I believe uh Apple works was still a thing at at the time that was amazing for writing papers uh and also I don't know if you remember this there was a a key command shortcut that would

uh turn your desktop into uh it suddenly had a bunch of pie charts and like ridiculous things that like made you look like you were working in an office um which I used all the time my parents were like ah cool um but yeah it was sort of and so then that began it began like I guess me being into uh max and uh that that's also when um we we got our first like family ipod and my mom didn't

really know how it worked so I had to be like oh these are mp3s this is a thing that works um and then uh I got my first uh do you remember the 12 inch power book 12 inch what was the form

Merlinfactor for that one uh it was titanium and oh well no god hang on duh no yes of course I do favorite laptop of all time so good oh my god yeah I mean it's that thing was uh and when it went away I was so sad I was buying people's used ones for years after that because it was it was so perfect for what it needed to do and I you know back in the days of Mech Break Weekly one of the running jokes about Merlin was like I always wanted to have a new version of that now that you had one of those yeah well thank thank god for Chicago pork money that's nice

AlexI know I sound sound like such a spoiled little bitch right now but to my parents credit

MerlinI wouldn't put it that strongly.

AlexWell, to my parents' credit, they knew how to spoil their kids in a way that was very beneficial to us. And to get that laptop, I actually made a PowerPoint, because Keynote wasn't out yet, about why I should have a laptop as a... Oh, God, I love you.

When I was 16, the iPhone came out and I didn't get one right away. But when the price dropped, got another PowerPoint about how our family could all communicate. So me, my mom and my grandma went and we're still in the same family plan because unlimited data. Yay.

Jailbreaking that was kind of the first thing that I kind of learned, quote unquote, hacking. Yeah, sure. And it was just, I don't know, I started seeing software as art and then Final Cut came out and it was, again, the very stereotypical, like, look it, I can create things and it is magical and wonderful.

And just like many people out there, my job is completely reliant on Apple stuff.

MerlinSo a lot of Steve's talking points about these lofty ideas about Bicycle for the Mind and all that kind of stuff, I mean, that really does go for you. This became a way for you, I mean, am I getting this right? It became a way for you to express yourself, to understand the world, to reach out beyond where you were. It really was that kind of transformative series of devices for you.

AlexYeah, especially as soon as I was able to get my EPUB files on my phone, that was the dream, to have a library in my pocket. The whole bicycle of the mind thing, he sort of goes into it more in this, the lost interview is like it's really also an extension of the mind. Not just a way to make your mind better, but the way like a bike is an extension of many athletes' bodies.

Like that's that is how technology is for me. My brain is omni-focus in text files.

MerlinI never heard the origin of that. I've heard that quote from him for years, but I'd never heard the origin story. And I spent about an hour last night trying to find that Scientific American article from December 1972. But I'd never heard. So for those who haven't seen it yet, he says that, you know, who knows how much of this is story. I really want to get in at some point to talking about Apple and story. But, you know, there's the idea that there was this moment where he describes it as being a kid and find the Scientific American article on which Earth creatures had the most efficient mode of locomotion.

The big winner was, I think, the condor. But then the person who wrote this article also incorporated, said, OK, humans fall really far down the efficiency unless you put them on a bicycle. And then they totally are, they're way more efficient at locomotion than a condor. So, I mean, a little bit of a strained analogy, but what an interesting idea. So, you know, human beings are pretty great on their own, but they can do so much more with the right tool that they can really become in some ways a more developed human by having something that's the right tool for what needs to be done.

AlexYeah, that thing he said really, really stuck with me is that humans are tool makers. And like that's that's why we beat the condor. Good for us.

MerlinStupid condor.

AlexYou had a very different experience.

MerlinOh, yeah. We don't have to go into mine. I mean, the short version is it was really out of utility. I needed a way to type up papers. But the very short version is that I really love using them. Starting in 1987, I love using a Mac. And I fairly quickly picked up desktop publishing. I wasn't very good at it. That led to graphics. And, you know, long story short, it's something I've said a million times, but basically what started out as a need to be able to write papers about Descartes eventually turned into the basis of arguably three different careers for me. And I really, it's, again, now again, we're all back to story, right?

Always very interesting. What is the story that we're telling? But that's true, I think. I mean, I would not have gotten into desktop publishing if it hadn't been for the Mac. Desktop publishing got me into doing graphics and getting really good at Microsoft Word. That used to be a skill. And that got me a job working at a place that did legal support all the way down to then I learned how to make webpages on a Mac. And each one was a little stair step that would not have been possible without the thing that came before. And that might have happened with me on a PC, but it would have happened very differently and not nearly as quickly.

Because it was just not – I went to the PC room in college about twice out of absolute necessity. I had a rabbi there to help me understand how to use this thing, and it was absolutely just not fun. These are just, you know, these are the IBMs that you would have out of college in 1985, and it was just not fun. But the Mac was like this whole little world, and there's so much personality, you know, and so much a word that Steve Jobs uses a lot that's now, you know, I think a touchstone of understanding how he thinks, taste. It had great taste.

It was appropriate. It did what it could with the graphics. They were always trying to get the right mix of, yes, user experience, and yes, performance, but also yes, price. Where to the extent possible, Steve Jobs really wanted to sell a $1,000 computer for years. There's so many of these things where you go back and you hear him talk about all these different things. You're like, wow, he really—oh, I don't think it was just a case of sticking to his guns. I think he just had a certain kind of a vision.

Not a vision for how things would end up. But I think he had an excellent, excellent vision for knowing. I don't know what this thing is going to be yet, but I know it's going to be a thing. And I can tell very quickly by looking at this thing, this is yesterday's news and it does not have taste. And he had such an exquisite sense of that, that even to this day, we Apple diehards tend to give them a lot of credit as a company because they usually are going somewhere with it. And it's only when we don't understand where they're going with it that we get really panicky. But I think to this day, Steve still has such an influence in that sense of like, we expect everybody here to be doing impossible things to an incredible level of quality that's almost inhuman in terms of what you're asking of people.

But that's what we ask of ourselves, and that's what we produce. And, you know, and again, with taste. And I think that's really inspiring, and it's so rare. you know when's the last time the electric company or the gas company or the cable company or the people you know people who make the jojos at your corner store when's the last time you felt that sense of like oh i care so much more intensely about this than my customer does

Alexyou don't get that much i'm i'm wondering uh since you were introduced to the mac in like a really utilitarian way like when did you sort of get into the mythology of apple as a company

MerlinI'm trying to remember. My memory is not good, but I can't remember being that into the mythology of Apple as a company. What I was into, whether I wanted to be or not, were the giant religious wars about whoever. It was Mac versus whoever or Apple versus whoever. It used to be Apple versus IBM. At a certain point, it became Apple versus Microsoft, Windows in particular.

And just the thing is, there was a time when you kind of had to be a partisan in that fight. If you just liked Windows, you didn't have to care about it. But if you used a Mac for what you did for a living, it would be impossible not to feel like a partisan. Because you were so uniformly shat upon by everybody in the professional world just by dint of the fact that you used a Mac. and Apple products. And, you know, you can't, these kids today, these millenniums, you can't tell them. But you were really considered to be a real stupid hippie

with bad judgment and too much money if you were using Apple products. That was a thing in 1999 when I was at a dot com when they would not let me put my Mac on the network because the footprint for NT to be able to do printing would be too much if it was a Mac. Plus, Macs aren't very safe.

AlexAll those viruses.

MerlinI don't remember now, But can I push further, though, with you? It sounds like, I mean, at what point did you get involved in the story? I hate to say cult, but like the story of Apple. And how did that pivot to being about Steve Jobs for you?

AlexI lived less than like half a mile from a Borders bookstore.

MerlinThat's where the love of books and music sets the standard.

AlexYeah, yeah. um and there was uh just a a uh you know like a the that's where the uh AOL for dummies and stuff lived um but then there were there were also these uh books that I just gravitated towards um and and you know they sort of tried to mirror Apple's taste in how they looked like and there actually was a book uh which is now I think a blog Cult of Mac um all right and reading that was incredibly interesting to me because I'm like, oh, there's other weirdos out there like me.

And seeing that's also, oh, God, how I got into Mac Papercraft, which is where 12-year-old Alex would print out these little diagrams of a Mac and put them together.

MerlinOh, wow.

AlexOh, yeah.

MerlinNo, that's huge in my house.

AlexYeah. yeah i think that's nice yeah um are you are you embarrassed that you feel this way are you are you

Merlini hear you self-editing because you don't want to sound like a rich girl but are you embarrassed about how much you like apple stuff you sound a little ashamed about it uh i don't know it feels

Alexit feels embarrassing now um or rather it feels embarrassing to still be so passionate about it i

MerlinI think um because it seems weird and it's something you shouldn't care about that much

Alexyeah it's it's it's like uh why why do I care so much about how this this uh this hardware is made made but there's a very very rational reason reason because I touch and hold on to my phone more than any other object um and that's how that's how the mac was or my first iMac was for me this this is the thing that I use the most this is how I read my stuff this is how um you know how I would I eventually you know I did make friends and this is how I talk to them um but then sort of

I I can't remember the first uh book I read about Steve Jobs actually but um his management style uh just freaking jumped off the page um and and hearing just all of these all the stories yeah Yeah, the stories we all know and love about these tantrums.

MerlinI had a couple of friends that were in the room at the Mobile Me meeting, and it sounds like it was pretty, pretty merciless. If you've ever seen, there's a videotape you can find, I think it's from 1979, of Saddam Hussein holding a meeting of basically all of his leaders in a big room. Kind of like you would say, imagine sort of like a session in Congress, a little smaller. and basically he just calls people out they stand up somebody walks over and they are very calmly

removed from the room and they'll never be seen again and it's really really chilling um might yeah i think it's from the late 70s early 80s but uh nobody died as far as we know in those meetings but like everybody i know who's worked at apple almost everybody's had some steve meetings and it's amazing how many people got a story out of it and again story look he isn't it funny how it keeps coming back to story but there are there are so many stories about obviously him just being seemingly just awfully awfully cruel to people but also of his just he's got to paraphrase

uh john roderick he brooks no truck like he is not going to take any bullshit like the the two seconds you're with steve jobs you better be so prepared because and i saw that in the that's i mentioned this last night in text that stare of his when it cuts back to cringely and you see Steve just in his repose listening. He's really listening. And then he composes. He takes a minute. He composes a wonderful response seemingly in the moment. And then the one time he misunderstands,

there's one time where he thinks Cringely is taking the piss a little bit. And he flips in a nanosecond. Do you remember that? It's when they're talking about he misunderstands. What was it? It was about some kind of a decision. and basically he thought Cringely was kind of making fun of him or trying to sort of, you know, say something out of the corner of his mouth. And Steve just, he perked right up and he's like, what was that? Like, you know, are you talking to me kind of thing? Cringely's like, no, I was just saying this. He goes, oh, okay, I thought you meant something different. And he goes back to his Buddha-like state.

But you can just feel that intensity. I've seen him seem like much more of an asshole in interviews after this. It was nice to see him being smart, being fast, being not at Apple, being still a little sad and genuinely hurt about what happened with Apple. But I thought there was so much I enjoyed about this interview just based on the way that he holds himself. And knowing that that whole interview was not going to air also, remember. But he didn't feel the need to always talk in sound bites. And he would always compose such an interesting response. There's something, if you're going to have a cult, it might as well be about this guy.

Because he is extremely charismatic. Charismatic does not always mean likable. It means you can't stop listening to what that person has to say.

Alexhe was saying that uh they they didn't want to use um the graphic interface but oh they it was a

Merlinpark it was a park and when they want that's right they didn't want to give him the demo right yeah and and and he thought cringely was inferring that he that they stole it right no no no he well

Alexthrough that whole interview jobs is so open about like well the quote that we all know um good artists copy great artists steal and he's very he was adamant about like oh they just didn't get it they were uh he calls them copy heads which i liked toner toner heads tone yeah like toner

Merlinheads or copy heads and yeah like like all the all they they just know from copy machines and they don't have the like vision to see beyond how to sell more toner oh we've got not i'm not let me interrupt we've got to come back to the distinction between companies run by sales and marketing people versus like what kind of company that was incredible but continue yes yeah he was

Alexintense super intense the thing that hit home for me was uh process is not the content which is um you know what he still believes is what made scully fail and made apple fail and you're right you can see like the heartbreak in his eyes and you see that emotion sort of slip slip through

MerlinMan, when he says they got the wrong guy, and you can feel, I mean, I think he is legitimately hurt, and he's legitimately also trying to not make it about his hurt. He's not doing well at it. It's very difficult for him to not be emotional about what happened with that company. But you can feel in that moment that we're talking more, you know, on the face of it, this is about a guy who co-founded a very successful company and then got pushed out because he was out of step with the Times. But there was so much more to it than that. He didn't see it that way.

He was holding that company to such a ridiculously high number of standards that were totally at odds with how you run a big business. Until eventually, you know, they had to get rid of him because he was just a pain in the ass. And he was perfidious. He was basically trying to undermine Scully behind the scenes. And Scully and the board were like, you want to keep this guy on? No, I don't think we do. I mean, it totally makes sense to fire him.

Alexyeah and and the fact that they didn't even want to keep him around uh and give him a couple million for r&d like that they knew that he would still undermine them he hated he hated what they spent

Merlinon r&d he's like they're wasting like hundreds of millions of dollars on r&d instead of like just trying to make this you know it's just he just exudes that feeling of like he i feel like he's almost like a magical creature and that there are it's the example i often use is people who have perfect pitch, which is something that's amazing. It's somebody who can hear any tone and instantly locate it as not just a certain musical note, but how much of a tone off it is one way or another. And to them, they, my friend with perfect pitch once said to me, well, it's not hard to explain.

It's like you see blue in the same way that I hear an F sharp. I know what two tones comprise that car's horn in the same way that you could see that this is even light blue or this is pink versus this is shrimp. Like that is how, and I think with Steve Jobs, the reason I say he's a magical creature is that there are things that he saw that were so patently true, obvious, inescapable, and it seemed to drive him crazy that he had to do anything to try and explain to other people why that was how it is,

let alone that it even existed. And he would just see it and go, no, that's a piece of shit. Why would you spend any time on that? This person is obviously, the guy running storage, What did he say? He's out of his element or he said something like, you know, he just he just throws anybody under the bus if they don't see the same chimera that he does.

AlexMy favorite leading question of the interview is what does it mean when you tell someone their work is shit? And he's like, well, usually it means that their work is shit.

MerlinYou can see him pausing for a second to try and come up with something. And he's like, no, fuck that. You know, it means their work is shit. Next question.

AlexYeah. And I mean, he goes into it a bit and especially about the Mac team, especially. And like, well, the people that we got to build the Macintosh, they were the A team. And they wanted, because they were the A team, they wanted to hire other A players. And like, we weren't going to get the B and C guys. And which I know some of that, you know, it makes you uncomfortable because like you feel like a B or C player. But what he said about, OK, if if you really are this brilliant, then you need to be told that your work is shit.

And it is. I forget how he phrased it exactly, but it's like I am basically like less of a boss if I don't tell you that this is wrong.

MerlinI have a thought on that, that this helped me sort of crystallize a little bit, which is, you know, the stories about him, he could be a very, very, like, seemingly deliberately awful person with people. And, you know, nobody wants a boss like that. At one point, he's talking about what it's like to work at Hewlett Packard and how awful that must be. Well, my gosh, being close to Steve Jobs was no cakewalk. But think about this. Let's imagine you are, I don't know a lot about medicine, but let's say, for example, my wife works at UCSF, which is one of the best medical schools in the United States. so let's say you're going to be the person who's going to be the head of i don't i'm talking out

of my ass but if you're the person who is the head of teaching surgery to new surgeons uh you need to be a really fucking good surgeon right if you're if you're going to be the person who's going to be president of the united states it would be nice to think in some fantasy world that whoever's going to be president should be the best conceivable person for that job and we shouldn't apologize guys for holding people to a high standard. We want our surgeon, we want the surgeon who's teaching surgeons. I'll tell you what, buddy, the surgeon that's operating on me, I want them to be the best surgeon in the world. And if they, if the choice comes down to, do I get the best surgeon

in the world or somebody who's just kind of doing surgery on weekends for chicks, I'm always going to pick the best surgeon in the world. What is the difference? The difference here is he is taking this technology, these products, this taste, he is taking that as seriously as picking a surgeon. that makes him seem like a dick. You would never say, you know, you don't give a pilot three strikes on drinking at work. You say, that's it, you're out of here. That's a C player. And that, he may be the best pilot in the world, but if he's drinking, he should not be flying that thing. I might be stretching this, but to me, that's what, when you say B and C,

that's just, it's because that sounds mean. And it is mean. But he, I think it must have been clear on some level that if you're going to work at Apple, you know, you know what you're signing up for. You know that this is what is expected of you. And if you can't do the impossible, you should go somewhere where they're happy that you sludge along with the possible. Does that resonate?

AlexOh, for sure. And especially, you know, I read a lot about this in Revolution in the Valley and just like the firsthand accounts of the Macintosh team, some who remember it very fondly, others not so much. But like you said in that interview, it was one of the most just intense and passionate times in their lives and it feels I think uh Max were here he would agree that it feels almost like

they were working on a political campaign and like they were shaping this thing that uh it needed all the polish they needed to not just sell the machine but sell the idea to the world and that was always his thing throughout his entire life um and I'm I don't know uh I think something that doesn't really come across in this interview but comes across in all all of these stories is he he wasn't he didn't seem like a super stable guy um and especially as I got older now I I think maybe

that is the embarrassment that I am uh holding on to is that I I am as I'm becoming like uh I guess more of a boss in my life and becoming more uh just being in charge of more people like having to sort of temper that expectation of like, well, if you're not going to do this right, why are you doing this at all? And I get that from, you know, reading too many Steve Jobs stories.

And, you know, I work for a company that's very, very good at what we do. And when I fuck up, it's like why am I here why am I I'm a b player here um I'm stammering too much on a podcast why am I here um and I I wonder too like um as like Syracuse said in that episode of Hypercritical that we talked about um we don't really know how Steve's management style changed and like I want

to know uh i want to be in the room where it happened i i want to know about i i know about how the early mac was made i want to know how the iphone was created like we have those little tidbits about um you know the the boardroom like sliding the phone to steve and nervously being like oh god what's gonna happen um or how remember the first iphone how uh you needed a little adapter because only the Apple ear pods would work because he wanted it to be a perfect

curve. I don't know. That still fascinates me. I'm rambling now, but it's...

MerlinNo, no, I'm with you. One thing, there's a word I want to use advisably, but I bet that I will reckon that his behavior often seemed capricious is the word I want to advisedly pick, which is that, for example, I mean, there's all kinds of things that we feel like we know about Steve Jobs. And, you know, to me, some of the interesting things we know about Steve Jobs, I think, is that, first of all, he has an extremely high standard for everything.

we know that there's certain kinds of things that in the aggregate are going to go over better with Steve than not a device that is very thick has 16 legacy ports and a one hour battery life is not going to be nearly as appealing to him one imagines as something that's an eighth of an inch thick has no ports and lasts for four days that's a continuum but I say capricious because I wonder You have to go out and make these impossible decisions to make this impossible device work in this impossibly great way.

You have to do all kinds of things in terms of tradeoffs. And I bet it was a real white-knuckle, pants-shitting moment to go into Steve with the tradeoff that you're suggesting implementing. Just not knowing, you know, if you decided to favor something about design and fashion over functionality, you better really hope that that suits his taste in fashion. And if you made something a little bit less pretty in order to do something technical, you better hope that's really what Steve was hoping for. Or I could just see, it feels like in my head, I could see him really writing somebody up, like, as they say, flipping the bozo bit for somebody who got that wrong.

And I bet that felt very scary to do.

AlexDo you think it's true that he says in this interview that he cares more about, he said, I don't care about being right. I care about success. And he admits to changing his mind often, which we see that he did. But do you really think that was a thing that he could accept and care about? That felt a little bit soundbite-y to me.

MerlinYeah. Yeah. I think one thing is I think Steve Jobs, like a lot of people I happen to admire, is a contrarian.

I like contrarians. I'm sometimes very frustrated by contrarians. I do podcasts with contrarians who drive me crazy. But there's a reason I keep doing it because there's something in their contrariness that I find invigorating. and you know this i look at the world of music and the some of the the people who i i really admire are people who you take whatever well that's bob dylan neil young bruce springsteen lady gaga you take somebody where as soon as you've decided what it is that they're up to

they say hey i'm gonna do this my way and they will not be they will not be pinned down on what you think they just said or what you think they just did or something that personally drives me crazy on why you're doing what you're doing. It's, I think that his natural contrariness behind the scenes. So how much, why am I trying to say here? So the thing is, is a reminder of our former president Clinton saying, it depends, what was his famous phrase? It depends on your definition of is or something like that. And I think sometimes when he would answer these questions,

he was just answering them in a way that wasn't what you expected. When he talks about success, Of course, everybody wants to be successful. What does Steve Jobs mean by successful? Well, you know what? Success for Steve Jobs might be it's one night without the demon dogs for him because he is so driven in this really manic way that the success for him may not be. For Tim Cook, it could be unit sales and fewer returns and high customer sat. But for – right? Because he's an operations guy, which is – I say that with all admiration because operations is hard.

but with Steve yeah he wants to be successful but how does he want to be successful he wants his employees to be great but he's not saying that he wants his employees to feel relaxed and safe he wants his employees to feel menaced he wants them to feel like every day I'm going to do way more than I did yesterday and I keep coming back to the phrase impossible because that's what it feels like to me and he demanded impossible things of himself he demanded impossible things of others and he was a very contrary unconventional guy and that even comes across in an interview where he could choose to say very canned things.

But, you know, he is, as they say, a maverick in that sense of he has a certain vision of the world that he can't tolerate being misapprehended in order to normalize it in some way to make it more consumable. Right. So you get this ultimate usable device that's available at the time from this incredibly unreasonable person. Not so different from Thomas Edison in some ways. You know, I mean, there's a history of dicks in America.

AlexI mean, Jobs didn't kill an elephant.

Merlinas far as we know they'll say autopsy at my autopsy i love jean dressed as thomas edison why does that kill me

Alexcan we talk about can we talk about story yes did i cut you off no i'm marilyn's planning no no no i'm really i'm sorry am i doing that no no not at all um one thing i'm actually like i said this is just therapy for myself today because it's it's still um I I think now I'm I'm very self I I try to be this person online and in my life uh like advocating for um

like dismantling all the stigmas around mental illness and uh I I think another reason why I immediately gravitated towards Steve Jobs as I was becoming a teenager is like this guy really fucks up and really treats people poorly but he was still able to achieve something and really that's that's all I want is to have my family not hate me at the end of the day and um you know there's there's all this the story of Lisa and um I think one reason that I I love the movie um

Steve Jobs, which could be called Mr. Fancy Company Man. Aaron Sorkin clearly did not care about Steve Jobs.

MerlinThat sounds like a Japanese translation, Mr. Fancy Company Man.

AlexYeah. And even with all the As You Know Bobs, it's essentially a movie about can you overcome basically the worst thing you've ever done in your life? He was one of the few people where it's like, what's better for the world, raising your kids or creating the most accessible computer in the world.

MerlinIt becomes another version of the ethical question, the trolley problem. Would you kill one person to save eight? This is not a rabbinical question. Not is it proper or right or good to do that, but would you do that? Would you take the effort to kill a person if you knew to a certainty that it would save eight people? And depending on how you phrase that question, and you get very different answers. And in this case, it's not so different in this case. I think the way John put it, it's like, you know, could you positively,

could you have a positive impact on the lives of tens, hundreds of millions of people at the expense of these, all these family people?

I mean, you know, he's so much under the magnifying glass for these things, you know, how, and I'm not trying, Boy, this is a really awful thing to say. But in how many office buildings and meeting rooms around the entire world right now is that happening every day? And those folks are not getting that same treatment. And they're basically making phones that fucking go on fire. Well, in this case, he made these tough decisions. And, you know, maybe he was just an emotionally unavailable guy.

But, yeah, I don't know. It's definitely very fraught. For sure. For sure. But you think you saw something. So it wasn't so much about a mental condition thing, but like a how you deal with what you've got thing.

Alexfor you? I guess. I mean, like you said, there's clearly there's so many episodes that are fueled by mania. And in that book that I really enjoyed, Becoming Steve Jobs was I just just hearing him like he would break down and cry around a reporter like, Jesus Christ, what the hell? Um, and, uh, I don't know, just, just really putting, um, like he, he, like you said, the demon dogs, like he was so haunted by like his parents giving him up in, in his mind.

And who knows if he had, uh, anything going on in his brain that was neurologically different than other people.

MerlinBut I'm actually I'm actually in that case, I'm talking more about his gosh, there's certain kinds of, you know, whatever artistic geniuses or whatever. We're like they could not. You know what? I'm going to steer clear of this third rail and just say when I'm talking about the demon dogs here, I am talking about his own completely outrageous expectations for himself in his company and its products. And there's no way I'll bet I'll bet there's no way that he could ever live up to the standard of what he thought he should be doing. and if that is your, let's just say it, incredibly irrational way to approach life.

That is a very, very, there's a lot of people who have one-tenth of the amount of that that he has and they're having very unhappy lives right now because nothing will ever be okay. And so, but imagine for him, you know, if that is, and I'm guessing here, but I'm guessing that like he had expectations for what this thing would do and anytime somebody came into the room with something that was not closer to the impossible but was further away from the impossible, I bet he found it intolerable. And I'm guessing it would take a product release of something. And even then, you know he's already thinking about

what's going to happen in two years and probably already working on it. It must have been, you just look at somebody from a remove and go, oh gosh, he's hung the moon. He's this rich guy who gets to do whatever he wants and everybody, oh, fawns all over Steve Jobs. But I bet he has demons in every square inch of his life that are just constantly saying, you could do so much better than this. what what a dick you could do so much better at this that's that's the kind of demon dogs that i mean and then like if you see it moving in the wrong direction and your sense of self and ego and your values are tied up in this company and then you get thrown out of your own company

to go in the direction that is antithetical with what he thinks is very very important to do that's it may not be very sympathetic it is to me other people may not find that very sympathetic But I find that tragic.

AlexOh, no, for sure. And I think that's why this fucks me up every year. Like, oh, God.

MerlinI'm like that with Elliot Smith. Really? I'm like that with Elliot Smith. And, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. I mean, as a fan of Elliot Smith from the 90s, you know, he always had, what do they call it, the dark mark? What do they call it when you see this big skull in the sky? You know something, you know things are not going great for Elliot in terms of the wiring and the electricity and pipes of his mind. That he's a dark horse, as they used to say. But, you know, when whatever that was, 2001, 2002, when it happened, it was still, it was crushing.

Crushing. Because his sad songs were exactly what a lot of us needed at certain times in our life. and the sad songs, that's a silly way to put it. What he had to say and how he said it had such an ineffable, indescribable impact on so many people. I'm not here to, any more than the Smiths, I'm not here to sell you on Elliot Smith, two Smiths, but it had a huge impact on me at various extremely difficult and buoyant times in my life. Listening to a sad song when you're very, very sad can be a huge comfort.

Listening to a sad song when you become very happy can make you very melancholy because you wonder how you got there and if you even deserved it. and so yeah him Phil Hartman there's still a few celebrity deaths that I still think I am not a public mourner I think it's unseemly but there are people whose loss I feel very deeply and very personally so I I don't think that's weird Alex and it's not my position to say I don't think you should feel bad about that I think you should embrace that I mean I'm very good

Alexat being sad and anxious so don't

Merlinworry about that we should start a podcast

AlexI'm interested though in you keep bringing up a story um and do you think you covered that or

Merlinwhat do you do you know I haven't even begin to cover it I will go as quick as I can bring it on it's extremely abstract and not very well thought out I have had the pleasure of back when I used to be Merlin Mann and people were interested in what I was doing I would go and I would do talks and tours at places. This is not a brag. It's just a way to say that I've been at Apple a bunch of times. I've been at Google a bunch of times. I've been to Yahoo. I've been to Pixar many times.

And had, you know, nice behind-the-scenes, well, behind-the-scenes in quotes, experiences at all of those places. And I, at the risk of, I don't know if I've said this about other companies before, but there are two companies that really stick out in my mind. for a couple reasons. Companies that are utterly obsessed with the story of the company. How did this company get started? How did this company come back from a seemingly impossible

failure to become 10 times greater than they could ever be? How did this company face down the risk of disappearing? How does this company handle the entire way we think about this process? We think about this so differently than any equivalent company in the entire world. This is the way that our employees are treated, and it's different than anywhere in the world. Here are the values of our company that are different from any in the world. You know what those two companies are? Apple and Pixar.

AlexI hear they have something in common.

MerlinWell, other places do very much have that. I mean, you look at some place like Panic in their way. Panic is a very special company in a lot of ways. They are, you know, I'm not saying these are the only two companies, but I just remember at Pixar in particular feeling like every single person I met there, maybe they just have to be. Like you don't get to work there unless you're a real bright face about the company. But everybody there is so into Pixar.

It's almost gross how much everybody at Pixar loves Pixar. And when you get the tour from anybody, you're going to hear these same stories over and over. Hey, you know, I have a friend who works in, what is Chris's exact job? He works, he basically is a big shot in the farm of servers that do a lot of the rendering. Hi, Chris Walker. I think that's what he does. And he's become kind of a big shot there. But they have the original Pixar box there. Like you can go see the box, the Pixar box. It looks like a safe from a cartoon. But every turn, hey, hey, you curious at all why the lobby is set up this way?

Not really. I'll tell you why. Because Steve thought the bathroom should be far away from the offices. So people had to see, oh, that's really weird. All I'm trying to get at is story. Story about the company. Now let's go further with Pixar. On my tour of Pixar, I got to meet Bob Peterson, who used to be the director of Story. He's the voice of Roz. And he was extremely nice to my daughter. But story. Pixar. It's all about the story. The story of Pixar. The story of what's happening in the stories that we are telling.

And those stories are so integral to how the company thinks about itself. Right? And you may disagree with the stories. You know what? You may even know that some of the stories are total bullshit. But I think that obsession with stories, and why am I saying that here? Because, first of all, Steve, there are all kinds of stories about Steve. But Steve tells stories. Steve doesn't answer a question just by saying yes. Steve goes through, and he has a very well-structured, like, he's good at this.

He will tell you a little story, however that is. and it will have all the elements of a story to it. There'll be suspense, like we don't know how this is going to turn out. There's risk. And then in the third act, this is what happened. But boy, then it changed again a lot later. So are you with me so far on this story? Huge to Apple, huge to Pixar, huge to Steve Jobs. Does that make sense so far?

AlexOh God, yeah.

MerlinBut do you agree though? I mean, you've met these people, you've read these things. These people are obsessed with the biography. On the one hand, when I say story, on the one hand, obsessed with the biography of the company as almost like a sentient being. But then they're also obsessed with, I mean, my daughter loves watching those horrible Johnny Ives videos, that fetish porn about how phones get made.

AlexOh, that's so cute. Oh God, I'd be best friends with your kid.

MerlinMy daughter loves those. My eyes are audibly rolling when I'm watching these, but I know people love them. They're beautifully produced, but that's part of the story. Here's the story. Your phone's not gonna blow up in your purse. We got it in this little bath of tiny rocks. It's gonna make it smooth. Oh, my God. Like, they invented that genre. Who else ever did that? Who else ever put that much into showing you how their product was made in a particular way? Did they show the Chinese ladies with back pain? They did not. They told a story about how your phone got made just for you.

So far?

AlexI'm wondering, though, if I'm trying to figure out if you just have a neutral stance on this or you think it is just interesting or you find it repulsive.

MerlinOh, no, I don't have – but here's the money shot. I was thinking about this, and then I was thinking about also what we love and what drives us crazy when these stories are told. And you and I have gone head-to-head on half a dozen occasions about the Fassbender Steve Jobs movie, right? I mean, because it feels – the way that story is told feels wrong to me. and this is not I'm not trying to start a new fight here but what I am saying is think about all the ways the stories get told now the thing is I see that story and I go whatever it's a

Hollywood movie you see you see that that story and and I think you enjoy it how important is it that the stories be true how important is it that the stories be complete and how important is it that the stories be consistent to Hollywood audience knowing the iPod is based on supposedly based on Lisa Jobs' Walkman is a fun fact. I think that's probably bullshit.

Don't you? I mean, do you think that exchange happened?

AlexNo.

MerlinIt really fits, but it fits that story. The story that they're telling about Jobs and Apple there, it really, really fits. So all I'm trying to get is this one thing that occurs to me here. What is a story? It's a thing about, a story is about a thing that happened And over time, it's got a beginning, usually a middle, and it's got an end. And almost every story is about change. That's really, I mean, this is, again, I'm sorry, I'm being condescending, but you learned this in your 10th grade writing class.

Like, tell me what changed. You started here, you ended up here. How did you react, right? That's what a story is. But the thing I'm thinking today, you know what else a story is? A story is an abstraction layer from reality. like if when you tell a story you don't leave in every single detail you only pull out the most important details and you tell them in the most satisfying order to have the highest impact stories in general right you to get good at storytelling you have to know how the audience

will react to this before you say it you have to know what details to leave in because they tell the story and what details to leave out because they distract it's a layer of abstraction that is not that different from the layers of abstraction in technology. For some reason, I don't know why, that feels really profound to me to realize that.

A Macintosh is also a story about technology. Because you don't need to know this is a 68,000 processor. No one cares. We're not even going to tell you how much RAM is in your fucking phone. Because you don't need to know that's not part of the story. All these layers of abstraction are increasingly going to enable you to make this a part of your life and your story in a way that has nothing to do with how it actually got made. If you want to watch a behind-the-scenes video, that's great. The behind-the-scenes videos we show you are going to be crafted exclusively to tell the story of your device and how it fits into your life.

So, I don't know. That hit me on the head today.

AlexI think, like, every, and this is how they want it, every Apple product is a story. and I think that's why not just me but now you know the entire world gravitates to it and man oh god I love the Johnny Ive porn so much it's so delightful

Merlinit's so beautifully done I don't know how at this point though I don't know how he does it honestly I don't know how he does it with a straight face at this point he must know how like a parody of bull he is at this point

AlexI don't okay so this is the other like thing that is so tragic about the like fucking official biography of steve jobs uh there's there's so little about johnny ive and apple is not apple without johnny ive like i i have this like really crazy conspiracy theory that i think johnny ive secretly loves orange because why in god's name would you make the uh the the mute switch on the the phone orange like i i i buy like

okay it's not it's it's uh you can't make it red because it's like less uh pleasing but like uh the ipod shuffle the case that it came the original you remember the usb stick um oh wow ipod shuffle i never i've never thought about this yeah i i it no it's completely it's completely weird and completely crazy but i just i god i that man i don't i think he's completely serious I think he 100% like buys what he's selling. And I mean, so, and in the interview with Steve Jobs,

like he also talks about like, we didn't just make the machine, we made the machines that made our machine. Right, right. Which, you know, speaks to the whole story of Apple's control and stuff like that.

But I don't know where I'm going, except that I think Johnny Ives secretly loves Orange, but he can't love orange because he's a designer.

MerlinI think whether he realizes it or not or says it or not, I think Steve Jobs sees his job as a kind of storytelling. Unlike other people who see themselves as merchants or who see themselves even just as designers, whatever he's doing is in the service of something bigger that's really ineffable. But, you know, it's almost like he kind of can't stop telling these stories, even if it isn't the kind of story where you gather children around the mantle. And that, you know, he seems utterly, he's such an editor in some ways.

He's so interested in taking out the inessential parts and highlighting and vastly improving the ones that are important. And I just I'd never thought about it in that particular way until last night and watching this and realizing he's such a good storyteller. Anyway, now I'm just repeating myself. But and that and then, you know, and then that goes out in a million directions because you think about his obsession with taste that just keeps coming through. He just he's so he's so sickened by people that don't care about this stuff as much as him. It's personally galling to him that other people don't care about these these temple matters in life.

Alexthe more i'm thinking about this it it's not just that he was a good storyteller he he wanted other people and other companies to be good storytellers like it's i think it goes beyond taste um because i mean pix pixar uh one of my favorite books creativity inc like uh ed catmell says like you know again and again that uh steve jobs didn't know how to make movies but he he you know would show Toy Story to his kids and like bring his friends over. And I mean, I don't know if there's

an actual correlation between that, but it feels like he also helped shape the story of Pixar, not just with like the whole office and like everybody needs to meet in the middle and talk before they want to go take a shit, but just how, you know, we don't care about what computers make this but a computer made this and a computer can make you feel so much love and you can cry about a little snowman who can't get out of the little snow globe all right so now I'm on this

this story kick like there's there's very much a Merlin man story and and no no okay and I know I know that you hate when I talk about this but there are so many people who wish that they could be me right now talking to Merlin Mann about Apple and Steve Jobs. And, you know, back in the days when you were Merlin Mann. I used to talk into my shoe. I'm wondering, as someone who is

like, I have listened to your voice for 10 years. How creepy is that? Were you doing it outside my bedroom window or something you look like a baby when you sleep like you know from from the guy who's uh teaching teaching us with leo laporte how to use use quicksilver oh my hair and that

Merlinoh my god you had cool glasses um all right no not that i'm angry but so what's the question

Alexhere madam do you think do you think that you uh are constructing a story of your life more than And I mean, we all we all do. We all try to make narratives of our lives and try to clean them up and make them nice. And but, you know, you you live maybe maybe not quite a celebrity lifestyle, but you have a very public persona and you shape it in a certain way. And is is there was there intentionally a Merlin man story? And did that ever shift?

MerlinAre you really asking me this? Yeah. uh i'm not sure how it applies to steve jobs but i'm game i am writing this as much as i can you write all you want i'll talk to you anytime dude you got my number um well uh i can say i can say this with with uh with total uh i hope honesty and candor which is that in the main in in the sort of modern era, like let's say starting in the early 2000s, I mean, I aspired to have

fun with computers, again, because I've been kind of burned out with the dot-com crash. But I got into LiveJournal and I got into blogging. And honest, like cards on the table, and I hope I've said this enough that you're tired of hearing it because I want to acknowledge that if I wanted to be famous at all, it was mainly that I wanted to be noticed by the people that I admired. Like I would have given anything for Jason Kotke to like me or Heather Champ or Corey Doctorow, all these people that I really, really, really looked up to. It just meant the world to me

that those people would see what I did and not think it sucked. And, you know, I mean, maybe in my dreamier moments, I would hope they would be obsessed with me, as obsessed with me as I with them in creepier moments. But that's where that was from, was just a raw, raging, inflamed desire to do something that would make me admirable to people that I respect. It was not to be famous. And if I was to be famous, I would be proud to be famous because

I know nice people that are awesome. If there's a story there, that's where that started. On the other hand, I mean, I'm extremely circumspect about actual celebrity. That's the thing. It's like, I mean, you're being sweet, to put it this way, because you've listened to me in a while and you're being very kind and you're my friend. But no, I'm not famous. Not really. Not like in the world sense. I mean, like, I would never want it to be. I can't imagine. There's things I do and things that I say I could never do and say if I were actually well known.

It's impossible. There's just no way. I mean, I would never mention anything about my life. It's just that it's contained into this certain area where so far, and I want to keep a cap on that. There's things I could do to get all of my podcasts more popular that I have no desire to do. I don't want a single person listening to that show that isn't flat out fucking awesome. And I will not do anything to pander to somebody who's going to say, oh, I don't know why this is popular. Well, you know, it shouldn't be popular. It should be exactly where it is. Exactly the right people are listening to these shows.

That's it. and the advertising I can sell against that number of people is exactly the amount of money that I will make from those things because I have no interest in becoming famous for its own sake because Kurt Cobain, that's just how it is. It's the worst. You do not want to be that way. So for me, I do have concerns. I was listening to Slate Culture Gab Fest today and they're talking about that Italian, that woman, the novelist, who's chosen to be anonymous for her whole career and has basically been outed. and they had the most

like angry spirited debate I've ever heard on that show about this but you know what it comes down to is like there's a certain feeling of like well hey once I've heard of you I get to do anything like you belong to me once I know your name and I find that chilling and I've seen it happen with other people before Twitter like I've seen ugly stuff happen where as soon as you appear on my radar screen and I get an opinion about you you now belong to me and sometimes people like to put that in a nice way and sometimes people put that in an ugly way

but I find that very chilling I don't want to be that famous and so increasingly I do try to I try to say what I feel like saying but I do not want to do it in the service of building a story about myself maybe there's a time maybe five eight years ago where that was more appealing but I don't know I don't want to be that I don't want to be that raw I don't want to be that you know um exposed what's the word i'm looking for i just don't want to be that guy i well and

Alexand to bring it back to to steve jobs i think you have you have that taste like you i i truly think that if you wanted to be you could uh you know have have a book about working for four hours um but but like you said you you don't you want customers who care about your product basically You, you, and I think that's why I gravitate. That's a good way to put it.

MerlinThat's a really good way to put it.

AlexYeah. And, and that's why I, you know, you, you've, oh God, I'm going to say you've been one of like an inspiration and a hero. I know how much you love those words. But like.

MerlinAlex, I appreciate that. That doesn't bother me. Don't be weird about it. I, I, cause here's the thing. I can't tell you how many people I feel that way about, and I don't want it to be weird. I mean, like I was I somehow got to be kind of minor acquaintances with Ted Leo. Ted Leo is a hero of mine. Like I'm talking to him on Twitter like like we're great pals or something. But the truth is I've been seeing him play playing punk rock bars since the 90s. And like the fact that he has any fucking idea who I am and cares about my taste in power pop for five minutes is staggering.

It's thrilling. It's humbling. It's whatever it is. But like, you know, just if you're lucky in life, you run into people who help you understand aspects of your life better in a different way or whatever. Or maybe they're just people who make you happy. But like we shouldn't shy away from saying that to each other. That's a wonderful thing. I mean, I tutored to Peter Serafinowicz the other way. Peter Serafinowicz does not know me from a slice of bread. And I just wanted to say, I like these Donald Trump videos you're doing. You're a delight. Thank you for doing them. I don't want him to respond to me.

I don't want him to like me. I just want him to whatever day he's having, I would like for him to see that and go not not to go like who said that not to go how many followers, but to just go, you know what? Sometimes it's really nice that people just like your shit and walk away.

Alexthat's well and and that's what i struggle with a lot a lot um is i i i'm at a point now where um it is i'm slowly accepting it's it's not weird for people to come up to me at conventions and

Merlinbe like that's not really your that's not really your style though no i don't enjoy do you remember me shoving you do you remember me shoving you at people when we hung out oh i do i do i demanded I was like, I'm not interesting. Talk to her. This is the one you want to spend time with. I was literally shoving you, shoving you into men's rooms.

Actually, that was your idea.

AlexThat was. I really had to pee. For folks who don't know, I sometimes use men's restrooms.

MerlinBut you walked in. You walked in. Yeah. You walked in and it was not. But the thing is, you didn't walk in like you own the place. But you walked in exactly the way that any person who used that room would walk in, which is to say you walked in. You went in a stall. Stahl, you did your business and you walked out. And I was like, check out that fucking baller. And it wasn't like, excuse me, I'm here to make a statement. You're like, I just need to piss.

AlexThis one's open.

MerlinOh, kudos, kudos.

AlexI walked in there like a person who really had to take a piss.

MerlinAnd everybody was just like, diga diga diga. I pours out whiskey bottle.

AlexOh, what just happened?

Merlinyou have good taste is uh thank you for saying that i don't feel like i do but well

Alexnot in home screens but you know my home screen fucking rules i you know there's just there's

Merlinsomething i've seen as like what i want to call an anti-pattern that like i just of all the things we try we all do irrational and silly things all the time because they might work or because they feel like they're useful there's all these things that we do but like there's such a funny thing and And like there's one of the funny things that we do in wanting to be liked or in wanting to be admired. And you can see this in spades with one of the presidential candidates. You see people doing the exact opposite of what would make people like you because you think it's the thing that would make people like you.

And that could be stuff, not the exact opposite, one of the myriad opposites. So things like being clearly fake interested in people, talking way too much. I mean, you've had calls with people. You ever have a call with a stranger that begins like this? Well, let me tell you a little bit about myself. No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't even want you to tell me a little bit about yourself. I had one of these calls two weeks ago. Somebody wants me to write for something. And I was like, hey, yeah, a favor for a friend. I could write for this. And I said, so what kind of topic are you looking for and how many words?

Well, let me start by telling you a little bit about myself and what I've been up to. I have been doing content strategy as a focus now for about three years. We've been working with brands A, B, C, D, E, and F. So what topic do you want me to write on and about how many words? Well, we've been rolling out an initiative where we're working closely with brands to bring a content management strategy. Oh, okay. so how many words do you want me to write about fucking what well let me tell you a little bit

about who we've been working with like okay that guy thinks that sounds so baller he thinks he sounds so cool because he is repping as this guy who is impossibly low-key about his clearly admirable success and i just see a fuckwit people are the worst alex the worst i don't know how you

Alexhandle those calls on on your own because i'm lucky enough to at least always usually have uh one person in in the room where we can just you know at some points we literally are running around tables being because we have nothing else to do it's such a boring conversation um i don't know

Merlinhow people do that you know but they do that because that's what they do all day and you're like you just want to call bullshit and go what are you doing stop doing that don't you think don't you ever want to like just scream how is this working for you how is this a success do you only talk to people who think that this is normal oh my god let me show you this educational film about how the rest of the world operates as actual co-8 human beings fucking people i have uh

Alexwhat is now known as an alter ego named Martha, where sometimes Max and my other boss, Trin, will be like, I need you to Martha this person right now, where I like to think you could call Martha a reasonable monster.

MerlinAnd so what is the nature of Martha's work? Is it something about her style that's meant to bring this to an end or to provide focus? What does Martha do?

AlexUm, Martha's main focus is either to, uh, basically tell someone to fuck off and that they're boring or, um, to get them to do their job or do.

MerlinDo your job, sir.

AlexBut yeah, when someone is, uh, trying to sell us something or a lot of times we get requests like, uh, make custom cards. And the biggest question really is just why. Why does this need to happen? And why should we care?

Which sounds harsh.

MerlinSo many people just do not understand that question. We'd be like, okay, so we have a reputation for being smartasses. But we have a reputation for high quality. And we have a reputation for what we do making sense in a certain context. If you like what we do, each thing we do will be more like us than the thing before it. You know what I mean? Like my daughter, we've never played Cards Against Humanity.

AlexWe can't.

MerlinShe's eight. But the point is she loves your company and she gets the joke. And we'll just be walking down the street and she goes, and at the end we'll tally up all the votes and then give the money to Hillary Clinton. She thinks that is – we laugh about this. I'm not shining you on. We laugh about this twice a day. We just look at each other and go, Donald Trump is a huge man who lives in a golf course. And then we talk about why it's funny that you used in instead of on. We literally talk about it. So like, but take that company. Here's this company. Each thing we do is more like us than the thing before it. And so far, we have a pretty unbroken record of blowing people's minds with how much more like Cards Against Humanity we can be.

Cutting this deal with you to do something, something, specialized cards, that makes us closer to somebody who makes lap blankets at Walmart. Like that does not get us closer to being more like us. That gets us more like becoming somebody we never wanted to be. I mean, isn't that kind of part of it? You have to measure that against like what it is that you're up to.

AlexOh, completely. And I am very comfortable with singing these praises because I have nothing to do with that part. To some degree, at least, you know, hearing Max just I mean, they created the voice of this company and created, you know, a character. and uh also i i i don't really know how to put it into words and it it does sound super appley and pretentious but it's like uh we we also don't want customers who who don't get the

Merlinjoke and who don't oh that's so important that was me in speaking gigs it was so hard to try and explain to people without sounding like a dick if i if i accept what you're offering to do what you want i would be worse as a person right like you got to just say it like like I'm not trying to steal this, but in that case, come out here and get all my employees straight by showing them how to use email. I'm like, can we talk about your management style before we do that? Whoa, easy text. And in that case, it's like, this is not who we want to be.

And it seems fancy, and people hate that. They're like, why are we having a conversation about why this should happen? That's not what happens on business development calls. That's where you say yes, and we say yes, and then we hand it on to the people, and we all go high five and have some gin. You know, it's like, oh, it's so gross.

AlexThe thing, and I know Max is just going to hate that I'm saying this, but it was super weird because in college I was a huge fan of cards, but just like the culture and the attitude and what they stood for. And, you know, the fact, oh God, now I'm just farting into our mouth.

MerlinPlease stop editing. Go, go, go.

AlexI know. But, you know, like we have a scholarship that is gets to send women in STEM to college. And like that's just so like who knew a stupid comedy company would do that?

MerlinAnd like I get to be a very small part of shutting down the factory for a week and everybody gets a vacation. Come on. Who comes up with stuff like that?

AlexVery smart and empathetic humans who happen to be my boss.

MerlinYeah, but it's like it's in the there's a word that's kind of looming in the background with all of this, which is brand. And like I get that. I get why people say that. I used to like that more word more than I do now because I think it means too many things and they're often silly things. But, you know, I think you could take brand brand is what you hope other people see when they look at you. But like I'm talking more about how you see yourself. It's like and this does actually, I think, get back into the Steve Job thing at length. But like, you know, yeah, sure. I want people to think I'm cool. I want people to admire my Helvetica or whatever.

This is really about me liking who I am and me feeling good about using the name of my company. And that gets lost in the shuffle. It's only after years of having a storied career and getting a TED Talk that people like to talk about shit like that. But that's part of the story too. And there's nothing better than that. It's just the best. knowing the people you you like think what you do is good it's great but like knowing that you and your heart are like this was better than the last thing we did we really outdid ourselves this

time now what do we do next ah come on it's the best oh god see now now i think this is a good

Alexepisode and good conversation and i'm gonna go and edit it and then just want to throw up and then i'm gonna send you a file and realize oh my god what happened with the noise gate oh god there's clipping what the fuck uh that's the spirit oh yeah

Merlinoh the demon dogs the demon dogs here come the demon dogs

Alexi'm your demon dog you know merlin it would just be way too off-brand for me to have even

Merlinan ounce of confidence oh yeah you want to really stay on on message

2. A Reasonable Monster

Show notes

Transcript

0:00

0:19

0:21

0:23

0:55

1:15

1:22

1:27

2:00

2:35

3:06

3:36

4:08

4:38

5:17

5:52

6:26

6:37

6:52

7:07

7:35

7:56

8:40

8:59

9:00

9:03

9:35

9:39

10:12

10:43

10:53

11:28

11:53

12:16

12:53

13:27

13:34

13:55

14:26

14:56

15:31

16:02

16:34

16:47

16:49

16:52

17:16

17:50

18:22

18:36

19:09

19:16

19:18

19:46

20:06

20:32

20:41

21:01

21:36

21:43

22:16

22:46

22:59

23:04

23:16

23:49

24:24

24:54

25:24

26:03

26:27

26:40

27:13

27:44

28:01

28:03

28:17