Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast
Speaker 2: about Steve Jobs. You know, the founder, co founder of
Speaker 2: Apple and in a lot of ways, the founder of
Speaker 2: a lot of the most irritating parts of our modern world.
Speaker 2: The guy Sam Altman pretends to be when he looks
Speaker 2: in the mirror in the morning. The guy Elizabeth Holmes
Speaker 2: pretended to be when she was executing one of the
Speaker 2: most infamous cons in corporate history. For someone who's not
Speaker 2: a con artist or Elizabeth Holmes, last time I checked Exitron, Hello,
Speaker 2: and is it true that you are not, in fact
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Holmes.
Speaker 3: I'm not Elizabeth Holmes. A lot of people ask me this.
Speaker 3: I am not Elizabeth Holmes. How do you feel about turtlenecks. Yeah, no,
Speaker 3: not for me. It makes me look weird, makes me
Speaker 3: look fatter than I usually am.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, Sophie, let's try to get back on the
Speaker 2: phone with Elizabeth Holmes. Though I do want a green
Speaker 2: light green light her podcast.
Speaker 3: Still I wish, Yeah, I wish I could have offline.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great shack. I love to talk to her.
Speaker 3: Hello. Yes, it's me Elizabeth Holmes.
Speaker 2: It's time to give her another chance. So when we
Speaker 2: last left off right, Steve has gone and come back
Speaker 2: from India. He's stolen a bunch of money from his
Speaker 2: best friend, Steve Wosneyak, who's the guy who actually knows
Speaker 2: how to do the stuff that Steve is getting paid for,
Speaker 2: and he has some plans for that money. He's going
Speaker 2: to have some plans for that money. So the thing
Speaker 2: that's also happening at this time nineteen seventy five that's
Speaker 2: kind of most noteworthy in the computer world is that
Speaker 2: al Taire has released the eighty eight hundred micro computer,
Speaker 2: now the all Tear eighty eight hundred. You would not
Speaker 2: call it useful in terms that modern computers are useful for, right.
Speaker 2: It is not a thing that you're going to get
Speaker 2: a huge amount of productive work out of. But what's
Speaker 2: noteworthy about it is that it's basically the first product
Speaker 2: that you can buy a symbol that will give a
Speaker 2: regular individual. You still need a lot more knowledge about
Speaker 2: stuff like soldering and whatnot than like a normal person has,
Speaker 2: but a relatively normal person can buy the Altair eighty
Speaker 2: eight hundred a symbol it and have a computer that
Speaker 2: you don't have to be super rich or working for
Speaker 2: a large corporation to have access to right. So, even
Speaker 2: though this device is we would call this extremely limited
Speaker 2: in modern terms, it is a foundational moment for modern
Speaker 2: big tech. Bill Gates reads an ad for the Altair
Speaker 2: eighty eight hundred and this causes him to drop out
Speaker 2: of Harvard and start Microsoft Right, which initially codes software
Speaker 2: for the Altair. Wosniak has a different reaction to seeing
Speaker 2: this product advertised because, unlike Bill Gates, Wosniak is an
Speaker 2: actual genius, and his immediate reaction to hearing about this
Speaker 2: is like, well, fuck, I've built computers that are as
Speaker 2: good as this for fun at home, Like this isn't
Speaker 2: that impressive? I could make something better than this, right,
Speaker 2: And in fact he can. He's about to, you know.
Speaker 2: So he talks to Steve Jobs about this, because he
Speaker 2: does about everything. Steve is his best friend, and we
Speaker 2: can kind of imagine Steve Jobs like steepling his hands
Speaker 2: like the Grinch while his lips curl up into a
Speaker 2: big sea being up the place too. Oh absolutely yes,
Speaker 2: smelling so bad now, Jobs in Wosniak both would sometimes
Speaker 2: attend meetings of a group called the Homebrew Computer Club.
Speaker 2: Jobs is a lot less technical, right, and he's not
Speaker 2: really interested in exploring what this new tech can do,
Speaker 2: which is why Wosniak is into it, right. But he
Speaker 2: does see the club as a potential test market, and
Speaker 2: he and Waws work out a plan to sell circuit
Speaker 2: boards that people can make into micro computers. This works
Speaker 2: pretty well, This gets them enough money that Jobs decides
Speaker 2: the next step is to form a proper corporation and
Speaker 2: decide to get funding to put out a device of
Speaker 2: their own, which is going to be like the first
Speaker 2: true personal computer. Right, has a little bit debate, do
Speaker 2: you consider like the chipset basically that Wosniak puts together
Speaker 2: first the first person computer or this divi But either way,
Speaker 2: it's not really a thing that people can buy at
Speaker 2: this point, right, Wosniak is going to have to make this,
Speaker 2: and it's extremely unclear as to whether or not it's
Speaker 2: really possible to do this at a price point that
Speaker 2: people can afford, and whether they'd be able to produce
Speaker 2: such a device at all. Jobs ignores the fact that
Speaker 2: it's not really clear if this can be done. His
Speaker 2: role in this is to motivate Wosniak to figure out
Speaker 2: how to do it right and at the same time
Speaker 2: convince wealthier and more experienced people to get on board
Speaker 2: and help them figure out how to actually like, produce
Speaker 2: and sell a product. So at this stage his role here,
Speaker 2: he's effectively being a con man, right. He needs to
Speaker 2: get people to buy into a vision that is far
Speaker 2: from proven by basically telling them, oh, yeah, we already
Speaker 2: have this figured out, when Wosneiac does not really have
Speaker 2: the device figured out yet, you know, and that is
Speaker 2: he is kind of doing a con here, right, It's
Speaker 2: one that's going to work out.
Speaker 3: What would otherwise be known today as just stought up funding.
Speaker 2: Yes, startup funding. This is how it all works. Now,
Speaker 2: this is what Elizabeth Holmes does, Right, She doesn't know
Speaker 2: how to make a blood testing device. She finds a
Speaker 2: guy who is a genius that she thinks is her Wosniak,
Speaker 2: and she sees her job as if I've got to
Speaker 2: keep the lie going until he figures out how to
Speaker 2: make the product. Jobs is doing the same thing. He's
Speaker 2: just doing it with a much more modest kind of development. Right.
Speaker 2: They're a lot closer to the personal computer when he
Speaker 2: starts making these promises than we were to a blood
Speaker 2: testing device like the one Holmes was promising, which may
Speaker 2: never be possible to be fair like, that may not
Speaker 2: be a thing we ever do, just because of some
Speaker 2: certain limitations in the way Blood is. I'm not an
Speaker 2: expert on this stuff, but they sure in a blood guy.
Speaker 2: But you can see what she is doing is pattern
Speaker 2: off of what Jobs did. But he is better at
Speaker 2: judging what kind of risks to take, right, because this
Speaker 2: is an achievable risk. And in fact, Wosniak is going
Speaker 2: to make the thing that he's promising. Everybody while is
Speaker 2: going to make. And there's an interesting quote in Isaacson's
Speaker 2: book from Noah Bushnell, who's jobs as old boss at
Speaker 2: Atari and something of a mentor to Jobs quote, There's
Speaker 2: something indefinable in an entrepreneur, and I saw that in Steve.
Speaker 2: He was interested not just in engineering but also in
Speaker 2: business aspects. I taught him that if you act like
Speaker 2: you can do something, then it will work. I told him,
Speaker 2: pretend to be completely in control, and people will assume
Speaker 2: that you are. And that is how all of these
Speaker 2: people are. That is what Steve is going to do. Atari,
Speaker 2: by the way, is going to go tits up not
Speaker 2: long after this, in part because of some of the
Speaker 2: decisions Bushnell makes. But this is the attitude that Jobs embraces,
Speaker 2: and the attitude that everyone who follows him is going
Speaker 2: to take on right, like move fast and break things,
Speaker 2: make promises that you don't know if you can keep.
Speaker 2: You know, what matters is keeping balls.
Speaker 3: In the h also, I think. But that's the thing.
Speaker 3: I think Jobs's big difference and the reason that puppeting
Speaker 3: him is so stupid is he seemed to actually, like,
Speaker 3: I think he thought was could do it.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and he was right. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Less so that he was right. I think he's still
Speaker 3: doing the thing that most founders do where they're just like,
Speaker 3: I think this is possible. But he at least knew
Speaker 3: that was could do this, and his yah, his idea
Speaker 3: was at least somewhat modest, Yeah, compared to all sorts
Speaker 3: of like there's the startup that claims it could beam
Speaker 3: energy between products, the one that's just been completely faked forever,
Speaker 3: that one's still going somehow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think it's also, as you were, kind
Speaker 2: of like intimating Jobs knows everyone knows. Everyone who knows
Speaker 2: anything about computers knows that what Waznak is trying to do,
Speaker 2: we're eighty percent of the way there. Right. That twenty
Speaker 2: percent is a significant gap still, but it's not nearly
Speaker 2: the kind of gap that Holmes had to clear with Therahose. Right,
Speaker 2: nothing even a little bit like the device Theramost was promising.
Speaker 3: He was just chemistry.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so it was not nearly a much of
Speaker 2: a jump. It is again that twenty percent is not trivial,
Speaker 2: which is why people consider Wosniak one of the greatest
Speaker 2: engineers who ever lived. His accomplishment is significant, but it's
Speaker 2: not nearly as much of a jump that you have
Speaker 2: to make now. Job still does have to convince Wosniak,
Speaker 2: who has again is the only person who's going to
Speaker 2: make this possible to devote hours of his time to
Speaker 2: doing this, and was just got married. He has this
Speaker 2: career that he's just starting, and he's broke all the time.
Speaker 2: Steve Wosniak is one of the worst people with money
Speaker 2: who will ever live. As a spoiler, He's going to
Speaker 2: get crazy rich off of Apple and then burn a
Speaker 2: huge chunk of that money failing to run a series
Speaker 2: of concerts like he is horrible with his money, and
Speaker 2: so it's not a trivial challenge for Jobs to motivate
Speaker 2: him to put the kind of time in that it's
Speaker 2: going to take him to achieve this goal, and he's
Speaker 2: able to do that by lying to Wosniak. Here's how
Speaker 2: Isaacson describes their conversation. He didn't argue that they were
Speaker 2: sure to make money, said that they would have a
Speaker 2: fun adventure. Even if we lose our money, We'll have
Speaker 2: a company, said Jobs, as they were driving in his
Speaker 2: Volkswagen bus. For once in our lives, we'll have a company.
Speaker 2: This was enticing to Osniak, even more than any prospect
Speaker 2: of getting rich. He recalled, I was excited to think
Speaker 2: about us like that, to be two best friends starting
Speaker 2: a company. Wow. I knew right then that I do it.
Speaker 2: How could I not? And that's sad because like that
Speaker 2: is purely Jobs gaslighting him. Jobs does not think of
Speaker 2: him this way. Right, Jobs wants a company for himself.
Speaker 2: He doesn't consider Bosniak to be an even partner in this.
Speaker 2: Right he knows Wosniak is herreplaceable, and he will treat
Speaker 2: Wosniak better than most people because of that, but he
Speaker 2: does not see this as two best friends embarking on
Speaker 2: an adventure together. Steve sees this as this is my chance, right,
Speaker 2: my chance.
Speaker 3: It's I'm said how the jeweling narratives clearly went and
Speaker 3: like I love my friend Steve, I love doing computers.
Speaker 3: It was with my friends Steve and Steve Jobs sitting
Speaker 3: there going, I can't wait to take all the money
Speaker 3: from Steve wasn act.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna fuck this guy and everybody else.
Speaker 4: I can't wait to fuck over this idiot, just like
Speaker 4: it's funny you see all the stuff with his children,
Speaker 4: disgusting and how he acted to his staff, but it
Speaker 4: feels like he was somehow more evil before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's worse to them than he is to Washnak
Speaker 2: because he needs Wosniak and he's not dumb right, Jobs
Speaker 2: is not dumb. Jobs understands maybe the only person in
Speaker 2: his life until he meets Joni Ives Right, who's the
Speaker 2: big uh industrial designer who is kind of probably the
Speaker 2: single most important person in like how Apple products look
Speaker 2: and feel today. That's I've iv is irreplaceable. Wozniak was irreplaceable,
Speaker 2: right because these guys have a skill that no one
Speaker 2: else can come close to, So he can't be shitty
Speaker 2: to them in the same way he is to everybody else,
Speaker 2: but he's still deeply manipulative to Wozniak, right, like that
Speaker 2: is beyond argument. I think so the wah was believe
Speaker 2: his friend. And for the next few weeks he works
Speaker 2: at HP during the day and at night he solders
Speaker 2: and codes software by hand because he doesn't have direct
Speaker 2: access to a machine, right, he can't. This is to
Speaker 2: understand the degree of his achievement. He doesn't have a
Speaker 2: computer that he can code this computer in He is
Speaker 2: sitting up with paper and writing code by hand. And
Speaker 2: the first time he knows when it works is when
Speaker 2: he puts all of this together and builds the device
Speaker 2: and tries to run it. Jesus yes, Like this is
Speaker 2: a whole different planet from what coders do today.
Speaker 3: Like so a level of genius the I don't think
Speaker 3: was actually guests no credit for he is so fucking
Speaker 3: good at this it's nuts.
Speaker 2: Jobs registers Apple as a California business partnership on April first,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six. Their initial logo is drawn by the
Speaker 2: guy who is briefly the third founder of the company,
Speaker 2: Ronald Wayne. Wayne is an Atari engineer who they brought
Speaker 2: in to kind of be the adult in the room. Right,
Speaker 2: one thing Jobs is good at that you wouldn't expect
Speaker 2: me to be good at. He has certain kinds of humility.
Speaker 2: He understands for a long period of time, I want
Speaker 2: to be the CEO, but I'm not ready to do
Speaker 2: that job. Right. His first pick, he's going to pick
Speaker 2: a few people for this role. And he's bad at
Speaker 2: picking people for this role, by the way, but he
Speaker 2: does understand I'm not ready to do this, which is
Speaker 2: interesting to me. You usually see a guy like Jobs. Yeah,
Speaker 2: weird for him to have that level of understanding of
Speaker 2: at least one of his limitations. Now, Wayne makes the
Speaker 2: first logo for Apple, which Steve Jobs loves. And this
Speaker 2: first logo is an etching of Isaac Newton beneath an
Speaker 2: apple tree. It's very pretentious. Jobs loves it because he
Speaker 2: is pretentious. But like I will guarantee you Apple would
Speaker 2: not have worked out had that been their logo. Right.
Speaker 2: The Apple logo today is maybe the most valuable logo
Speaker 2: on the planet. There is a reason why it is
Speaker 2: so front and center in like the back of every device. Right,
Speaker 2: it's what you see when people you know someone's using
Speaker 2: an Apple. Right. It's an undeniably successful design, and Jobs
Speaker 2: wants this like pretentious ass Isaac Newton design because he
Speaker 2: thinks it's smarter. Right. They do eventually jettison it before
Speaker 2: the company, you know, comes out within it logo.
Speaker 3: By the way, the thing you're not describing is that
Speaker 3: it's got Apple computer co on it. It looks like
Speaker 3: the label from an eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like medicine, Like someone's kind of sell you medicine.
Speaker 3: Stay coil logo. It's all stippled as well at Wall
Speaker 3: Street Journal style. Yeah, this is this isn't just bad.
Speaker 3: This is like dog shit.
Speaker 2: It's dog shit. It's going to get replaced very quickly.
Speaker 2: Wayne is going to leave the company, and like he
Speaker 2: has like a third of the company, has a stake
Speaker 2: in it that he like sells for I think like
Speaker 2: a thousand bucks or some shit like. But what it
Speaker 2: says a lot about how shitty Steve Jobs is to
Speaker 2: work with that. Years later, when Wayne is interviewed about this,
Speaker 2: he's like, yeah, I just thought it would be too strong.
Speaker 2: I'm glad I quit the job because it wouldn't have
Speaker 2: been worth the stress. Like this man looks at the
Speaker 2: possibility of having one hundreds of millions of dollars. It
Speaker 2: is like, but I wouldn't have had to stay in
Speaker 2: a room with Steve Jobs. Not worth it. The smell
Speaker 2: not worth it. Yeah, the smell alone, it's not worth
Speaker 2: that money.
Speaker 3: Oh boy.
Speaker 2: So Wahs succeeds and the device he makes becomes the
Speaker 2: Apple One. It's basically just this is not what we
Speaker 2: would consider a full computer. It is a microprocessor, a CPU,
Speaker 2: a power supply, and some memory chips on a circuit board. Right.
Speaker 2: You put it in a box like you get a
Speaker 2: cigar box, and you stick this fucker in there, and
Speaker 2: you hook it up to a monitor and a keyboard,
Speaker 2: and then you've got a computer you can use in
Speaker 2: your home. The Apple One is not a big hit
Speaker 2: among the computer geeks at the homebrew club. They wanted
Speaker 2: to hack and cobble, and they liked sharing schematics and
Speaker 2: stuff for free. The fact that Jobs is trying to
Speaker 2: sell this idea to them for money rubs everyone the
Speaker 2: wrong way. But in this instance, Jobs understands the future
Speaker 2: better than they do. He knows that it lays in
Speaker 2: selling a computer regular people want to buy. So he
Speaker 2: finds a guy who owns a computer shop, and he
Speaker 2: works at a deal to sell a bunch of these
Speaker 2: boards for five hundred bucks a pop. He brings in
Speaker 2: a bunch of his friends from around California and elsewhere
Speaker 2: to help them make the boards, and he hires his
Speaker 2: mom to manage the phones. Elizabeth Holmes is one of
Speaker 2: Apple's first employees and does finance work for them. And
Speaker 2: this is where the legendary story of Apple being formed
Speaker 2: out of a family garage comes from. Jobs in Wozniak
Speaker 2: Rope in their friends jobs's adopted sister works there. They
Speaker 2: bring in their friends girlfriends. Right you know, Elizabeth Holmes
Speaker 2: is Dan Kottke's girlfriend. He has them like soldering a
Speaker 2: bunch of boards together. Right. Kotkey moves down from Oregon
Speaker 2: for the summer to help. And this is the first
Speaker 2: time that people get exposed to Steve's temper. Brince Schlender
Speaker 2: writes he prodded the team ceaselessly when things went wrong.
Speaker 2: He moved fast. After an old girlfriend failed to solder
Speaker 2: a few chips correctly, he made her the team's bookkeeper.
Speaker 2: His temper was short, and he never hesitated to belittle
Speaker 2: their work when something went wrong. As a child, Steve
Speaker 2: had rarely been given any reason to hold back his
Speaker 2: honest feelings. Now he began to learn one of his
Speaker 2: first management lessons, namely that his temper, properly targeted, could
Speaker 2: actually be a very effective motivational tool. Right, people will
Speaker 2: work hard to avoid me screaming at them because it's
Speaker 2: such an unpleasant experience. Ooh, that does say a lot
Speaker 2: about this guy. So they come out with this thing,
Speaker 2: this legitimately revolutionary device, the Apple one, and it kind
Speaker 2: of flops. Right. They sell, They make a good amount
Speaker 2: of money off the first batch of sales to the store,
Speaker 2: but the store can't move them. Right. Part of the
Speaker 2: problem is timing the first twenty five devices hit the
Speaker 2: store right at the same time as a more established
Speaker 2: company puts out its first personal computer, the IMSAI eighty eighty,
Speaker 2: which would become the first personal computer to sell more
Speaker 2: than a million dollars worth of product in a single month. Right.
Speaker 2: Un Like the Apple one, the IMSAI eighty eighty is
Speaker 2: a complete machine. It's in a box, like an actual
Speaker 2: professional box, not some box that a dude found, right.
Speaker 2: And it's not just so. It's not just a circuit
Speaker 2: board with some kookie branding. Right. It's something that's more
Speaker 2: recognizable to a normal person as a product, and particularly
Speaker 2: to like somebody buying a computer for their business, right
Speaker 2: because that is still the bulk of the of the
Speaker 2: of the market right now. Now. The other issue is
Speaker 2: employees at the one store that Apple's first product is
Speaker 2: in hate Jobs. Whenever he comes down to try to
Speaker 2: get them to buy more, to try to like get
Speaker 2: them to change the prominence with which the Apple one
Speaker 2: is put up in their store, He's like, he hasn't showered.
Speaker 2: He stinks to high heaven.
Speaker 3: He looks at the ways of him the pig pen, right.
Speaker 2: And yeah, they're all just like why are we why
Speaker 2: are we taking Yes, And they're these guys at these
Speaker 2: these early stores that he's trying to get to buy
Speaker 2: his product are like, why would we take a risk
Speaker 2: on this?
Speaker 4: Dude?
Speaker 2: He doesn't look serious. This is not a guy who
Speaker 2: can run a real company. Right. So the fact that
Speaker 2: this fails, the fact that Jobs is not able to
Speaker 2: make this product move, and that it starts to become
Speaker 2: really clear that the company's approaching a serious cash crunch.
Speaker 2: This causes Jobs to have something of a personal crisis.
Speaker 2: When they sell that first those first twenty five units,
Speaker 2: they make a good amount of money off of that, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of money for them, and that makes
Speaker 2: them feel like we're on the cusp of success. And
Speaker 2: then they stop selling additional units. He had initially thought
Speaker 2: with the early success they had, jobs had convinced himself,
Speaker 2: I have hacked a new kind of enlightened Buddhist capitalism. Right.
Speaker 2: The fact that we're going to be a hit means
Speaker 2: that I have figured out a better, a more ethical, enlightened,
Speaker 2: spiritual way of being a caut his employees, one where
Speaker 2: he screams abuses his girlfriend for not being as good
Speaker 2: at soldering as he wants it to be. As soon
Speaker 2: as he becomes convinced like I am the new Buddhist
Speaker 2: founder CEO, he orders production of one hundred more Apple
Speaker 2: Ones that they can't sell, and so he burns the
Speaker 2: money they've made in this first sale on this disastrous
Speaker 2: second push of products that people don't want to buy,
Speaker 2: and so the company finds itself in an existential cash crunch.
Speaker 2: They cannot move the units that they're making, and they're
Speaker 2: running out of money to pay his friends, some of
Speaker 2: whom have quit other work and moved to California, like
Speaker 2: Daniel Kottke for the summer to help. For the first
Speaker 2: time and not the last. The company headed towards a
Speaker 2: disaster entirely architected by Jobs. And speaking of disasters, your
Speaker 2: life will be a disaster if you don't invest in
Speaker 2: the products and services that support this podcast. Oh we're back. So,
Speaker 2: as Apple is careening towards the abyss, Jobs reaches out
Speaker 2: to Chris Anne, his old girlfriend, and again they're kind
Speaker 2: of on again, off again. Right, He'll come back into
Speaker 2: her life and this is going to be a thing
Speaker 2: for like twenty years. He gets more and more kind
Speaker 2: of close to her every time he fails. Right, he
Speaker 2: will never admit this, and he is constantly shitty to her,
Speaker 2: but she is for decades going to be a crucial
Speaker 2: part of his emotional support network.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: She's someone he feels safe with when he's failing, and
Speaker 2: when he succeeds, he wants nothing from her. Does that
Speaker 2: make sense?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds like Steve Jobs.
Speaker 2: That sounds like the Steve Jobs I know. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: he's like he bears his soul to her and she
Speaker 2: advises her because she is into the same kind of
Speaker 2: Eastern religion that he is. There's this local Zen Buddhist
Speaker 2: monk that they're both kind of friends with Cobin Chino,
Speaker 2: and she's like, hey, go talk to Cobin and get
Speaker 2: some advice from him. Right. The following story comes from
Speaker 2: the excellent book Infinite Loop. Wouldn't it be better? Jobs asked,
Speaker 2: and this is n't talking to Cobin if he were
Speaker 2: to drop this capitalist deceit and head for a monastery
Speaker 2: in Japan. The monk laughed and told Jobs he would
Speaker 2: not find much difference between the two, a statement that
Speaker 2: showed the monk had incredible insight into either the nature
Speaker 2: of entrepreneurship or the personality of Steve Jobs.
Speaker 3: Well, just the thing that he said still absolutely nothing.
Speaker 2: I think what the monk is saying, you will not
Speaker 2: notice a difference between being a monk and a monastery
Speaker 2: or running a company, because it's still you.
Speaker 3: You to watch Bakkaroo banside that where you go there
Speaker 3: you are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly. You will be like if you want to.
Speaker 2: If you feel like you're doing something wrong, it's because
Speaker 2: of who you are and how you treat things, not
Speaker 2: because of what you're doing right, which I think is
Speaker 2: a legitimate insight. That quote continues. Afterward, Jobs confided to
Speaker 2: his old girlfriend that he was afraid Apple would turn
Speaker 2: him into a monster, and boy, howdie is that one
Speaker 2: of those Dune moments. So by this point, Apple had
Speaker 2: switched to the now famous Apple logo from the pretentious
Speaker 2: one Jobs had loved. At one point, he flew into
Speaker 2: a rage with their only customers so far about the
Speaker 2: logo that the guy owning the shop has no choice
Speaker 2: in the logo, but Job screams at him, people that
Speaker 2: gets horseshit, We've got to change the name. And he
Speaker 2: actually gets talked out of that by the client. Right,
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs tries to jettison the name and logo for
Speaker 2: Apple Computers.
Speaker 3: Do we have to find out what he was going
Speaker 3: to change it to?
Speaker 2: But it was like, I'm sure it's something pretentious, Buddhist capitalism,
Speaker 2: anchor some shit. I don't know. Yeah, Now there are
Speaker 2: some additional weird issues that Apple has to confront early
Speaker 2: on this one. I did not see coming. The same
Speaker 2: summer they're trying to make this the Apple one work.
Speaker 2: The Omen comes out, you know the movie The Omen, Right, Yes,
Speaker 2: I know what you're asking. Again, what the fuck does
Speaker 2: that have to do? It's selling it. I can't wait
Speaker 2: to find out well, for reasons, I've never heard a
Speaker 2: good explanation for jobs sells the Apple one for six
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty six dollars and sixty six man owns
Speaker 2: the Bible, That one's right in the Bible. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: sure now. Well, Oddly though, it's not Christians that this
Speaker 2: pisses off. It's a group of Sikhs who organize a
Speaker 2: campaign to like protest against Apple that like drowns the
Speaker 2: job's household, which is Apple's office, like his mom's running
Speaker 2: the phones, and they just get deluged in complaints about
Speaker 2: like the fact that they're clearly selling a satanic product.
Speaker 2: It's very weird the way this moral panic works out.
Speaker 2: I guess it's it shows how different the times are.
Speaker 2: Go figure Jesus Christ. Yeah, what a weird issue to have.
Speaker 2: That one's not his fault. Who could know?
Speaker 3: Right, I'm sorry, Yes, it is his full Why are
Speaker 3: you selling it for six hundred and sixty six dollars?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It must have been on purpose, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no real Did he just leave his finger
Speaker 3: on a key? Like no, he was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: this will be Yeah, this version of Elon Musk's doing
Speaker 3: four twenty jokes it is.
Speaker 2: I didn't think about that, but he is that guy.
Speaker 2: It is the same kind of dude, right, wouldn't this
Speaker 2: be funny? That's amazing. Eventually Jobs is able to secure
Speaker 2: a few more months of funding by getting a loan
Speaker 2: from some friends of Wosniak. Now, these guys, these people
Speaker 2: who are good friends of Steve Wosneyak, they are not rich, right,
Speaker 2: And in fact, one of them is going through like
Speaker 2: dire financial straits at the moment. And when they're interviewed later,
Speaker 2: they're both like, I don't actually know why we gave
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs five thousand dollars, right, it doesn't make any
Speaker 2: sense that we would have made this investment. All one
Speaker 2: of them could later say is Steve had a silver tongue.
Speaker 2: He could talk anybody into anything. Right, Again, from the
Speaker 2: cult leaders sort of thing he is. He is really
Speaker 2: good at convincing people to do what he wants them
Speaker 2: to do, to a point where they're like baffled by
Speaker 2: why they do it themselves. Right.
Speaker 3: I think he was convincing but also very annoying and
Speaker 3: smelled And I keep mentioning the smell. But it's insane
Speaker 3: to me that this just like stinky asshole was able
Speaker 3: to con so many people.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing, though, the stinky asshole who conned a
Speaker 2: lot of people. That's also the description of Rasputen. Right.
Speaker 2: Often human history turns on a smelly asshole who's man,
Speaker 2: some stinky man who's good at convincing people to act
Speaker 2: against their interests. Look, I can't imagine Hitler smelled great? Right,
Speaker 2: you know they in the Boston smell zone. Yeah, what
Speaker 2: did these guys smell like? Not great? Now? You know,
Speaker 2: Saddam Hussein, there was a man who smelled good. I'm
Speaker 2: going to guarantee that guy always smelled incredible. He just
Speaker 2: has that vibe to him.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: That's my head canon for Saddam and for Tito weirdly enough,
Speaker 2: but not Stalin. So Steve was of course lying, right,
Speaker 2: or at least he's at best he's getting by. He's
Speaker 2: convincing these people to throw down their last bit of
Speaker 2: cash on this investment, not based on his actual knowledge
Speaker 2: that they are going to turn shit around, because he
Speaker 2: has no ideas here, right, he basically has to go
Speaker 2: to Wosniak and say, the Apple one, groundbreaking as it is,
Speaker 2: is not selling. We have to figure something else out.
Speaker 2: And he has to hope that Wosniak can do magic again. Right,
Speaker 2: the Apple one is too weak that it doesn't have
Speaker 2: a powerful enough processor. It can't really compete. It's the
Speaker 2: technically the first I think, But like the PCs that
Speaker 2: succeed before it does, you know, they have more horsepower. Right,
Speaker 2: And so what initial buzz there had been around the
Speaker 2: Apple One, it fades because everything else that comes out
Speaker 2: immediately afterwards is a lot better. And so fixing this
Speaker 2: is going to come down to Wosniak. And Wosniak is
Speaker 2: not motivated by money. He never is. He is motivated,
Speaker 2: like all genius nerds, by impressing other nerds. Specifically, he
Speaker 2: wants to impress the guys at the home Brew club
Speaker 2: who were not that impressed by his first creation. So
Speaker 2: he decides to do the impossible, make an affordable PC
Speaker 2: that's color TV compatible. And I'm going to quote again
Speaker 2: from Infinite Loop here. The only problem was that most
Speaker 2: designers figured out that to put color on a home
Speaker 2: computer would require another board equal in size to the motherboard,
Speaker 2: containing forty or more chips that would at least double
Speaker 2: the price of the computer, not to mention, create all
Speaker 2: sorts of new problems with reliability, power consumption, cooling, et cetera.
Speaker 2: It was the perfect challenge for wa was nobody alive
Speaker 2: could look at a chip design and simplify it by
Speaker 2: factor of two or five or ten in the way
Speaker 2: Was could, And now having announced his intentions, he set
Speaker 2: out to do it. And being Wase, he also had
Speaker 2: his own silly, eccentric reason for doing the impossible. He
Speaker 2: wanted to play the game he devised for Atari Breakout
Speaker 2: on his own computer and not just on an arcade player.
Speaker 2: So again, Jobs is entirely motivated by wanting to succeed,
Speaker 2: wanting to be influential, wanting to be rich and powerful.
Speaker 2: Wozniak is motivated by wanting to impress some other nerds
Speaker 2: and wanting to play a video game in his house. Right,
Speaker 2: Why this theory is kind of a tragedy, Yes, it
Speaker 2: really is. It's very sad.
Speaker 3: This lovely, this lovely man who's lear I love doing computers.
Speaker 3: I love doing computer so much. And this other guy
Speaker 3: who's just like a Goplin he wants to make more
Speaker 3: money than God.
Speaker 2: And this is this is why I prefer the Fastbender
Speaker 2: Rogan movie. Is that like Fastbender, it comes across as
Speaker 2: like kind of sinister which Job was and seth Rogan
Speaker 2: is wholesome right as Steve Wotsneyak, and it captures he's
Speaker 2: playing Waws largely during the period when like Waz is
Speaker 2: angry at Jobs, which is a thing that happens, right
Speaker 2: because Jep justifiably yes, anyway, that's the one I would
Speaker 2: recommend watching. So yeah, this does I think get to
Speaker 2: the heart of what makes Apple work. Right. In one
Speaker 2: corner you have Wohsniak. He's not interested in money or
Speaker 2: doing anything for the money, and without him, Apple would
Speaker 2: never have had a product. Now we've been making fun
Speaker 2: of Steve and it is an unequal partnership up this point,
Speaker 2: but Steve plays a critical role in why this works
Speaker 2: out because the Waws is never going to build a business,
Speaker 2: right He's probably, despite his genius, probably would not have
Speaker 2: been very influential without Jobs, because Jobs is going to
Speaker 2: force these brilliant things things he's making into the market, right,
Speaker 2: that is the thing that wouldn't have happened without Jobs.
Speaker 2: Right now, Remarkablyosniak solves the remarkable engineering hurdle that he
Speaker 2: had been set for him, and in doing so, he
Speaker 2: creates a device that integrates the display driver into the microprocessor.
Speaker 2: This is probably I think there's some debate about this,
Speaker 2: but I have heard it argue that this is the
Speaker 2: single innovation that most makes mass market personal computer's possi.
Speaker 3: It's quite literally the thing that makes them work. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a huge, huge deal. But he's saying that
Speaker 2: he did it is just some guy. Yeah, some guy
Speaker 2: who wants to play Breakout, and it's because of his innovation.
Speaker 2: Nearly every part of a PC now is able to
Speaker 2: be put on a single board that can display in
Speaker 2: color and doesn't cost as much as a new fucking car. Right,
Speaker 2: this is still not quite enough. In Apple lore, the
Speaker 2: Apple two is usually described as Wasniac's brainchild. But the
Speaker 2: whole thing needs to fit and be shipped in a
Speaker 2: professional case, not a cigar box, which is what they'd
Speaker 2: been doing. And as a result of that, it needs
Speaker 2: a better power supply. And the Wahs doesn't know shit
Speaker 2: about power supplies, right, this is outside of his wheelhouse.
Speaker 2: Power supplies are analog devices. He is a digital guy,
Speaker 2: And there's a weird kind of pride divide between the
Speaker 2: dudes who are into the analog and the digital shit right.
Speaker 2: So jobs has to ask a friend of Atari, who
Speaker 2: do we bring in to figure out the power supply?
Speaker 2: And the name they get is a Marxist mad scientist
Speaker 2: named Frederick Holt. And this is a weird part of
Speaker 2: the story. And I'm going to quote from the book
Speaker 2: Return to the Little Kingdom here, which is the first
Speaker 2: history of Apple that gets published. As a youth, he
Speaker 2: had inherited the complete works of Lenin from his grandfather,
Speaker 2: a revolutionary socialist who ran for governor of the state
Speaker 2: of Maine on the Eugene Debs ticket. And though Lenin
Speaker 2: came to share his teenage bookshelf with the works of Darwin,
Speaker 2: Holt decided that the triumph of the proletariat was infinitely
Speaker 2: preferable to the survival of the fittest. He found graduate
Speaker 2: work in mathematics at Ohio State lonely it was like
Speaker 2: playing chess with yourself, edited a free speech newspaper and
Speaker 2: explored the private jealousies of radical left splinter groups. He
Speaker 2: became national treasurer for the student portion of the National
Speaker 2: Coalition Against the War in Vietnam, and was invited by
Speaker 2: a small New York publisher to write a book about
Speaker 2: the logic of Marxism, but he was diverted by the
Speaker 2: call of politics. And in nineteen sixty five, when John
Speaker 2: Lindsay ran from mayor of New York City, Holt managed
Speaker 2: the rival campaign of a black taxi driver who stood
Speaker 2: as a revolutionary socialist. The duo succeeded in drawing far
Speaker 2: more attention from the FBI than the New York electorate.
Speaker 2: This is the guy who's going to figure out the
Speaker 2: apples power supply, right, And it's funny. That's such an
Speaker 2: interesting backstory.
Speaker 3: But also it's interesting how Steve Job seems to be
Speaker 3: surrounded by people with relatively strong moral beliefs yes, despite
Speaker 3: the fact he has none. No.
Speaker 2: And he's good at manipulating them too. He manipulates these people.
Speaker 2: These people believe in things and he does not. Yes.
Speaker 2: And it's one thing that's funny. And the Ashton Kutcher
Speaker 2: movie all of this that like that paragraph I read,
Speaker 2: that's a fascinating backstory for a character, right, this like
Speaker 2: genius engineer who comes into engineering as like a Marxist academic.
Speaker 2: That's like, you can have a really interesting character. The
Speaker 2: because the Jobs movie is written by Dipshitz, all the
Speaker 2: only thing they can think of for him is like,
Speaker 2: we'll give him a leather jacket and have him ride
Speaker 2: a motorcycle. Like that's they make him. Then they make
Speaker 2: him the Fosters, They don't. They don't even make him
Speaker 2: a like they just don't know what to do with
Speaker 2: the character because it's it's it's written by scrubs. Holt
Speaker 2: is an interesting guy, though, and he doesn't want to
Speaker 2: work for Apple. Initially, he tells the company basically, you
Speaker 2: can't afford me, and Job says, no problem, we'll figure
Speaker 2: it out. Holt. I don't really know the exact details
Speaker 2: of the detail they work out. Holt would later just
Speaker 2: say he conned me into working. So there you go.
Speaker 2: The new and improved Apple one is a much better product,
Speaker 2: and it starts selling. It starts selling like hotcakes, but
Speaker 2: personally conflicts between Wosniak and Jobs nearly derail everything. Right.
Speaker 2: The cause was this this question of what are we
Speaker 2: going how many expansion slots are we going to put
Speaker 2: in the machine? Right? Wosniak wants eight, And these are
Speaker 2: the slots that allow you eventually are going to allow
Speaker 2: you to hook up like a printer in addition to
Speaker 2: like cooking up a keyboard and a mouse, right, Jobs
Speaker 2: is like, you need a keyboard and you need a monitor.
Speaker 2: Those are the only slots you need. We don't want
Speaker 2: to give people more because that makes it too big,
Speaker 2: so it's not streamlined, and we don't want customers to
Speaker 2: have control over the product. Right. This is he is
Speaker 2: obsessed with simplicity and cutting down the degree of access
Speaker 2: consumers have to modifying their own products. That is a
Speaker 2: hallmark of Apple Stuff today. This exists at the beginning.
Speaker 3: Of genuinely fascinate as Yes, going back to the original devices,
Speaker 3: he had this world garden philosophy.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is from this. He has always believed in this.
Speaker 2: And what's fascinating about this to me? If he had
Speaker 2: gotten his way because he loses this argument with wa.
Speaker 2: If he's gotten this way in the first the Apple
Speaker 2: and the Apple Too, the company would have failed. It
Speaker 2: would not have worked as a product. The fact that
Speaker 2: the Apple Too in particular is so modifiable and expandable
Speaker 2: is why it has The Apple Too is the top
Speaker 2: selling Apple product for like thirteen years, right because people
Speaker 2: can modify it, you know. But Jobs would have been
Speaker 2: disastrously wrong if he'd gotten his way in the short term.
Speaker 2: In the long run, I think it's bad for all
Speaker 2: of us that he's right about this, But he is
Speaker 2: right that this is the smartest way to make a
Speaker 2: profit in the tech industry is cutting down consumer access
Speaker 2: and cutting down simplifying doing shit like cutting out the
Speaker 2: headphone jack. Again, I'm angry at him for doing that,
Speaker 2: but it works. You can't deny it. It is profitable
Speaker 2: right to run your your tech.
Speaker 3: But price sucks.
Speaker 2: It sucks, ass. I don't like that it is, but
Speaker 2: you can't.
Speaker 3: Argue that we all use on a deal. Yes, I
Speaker 3: love me Dongles.
Speaker 2: I'm very frustrated by it. It is interesting to me
Speaker 2: that he Dongles pilled. He sees what of eventually will
Speaker 2: be the most profitable way to do things. He just
Speaker 2: he has no understanding of the fact that that won't
Speaker 2: work now, which is strange. I didn't expect that when
Speaker 2: I started looking into this. Wosneiak's parents and family hated Jobs,
Speaker 2: and this gives us some important outside context on the
Speaker 2: man I've mentioned before. Jobs is basically a con man
Speaker 2: who's con worked out right, and that is how Wosneak's
Speaker 2: dad sees him. This guy, he sees what Jobs is doing.
Speaker 2: He sees my boy is brilliant and sweet and naive, right,
Speaker 2: and this man is making him, convincing him to work
Speaker 2: long hours, to neglect his wife, to endanger his paying
Speaker 2: career at HP for a pipe dream that's never going
Speaker 2: to pay off. He's taking investments based on work my
Speaker 2: boy hasn't even done yet, right, And he's right about this.
Speaker 2: And then kind of at the height of this, Commodore,
Speaker 2: one of the computing giants of the day, offers to
Speaker 2: buy Apple Computer out. Basically, we will buy your company,
Speaker 2: we will buy your product. You will get one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars to split up, plus each of you will
Speaker 2: get a healthy salary like thirty six grand a year
Speaker 2: at Commodore, right, which is a lot of money at
Speaker 2: the time. This is a good deal, right, This would
Speaker 2: make them both they're going to be crazy rich, but
Speaker 2: this would make them both very comfortable. You know, on paper,
Speaker 2: it's a solid deal. Now, Steve is going to fight
Speaker 2: against taking this deal. And he's actually right about this
Speaker 2: because Commodore, the people running it are shady as hell.
Speaker 2: They are going to run their company into the ground
Speaker 2: not too long from now. They probably would have fucked
Speaker 2: him in Wosniak on the deal. It's smart that he
Speaker 2: doesn't take this, but it doesn't seem like the smart call.
Speaker 2: And Steve Jobs does the fucking around here, right, yes,
Speaker 2: And this pisses off Wozniak's family. He was like, he
Speaker 2: is going to this is the entire reason they have
Speaker 2: a product to sell is our boy, and he's trying
Speaker 2: to screw him out of a payday, right And I'm
Speaker 2: going to quote again from Infinite Loop. It all came
Speaker 2: to a head one evening in September, as the Apple
Speaker 2: narrative shifted momentarily from the Jobs's house to the Wosney Acts.
Speaker 2: Jerry Wosniak confronted Steve Jobs. He had told his son
Speaker 2: Mark that he was going to make the little son
Speaker 2: of a bitch cry and that'd be the end, and
Speaker 2: that was what he did. He told Jobs, as Mark overheard,
Speaker 2: you don't deserve shit. You haven't produced anything, you haven't
Speaker 2: done anything. Jobs burst into tears. He told Jerry Wosniak
Speaker 2: that the veteran engineer didn't appreciate all that he Steve
Speaker 2: Jobs had done for the company. Then the tearful young
Speaker 2: man turned to his partner and said, was if we're
Speaker 2: not fifty to fifty. You can have the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Whether Steve Jobs cried out of betrayal, surprise, or calculation
Speaker 2: is impossible to know. But even though he cried, as
Speaker 2: Jerry Wosniak had predicted, it was not the end. Through
Speaker 2: the tears, he had called the bluff of this rather
Speaker 2: unusual pairing of a middle aged man fighting in place
Speaker 2: of his grown up son. And when it was over,
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs was still in charge, and he still killed
Speaker 2: the Commodore deal. Cool. And it's interesting to me that
Speaker 2: he has figured out how to use crying as part
Speaker 2: of a strategy of Like, it's not just belittling and
Speaker 2: screaming at people. He knows that he can cry to
Speaker 2: make himself seem sympathetic, and his friend Wozniak, who legitimately
Speaker 2: loves him, will that will turn him around even though
Speaker 2: we've been fighting.
Speaker 3: What a fucking scumbag.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is. He is always going to be
Speaker 2: good at playing to Watsdak's sense of loyalty to this friendship,
Speaker 2: which is going to be tested mightily in the years
Speaker 2: to come. Steve is although he is right about killing
Speaker 2: this deal right, it works out much better for them
Speaker 2: both that he does, and so you do have to
Speaker 2: give him credit for that he does not he doesn't
Speaker 2: see this right now, maybe you can say he didn't
Speaker 2: know that at the time. This is still him being
Speaker 2: a con artist, but it does show his instincts are
Speaker 2: pretty good about this sort of thing, right. And so
Speaker 2: after he kills this deal, he sets up meetings with
Speaker 2: a guy named Don Valentine who works at Sequoia Capital.
Speaker 2: Don is a serious business man, right, and Jobs is
Speaker 2: a smelly hippie. And so here's how Brent Schlinder describes
Speaker 2: the way Jobs shows up to this meeting. His jeans
Speaker 2: had holes, his hair was unbrushed, he wore no shoes,
Speaker 2: and he smelled. They only get the meeting because Jobs
Speaker 2: he'll massage his own bare in meetings.
Speaker 3: Like he's so off putting the people's the disgusting goblin.
Speaker 2: They only get this meeting because Jobs talks a marketer,
Speaker 2: Regis McKenna into setting it up. Right, And after this meeting,
Speaker 2: Valentine asks McKenna, why did you send me these renegades
Speaker 2: from the human race? But he says this, he's still
Speaker 2: impressed enough by what they're saying that he connects them
Speaker 2: to an investor, a guy named Mike Markula and Markola
Speaker 2: winds up both investing a bunch of money. He puts
Speaker 2: like one hundred grand of his own money into Apple,
Speaker 2: and he also he basically signs with them for a
Speaker 2: line of credit with Bank of America for like a
Speaker 2: quarter of a million dollars. And in exchange for putting
Speaker 2: this money in and for being the guaranter of this
Speaker 2: line of credit, he gets a third of the company,
Speaker 2: which is, by the way, Mike does very well off
Speaker 2: this deal, right, makes a couple dollars a third of Apple,
Speaker 2: quite a lot of money. His one condition is that
Speaker 2: Wosniak has to quit HP, right, And this is the
Speaker 2: this is a smart thing. Yeah, what Mike's like, If
Speaker 2: I'm gonna put this much money in Wozniak, you got
Speaker 2: to shit or get off the pot. You know.
Speaker 3: This is the saying that Wozniak has done all of
Speaker 3: the things you said without leaving his day job.
Speaker 2: No, No, he's doing this in like evenings when he
Speaker 2: and kind of he's ignoring his wife.
Speaker 3: Niley fucking a podcast. Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, right, he is. He is very uh
Speaker 2: and they're young too, which which makes it easier to
Speaker 2: work out stuff like this.
Speaker 3: That's definitely it.
Speaker 2: And you know who's forever young. The sponsors of our podcast,
Speaker 2: none of them age, and you too will stop aging
Speaker 2: if you buy whatever it is they're selling. The Fountain
Speaker 2: of Youth is here advertising on our show. And we're back,
Speaker 2: having conquered aging. Let's continue the story of Steve Jobs.
Speaker 2: Our cameras are off today.
Speaker 3: But just no, I did not enjoy that ad pivot.
Speaker 2: Well I'm proud of it.
Speaker 3: So yeah, this we're fine.
Speaker 2: I'm proud that we have conquered the fountain of youth,
Speaker 2: you know, like the conquistadors of old. So this is
Speaker 2: the point at which Apple starts to turn into a
Speaker 2: real company. They move out of that famous garage, they
Speaker 2: get a real board of directors, and they get their
Speaker 2: first professional CEO, who is coincidentally named Michael Scott. Again
Speaker 2: the number of people with names that are prominent for
Speaker 2: some other reason. That's the first Apple CEO is literally
Speaker 2: Michael Scott, and he is I will say he is
Speaker 2: as bad at this as the Michael Scott from the offices,
Speaker 2: Like he is not good at this job. Incredible, It's
Speaker 2: very funny.
Speaker 3: Your history is oh Yeah, I'm the guy who couldn't
Speaker 3: run Apple.
Speaker 2: There's so many guys who have that job title, actually,
Speaker 2: including Steve Jobs, including Steve Jobs for a spell. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Apple begins its rise to global prominence after this point.
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs, now they're making money right, moves into a
Speaker 2: ranch style house in Coupertino alongside his buddy Dan. Now
Speaker 2: Chris Ann works at Apple in the packing department at
Speaker 2: this point, and she's living with Jobs and with Dan Kottkey.
Speaker 2: And this is where we get to an interesting discrepancy
Speaker 2: between the account Isaacson writes based on Steve's recollections, and
Speaker 2: the account Steve's daughter, Lisa Wrights, based on her mother
Speaker 2: Chrisan's recollections. And this is, by the way, my sources
Speaker 2: for this. There's the book Becoming Steve Jobs. There's Isaacson
Speaker 2: Steve's Jobs. There's the book Infinite Loop. There's Inside the
Speaker 2: Magic Kingdom by I think Moritz is his name. Those
Speaker 2: are like my business history book sources for the Steve
Speaker 2: Jobs story. The best book I read preparing for this series,
Speaker 2: and I read this thing cover to cover in about
Speaker 2: a day is Lisa Jobs. Is Lisa I forget exactly
Speaker 2: what her last name is it's like a hyphenated one.
Speaker 2: I think it's Brennan Jobs. She's a really good writer.
Speaker 2: It's something about like, you know, Steve's sister is a
Speaker 2: famous Mota Simpson is a great novelist. Steve thinks he
Speaker 2: could have been a poet. Maybe he could have been
Speaker 2: because like his daughter's actually like, this is not just
Speaker 2: interesting because of the insights. It hasn't a jo It's
Speaker 2: like legitimately an extremely well written and emotionally affecting book.
Speaker 2: Like her story of this, her relationship with this guy
Speaker 2: who is at times abusive and deeply neglective to her
Speaker 2: is like really like moved me. I actually very much
Speaker 2: recommend reading Lisa's book. It's quite good. And in that
Speaker 2: book kind of recalling her mother's recollections of this time
Speaker 2: because Lisa's obviously not around yet, Lisa writes, my parents
Speaker 2: were a couple again, living in a dark brown ranch
Speaker 2: style house in Cooper, Tino, together with a man named Daniel, who,
Speaker 2: along with my parents, also worked at Apple. Isaacson's recollection
Speaker 2: of this makes it sound more like Jobs brought in
Speaker 2: Chris Ann as an afterthought, right. Chris San's recollection is
Speaker 2: we all moved in together and we were all close.
Speaker 2: The way Isaacson describes it, you know, we're hosting all
Speaker 2: sorts of crazy people, is the way that, like I
Speaker 2: think Daniel describes it, And that's kind of the quote
Speaker 2: Isaacson uses that, like they move in together, but it's
Speaker 2: not really that meaningful to Jobs, I feel like chris
Speaker 2: San's probably closer to the truth. But the relationship is tumultuous,
Speaker 2: and chris Anne claims she eventually decides to end it, right,
Speaker 2: She's going to quit Apple, break up with Steve, move
Speaker 2: out to go do something else. We don't know if
Speaker 2: that's true, right. This is you get different accounts of
Speaker 2: from different people about relationships, and to it a certain point,
Speaker 2: you can't really know. It does seem like it's one
Speaker 2: of those things where neither of them is able to
Speaker 2: actually finally break things off. Right. Maybe there's a little
Speaker 2: bit of codependency or something going on here. I don't know,
Speaker 2: But chris Anne says she is planning to leave, and
Speaker 2: before she can her IUD gets expelled without her knowledge
Speaker 2: and she gets pregnant. Right. This is how Lisa Brennan
Speaker 2: Jobs describes what came next, which is her conception right.
Speaker 2: She told my father the next day that she was
Speaker 2: pregnant when they were standing in the middle of a
Speaker 2: room off the kitchen. There was no furniture, just a rug.
Speaker 2: When she told him, he looked furious, clinched his jaw,
Speaker 2: and then ran out the front door and slammed it
Speaker 2: behind him. He drove off. She thought he must have
Speaker 2: gone to talk with an attorney who told him not
Speaker 2: to talk to her, because after that he wouldn't say
Speaker 2: a word. She quit her job in the packing department
Speaker 2: at Apple, too embarrassed to be pregnant with my father's
Speaker 2: child and working at his company, and went to stay
Speaker 2: at different friends' houses. She went on welfare. She had
Speaker 2: no car, no income. She thought of having an abortion,
Speaker 2: but decided not to after a recurring dream of a
Speaker 2: blowtorch between her legs. And that is it's perfectly understandable
Speaker 2: that being told that, like by surprise, you have gotten
Speaker 2: someone pregnant, to have like an initial emotional reaction to it.
Speaker 2: The fact that he never comes back, that he will
Speaker 2: not talk to her about this, that he treats it
Speaker 2: as entirely her fault, is deeply cruel and fucked up.
Speaker 3: Because I think he might actually be worse than Elon Musk. Yes,
Speaker 3: what a fucking monster it is.
Speaker 2: It gets a lot worse. We're just starting here. So Jobs,
Speaker 2: he is enraged at Chris Anne for having the temerity
Speaker 2: to get pregnant. And I think that's important.
Speaker 3: How does the sperm get this levee?
Speaker 2: Where did the sperm come from? In this situation. It's
Speaker 2: important to note he doesn't seem to be specifically pissed
Speaker 2: that she chooses to go through with the pregnancy, right,
Speaker 2: and in fact, he may have supported the idea of
Speaker 2: her going through with the pregnancy. And this is something
Speaker 2: you will not find. First off, I'm going to continue.
Speaker 2: This is a quote from one of Jobs's friends, Greg Calhoun.
Speaker 2: This is what he tells Isaacson at the time about
Speaker 2: why Jobs is so weird about this. Steve was not
Speaker 2: just dealing with Chrisanner or the pregnancy. He could be
Speaker 2: very engaged with you in one moment, but then very disengaged.
Speaker 2: There was a side to him that was frighteningly cold, right,
Speaker 2: And this is the attitude of his friends. He's just
Speaker 2: this guy who compartmentalizes, so he just shuts off in
Speaker 2: his head the possibility that this kid is his and
Speaker 2: that he has any responsibility to it, and he's he's
Speaker 2: so good at doing that that he never revisits that,
Speaker 2: you know, at least not for a very long time.
Speaker 3: A very convenient way to live one's life.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's act. We're building to that, though.
Speaker 2: He begins to tell his coworkers and friends, who all
Speaker 2: knew Chris Anne, that the baby is not his. Decades later,
Speaker 2: he even told Isaacson, I was pretty sure I wasn't
Speaker 2: the only one she was sleeping with, which the number
Speaker 2: of times he will basically say, well, if you weren't
Speaker 2: such a whore, this wouldn't have happened. That is what
Speaker 2: he says, right, I'm not saying that about it like
Speaker 2: that is what Steve says. He's very much blunt and
Speaker 2: cruel about that to her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was there when you were saying that. I
Speaker 3: was like, is he blatantly like, oh.
Speaker 2: He's going to tell Time that, and like he's going
Speaker 2: to tell Time magazine that we're building to this. His
Speaker 2: friend Daniel Kottkey describes this, and I think Daniel actually
Speaker 2: does have the measure of jobs here. He describes this
Speaker 2: as a case of jobs using his reality distortion field
Speaker 2: on himself, and Elizabeth Holmes said he considered the option
Speaker 2: of parenthood and considered the option of not being a parent,
Speaker 2: and he decided to believe the latter. He had other
Speaker 2: plans for his life. I think part of that is accurate.
Speaker 2: But this misses an important detail, and it's a detail
Speaker 2: I've only run into and Lisa Brennan Jobs's book, Right,
Speaker 2: you don't get this from Isaacson. You don't get this
Speaker 2: from from Schlender, you don't get this from Moritz, right,
Speaker 2: And this is very important. Right. So Jobs may have
Speaker 2: been on board with the potential of having a certain
Speaker 2: kind of child. Right. And this story is very ably
Speaker 2: told in the book Small Fry by Lisa Brennan Jobs.
Speaker 2: When it comes to the question of how did Chris
Speaker 2: Anne decide to keep the baby? Here is what Jobs
Speaker 2: told Isaacson. First. This is what Jobs says to Isaacson
Speaker 2: late in life when he is the great Steve Jobs
Speaker 2: about this. I was all in favor of her getting
Speaker 2: an abortion, but she didn't know what to do. She
Speaker 2: thought about it repeatedly and decided not to or I
Speaker 2: don't know that she ever really decided. I think time
Speaker 2: just decided for her. That is what Job says. I wanted.
Speaker 2: I thought she should she should get an abortion. She
Speaker 2: just kind of waited until that wasn't an option anymore.
Speaker 3: Except he didn't talk to us.
Speaker 2: How would he except how would he know? Right? This
Speaker 2: is not what chris Anne says. Chris Anne tells Lisa
Speaker 2: that to make the decision about whether or not to
Speaker 2: keep this embryo, she consults with a Buddhist monk. Her
Speaker 2: parents knew. Come, come on right, this paragraph you will
Speaker 2: not catch in any of these more popular biographies of jobs,
Speaker 2: quote have the child. Cobun had advised, if you need help,
Speaker 2: I'll help you, but in the intervening years he had
Speaker 2: not offered any help. No one had promised as much
Speaker 2: as Kobun or had seemed to my mother at the
Speaker 2: time as trustworthy. At the time, my young father had
Speaker 2: also trusted Cobun, who told him that if I turned
Speaker 2: out to be a boy, I would be part of
Speaker 2: a spiritual patrimony, and in that case my father should
Speaker 2: claim me and support me when it turned out I
Speaker 2: was a girl. My mother later found out from others
Speaker 2: in the community. Cobun had told my father he had
Speaker 2: no obligation to care for my mother and me. Oh,
Speaker 2: that is a very different story than Jobs gets.
Speaker 3: I think Steve Job says why he thought it was
Speaker 3: too kind?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was not a very good person.
Speaker 3: That is. Yes, I realized the title of this show.
Speaker 3: But yeh fucking christ.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so much worse than you get in the
Speaker 2: other versions of this story. And you know, I can't
Speaker 2: say who is totally right, you know, but but Lisa
Speaker 2: Brennan Jobs' book rings truer to me.
Speaker 3: I would be shocked if the answer was the nice story.
Speaker 2: And this is consistent with the stories Jobs tells about
Speaker 2: all of the other times that he was He based
Speaker 2: his life on these kind of decisions based in his
Speaker 2: spiritual beliefs, right, it is very consistent with that. So
Speaker 2: chris Anne has the baby. She has it on their
Speaker 2: friend Robert's farm up in Oregon, and Steve arrives a
Speaker 2: couple of days after the birth, at which point he
Speaker 2: proceeds to tell all their old friends he is there
Speaker 2: to see his child, and he tells all of his
Speaker 2: old friends on the farm, it's not my kid. And
Speaker 2: again Robert Friedland, who owns the farm, not a great man.
Speaker 2: This man becomes a mining billionaire. But Robert's like, dude,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about? She looks just like you, Like,
Speaker 2: come on, man, like we've all seen you two together.
Speaker 2: She looks exactly like you. This is obviously your kid.
Speaker 2: Stop fucking being bullshitting around about this.
Speaker 3: You know that this is like not the guy you
Speaker 3: want to be the moral power gone age.
Speaker 2: Yes, no, And it does seem everyone who is friends
Speaker 2: with Jobs who knows him, and Chris Anne immediately is like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is obviously his kid, right, you just don't take
Speaker 2: one look at her. Yeah exactly. And credit to Schwarzenegger,
Speaker 2: He's made a lot of morally compromised decisions in his life.
Speaker 2: He immediately was like, yeah, I mean this is my kid.
Speaker 3: That's mine.
Speaker 2: This is my kid, and I'm never going to yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: The Apple Too had been released not long before Lisa's birth,
Speaker 2: again based on Wosneiak's original design, and it very quickly
Speaker 2: becomes the most successful piece of its day. It's going
Speaker 2: to spell sell more than six million units over the
Speaker 2: course of a decade and a half on the market
Speaker 2: in varying forms, and the rocket like success of The
Speaker 2: Apple Too prompts a run of investments in Apple, and
Speaker 2: the company goes public in nineteen eighty, and in that
Speaker 2: whole time period from the Apple twos release, which roughly
Speaker 2: coincides with Chrisanne's pregnancy, to the IPO, Steve pretends the
Speaker 2: daughter he'd named was not his. He repeatedly denies her
Speaker 2: and denies he as any responsibility to this kid, Chris Sanne.
Speaker 2: For the first three years or so, Lisa's alive is
Speaker 2: barely getting by. She baby sits at a daycare, She
Speaker 2: lives off welfare and odd waitressing jobs. At one point,
Speaker 2: she has to move into a group home for women
Speaker 2: who are considering adoption right because she just cannot support
Speaker 2: herself and Steve Jobs's kid otherwise.
Speaker 3: As she watches the kid's father just get insanely.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, he about to. He hasn't gone public yet.
Speaker 2: This is criticism way this time's out. It is about to,
Speaker 2: and he's doing quite well. He's certainly doing well enough
Speaker 2: to help her not be in poverty.
Speaker 3: Right to pay in any way.
Speaker 2: Jobs is forced to take responsibility for Lisa in nineteen
Speaker 2: eight because the state of California finds out that the
Speaker 2: mother of Steve Jobs's child is on welfare and it's
Speaker 2: basically like, why is the state of California paying for
Speaker 2: this kid when you're Steve Jobs? And so the District
Speaker 2: Attorney of San Mateo County sues him for child support.
Speaker 2: Fuck yeah, California's attitude is like, yeah, we shouldn't be
Speaker 2: paying for this right, Jobs deny his paternity. He's like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm sterile, it couldn't be my kid, And so the
Speaker 2: State's like, well, then let's have you take a fucking
Speaker 2: DNA test. Why is he lying when science exists?
Speaker 3: Why is he lying? It's why this is the Guru
Speaker 3: told him he wouldn't have any responsibility, and he's a
Speaker 3: huge asshole, and most people based on this history have
Speaker 3: never just gone prove it, Steve you.
Speaker 2: Fuck you fucking asshole, asshole.
Speaker 3: But he's also like dumb.
Speaker 2: Well this is I'll say, not in defense of him,
Speaker 2: but this is basically the first moment at which he
Speaker 2: could be made to take a DNA test. They have
Speaker 2: just that's just become a thing. And in fact, the
Speaker 2: maximum that a DNA test can like say that a
Speaker 2: kid is likely your kid is like a ninety four
Speaker 2: percent something like that rate of confidence, Right, that's as
Speaker 2: high as it will go at the time, and that's
Speaker 2: how highly confident the test is that this is his kid, right,
Speaker 2: Like he's like, it's not mine. The States like take
Speaker 2: a DNA test, and the DNA test says like, this
Speaker 2: is definitely his fucking child. And as a fucked up aside,
Speaker 2: Lisa is so small when they do this that they
Speaker 2: have to like try several times to draw blood from her.
Speaker 2: They have to keep poking her because she's she's so
Speaker 2: tiny that it's hard for them to get a vein.
Speaker 2: So he puts her through this too, his child. The
Speaker 2: test does prove that she's his, and so the court
Speaker 2: requires him to pay them back for past welfare payments
Speaker 2: made to Chris Ann, and it authorizes child support payments
Speaker 2: of five hundred dollars a month, plus it requires him
Speaker 2: to provide medical insurance for the child. The case is
Speaker 2: finalized in December of nineteen, right before Apple's IPO, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of surprising to Chris Anne at first that, like,
Speaker 2: after literally months of delaying this case, suddenly his lawyers
Speaker 2: are like, yes, let's sign, let's lock this down right now.
Speaker 2: And the reason why they suddenly change is that four
Speaker 2: days after they sign the papers, Apple goes public and
Speaker 2: overnight Steve Jobs is worth nearly a quarter of a
Speaker 2: billion dollars. They needed to settle this before that happened,
Speaker 2: so he didn't have to pay more money to support
Speaker 2: his child. Hm. Cool guy, great, great dude. So before
Speaker 2: the IPO hits, he actually has to inform members of
Speaker 2: the Apple board that he's fighting this child support case,
Speaker 2: right and even at this late moment, months before he
Speaker 2: will accept paternity for this child, board member Arthur Rock
Speaker 2: recalls he kept insisting that there was a large probability
Speaker 2: that he wasn't the father. He was delusional. So Apple
Speaker 2: goes public and it's it's huge news. Number one, they're
Speaker 2: selling computers faster than anyone ever has. They make personal
Speaker 2: computing like a massive industry, right. And number two, the
Speaker 2: Apple going public, Like three hundred people become millionaires overnight,
Speaker 2: This has never happened before. All of the way that
Speaker 2: all startups are obsessed with this IPO, with like everyone
Speaker 2: getting rich overnight. You know, all the reasons open Ai
Speaker 2: is making decisions it's making so it can get that
Speaker 2: eighty billion dollar whatever evaluation, and all of the early
Speaker 2: employees who have who have stock right now will get rich.
Speaker 2: All of like that whole part of Silicon Valley culture
Speaker 2: starts as a result of the mythic role of this
Speaker 2: Apple IPO is going to have in everybody's mind. Right,
Speaker 2: this is such a crucial moment for how the tech
Speaker 2: industry winds up being what it is today. Right, And
Speaker 2: so because this is such a huge story, Jobs is
Speaker 2: a celebrity after the IPO, and Michael Moritz, who is
Speaker 2: going to write the first book about Apple, writes an
Speaker 2: article about him for Time magazine and it's it's funny.
Speaker 2: Jobs hates Moritz because of how this works out, because
Speaker 2: he is convinced that he was promised he was going
Speaker 2: to be Times Man of the Year, and Time winds
Speaker 2: up making the Personal Computer Man of the Year and
Speaker 2: just writes a very fawning story about Jobs. Jobs is
Speaker 2: convinced it's because Daniel Kottkey, basically says, tells part of
Speaker 2: the story of the fact that he has this kid
Speaker 2: and is pretending it's not his right. He says that
Speaker 2: in his interview effectively, and Job is convinced that's why
Speaker 2: Time didn't make me, so he never won. He never
Speaker 2: forgives kott Key forgure this, and he blacklists Morris Moritz for.
Speaker 3: All the time. I like that it's not because he
Speaker 3: did the thing. It's that he told someone. Yes, like
Speaker 3: it's yes, it's not that time was like, hey, that
Speaker 3: sounds morally reprehensible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that they knew at all. Yeah. And it's
Speaker 2: in this time interview because Moritz brings up you know,
Speaker 2: I've heard about this kid and that you're deny paternity.
Speaker 2: Jobs says to Moritz for this time article, that's going
Speaker 2: to be like everywhere in the United States, twenty eight
Speaker 2: percent of the male population in the United States could
Speaker 2: be the father. He does this like tortured math based
Speaker 2: on the DNA test to be like, well, the tests
Speaker 2: aren't very good and technically a quarter is what he's says. Hun,
Speaker 2: That's what he is trying to say, is like the
Speaker 2: test is so inaccurate, a bunch of people could be
Speaker 2: the father. It's not conclusive. What people interpret it is
Speaker 2: the way you interpret it and the way Chris Anne
Speaker 2: interprets it, which is that he's saying she's a slut, right,
Speaker 2: And that is how Lisa in her book relates her
Speaker 2: mom reading this article and it just destroys her for days,
Speaker 2: for weeks, she is like depressed like it is that
Speaker 2: it goes this article in Lisa's childhood is like a bomb,
Speaker 2: and like, how does how does your mom explain to
Speaker 2: you that your dad is staying saying stuff like that
Speaker 2: about you? You know, like that is beyond cruel, Like
Speaker 2: it's such an evil, evil way to treat not just
Speaker 2: the mother of your child, but a child. You know,
Speaker 2: it's it's pretty vile shit. So I'm going to quote
Speaker 2: again from Liz's book, and this is her describing not
Speaker 2: long after this, you know, right after the IPO and
Speaker 2: after the case gets finalized, her first meeting with her father.
Speaker 2: Just after the court case was finalized, my father came
Speaker 2: to visit me once at our house in Menlo Park,
Speaker 2: where we had rented a detached studio. It was the
Speaker 2: first time I'd seen him since I'd been a newborn
Speaker 2: in Oregon. You know who I am, he asked, He
Speaker 2: flipped his hair out of his eyes. I was three
Speaker 2: years old. I didn't I'm your father like he was
Speaker 2: Darth Vader, my mother said later when she told me
Speaker 2: the story, I'm one of the most important people you
Speaker 2: will ever know.
Speaker 1: He's sorry here, I know, you fucking asshole. What a
Speaker 1: fucking asshole, piece of shit moon where to dump to
Speaker 1: your diary daughter for the first time. Fucking hell, the
Speaker 1: most precious gift you could ever have, and treating it
Speaker 1: this way just outrageous. So this is not the end
Speaker 1: of the Steve Jobs being an asshole. Around nineteen eighty story,
Speaker 1: several other people get fucked over in the Apple IPO.
Speaker 2: Again. This is like the foundational myth of Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2: Basically all of startup and VC culture revolves around the
Speaker 2: resonance of this moment. But not everyone who had built
Speaker 2: Apple got rich. Steve had brought in a lot of
Speaker 2: brilliant people to do crucial work as contractors. He had
Speaker 2: pushed them all to told them the work we're doing,
Speaker 2: we are changing the world, this is crucial work. And
Speaker 2: then when they finished their task, He's like, why would
Speaker 2: I cut any of these guys in on stock? I
Speaker 2: don't like fuck them, you know they already did the
Speaker 2: thing I need from them. One of these people was
Speaker 2: Daniel Kottke, his former best friend and roommate. Kotkey had
Speaker 2: been like a couple of times, been like, hey, am
Speaker 2: I going to get any stock, and Jobs was like,
Speaker 2: it'll be fine, don't worry about it, and he was like,
Speaker 2: I trusted him, so I didn't push for anything. In reality,
Speaker 2: Jobs ensured was cut out entirely right. And when Isaacson
Speaker 2: interviewed some of Jobs's friends who worked at Apple about this,
Speaker 2: one of them said that Jobs is quote anti loyal.
Speaker 2: He has to abandon the people that he's close to, and.
Speaker 3: The fuck does that mean?
Speaker 2: What the fuck?
Speaker 3: Just Eve an asshole. He's a selfish piece of shit.
Speaker 2: He is a differently He's not the kind of asshole
Speaker 2: everyone else at Apple is. Right, And for an example
Speaker 2: of how singular a piece of shit he is, Rod Holt,
Speaker 2: the Marxist who built the power supply. He gets a
Speaker 2: lot of options, right, He's going to be very rich
Speaker 2: as a result of this. And he goes to Jobs
Speaker 2: and he's like, look, man, how about I'm going to
Speaker 2: give Cockkey some of my options. It's not right to
Speaker 2: cut him out. He's been with us since the beginning.
Speaker 2: I'm going to give him some of mine if you'll
Speaker 2: match them, right, if you'll equal the number of options
Speaker 2: I'm going to give him. And Job says, okay, I'll
Speaker 2: give him zero. Now. The savior of the day here
Speaker 2: is Steve Wozniak before the IPO, even before Kotkey gets
Speaker 2: cut out, Wozniak realizes that a lot of like these,
Speaker 2: a lot of these contractors are getting fucked and he
Speaker 2: has a bunch of these like founder's stock options, and
Speaker 2: so he he takes two thousands of these options and
Speaker 2: he gives sells them for basically pennies to forty mid
Speaker 2: level employees who he thought had gotten screwed, and most
Speaker 2: of them wind up with enough money to buy a house. Right.
Speaker 2: They don't get rich, but they they get something as
Speaker 2: a result of this because of Wosniac. And when Wosniak
Speaker 2: finds out that cot Key has been fucked out, he
Speaker 2: straight up gives Kotkey a bunch of his options. He
Speaker 2: does this to several people that job screws out, right
Speaker 2: like Wosnik. There's like jokes at Apple that Wosniak's going
Speaker 2: to go broke himself because he gives so many of
Speaker 2: his options to people that jobs cut out of the
Speaker 2: of the IPO, which says a lot about Wosniak and
Speaker 2: his attitudes as much as the Angels above the Angels
Speaker 2: the Steve Wosniac story, right, yeah, and it says a
Speaker 2: lot obviously about Jobs too. But yeah, that's uh, that's
Speaker 2: part two. How you feel it ed.
Speaker 3: I feel bad. I feel bad about Steve Jobs because
Speaker 3: I already knew he was a deadbeat dad. I knew
Speaker 3: he was a horror show of a person, an abusive
Speaker 3: manager who used to He famously screamed at the mobile
Speaker 3: Me team, and there were people the first version of
Speaker 3: iCloud effectively screamed at them, would fire people in elevators,
Speaker 3: and I didn't think he would be so I knew
Speaker 3: it'd be bad. I didn't know he was this. By comparison,
Speaker 3: most of these Silicon Valley people who are aspiring to
Speaker 3: be Steve Jobs are actually nailing the personality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just not the execution.
Speaker 3: Yes, they don't see because I think that he from
Speaker 3: what you've told me, he was quite an impressive orator,
Speaker 3: and you could tell that from his presentations as well.
Speaker 3: But also he knew when not to piss people off
Speaker 3: and when to be nice. Yea, even if that was
Speaker 3: quite rare, making him so much worse like Mark Andresen
Speaker 3: by comparison. Actually, no, we don't know his past either,
Speaker 3: Like we'll probably get a that proves him just as bad.
Speaker 3: But all of these people right now, they're really like
Speaker 3: micro jobs, is they don't They lacked his sociopathy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they lacked the mix of sociopathy and actually understanding
Speaker 2: human nature.
Speaker 3: Yes, And that's the thing. I think that that is
Speaker 3: the real thing that while these people today have his
Speaker 3: sociopathy or his narcissism or what have you, they lack
Speaker 3: his actual ability to understand people and understand that He
Speaker 3: could cry or yell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, andreson cry. Yeah, that's all cool. Good, good shit.
Speaker 2: Well ed, do you have a have anything you gotta
Speaker 2: plug here?
Speaker 3: Well, I have a podcast on cool Zone Media called
Speaker 3: Better Offline. It's a weekly tech show about some of
Speaker 3: the Silicon Valley people that you might have heard us
Speaker 3: discuss today and tech in general. And you can find
Speaker 3: it on iHeartRadio on every other place where you can
Speaker 3: find your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, well you can find us at this show.
Speaker 2: We have a subreddit. If you google behind the Bastards
Speaker 2: reddit you can find that there too. You can buy
Speaker 2: a subscription if you don't want to have ads. At
Speaker 2: cooler Zone Media, all of these things are possible.
Speaker 3: So you just get things about Robert talking about the
Speaker 3: eternal font of life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly it right and how can you too
Speaker 2: can become immortal? So check all that out and most importantly,
Speaker 2: go to Hell. I Love you.
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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