We talk to the guy who knows Silicon Valley’s darkest secrets

i've got steve job stories i've got jack do stories i've got rust all stories you name it i got him i feel like i could rude world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a role travel never sam has been telling me about a book for probably ten years in a row and i finally got around of reading it this year and the book is american king pen it's a story of the silk road of ross a who created it grew it to great you know prominence ended up going to jail what we thought was for life and then he just got pardoned by trump and so sam just reread the book i read it this year we both love this thing it's a it's a page turner and the author dick built in not only wrote that but he wrote hatching twitter at a bunch other stuff fascinating guy and he's here with us today on m so let's do it nick what's going on we wanted to talk about all types of stuff we wanna talk about storytelling tom we wanted talk about things that you research that didn't make the book we wanna talk about like the og stories of silicon valley because you've been covering this stuff forever but you're like one of the three people who we've had on the pod that i'm like nervous to talk to and i stayed up all night like reading everything about you don't be nervous this is exciting this is fun it's gonna be great we're gonna tell some some crazy stories i've got steve job stories i've got jack do stories i've got russell all break stories as you name it i got him who of all those people did you have you become friends or admire any of them or do you are you like a strictly like a journalist who doesn't cross the the barrier what that's a great question i feel like we should save i should save that answer because i've got such great stories about all these people about bezos everyone where you know there are some that i have become friends with and then un friends with and the some i'm still kind of friends with but we let's save that for when we get into the hatching twitter elon musk jack do territory of this of this pod i was also sending to an episode with david pro it was all writing and you talk about like what makes a great story and this sounds like a like a back a compliment i think that your writing is amazing your storytelling is amazing i think you just happened to pick the best story of all time with the silk road like it was like set up to to win well i think i mean let me just tell you how i came to the story so i was a reporter the new york times and in silicon valley covering tech i was writing about apple and facebook and twitter and and i i don't even know how to describe this moment in time you know it was like two thousand eight two thousand nine it was you know right after the bubble had popped the second bubble and it was again once again this no fly zone you know to be in to be in silicon valley to do startups and whatnot and i started covering these these companies that were not there was the idea of one of them being a trillion dollar company was it was ridiculous that would never happen and i would spend time with steve jobs and bezos and z and and endorsing seeing all these guys and i wrote the twitter book which which we can talk about in this incredible back stories to that and of people trying to kill the project and so on and so forth but i'd finished the twitter book and the twitter book had done really really well and i was looking for a new book and and i couldn't you know i really i love writing books it's it's one of my favorite forms of writing to do and i i heard about this guy who had started the silk road who'd been arrested this little public library there was like four blocks in my house and i i knew the the library i knew this and and i knew the area and i also knew the silk road and so i wrote a piece for for the new york times about it's just like a short piece and and then i was like maybe there's a book in this and as i started to dig further and further it just felt undeniable it was like it was just an unbelievable story of this kid who i a kid because he was very young at the time but he he got he grew up in austin he was incredibly smart sixteen hundreds on his sat you know studied astro for physics went off to a one of the best schools and and then had this like libertarian and ideal to him that is no different to like travis ka when he's building a building uber and you know all these other people in silicon valley and he decides that drug should be legal and the government should not be able to tell you what you can and cannot put in your body and the only reason that the the drugs lead to these you know to deaths and murder and so on and so forth is because the government has so much control over it and so he takes the onion browser which is is the secret browser that you can where the dark web exists and then he takes bitcoin which but both kind of come along around the same time and he creates this proof of concept which is this website called the silk road and then next to you know he's making millions and millions and millions of dollars a day is the biggest drug dealer on the internet by the way how good was the branding for that the fact i he called himself the tread pirate roberts the silk road the like the logo behind it the branding was actually like the whole it was pretty brilliant no the branding was good was i forgot the name there was a name that he had originally wanted to call it was like some terrible name it was called like hardcore underground or something like yeah it was where it was like like does it sound like a peep like i i'm interested in matt but what's what's fascinating is you know at the time he's living in austin and he's got this girlfriend julia and they're kind of in this like toxic relationship and he has this business and it's like a it's a pretty like nice business where he goes around and he collects books the people wanna get rid of and then sells them and and and mails them out so when he when he moves into the drug trade and he goes he goes to ba upstate park and he rents a cabin and he grows mushrooms so that he could sell drugs on there to show that you can sell drugs on there and then he starts mailing them out like he's mailing the books out and then the drugs out and like and it all kind of you know it all comes together in this very very unique way what ends up happening is ga the website that is obviously not def fun they write about it and then that's it it's like game over like everyone on the planet knows about it and senators are coming after him and every government official from the irs to the fbi to the secret service to the dea they're all trying to hunt down the drive pirate roberts and ross essentially goes on the run around the world as they're as they're trying to catch him yeah it's one of the best things about the book is that it starts with like i don't know how much of this is your con versus you had his diary i guess and you you knew some of his thoughts but it's like he knows he's smart he wants to do something special he sort of bummed out that he hasn't done anything interesting or special with his life and you know has sort of tried but hasn't really made it yet doing anything and then you've got his girlfriend and there's that part of it to get the libertarian ideals and then it leads to all you the thing escalate like crazy where i think i don't know if it's peak but it i think silk crowe was doing like you know over a billion dollars like gm through the the marketplace yep and there's like you know murder for higher plots going on like it escalate like the craziest crime movie would would would escalate but i like that you had that beginning part where it wasn't just this criminal mastermind is like this smart kid you know just trying to trying to do something and had had a certain set of ideals how did you know what he was thinking how did you get access to with diary why do why does it writer like how does it writer like you get that and you got a lot of stuff you got like the footage of the library where he got arrested you got like the chat logs from you know from like with the government how did you get access to all this information well i can't tell you exactly how i got a lot of it because that's the that's investigated reporting and and i you know obviously i can't where it came from but the way i approach these stories is i want to know everything literally everything and so i have these researchers who work for me and one of them one of them actually used to do op research for the for the the democratic party trying to find you know bad stuff on republicans and we literally just blank approach and what's been really interesting i have a new project which i can't talk about but i can tell you a little bit about how reporting it what's been interesting is have it's new project that we're doing and we've been using ll google notebook and so now we stuff millions of words into these things that i can query it whereas before we had to build like excel free spreadsheets and databases and like we it was very very complicated the way we did it but we kinda put into three tran so we we have the dr tire roberts and we get access to the chat logs that were on his laptop which i don't actually know if he knew with air because they were in a hidden folder and i don't think he actually knew he'd been saving them or maybe he was i don't know and then there's some diary entries he'd literally been making a diary about about the thing because he would he the the best line ever as he thought there'd be a book written about his life one day and then we and then we you go through social media and we and we get all the photos and all the posts and all that and we everything's not a timeline it's all got time stamps and then and then lastly it's the interviews with everyone and with as far as like you know i we reach out you get your books and you go and you find out everyone you went to elementary school with the middle school in high school and you interview everyone you're you find the neighbors you the kid that lived across the street you know which coffee shop went to you go to the coffee and then the thing i do which is a little psychotic but i do it anyway is i want to be able to describe what that i want you to feel like it's a novel in some respects but it's all real like nothing's made up and so like if i know he let's say he took a picture he was one instance where he went camping and and so i didn't know where the campground was it was in near san francisco but he had taken two pictures three pictures sorry one was when he left and i we could figure out the street because we could you know see the angles in the street signs and the next was when he was driving over the golden gate bridge and then the third was when he got to the campground and we could tech tell the stamps so we just did the math and we're like okay it's probably forty five to fifty miles away and then we looked in the circle around san francisco and then we found these different campground and i went to one and there there we are at the campground so i go there and i find the place that he took the picture from where he's sitting i sit in that spot and i can i can smell those sat the everything and so i can describe that because it hasn't changed in in six months or a year still looks the same and and so i do that with like everything i i go to the coffee shops he goes to i walked the same street and so you get to describe this and then you also can look you know with with different apps where you can see the way the sun comes on certain days and you can describe what the shadows is look and you just can describe everything sam isn't this wild like say it's wild in two ways one it's the same sort of obsession of why jobs is like i'm gonna design we need to finish the inside of the casing of the computer and they're like steve nobody's gonna see this and he's like i've seen it i know it's there that's why we have to make finish this the inside case so this is a weird kind of product session which i respect but then there's also like do nobody would know nobody would ever know and it might not ever matter why does it matter to you to do well i it's also weird that nick you've written like hatching twitter wasn't the most favorable towards like jack do seeing some of these guys you guys all the same flavor of crazy though you know what i mean like that that that's what sean is describing is like what they have look i totally agree look i mean it's it's fun for me i think it's like i i love the challenge but it's what's interesting you can bring up jobs like i spent i spent quite a lot of time talking to him when he was alive and he was incredibly obsessive and of course and like and you know one of things that he always said that that and me said it publicly too but like you should never know that the technology exists and how it happens and so on and so forth and and it's i'm fine coming on a podcast and talking about how i did it when you're reading i'm not gonna tell you like it let's not that drives me more insane where it's like according to a a transcript that i found it's like who gives a shit like just tell me the story and like and and i think that i you know one of the beauties of great products is when you don't know how it works and they and and i think one of the and it just works and it's magical and you know the all those those words that they use and the and the ads and everything and i think the same same is true for storytelling you you know like a lot of the greatest novels i i read i read a ton of novels and there a lot of the greatest novels that the amount of research people like gabriel said chad put into a hundred years of solid attitude and like into chest i just like when you read these they they're not telling you all this they're just telling you a story and why would i saw that you i think you said in another podcast you spent like three or four weeks with julia ross ex girlfriend when he was starting it and there are and and and i didn't know that you had spent time with him when i was was spent time with her because i was why why earth that she ever talked to nick like you know if i'm i'd probably just kinda shut up but you knew stories like you knew like when they had sex are like like the comments that they made to each other i'm like i on earth does he know this and then i find out that you i i heard you spent time with her like getting info why on earth with some of these sources talk to you why not why won't they just say i don't need that in my life get out of here i think one of the things i've learned as a reporter for two decades is that people talk people wanna talk for different reasons so you get you there's you know endless numbers of them and one of what one of i think the thing people think being a reporter is like you gotta break the news and you gotta write the story it's like no it's a it's relationships it's like it is literally just relationships and and what you have to do is you have to figure out you need these people to talk to you and you have to figure out how to make them want to talk to you and so for example everyone has a reason so people that would would leak stuff to me the worked at apple or facebook some of them were so just so excited to say oh my god it worked on this thing and it was like and they and they just wanted it out there and they don't have the patience and you know and others of them worked on something that never got made or they got fucked over by their boss so they didn't get the credit and like or like they have other the ego reasons whatever it is and so your job is they as a reporter is to try to get them to talk to you and to try to figure out and my job is to be like why what can i say to you what is it that you want i know you want we all want something and so with julia you know i think i think she wanted she wanted to be part of the story and i think she wanted to be famous a little bit and i also think that she for her there were there was some things that hadn't been said and haven't been finished and and that she hadn't it was like a little bit cath i think in some respects and so that's the reason she talked when it came to the agents you know i spent time with all of the agents involved in the case or almost all of the agents and and you know with charity and i probably spent four hundred hours five hundred hours together you know we i went to his office went to his house i went to his we we met all different places saw the postal service where he worked and the we went inside the chicago airport and underneath the bowel of it and it was amazing to see all sean i do you remember that we're so jared was the guy who like he wanted to be an fbi agent or something like that but he ended up being a homeland security agent which is like like i think the starts with him it's like yeah he's starts a pill yeah single pill one one pill it would shocked me about homeland security and mail is that they would just sit there and watch packages come in and they would just be like that that envelope looks weird because like it's handwritten in a certain way and it just similar like it's just so crazy that one of the one of a few different ways that he was caught was just like traditional police work as opposed to like something more complex it it was shocking that it was just like eyeball things well it's what's what's inch what i why started with the pink pill the single solitary pink pill is because and then there's there's a a a line there's a paragraph in the book about how you know the website started with a single line of code and all of a sudden he creates this world and so on is i i think what's interesting about techno and that this was just me the way i wanted to tell the story but what's interesting about technology is this also the scene where and i say scenes because i think of them my head of scenes are not chapters i everything's visual in my head and there's this scene where we see a computer being built and and it starts with like a single diode and i what i find so fascinating about technology it's all these websites and all these products and all these companies they start with this little this it's one thing in the same with the books and everything and they they grow into these they take over the world and and so for me the pink pill the single solitary pill of ecstasy was the beginning of the story which was just gonna become a fucking tidal wave that took over everything did you ever feel in danger during your research i felt more in danger during the twitter book quite honestly what was the danger there there's powers that he didn't want jack do did not want that book out and he was trying to do everything he dude he's he's a peace loving hippie as far as i could tell he sits with a beard and a tie dye shirt he just wants peace and love for all i thought he he no it's that that is all a it's all a story that he tells look there are definitely stories i've worked on i wrote a book that didn't that we i chose not to publish it was just about the nra this was after marge or stone douglas it happened because i went to school there and it's been a couple years on the book and then then decided to not do it for for a few reasons but that one i wouldn't even say that was that i wasn't like afraid someone come after me except maybe like some gun nuts later you know i've done some stories mafia stuff like russian hackers things like that and i've never like you know i think a lot of the times people respect the process and they don't they they don't wanna start a war with the new york times of vanity fair or you know right i think it's different if you're like covering mexican cartel in you know in mexico that that's that's a whole different thing or or if you're trying to be a reporter in russia or something like that that that's way you really do have to start to worry but in silicon valley it's a bunch of nerds that you know talk a big game and and and that's it i did have i do have one story but it's from the twitter book so when i i won't mention names here but when i i wrote the twitter book and there's a moment in the book where someone gets fired and i got a call from a friend who was a journalist of bloomberg and they said hey somewhat there's a there's a bunch of people these like crisis p people that are trying to they're calling all the journalists they just called me and they're trying to say that your book is all fabricated and it's not true and this especially this moment it's all made up and and i just wanted to let you know and i so i just called this woman directly and i was like hey heard you're calling everyone and saying that she and she's like didn't say that and was like i said look i have the tapes of the interviews and of that moment and i was like i will happily post it on twitter i said you just keep calling people and i'll put it on twitter and that was the end of it so you know so there are these moments while you get these crisis calms people that come after you but well like money you know you when you do as most research research you do you end up getting to know the subject in some ways better than themselves it's like these business and business these you know ceos will pay for these expensive three sixty reviews where you go when somebody goes and talks to their wife and their yep their their coworkers and their interns and they get they come back with this feedback and especially with this eye opening thing about them that this person can can find out more about them and show them a mirror that they haven't really seen before in that case they want it but you know when you're researching jack do and you say something like you know that's all the story who's the real jack do well i think just what just one thing about what you just said is i know somebody asked me once how do you know when your book is done when you're like when you're ready to to because what happens is you research for for a long time you don't write a word until you're ready until you've done all the research and you have everything and i have in my office i have these boards and i'd like create these cards like that that you can you know where they're just all the scenes of and different colors and everything and put them up on a wall and and and i know when i'm ready to write when i start telling the people i'm writing about things they don't know about themselves and that's the moment i'm like okay i got it and so happened with the twitter book i remember sitting with all the founders and there was a moment where i told evan williams something that had happened be behind his back that i thought he knew about and he he had no idea and i was like oh okay well there you go i'm ready and you know as far as jack specifically goes the best quote i ever got about jack do i've written a lot about him was from one of the board members years ago who said the best product jack do if he made was jack do because it's because that's what it is it's a everything is everything is a story right every single solitary thing we do every single day is us telling a story the the outfit you chose to wear today is a story about yourself me telling a story about the book is me it we're all it's all we're doing all day long and we're telling these stories and we choose which story we wanna tell certain people but based on how they want us to to perceive is and i think that people like jack and jobs and bezos all of these guys and suck they that's one of their one of the things they're great at is telling a good story and and i think like i personally believe that your story for a company is more important than anything i don't care if you have the greatest product in the world if you can't tell a story about it well what's the point what what's the example that drives that home youtube is a perfect example youtube was not the first video platform there were dozens and i remember seeing this like when i was a a just a a beat reporter covering silicon valley and and i would my days were like it was like office hours and you'd have like start up after startup up in like two thousand nine eleven twelve come in and meet with you and they would have you know so that have great ideas and and but they couldn't walk you through it and they didn't hire a p r person and they didn't like and and so you know and youtube youtube had a great story and and that they were able to tell and that became and it became the video platform there were other video platforms there were i would argue way better than than youtube and i mean vimeo is was a perfect example vm was was a a thousand times of a better product and a pretty easier to all these things and and youtube just told a great story and google helped them do that and it becomes that's what it becomes and if you if jack do had told the real story about twitter that his best friend noah glass really was the one that came up with most of it and he stole it you know from him and and like and the the place was a shit show and no one knew what was going on it was all an accident like you'd be like oh okay but i but to tell the story that i am the next steve jobs and and i i conceived of this idea of twitter while i was in my mother's womb and and like holy shit i gotta check this thing out what is this and like the jack do twitter story i know is he grew up and he was just fascinated with dispatch or something like that he talks about like i loved to either taxi dispatch or some of some transportation dispatch services to listen to in that short form dispatch communication was always something he was into and then when had the you know the idea for twitter and he has the sketch of the original twitter thing that he posts you know he's posted before that's the story that i know right because i'm on i'm just the receiving end of that product it worked right that story the story worked does is it true no it's not true yes he was interested in dispatch in the same way he was interested in writing poetry and painting his nails black and dying his hair blue like but that's not part of the story because what really happens is and as i say in hatching twitter and after and no one knew this i i was like i had to talk to all these different people to kind of pin it together except noah glass knew it was you know jack was living in san francisco he was in his the early thirties he was like a part time manny in oakland he like he his life had not turned out in any way like the pre dust version of jack doors who we think of today he got a job working at a you know the ticketing boost at alcatraz the so they are these booths that are pretty small and he was the seat programmer who would go and fix the ticketing booth and the reason he got the job was because he was small enough to fit inside the booth and program but so this was the life he was living and he he had went he applied for a job a camper shoes to sell shoes not not like to build the website or be the ceo like and he couldn't get the job and he was at a coffee shop and evan williams walks in and he'd read an article about evan and he just felt like it was a sign which it probably was the universe was putting them together she sent him a note and he said i'm a programmer and you know and they had audio at the time which was the podcasting company which was a decade ahead of its time which was a a brilliant idea that the noah glass had come up with and so noah and and evan williams had had created this single called blogger and blogger was again ahead of its time you know and google purchases it and one day this guy biz stone reaches out and he says i love blog i'd love to come work for you and so evan williams and biz become friends jason goldman who's also another part of this he's working at google they all kinda become buddies they end up leaving and we'll get goldman states but evan is end up leaving and the reason that they leave is because evan lives on i think it was like eighteenth in market or whatever the streets were and he one day he was on his balcony and another guy noah glass was on his balcony and noah had been reading that same article that jack do had read and he recognized in the article that the photo of evan what of williams was taken on the balcony and in the background there's a little noah glass because they were neighbors and so he goes out and he goes hey blogger and they become friends and then he pitches and noah pitches in this idea for this podcast company he's like this is the this is the future it's gonna take a radio on so on and so abe is like looking for a project and so he agrees to do it it's all disco no one knows what's going on like they can't run the start up apple come along with podcast they're they're screwed jack do comes along and they hit do a hack day and to try to like last to save the company and they during the hack day jack presents this idea for status okay and everyone's everyone's kind of doing the same thing the the ideas are very very similar and i'll tell you a couple of them but jack presents this idea for status and what status is is stat dot us slash nick dalton right and you go there and you see my status it's one status so if i say and it's three four words you're not really supposed to do anything more than that on a podcast now if you go an hour from now if i put it post a new status and i'm like taking a walk that on a podcast is gone and it now just says taking a walk it's like an am away message yeah it's literally an am away message that they were doing and and so so noah has a very similar idea but noah is like no one is going to go stat dot us slash and they built in five times your mom will do it because she wants to know what you're up to but no one else is doing that and so they all start bringing these ideas to get an truly it's like eleven people in the room it it is a collaboration between all of them and what noah has this realization is he's a very emotional guy very smart and he's like it needs to be about friendship it needs to be about connecting with your friends and that is what it's about and so he brought this humanity to it and so he came up with the stream and the app it's like oh not the arab replies but the friends like that you had friends and you and that was what that was twitter it wasn't status you know it it there were a million other statuses is are back then i mean and so when it ends up becoming what it came noah it was a mess he was getting divorced he was like just his life just wasn't work and and he gets pushed out by jack and and ave and and those and jack who his best friends would know it goes into abs office one day and he says either you get rid of noah or i quit and as far as ave jack had come up with the id idea himself you know when he was a little kid listening to fire trucks that was a story that was added later and and so you know so but that's but the better story is not oh i screwed over my best friend for power and control of this thing it's when i was a kid i used to sit in my room at twelve years old and i had the vision for twitter by listening to fire truck okay that's a great story and so you know you seem like you don't like jack do is it you don't like him or you just feel like that's a wrong that needs to be right to that story is it that you wanna pay the record that is i don't like people who fuck other people over especially their friends did you find yourself like you had this great podcast with our friend david pro and you set a line that hitchcock someone came up with where it was every villain has a mother and it was like yeah i guess like you you see yourselves in the villain at times that's what a good stories do you kind of like like a villain a little bit or they're little you know you're they're you're they're you're interested in them did you find yourself liking ross did you find yourself liking jack at times like because you get so into their minds and you also see that like even though they do a lot of bad things they do a lot of epic things a lot of big things do you find yourself ad admire and liking them well they all have a charisma to them you know that that you can't pull this off without the charisma i've met trump he's very charismatic very very charismatic you like wanna be around him even if you don't agree with him what was the context how'd do you meet him oh just a this at a rally once years and years and years ago i think two thousand fifteen or something like that you know spend time with elon like he's kinda funny he's funny he's like a weird dude but he's funny you know jobs had this like aura to him you know bezos too like they funnily enough suck doesn't necessarily have the charisma but it's almost like he's a robot and you're like oh how does this thing work but but they all have this this there's something to them that is that is enticing and and and jack's funny he's a funny nice guy like when you're hanging out with them and he like you it's like you're you're like oh this he's fun i like hanging out with this guy and and and so and i never met ross i covered him in the court in the trial so i saw him many many times but never spoke to him and but they have this charisma to them that i think makes them great in some respect and it's not something that you can learn it's just something that you either have or you don't have and and so you cannot help but like them for that but i think for me i just i don't understand here's the part with jack and then we should move on from it because i could talk a all day about this but jack is worth twelve billion dollars give or take noah glass is worth about a zero dollars okay he never got anything he av gave him something and he had to live off that and and and whatnot if you're worth twelve billion dollars give the guy ten million you wouldn't even notice you'd it would literally be like losing a penny between your couch cushions and like that to me even if you believe that you are the creator even if you believe that that you that you really came up with this on your own because he may believe that today i just don't understand like why the kid that you were best friend the guy you were best friends with who who without question helped you with this product like go take care of him and it never happened and for glass i agree with you but also no glass now has a thing too right do doesn't they have ol or no that's a different note glass no shit they're not the same guy not same guy so yeah everyone did that i thought they were the i thought it was like his second coming no he's he just he has a family and he like he married the french and they have two kids and i think not only twitter got stolen them his own name got stolen name on google got stolen front of hasn't got credit mess him up i did not know that i thought it i thought it was like oh he's getting it he's getting it back no man that ruined the story for me can you can you tell us some other stories of you know that that have stood out to you things you still remember either experiences or whatever you you said like i got job stories i have z stories i have elon stories let's let's see like jobs is the best one i think i'll i'll i'll do the job story so when i was a reporter at the times i i didn't really know what i was doing like no one knows what you're doing when you start out in these jobs you pretend you do but you don't and and i i don't even i think the ten thousand hours is nonsense i think it's about thirty thousand right to really understand what you're doing properly but i was at the times and i was what had happened was i come into the times by complete accident let me just start with that story because it's actually a very funny story so i was a i would my dream job was i wanted to be war photography and i'd read all these war photography books and and i bought like saved up and bought like a fancy camera and i would like to practice war photography with my friends where they would like run through the streets with you know and i take pictures and and so i put together this portfolio and i was a graphic designer and i done toy package design for a while and i'd like design the first britney spears doll and stuff like that and so i was like oh i can use the designer job to get to the times as a designer and then i can become a war photographer and so i end up doing that i'd become i do page and stuff like that and when you do these the way these meetings work is the at at these newspapers you have a morning meeting where all the editors and report is going one big room and each section the business section the culture section the from page and on you pitch they pitch their stories the editor decides is gonna go where on the front page and and and off you go and but i would speak up because i know you weren't supposed to and so i'd be like what about that and what about that and i like that and what if you did this and and i just became like friendly with a lot of the editors one day i sit down with the photo editor and i show her my photos and she looks in her name was michelle mc and she like slowly goes through one by one and she closes the book she goes she's like you're a good photographer she's like i think he'd be a be a be a good war photographer but i'm not gonna hire you to do it and i was like why not she goes because you're too normal she's like these guys are fucked up they're on drugs they can't be in a they can only be in a war zone half the time like they've got like they've just got something that's missing that they need that adrenaline and she was like i don't feel that from you and i'm grateful it's so grateful that she she said that and so i was like what do i do now and there was at the times i i become friends with with marissa mayer and i that was talking about going over to google to go to google news i mentioned this to the editor in chief of the business section and he said god i wish we could keep someone like you to be like a reporter because everyone wants to write for the print section no one wants to wait write for the web and i just the words just came out of my mouth i'd never wanted to be a writer it had never been anything on my list of things i wanted to do and i said well i would do it and he was like oh well why don't we try it and then i was like oh shit what have i done and so the first day i'm on the job at the new york times and i'm in this massive newsroom with all these insane people that you know then you were just like enamored by these these buy lines that you were just like holy shit and my editor comes over and funnily enough it was twitter had gone down and he said twitter's gone down can you write a blog post about it you know call the company and everything and i was like you had no problem so i looked at my computer and i googled how do you write a blog post so that was my first and then i realized like oh my god what have i done i i found myself in this job that i just don't know what to do and so i just i spent weeks just reading every by line of the greatest reporters and i was like okay this is how they write the intro this is how they do the quotes this is how they do the nut graph and i just figured it out and i've made mistakes but like that was my that was my foray into it so one day about i don't know like six months a year into me being a tech blogger for the times i reach out to apple as you know you call and you say hey i'm doing the story this do you have a comment and the p r woman that answers she says steve's gonna call you and at the time there was a guy called steve dow who like a very senior comps person and i was like cool steve dow and she goes no jobs and i was like what and and i was like is that normal does that happen and she goes sometimes he's gonna call you he wants to talk to you and i've been writing a lot of apple stuff and and so he never called and that night i went out for dinner with my girlfriend at the time and and like we went for sushi and i had a i had like a few sa and then all of a sudden i get a phone call from this number in in in san jose and i answer it and its jobs and i was like a little tips and he talked to me for like an hour and he just he just like convinced me not to do the stories in the way i did it and i didn't i didn't it didn't make any sense but i he made so much sense and he just he was like oh you got this wrong and that and then if you actually you look at this you can and and then the next day so i wrote the piece and then a couple of days go by you know what like you've seen a movie and then all of a sudden you process the movie and then it's like oh that makes sense i i played this conversation back in my head and i was like holy shit he convinced me not to do the story that was there was the right story he got you he got me and so john mark who was a veteran reporter i told him and he goes he just says it's the reality distortion field and i was like what's that and he goes jobs jobs invented it and and every time i talked to him from time to time and every time it was the same thing it was like this he had the ability to make you believe that what you were doing was not the right story and that this was the way to do it it was it was a really fascinating thing to see how does the reality distortion because i've heard that so many times the reality distortion field never been in it you've been in it what is he actually doing in your opinion you're a smart guy you're a storyteller you're a persuasive guy you've been around other charismatic people is it just his aura is it his g us is he really good at ref framing things is it is an intimidation what is he actually doing and it's one of those things where you hear about in and you're like that won't happen to me no exactly i was i yeah like he i it's hard to describe what he's doing because it's so interesting he he convince you that you're wrong and you believe it you know you and look i think there's a part of jobs that we should all admire and respect and and be be really amazed by but there's is a part of him that he was he'd he could be a real asshole like walt tries this and told me the story wants jobs it was was he presented the ipad and and then what they did back then they don't do it anymore as much because the media has changed so much but what they did back them was they would go around to all the newsroom rooms around the country and they would meet with the editorial boards and the reporters in in off the record in total private and they would show you the products that they were doing so and presidents would do it too and you know you would sometimes get invited they'd be like you know bushes here or the secretary state like come in it's a huge at the new times it was this massive conference room and on the walls were all these photos of all the dig that had come over the last hundred and fifty years and and business people and so on and so we got a call that jobs was coming and there was twenty of us that were invited to this thing and i end up getting sat next to brad stone who now runs bloomberg business and and jobs was right next to him and brad was the the apple reported at the time and i was the tech logger and there was this moment where he passes his he brings an ipad prototype and you know we're playing with them and everything and i was prodding it too hard and he was like stop it you're hitting it too hard nick and i was like okay and so but then he says this is another reality distortion field is actually will make more sense he says we're doing questions and answers and and everything and then i said to him i said steve i saw you a couple years ago at cup and you were sitting on there was three stool on stage and you were in one of the stool and you had just presented the apple television box and i said you said that you see apple as having these these three businesses right there's the mac and there's the ipod because that's what it was back then and and whatever and i said and then you said apple tv will be the fourth lag so the stool will become a chair something like that and i remembered to verbatim him back then and he goes i never said that and i was like no i'm i you no you said that i'm pretty sure you said that and he goes never said that because i've never said that it about apple apple televisions that experiment for we're just playing with that it's like you know because it wasn't doing very well at the time and that was my question was like it's not doing very well like did you say that incorrectly and and i was like and i'm sitting there with all the editors in the you know and the big the big mock of the at the new york times and i'm like and i'm just like this young report and i'm like no you you definitely said that and he goes nick i never said that and i was like okay and so and then i just like shut up and then afterwards spun john marco was there again too i pulled it up on my computer and i was and i watched the video i was like he said it and he goes reality distortion field and that was just it and so what was i gonna do go run around to the twenty people in that room and tell him say that he made it up no he he did what he did and it worked and they all believed that that was just an experiment right are there any of these guys that you felt like had had had it all meaning they have the extreme success they're they're they're the extreme achieve of society but you know most of the time you look and they're on their fifth wife and they're kind of an ad the stories that they're kind of an asshole to work for or that they screwed somebody over or whatever right like they they same as this quote you know show me a great man and i'll show you a bad man right like you there's a there's just stereotype with that was there anybody you met that were like no this person's actually they had it they they they had the career success but they also were good family man or they were actually good to be they're a good good human being to be around yeah people who you would say they're winning yeah there was one person and i say was there there's two and there there are other people look i i think like there are really good people in that in silicon valley they're not the most successful of like you know they're not the worth the hundreds of billions like i love aaron levi i think he's a great guy like dennis crowley you know at the along people that i really really admire and like and i think a good people but there was one person that i was like oh you have it all and i had met him because i'd had done these series of stories on on the kindle and it was jeff bezos and i remember spending time with bezos and when i became a columnist at the new york times like when i got promoted to be a columnist there was a guy i worked with david carr who was just a wonderful wonderful human being who was the media columnist and he since passed away but he was like he was everyone's mentor he would make time for anyone he was just a lovely lovely person so smart and when i became a columnist i didn't the first few columns i wrote i was like i don't know what the hell i'm doing and and david used to smoke outside and that would go down on the king out with him and he said and he said pick a fight that you can win that's what you need to do the first time when you first become a columnist so i was flying out to la for for thanksgiving and i was reading a book on my kindle back then i was like two thousand ten and nine eleven twelve and i was reading book on my it was like three pages to go and i was like oh my god and they were like you must turn off your put your devices off now and and put them in airplane mode and whatever and and i and i wanted to finish stories was like hiding the book so i can finish it and the air the steward was like we are not allowed to take officer until each turn and i and i was like it's a calculator like it's not gonna destroy the plane and she got very t and i was so angry that when we finally got up to to el i wrote a column about just how ridiculous it was and it got published like the next day whatever and it was like the most red thing on the on the the new york times for weeks and i was like oh i'm picking this fight and so i started doing i went to all these testing facilities because back then you were allowed there were rules in the faa you could use a razor a tape recorder a heart monitor and some other this so we got all these calls it going to pet court yeah you pet court yeah i was i was in pet court and so i we went to these testing facilities and we did like em p testing and we put a kindle these it's amazing these giant rooms that like and you just have a device and that can test the e and p's it turns out like the razor puts off like a hundred times more p's than a kindle and so i did i just kept writing these stories because people like were so irate about the fact that they couldn't read their kindle or play on their phone while they were taking off and eventually it got overturned and and bezos during his earnings call that quarter was like on the earnings call it was like i wanna give a shout out to nick hilton for like because it helped his business of course you know and anyway in the meeting with him and and he was like so smart and thoughtful and just you could tell was on a different level like he he could just see like oh this is someone who who never forgets anything who and he was married he was talking about his kids and how his his teenage son still sits on his lap and like and then i ended up again going to a dinner at his house and and he's you know talking about his family and like and i met his wife mackenzie many times and and i was like oh this he's the guy who has it all he's like create this unbelievable business he he doesn't from what i could tell he's not like people don't say he's an asshole to work for right i'm sure there were some but most people like really really loved working for from state at amazon for years and love the culture and then and then they got divorced and he ended up in a very very different relationship so i and now you like he's like this body building looking like rave so he i think he had it all but but whatever reason he had like this midlife crisis that made him throw it all away i don't know i don't know so that was the one person that had it all i i wanna talk about one more thing do you want me to tell that that walter isaac since oh yeah yeah go so walter told me the story of after the ipad where he had met jobs in the four seasons i think it was which is connected to the the musk center and they met for breakfast i don't know before after the ipad and jobs had ordered a fresh squeezed orange juice and the waitress brings it out and it's not fresh squeezed it's called like pulp up and he calls her back over and he says i asked her a fresh squeezed orange juice and she brings another one out again let's called pulp it and he just becomes more and more angry and about this orange juice and at one point it a sense and this she's almost in tears this like this this poor waitress and at one point walter says like steve what are you doing like it's just an orange juice like she's truck like she clearly doesn't they they clearly don't have like non pulp orange juice because it's f squeezed whatever and he says if if she's chosen to be a waitress for her living then she should be the best waitress she can be and it's my job to push her to do that and it's like no you don't know her backstory you don't know like why her life has gone and why and things like that and like and i think that like so for all the brilliance there was a lack of compassion and look we all i think the thing is the reality is like none of us are perfect world all yeah well do you think you have you're one of the best there is do you lack that i mean like are you accused of being an asshole yeah i i fucking love when people call me an asshole like i just like i i just don't give a shit but like i what i pride myself on is i pride myself on being very very easy to work with like if if we're doing a creative if we're right if we're writing a movie together and i'm working with the producers or we're doing a documentary like i am there to make this the best possible and that you i will never ever ever be an asshole you and you could never find anyone that's would say i would because i understand that what we're doing is really hard and we're all doing our best and like that's the pursuit of creating great creativity however i've picked fights with people as a writer and a journalist and gone after people that makes me into a fucking asshole quite honestly you know like i had a thing when dave more was doing you know all of his products and start like i went after him and and then later i actually later apologized to him because i felt like i was to much of an asshole and we had like a heart to heart about it and like and i do think like there's a great line that bill keller he was the editor in chief of the new times many years he used to say and he used to say i don't believe people should be able to write about other people until they have been written about themselves and i learned that when i people started writing stories about me and i was like oh that feels awful like that sucks and it was like a moment where i realized like oh like i don't need to be such a dick to people like i can i can i can write these stories and i can be honest and i can tell the truth but i i need to you need to have some compassion too and i you know that was something i have to learn in at the beginning of my career you talk about like your time at the new york times where you're like we were in this room and then the room had the portraits of all the important people who used to come to us and and try to tell us what they were doing because we were the messengers and we used to kind of shape the narrative out there and they tried to shape us and we shaped the narrative yeah and there was these people who were you know you recognize their names from the by lines that you had just like so much respect for them do you think that that's still like the like does that shit matter at all anymore because for me i'm like if i'm a founder of a company now i don't i put zero dollars in the p r i put zero care in if if i could get a press mention it it's like so low on the total book compared was fifteen years ago when i was building a company that has changed my my respect for kind of man i i think trump really like reality distorted everybody when he started going after fake news i then you started seeing examples of it and like i just feel like the credibility has gone down but i'm also on the outside you're almost you you know you're you're from that world do you feel the same way or do you do you think that's completely misguided there's a practical thing of like you you can get an audience on twitter on wherever and you're like i don't you can you nor do i need you there's two answers to that question and the first answer is that i think ninety percent of the media is utter garbage and it is complete and utter ridiculous drizzle that is opinionated and bad for society and i think ninety i think ten percent is people that are working really really fucking hard to try to do investigative reporting because they care and i met those people i remember those people at the new york times when i first started and i had they were you know they were people that were making a hundred and twenty grand a year and that could be making millions like working for a hedge billions i know for like wherever they wanted and they wanted to pursue the pursuit of honesty and setting the record straight and going after these bad people because there are a lot of bad people in the world does that do many percent of the of the crap include your past employers does that does that include your times yes one thousand percent because i think because the system it all broke like it's broken be and i i believe it's broken be on repair for now i i my hope is that and maybe this is me being delusional but like my hope is the ai can somehow help fix it but for but i believe that or ai in the hands of people can help fix it but when i first started at the times like you weren't allowed an opinion you weren't there was no you know you there was no social media like there was no twitter like i was at the times when twitter came out like you if you i remember being in meetings in those rooms and i would ask an editor right what do what do you think and they would be like i'm not i don't have an opinion on this my i'm a journalist who comes at this impartial and all i wanna do is report the facts and and and so i think that what happened was you had this the the prod problem was the internet came along right and you had to to get to the times like i was the first one that one of the first ones that came in i remember being in a meeting once with forty or fifty people at the times this was this big meeting and everyone kind of went around and they introduced themselves and they talked about like where they gone to school and how they ended up here i i barely graduated high school like i literally had a two point one gpa i got kicked out of art school and like they're were all like i was at harvard and i worked at the harvard crimson and i did this and the other and i was like oh i'm the odd one out here that shouldn't be here and like was only here because no one wanted to write for the internet and that became everyone became that and and i think that like what ended up happening was you had this generation that came in after i left that was they were they they were the internet people they hadn't been mentored they hadn't you know they hadn't learned the ropes and and they didn't and they felt like they had it right to say oh we shouldn't we should not publish tom cotton in the opinion section and we're gonna go i we're gonna be irate because we'd that is not the way the world works the world works is by listening to other people's opinion and like and i think the reason that so many people in silicon valley have have veer to the right which they have is because the left tells them oh you can't think like that and you can't and you're stupid if you believe this and so on and so forth and i think that so the the whole apparatus is completely broken but at the same time i am friends with a lot of startup founders who tell me that like oh we got a profile in the new york times and we had the biggest influx of customers we've had ever or we got mentioned you know a a write up on here or whatever it is and the same thing happen and so the eyeballs are still there people just don't necessarily trust them in the way that they did and i and i think that you know what's interesting is that you have all these new news and i'll to come along like sema four in the free press and things like that and they're trying to get people they're trying to say we're we're in impartial in the middle and so on and so forth but inevitably but what ends up happening is as soon as you put that opinion in the view the everyone the the number of listeners or viewers or readers go up and then the product ends up staring that way and so i think that they're is it a desperate need for something that is what i think the solution is honestly is you you you know you don't need a right wing publication or a left wing publication you need a both you need a place where there are people who have right wing point of views and centrist point of views and left wing and they're all in there together and they're debating it and they're respectful of each other and maybe they disagree but they are all there and the problem is the new york times is all left in the wall street journal all right and so on and so forth and and so you you don't necessarily trust any of it yeah i would love to read the debate i think that's a lot more interesting format totally people who take the other two people each each believe or willing to like argue the best case for each side so you can read it and i think that's both entertaining because it's sort of a fight an intellectual fight but i think it's also more informative because you get both perspectives you know sort of steel man yeah is there a story you wish you could write either if you had like infinite time or you know sometimes you get successful and you're like oh somebody should do that it's probably not worth me doing it but somebody could do that is there is there a great story out there that you think someone should be doing i don't know i my dream is i've i've i love thinking about stories from all different perspectives like how you know when do you do when is a story of documentary when is a story of book when is it a magazine when's it a tweet when's it a movie or or a nine part series on netflix or you know and and i do i write all all forms of of writing and and and i'm fascinated by you know there's there's these different things that's they're are fascinating is like you know a documentary is the people from the past talking about there in the present talking about the past right a tv series is the story unraveling as you're watching it unravel a book is you get to climb inside crawl inside someone's head for seven hours and let them understand how visually things smelled looked into tl and like and so i've always might i wanna write a novel at some point i think that that's like the next thing i wanna do and so because i love a re a novel reader and and i just have so much respect for the amount of research that goes into them and then they become but they it's like it goes back to the beginning like the magic is you don't know that the people that wrote the novel spend hundreds of thousands of hours researching all the history or whatever it is to to to do that as far as like a net non fiction like i just love stories that are that you know that old cheesy saying that like you know it's if it was fiction you wouldn't believe it you know it's like i really think that those are the stories that to me are are the most the most fun to read and the report and research you have all these different seasons of life you know you said to in in evolutions you said you wanna be a war photographer then you accidentally became a common a columnist and then you became an author and you've even though you've dislike some of the guys you cover it sounds like there is a lot of admiration still for a bunch of others as well have you ever thought about like going into the business world since you've been able to see it so closely i almost did this year actually there was a project that i was gonna go do which was a startup up in in the storytelling space can you say what it is yeah i think that what's happening is there's a change coming in hollywood as far as how we consume content and short form versus and the way you know there's there are these structures that happened to stories that that we that become norms and so for example in a film screen play a film screen play is a hundred and twenty pages long because each page is a minute that's why when you look at screen their courier and the certain font because each page shot is usually one minute long and so a hundred and twenty pages is is to our movie and so there's a there's a whole system set up there's a book called save the cat which essentially made this world where you you on page one the first person you meet is is your is your main protagonist by page three you have discovered what the movie's is about by page five there's the introduction of the antagonist by page thirty every single movie if you go back and watch on page thirty which is thirty minutes in it's the changing moment it's the you know it is the joseph campbell like this is when the journey begins and and then by page ninety you've entered the third act and and we we've come back around and so on and so forth and and while every movie is different we we understand that that's the same thing and i think what what's happened is that that philosophy has been overused and i think remember the movie parasite the won the academy award parasite changed it and it wasn't by page sixty it turned into a whole different movie and you were like whoa i've never seen that before and that's why people i think really loved it and i think what we what we look for in culture is things that are new and different and every once in a while a genius comes along who does it and and then everyone else copies that and then you gotta wait for the next genius to come along to do the thing and and i think that the that page one page five page thirty page ninety thing is completely it doesn't work for today's audiences they don't have the patience to wait till page thirty to find out when the turn is and so in short form there's like this new philosophy of like one second seven seconds nine seconds and i think that like but then they don't know how to tell stories and i think that there is a world where you know there's we were exploring this idea of like thinking about the new approaches of how to tell long form stories and short form bites and things like that and but at the end of the day like the reason i didn't end up doing it is because i just love telling stories and i don't necessarily wanna be like a manager meeting with vcs and boards and and getting kicked out by jack do how many how many copies how many copies of your books have you sold hundreds of thousands of copies yeah oh over time i don't haven't checked in a long time but hundreds of thousands and they've been printed all over and i why is american king ben not netflix like seven part series i like nobody it was one movie amazing show it was okay that movie was okay i mean no it was bad it was bad was bad yeah it was bad i'm not gonna tell you the story but the reason the reason it has not is because i got screwed over on on the film film rights steel so that's the reason why but it may end up in it's still today it's still may end up may end up there we'll see alright if i wanted to spend six weeks getting as good as i could at storytelling what would i do is there a book or is there some process like i was dedicated how would i be become an amazing storyteller what you if you dedicate you need more than six weeks so let's pretend what would be the first what would be the well what can i do in six weeks i got nineteen bucks what you got for me if you i have all these books on like on storytelling that i read and like and they're interesting and like you get a little snippet i think the most interesting of all the books was i read was when i wrote hat and twitter i really wanted it to feel like a murder mystery because no one knew what really happened and i read a book on murder mysteries which was unbelievable like you can read any of them just google like how write murder mysteries it's a it's a blue book it's a collaboration where a bunch of murder writers and and screen writers and so on each write a few chapters each and there's a few things i learned from that which were which one is i when you read a lot of books people forget to describe smells and murder mysteries always do and it's like and it brings really brings you in it's it's while to see how it can add like this extra layer like sounds smells you know the noise is you know not just the creaking stairs but but the you know the mold whatever it is it just creates this sense of story in your brain the other thing is the save of the cow which is a really interesting even if you don't write screen plays it's a really interesting way of understanding character and so on and read a bunch of screen playbook books by like some of the old greats and they talk about characters and and and thanks standing in your way and so on but i will say for me the best way to become a great storyteller is to read stories and i think one of the things that frustrate me about silicon valley and the tech bro culture is everyone's trying to optimize their life for the most number of seconds of this and that and the other and it's like what they don't realize is that some of the greatest things that they will learn is from things that have nothing to do with what they do so i've and i'm forty eight now when i was forty five i i love listening to piano music i've never played before i was like you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna just learn the piano and and i got obsessed with it i learned how to read music for the first time look at you what is that i'm on a alright perfect that's his like a new year's resolute resolution my new year is my doing how i'm how well i'm on the faber method here so i'm on book 2a right now i'm playing i'm playing there's a great app it's like it's called that i do in my spare time it's called notes teacher and you just do it for like five minutes a day reading practice yes reading practice but i got obsessed obsessed like i literally would play two hours a day and like now i can play a couple of show songs and things like that and i and the thing i and to me was just a fun hobby and it was like really like but what you learned is that like they are telling a story and they're telling a story you know hands hans z says like the notes will ask a question and then the next notes answer the question and it's like and the way it show on it like is you just unbelievable when you if you sit and analyze the music and think about like the highs and the lows and the things that are repeated and it's and it's amazing and it and it started to kind of inform some of the ways i thought about screen place and like i read as as many novels as i can't i hate non fiction books i can't read non fiction books just funny because i write them i just they're just boring to me so i but i read novels and i'd love like just studying as i'm reading like oh that was really unique of the way they did this and i i read a lot of like nineteen fifties sci f and then i read a lot of like nineteen thirties forties fifty sixties incredible you know the like the writers that we all should read and you just understand that they it's really these stories are about people or not the stories that that we think that it's like the the guy who wrote game with thrones george martin and i saw him speak once at a conference years and years ago and he said you know you could take my story you could put it in a spaceship and it would still work you could put it in present day and it would still work because it's about the relationships and the characters and i think that that's what ends up happening is as you watch something the best stories are the ones where you imagine yourself as the character and then you wanna know how you would solve the problem if i'm james mann how would i get out of this is the as the drill is about to you know sever my part or whatever and and then you can't figure it out and the storyteller does and you you're like delighted by that because it's great storytelling i think that's your secret by the way you're like i i non fiction is usually pretty boring but yours aren't and i think yours aren't because you consume so much content that's you know on the mystery side yours are page turner and so what you know that lateral thinking where you take a skill from one discipline and apply it to another that usually doesn't have it that's what some of the best business people do as well as they take back yeah the best hedge fund you know renaissance is because they took the best ai machine learning mathematical prowess and applied it to finance and like we had mike pos on the podcast and he was talking about how he started as a rapper but all his hit songs are him singing and he's not the best singer but he's like i am the best writer because is he and he's sang one of his lyrics and he's like the rhyme scheme i'm using here the reason people like that hook and it's catchy is because i'm using a rap rhyme scheme which no singer song writers would typically do but that's why my song sounds different because i'm using a rapper lyrics but i'm singing them in the way that you know is is rarely done but it sounds like you've kind of done that same thing no it's i think it's totally true to look i think jobs jobs did this thing where he you know computers back then were these nerdy like circuit boards and he was like oh i'm gonna marry graphic design with technology and so for me like i wanna marry that style of a novel with a narrative non fiction story and and you know this great writers who've done that in the past that i such such admiration for whatever i get done reading your books like when i get done each time after i read american king pin i'm like pretty bumped i'm like i was so like in love with like reading this and i was looking forward to fin or i was looking forward to like i would sneak off to like find the page and and see if i can just like read a few chapters and i felt bummed that like i was like in this relationship with this book and it's over now and i would i've like searched so long and hard to find something that could fill that need and like only one out of like twenty or thirty books like fills that need i think mass mind was another great book that was very similar topic yeah he did a and they the author did a great job of a very similar style of storytelling but in general it's been really hard for me to find things i i read a lot of novels but i like reading i like sometimes when i read a novel i'm like i fall in love with this character and then i find out that i've to remind myself the character is not real and i get kind of like bummed about it you know and so what who do you view as a peer or someone you look up to where you they do your style of non fiction storytelling oh what well just to real quick on the novel like yes they're not real but they are based on reality like every every novel pulls from the people around them to create the characters that you're reading so you know it's like what you know if you go do research into like whatever your favorite book is your favorite novel like and you look at how they did it if they talk about it they're like oh well just you know when i was a kid them i my grandfather used to tell me the stories da low or like there was a neighbor across the street so i think they are it is real and it's still people as far as as as far as people i admire and i look up to i i like i said before i don't really read a lot of narrative non fiction i'm sorry a lot of non fiction i i don't think there's that like i and i love i have such admiration for people's reporting and and even the writing but this is i i need a story i can't have and so that's what i'm describing i want more like stories driven i need a story this is the shit man i've just like i just love learning about this stuff well you have you had one last question sam when i interrupted you to what or did you get answer it it was about i sean did you see the documentary on netflix about was what was it called it was with il was it bit bit what was that called it was this couple a bitcoin bonnie clyde i did a documentary on them for netflix with christmas smith who did tiger king that was about this couple that had stolen five point four well they stole seventy two million dollars in crypto and then we're trying to lau it and every they were the only two people on the entire internet who wanted the price of bitcoin to go down and they had every time they were trying to lau it it would double and double and double and double and double to the point that it was a one point at his peak was worth eight point four billion dollars and she was let's like wacky cringe rapper and he was like part time magician investor and like it's one of those stories the if it worth fiction you'd be like yeah this is stupid bad this had never happened she s or the the guy il spoke at the very first hustle con which is kinda funny oh and then the woman heather forbes thirty to thirty did you well listen listen listen the little bit heather she was like a copywriter or something but she wasn't any good and she like dm me asking to talk at one of our things or to like do freelance work or something like that and then she was kind of a sex freak i had a bunch of friends at like fooled around with her and they were like this woman's wild man i you should stay away like like those type of stories and i was like joke with nick i was like whoever i guess we interact with just like you know maybe ten percent of them are gonna end up being becoming like amazing criminals because for some reason we we've been around on much of these people like right ads or right before they're were committing some huge crime but that was also a good story yeah that was a great story sorry that was such just wild story that they that they went on they went to ukraine and like had like fake passports and i mean it was just just yeah it's nuts is is making a netflix documentary is is there good money in that or you do it just because it's sick and it's like you know as art and i'm doing this for art how does that work there's not look being a writer i think you know you it's good money like if you can pull it off there's somebody sent me an article a while ago that you're more likely to become a billionaire than to become a a successful writer and yeah it's like i think the way in the olden days you know at vanity fair for example or or the new yorker they had these contracts for these writers they would get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and they would write four stores a year and like and then they had the house up upstate and the place the brown stone in brooklyn and i'm like it was a different time and now you know everything's been media has been completely diluted where we have podcasts and blogs and newsletters and mainstream media and all and all this stuff and so the advertising dollars and the revenue dollars that it's not like they've gone up it's just they've evenly been more evenly distributed and so for me i just wanna tell stories and the and i just don't give a shit in what format it is and so it's really fun to be able to write screen plays to write books to write magazine features to make documentaries and like and then you know it all just kinda adds up from there i could talk with you for hours man thank you for doing this thank you so much for having me this been really fun we appreciate you alright that's it that's the pod that's the pod i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a day's off on a travel never looking back