Tech Brew Ride Home - (Bonus) Listener Call in I - The "Call-in-an-ing"

Episode Date: May 16, 2020

Questions about: tech in the time of coronavirus, podcasting in the time of coronavirus, WeWork and co-working spaces after the coronavirus, Netflix's position among the competition right now, are subscriptions the future of podcasting, how I source news, and what are my biases, among other questions and answers.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to a weekend bonus episode of the TechMeme Ride Home. I'm Brian McCullough. This is our second experiment with a listener call-in show technically.

But really, I'd like to think of this as our first real attempt. As I think you'll hear, it went fairly well. And certainly with Zoom, you can get a lot of people in the same room at the same time. I got some good questions, some pretty good conversation out of it. You will hear we did get Zoom bombed, which I did leave in a little bit, but actually I cut out a whole five minutes of it. I'm kind of glad that that happened because part of me wanting to do this was I wanted to get a better handle of what is and what is not possible with Zoom. So now I know how Zoom bombing happens and I know how to keep it from happening the next time we do this. So thanks to

those of you that sat through me figuring all that out. Anyway, please enjoy this conversation about tech in the time of coronavirus, about podcasting in the time of coronavirus, about Netflix at this moment of time and a whole bunch of other stuff like how I source the stories we do. What are my biases when giving you in the news, that sort of thing? Many thanks to those of you that participated. And if I didn't get to your question today, we'll do this again probably sometime next month. So do listen out for when we do it again. Yeah, this is, I don't know if I said this, but actually until about a week ago, I had never used Zoom even once. And then I've got to do, there's a tech conference that I'm going to be moderating a couple panels on,

and of course they're doing it virtually. So one of my motivations for doing this was to figure out if I could get Zoom working properly for me. So, all right, let's consider us recording here. I'm going to get my stopwatch going so I know how much we're actually doing of this. FYI, there's a chat you can turn on. You're all muted at the moment, but I think there's a feature where you can raise your hand or something. So when we get going, if you all want to raise your hand

and I'll just unmute individually and we can do it that way. Timer and are we recording? Yes, we are. Awesome. Actually, Zoom, I have to say, I don't know why I didn't give this a try because I've been doing all of my interviews for various podcasts over Skype all these years. And the ability to just send people links is obviously insanely more simple. The ability to have it just dump the audio as a file automatically after you do a call is simpler than having to do plugins for Skype and things like that. So listen, hats off to Zoom for being this awesome, at least so far.

All right. So let's see. I am officially throwing the floor open to questions. I see a couple already in the chat. Somebody try to do the raise your hand thing if you can. Let me see if I can see that coming. Oh, I see them. All right. I'm going to just take them in order. And also, depending on time, I'll get to some of the questions from a couple. did come in over Reddit and there's a couple in the chat right now. Obviously, if you don't want to be on air, throw your question in the chat and like I said, we'll try to get to everyone. So, all right, we are starting with Alan Jay, who is going to be unmuted first. Hey, Alan, are you there? I am. Hi, everyone.

So I've been fascinated by all of the discussion recently about contract tracing apps and how they do and don't work and what the correct level of privacy should or shouldn't be and how different people's perspective of it seems to be getting to a stage where I don't think anything is going to work because they're going to argue about it rather than actually get on and do it. And I just wondered, you know, there's a topic that I think everybody is going to do it. probably is probably thinking about or being technically minded and probably having a much better perspective than the politicians.

You know, yeah, I'm trying to find it right now. There was a, there's a Wall Street Journal piece that came out either last night or this morning that's sort of talking about, well, actually, let me come back to that because that is answering a different question. So, you know, it doesn't it feel like our whole world is like that now? Like, nothing is simple, like even finding a solution to, you know, a global pandemic that ruining the economy. Maybe that's naive to think that anything like that would have a simple solution. But even like, you know, all right, we need to do something to stop the virus. Let's all get on board.

I don't know. It's the times we live in that nothing is like, let's all band together and just fix shit. The thing that I would say that's interesting to me is the idea one that, again, this is, I guess, a sign of our times. Where are the solutions coming from? At least, you know, I'd have to say, I can only speak for the U.S. and the U.S. It's not coming from the government. So, you know, there's been lots of talk over the years about where does power reside in our societies these days. It does tend to reside with the corporations, with the powerful tech companies. And, you know, look, this is an indication of that, certainly. I think, though, for me personally, the thing that I don't know where I fall on this on yet is, on the one hand, you know, I did several segments

about, oh, ha, ha, look at Britain and France, they don't want privacy, and look at Apple and Google want to create these apps keeping privacy for the individuals. But at the same time, and I am someone that for years politically has always been like, keep the government away from me, individual privacy, all these things. But for some reason with this thing, I was immediately like, I don't care about any of that. Let's fix this problem. So I was perfectly happy and will be perfectly happy to do whatever, give away my location, do anything like that. I know that that's probably an unpopular opinion. And frankly, if most people are not like me, these things aren't going to work. But that's what this piece in the journal is saying is that public health officials are

saying, well, you know, on the one hand, you've got the apparent chaos of the British version and the French version not working. So apparently the Google and Apple version will work, except for the fact that the public health officials are saying they'll be useless for us. Because if the point, to go ahead, Alan. And I think that's exactly the point. And I think I'm probably directly with you in that if there was a system that recorded the contacts, with a privacy mode on. Yeah. And when you are diagnosed with the disease, you then have the ability to transfer that

information to the public health authority. Right. At your choice, then why is it, should we not be backing that and saying, I want the maximum amount of information to go to the public health authority if they treat it like a medical record with suitable privacy? Right. And the point is we should be clear that one of the reasons that the public health officials say this won't work is because what is the point of contact tracing? If there's a hotspot that bubbles up, if Park Slope Brooklyn all of a sudden has a bunch of cases, like they need to know that geographically even, on a basic level of they need to have the GPS data. Otherwise, what's the point of like trying to find hotspots? You can't find hotspots if you don't have this information.

Well, they find it out until they phone everybody up. Right, right. If there's the interaction, at that point, you can say I'm ill and provide the information to them, and suddenly they know there's a problem. Right. And then, I mean, this is what I'm saying. Like, I feel like in the context of this, I would be willing to have to allow the government to come knock on my door.

You know, in Asian countries, when they do lock, you don't do shelter in place. Like if you are, if it's detected that you have the virus, you're not sent home where you can infect your entire family. You're sent to these central quarantine locations where you write it out for two weeks or whatever. Like I know that this is completely different than anything that I've believed in for the last several years, but I'd be in favor of that. Like, I feel like in these special times, I want things that I would never have ever countenance before in order to fix this. That's the thing that I, you know, this sort of gets back to what we were saying at the very beginning, like nothing simple. Like to me, everyone that's screaming about let's get this over with like it's killing the accommodator or whatever. Like, then let's do what needs to be done. This whole arguing about it being wishy-washy, taking half measures. All it's going to do is prolong everything. So I don't know if that makes me insane, but like I'm willing to do the optimal thing because I feel like that's the only chance we have of like getting this done in a month, in three months or whatever. Totally agree. Yeah.

All right. Thank you, Alan, and thanks for participating. Anyone else that wants to raise their hand? Again, like I said, I will do it first come. Brandon is next. And Brandon, I'm unmuting you. And again, people, you don't have to be on video if you don't want it. It can just be audio.

But go ahead, Brandon. So as someone who started a network of podcasts, what has your reaction been to dithering by Ben Thompson and John Gruber. Do you think launching a podcast that doesn't rely on advertising is given a stronger chance during a pandemic? Or, I guess, kind of related, do you listen to a lot of podcasts yourself? Do I listen to a lot of podcasts? Let me see. This is video. I can, I mean, if you saw the amount of podcasts that I listen to on a daily basis, I don't know if you can see this, but like literally, I have 50. I probably listen to, depending on the day, six or seven different podcasts in a day.

Okay. Uh-oh. Hold on. All right. Can you guys still hear me? Raise your head if you can hear me. Okay. I had to put everyone on mute because I don't know where that came from.

I did wonder if we should put the link as widely as we did. But all right, Brandon, I put you back on mute. I'll try to unmute it in a second. But to answer your question, I listen to everything. And that's sort of how I accidentally got into podcasting, just because I've been such a fan of it for more than 10 years. Now, actually, I remember, shout out to one of my co-founders from a previous startup, Justin, who was listening to the Ricky Jervais podcast back in. I think it was like 2005 or 2006.

Like, he was way ahead of everybody. So the dithering, I have not listened to it yet. And frankly, the only reason is, is because I haven't gone through and gotten the link from, because I'm a subscriber to Stratereckery. and I just haven't done that. I know it's super simple. And it is, it's a daily show. It's a 15-minute show.

So, like, obviously, these are all things that, like, are near and dear to my heart. I think, listen, Ben, I love, John, I love. I wonder if, one of the things I'm curious to listen about is, can they do it in 15 minutes? Like, that doesn't, brevity doesn't seem to be something that either one of them is good at. Like, you know, they're smart.

guys, maybe they can figure that out. But also, I wonder, does it play to their strengths? And again, I don't want to be negative about this. I hope they do succeed. But I like Ben and I like Straterec for in-depth stuff and deep dive and analysis. And I like Gruber's podcast for the same reason where they can kick things back and forth for two or three hours. So I just wonder, will I like it because they're kind of not doing what I love about both of them. But then again, you know, I again, I'm I'm someone that does a daily podcast every day. So I'm not going to. One thing, the other thing that is curious to me, I just I can't share the name, but I was just having a conversation with somebody recently that's also going this route. It's not just the

subscriber podcast thing. It's the whole you you you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you create a subscriber package and you deliver like a whole lifestyle product. Like Sam Harris has done that. Like I know the people that developed that for them. And who else? Like Shane Parrish has done. Where it's like you do things like this. Like you would have,

you know, weekly chats with people that are subscribers. You have some podcasts and newsletters that are outside of the paywall, as it were, whatever. There's lots of people doing that. And I think that you... Hold on one sec. You probably can't do it just as a podcast.

You probably have to do it as... And here was the part of the show where all the Zoom bombers came in, and they do peek their heads in a couple more times later on, but only briefly, because as I said, what you're not hearing is the five minutes or so, where I learned how to lock the call and kick people out and all that stuff. So with only a couple more hiccups, the rest of this show is mostly troll-free.

All right. I think we're, I think I've got most of them. We will find out shortly. And I've learned that I can lock the meeting. It is now currently locked. All right. Where were we? Alan Jay. I'm going to unmute you. I've already spoken. Alan Jay, you're muted again. Who was I taught? Brandon, Brandon, Brandon. Subscription podcast. Yeah, there you go. I think that that's, that's not going to work for everybody, but what I think you'll see is it's going to be a whole premium thing, where I think a lot of people will move to

the free stuff is just like you see it with newsletters. Every newsletter on Substack now, you've got one or two free a week, and then the rest is behind the paywall and things like that. The only problem with that for podcasting is think about this. Unless you can do a show by yourself, it'll be very, very hard to get people to come on as a guest to your podcast if it's behind a paywall because why am I going to get anyone to agree to come on if it's like, well, this is for only my

2,000 listeners. And 2,000 would be fantastic. Like nine times out of 10, it'll be 20 or 200. So I do, the person I was talking to about this yesterday, I was like, I don't know how you're going to solve that problem, but it's going to have to be a balance. Because again, if I, if I reach out to some big name. Like I hopefully am recording an interview with a CEO of a major startup this week. And there's no way that they would agree if I couldn't say to them, well, I've got 50,000 listeners, you know, they want to reach an audience. So that's an interesting thing that they're,

oh, poor Charles Crete just said, you kicked me while I was muted. Well, I'm sorry, Charles, you had to, the baby out with the bathwater. I think we've got everybody. What I need to figure out is if I can force everyone to be muted until I unmute you. But anyway, thank you, Brandon. If anyone wants to raise a hand with the next question, Quincy. Hey. Hey, how are you?

I'm well, a long-time listener to the both, I guess, shorter time listener to the coronavirus podcast, which I guess is now the good news podcast, but that's an excellent as well. as somebody who runs both a technology podcast and a coronavirus podcast, what are your, I guess, top-line predictions for the structural changes that are going to happen in tech as a result of this? And I apologize with this question's too vague, but that's how it's... Well, it's not that it's vague, it's that it's wide open. You know what I mean? There's a couple things, because I think several people have asked this recently.

obviously this week we talked about people leaving the valley and the whole concept of well if we can do work from home everyone seems to be convinced right now that this is going to prove the use case of people working from home and working remotely and certainly that sort of thing will be a true on a case-by-case basis, I'm not saying that work from home and working remotely will never work. It's just that I don't think that it's going to be this revolution that everybody thinks it's going to be. The, I here's the thing that I think. At the same time that there are all these stories about people talking about, and you're seeing companies say that they're going to move a lot of people to work from home. At the same time, you're seeing all these stories, which I haven't done so much, about how your bosses are investing in all these surveillance software and things like this.

And the people that are in management that I know, they're not exactly thrilled about this. I think that it's sort of oversold right now that your boss wants you to be working from home. And I mean this almost, it's almost in a Marxist sort of way where like the capitalists are losing control of the pro. But in a very real sense, like, I think, I know a lot of people that are like, I don't, I need to have people present to have a sense of how teams are functioning and things like that. So I actually think that it's overblown right now, this idea that, you know, a year from now, two years from now, we're all going to be working from home. And you can, you can work for Facebook or Google from Iowa if you want. I certainly, that is probably more likely to happen.

now. And I could be very, very wrong, and there's a large percentage that that could be true for. But I think if it does happen, it'll be one of those things that people will experiment with and then walk away from eventually. And I actually, there's priors for this. I was living here in New York in 2002. And, you know, a lot of the, after 9-11, a lot of the talk was, well, cities were dead anyway, and none of that proved to be true. I mean, we've had two decades of cities and concentrations of wealth and concentrations of jobs and things like that. So I'm a little skeptical of that. But what was your other question? It was more about like, I've just said what I don't think will happen. Was the other question trends that you think might happen or accelerate?

Yeah, I guess if there are any things that you think that this is revealed that will, that you think are likely to be pictures going forward. Yeah, you know, it's a weird thing where you sometimes need things like this to break habits, or not to break habits, but to form habits. In the book and in my stuff on the dot-com era, I talked about how long it took years for people to be comfortable just putting their credit cards online. It's really undersold how much inertia there is in especially consumer behavior, but also in corporate behavior and enterprise behavior and things like that. So what you're seeing right now is by an accident of history,

you've got a lot of things that people were considering for a while that they're being forced to try out. Like we're trying this out. Like people are doing, like telemedicine I'd say is the most obvious example. Like if, especially because what I see is like when's the next time you're going to be able to go to the dentist? You know, we've already twice had to have doctor calls for our kids, which we've done over Zoom and Skype and things like that. So I think that those sorts of things, already on the cusp of happening are just going to accelerate. That's also why I'm so like, why are things not happening for VR? Why are we not seeing more robot deliveries?

This is the time. Look, one of the things that I think is 100% going to accelerate is I think that the moment for grocery delivery, we're on it. Like, like, I think you will see grocery stores increasingly go away because, you know, look, and again, it might be a big city or even a coastal thing. but everyone here now is 100% trained to I don't have to go to the market. So I guess if what I've just described you, the common thread on that is the virtuality of stuff, is the remote stuff. So I guess that's the thing that I would say I think for sure we're seeing right now.

All right, thank you, sir. Whoever wants to go next, I see Johnny Quest. Go ahead, Johnny. Hey, Brian, how's going? Long time for a time, right? Yeah, right. I feel like a radio host now, yeah. So my questions are more about just podcasting in general and especially doing a daily show.

As doing a daily show, I guess one, how do you like control, especially now doing two daily shows? One, how do you like stop or control like getting burned out from like the constant work? And then specifically kind of with the, you know, the coronavirus daily, how do you like not or how do you get past like the apathy or, you know, just like not be tired of reporting sad news all the time? Well, funny, you should say that. You might have noticed that the coronavirus morning report is now called the good news ride home. and if you listen to that show, I explained why we did it, and part of it is burnout. Part of it was also there was less coronavirus news than there was even a month ago. The answer to your question is on burnout generally, yeah, you'll also notice that Jack has been hosting the show ever since we've done the transition and he probably will be.

I'm not saying I'll never be on that show again because, you know, sometimes I get a be in my bonnet and I got to do a rant. But yeah, I can't do two shows every day. It was weird because, right, I would wake up at 6 a.m. and then I'd work till 9 to get that show out. And then immediately after getting that show out, I would switch to do the tech me and show. So it was, I was doing days when I was working from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. And, right, that's totally unsustainable.

I think my answer to workflow is, number one, I'm a maniac. and I have some form of ADD or something. And so, you know, I'm doing this with you and I'm checking Twitter right now. We're talking like, I'm always like trying to keep my finger on what's going on and things like that. And I spent 20 years reading all the blogs and reading tech meme and stuff like that and just keeping track of tech. I'm one of those, you know, I'm one of those people for whom Twitter was invented and I can't imagine a world without it. So I just happen to be making a living doing the thing that I've already been doing for 20 years anyway. But then in terms of my personal workflow, I have the advantage of there are, I believe, 10 TechMeem editors that work 24-7.

I mean, literally 24-7. There's overnight TechMeme editors. And so for my show, I can go into the TechMeme back end and they have a whole software angle to it. where they're tracking tweets and they're tracking stories and they're tracking things that get chatter and things like that. So, you know, the other people in our network that do shows, they don't have that advantage. But it is a very real advantage for me. I can go into the back end of tech meme right now, and I can tell you not only, you know, you can go to the homepage and see what the headlines are right now today, but I can tell you what's going to be a headline in the next six hours and

things like that. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, no. It's hats off to Gabe. because he has this whole system and it works. And everyone always says to him, well, why don't you do a tech meme for X or whatever? And I've never gotten a straight answer on that myself. But it works good for our purposes. Thank you, Johnny. I believe we have Vivian, who had a question in the chat too.

But if you want to shoot the question at me again. Oh, sure. So, at first my question was, is this asked me anything? Yeah, yeah. So my real question is, have you heard anything about WeWork or No Tell? No tell, no. The latest on WeWork, I haven't... Industrialist. Industrious, I don't even know. Is that another co-working space? Yes. They're partnered with Equipers.

Oh, interesting. Okay, well, I'm going to be straight out honest with you. I don't know those other two names. The last I knew of WeWork was that What's His Bud is suing them because he's already taken a billion dollars off of SoftBank and they're trying to back out of giving him a billion more and he's not going to let them get away with that. So there's litigation going on there. If your question is, is your question, is your question? question, like, am I hearing, like, is there vacancy rates and things like that? Yeah, their business model and how they're being, or, you know, negotiations with soft bank and just whether that will have a ripple effect for the greater part of the economy. Well, look, that's the fear for sure here in New York, because I think towards the end there, they were in the top five in terms of commercial real estate here in New York City. I have heard nothing. And that's a good question.

And you're going to make me look around for that this week because specifically we know that WeWork is sort of, I haven't seen them any news of them shutting down locations. You would think that they would. You would think that they're going to be, even like even if none of the drama had happened, you would have to imagine that they are seeing a drop in demand like everyone else. But I haven't, again, I haven't seen those stories about any.

of the other co-working spaces. I'm actually, I, my office when I go to it is in a thing called Green Desk, which was actually the original WeWork location before he split off from these guys, blah, blah, blah, long story. And all I can tell you is that I've gone in there three or four times now on the weekends and it is noticeable in the sense that there was maybe, I'd say, a 20% vacancy rate, you know, because I can walk through the whole thing and see all the desks And like there were, there was a huge advertising agency down the hallway for me that had been there for years that they're gone. But it's hard for me to tell. It's too soon to know, like, were they leaving anyway?

I don't know the answer to that. So this is a long way of me saying, I haven't seen those stories, but I'm going to keep an eye out because you're right. That's an interesting one to be paying attention to. I would bet that for sure WeWork is going to probably cut itself in half. I would not be shocked. In fact, I'd be shocked if we didn't see news of them closing locations, tons of locations around the world soon. And if you have any more info on that,

feel free to send it my way because I'm interested in the story. Okay, thank you, Vivian. Is there anyone else that would like to raise a hand? All right, I've got an Alex. Alex, you are unmuted, I think. Yes, go ahead, Alex. Thank you. So I have a quick question regarding Netflix. What's your take on Netflix and its performance, especially in the current pandemic? Well, listen, I think the interesting thing is I haven't actually formulated my thoughts on this yet, but this is something that I've been waiting for an appropriate piece to throw my two cents into.

Remember in the before times before all this struck, we were talking about, oh, this is crunch time for Netflix, all of their, all of their competitors are coming at them now all at once. And so, like, in the VC world right now, everyone's saying, well, this is perfect. If your startup was failing, no one's ever going to blame you. This is going to be, it's sort of like career whitewashing. You can shut down your startup now, and you can always just say for years, oh, it was the pandemic that did it.

Well, almost in reverse for Netflix, I think that this is helping them in a strategic sense in that no one is paying that much attention to the competition right now, which I think is really what Netflix needed. They didn't, like the narrative was shaping up to be, you know, a circular firing squad against Netflix. And from what we can see from that last earnings report, like, you know, obviously their subscriber numbers are holding up. They're continuing to grow across the world.

And you would have to figure it. that like they're all of the streaming video players the corona moment is a good moment for them because again it's going to get more people hooked on their services it's going to train more people to become to cut the cut the cord and all that stuff and to become subscribers but at the same time I think that this is perfect because you know in terms of like the the Wall Street sort of investment sort of narrative thing like everyone's going to be focused on how is Disney going to survive right now and it

Everyone's going, and so Netflix is going to skate. And like the big one is going to be like, I mentioned it this week. Like HBO Max, I don't know anything. And so this is just pure random gut speculation. But I wouldn't be surprised if HBO Max underperforms and then that'll be a huge story. So what I'm saying is, is I wouldn't be surprised if a year from now everyone suddenly looks up, looks around and is like, oh my God, Netflix is even more dominant. Because that's always been the story with them is that.

Everyone says, all right, this next six months is when we're going to see if Netflix is going to survive. And they always come out of that six-month period, even more dominant than they were before. With the one caveat, one caveat with Netflix, but this is true for everybody across the board. Netflix is still burning, still has a surplus of content that they're burning through. But the longer they can go, the longer that things have to be in lockdown so we can't do production, the more that's going to be a problem, and that's going to be a problem for everyone, but it's going to be a problem for Netflix because then Netflix might have to do the thing

where they go back hat and hand to people and try to buy some content libraries. And that would be very expensive for them now because everyone would know that they would desperately need it. But then I don't know, like we said, soccer was today, so maybe we'll start to see film production ramping back up. Go ahead.

Yeah, the reason why I asked is because, I mean, a country where people, we tend to have already accounts Netflix accounts which we have subscribed to the thing I've noticed is you could have like they let me have an account then I've shared with like five other people yeah we have this thing where you could take the numbers that in our country maybe officially Netflix thinks it has like maybe would assume 200 but maybe in real sense there could be an audience of a thousand people because people are watching through different profiles

in the account. So it's something that got me curious because I realized the other day, like in my country, there's no Disney Plus, they have not launched yet. There's no HBO Max. I haven't launched yet. It's the only, the only services that are working here is just showmarks and Netflix. And actually Netflix made a move the other day where they enabled subscribers in our country to pay via our mobile money services, which I felt that has been growing their margins and their businesses. Yeah, well, let me, sorry, let me, let me, let me, uh, interrupt you there just to, because you made me think that that's again, this is why, and I think we said this even a few

months ago, uh, Netflix has that, that sort of advantage that they are in, I think it's like 150 countries around the world or whatever. So you're right. That's their other advantages that how long is it going to take a Disney or forget Disney. how long would it take in HBO Max to get in 150 countries around the world? So by the time, that's why people are saying, like, it's too late for certain people. By the time, even if they're successful, they can get to where they're playing in all of the markets that Netflix is playing in.

Like, you're going to have trained entire nation's consumers that Netflix is where they go for content. Your original point about everyone's sharing, like, there's nothing new. about that. Even before the pandemic, everybody's been sharing Netflix thing. And believe me, Netflix knows that. But that's something that Netflix will solve one day. They just don't need to solve it now. So don't worry. They will crack down and they will do all. And they'll also raise prices. Like that's the amazing thing. Like when you read those great Matthew ball pieces is like, we all know what the play is, is eventually, you know, Netflix right now is going to look like it's cheap. Like five, 10 years from now, you're going to be paying $30 a month, $50 a month. Like it's going to

happen, they're going to have the pricing power. They just know that they can wait. They don't have to jump the gun on that. So what you've described are problems that have always been there for them, but there are also problems that Netflix is aware of and knew that they would deal with when the time was right. So those two, I'm not worried about, like the fact that everyone can share and things like that. They know about it and they'll fix it when the time is right for them. I'll tell you what, Like we've already gone, despite the interruptions, we're approaching 45 minutes. So what if we did two more questions if people have them, if anyone wants to raise their hand? But if no one has one.

Let me check the chat here. Somebody asked, what do you think about the slump in advertising revenue and podcasting? And I actually, I can only speak for me. I haven't seen a slump in advertising revenue, you know, knock wood. Let's all hope that that continues. What I have seen, if you guys want some inside baseball, is for sure we lost about 20% of our audience over the last two months, which has never happened. I've never had a month-to-month drop of even, you know, 3% or 1%. So to lose 20% of people, that's in line with what other people across the podcasting industry have seen.

I would be shocked if it were otherwise because if you think about it, even more so than other podcasts, we're a daily show. I mean, ride home is in our name. We're assuming a certain use case. And if there's anything, I gave an interview to some Chinese outlet about this last week. I think it's proving that podcasting is a very routine-based thing. and things like having a commute and having to, you know, ride in your car 45 minutes each way each day,

has gotten badmouth for years. But look at what we're realizing that apparently your commute is the one time in a lot of people's days where you give yourself permission to check out because either you're in a train underground or you're driving a car. And so like it maybe commutes are actually underrated for the sense that it allows you to do things like listen to music and stare out the window. That allows you to, you know, listen to podcasts and audiobooks and improve your mind or things like that. So I don't know. What will be interesting to see is now that people are starting to go back to work, will we get

that 20% back without having to do anything for the people that have gone away? Will they find us again when all of a sudden their routines are back? I don't know. We'll see. But those of you that have stuck around. I appreciate it. I see one. Quincy, have you already had a question? I have. Okay, all right. I had another question that was directly related

to what you were just talking about. All right, give it to me real quick. Yeah, sure, sure. So we've seen like, on the channel, we've seen like a dramatic increase in usage. Do you think a lot of that podcast activity is now moving to YouTube,

and other video-based media for learning just news. And have you all considered creating some sort of video version of the podcast using slides or some combination of a person talking in slides? Yes, of course. We have considered it. And all I can tell you is we might have news on that someday. I don't think it's immediate. Yeah, let me save that for when I have more to tell you on that.

I don't know. Again, I just think that it's, the two things with podcasting is it is more mobile than we knew because you're like, well, why can't people just listen on their smart speakers or whatever? Well, what I think it is is it's just the habit of I listen when I go out for a run. I listen when I go out and take the dog for a walk. I listen when I drive the kids to school or whatever. So that it is just that habituated thing of like you're not in the routine of when you normally do these things. And listen, I showed you at the beginning how many podcasts I listened to. I can tell you I listened to less than I did. there are shows that I haven't caught up on that I know I've got to catch up on because even my routine has been upset a little bit. So I don't know. That to me is the biggest question is I will be curious to see if three months from now

we can say 90% of people are back to their normal routines. Just using us as an anecdotal lens, like I said, those 20% of people that went away, will they just magically reappear? So I guess now that I'm saying this and it'll be on the podcast, I'll try to remember to follow up and let you guys know what happens with that. All right, Dave, we're going to let you be the last one, but I do want to thank everybody that's participated and come in with questions. And as always, thank everyone for being listeners.

Dave, I see you're outside. You're enjoying your best Saturday right now. Yeah, definitely. First of all, thanks. I enjoy your show. I really appreciate you doing it. Second, a comment, you did a story yesterday about Facebook, buying some peanut butter company that really confused me.

So, you know, I think it's... Did you see... Did you notice what I did there? I pronounced it both Giffy and Giffy. Yeah. I did notice that. But you started with Jiffy, and so that confused me. Third, one of the reasons I enjoy your show so much is because you seem to not have too many biases

that come out during the show, right? I think most people have biases, whether it's, you know, I'm an Apple fan, I'm a Google fan, I'm a privacy fan. I'm a consumer choice fan. Last night you did a show about, it's kind of hard on the Chrome team about them blocking ads that hurt consumers, right? They slow my machine down. Well, actually, blocking, right, right.

So blocking the ads helps the consumers. Right, then that's the argument they would make. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. So anyways, I thought there might be a bias there, but I can't tell, like, do you have any biased or do you want to talk a little bit about biases and how you avoid being biased in your show? Okay, so this is an excellent question, and I think I've addressed this a couple of times,

but like, for sure I have biases. I mean, I have political, I'm a political person. I try not to let that shine through at all on the thing. I'm talking about big P politics. I'm a political person in terms of, yes, there are companies. I think are better in tech, better in quotes, you know. But I'll tell you what my biggest bias is, is that, you know, I grew up in tech. I started my first company when I was 21 years old. It's 1999. Like literally, I've spent my entire professional adult life in the modern tech industry.

It came around right when I needed a job. It was there when I was young and idealistic and it felt young and idealistic. It made me feel like we were changing the world in all the ways that seemed cliche now. I really, I drank that Kool-Aid. I believed it. So here's my bias when it comes to reporting on tech. I love tech. I know that it can be better.

It hurts me when it's not better. I know people, great friends of mine in all of the companies that we cover. And so sometimes when you'll hear fresh, with me about a Google, a Facebook. You know, recently I've been very hard on Amazon and being more explicit about that because I swear to God, man, I know people at Amazon and they're even confused about what's going on. And I'm confused about the fact that they seem to be a different company now.

And so if I have any bias, it's that I just want people to be better. I know they can be better, and I'm disappointed when they're not. And you have companies like Facebook that have this reputation for being cowboys and sometimes being bad actors and things like that. But there's tons of great people, smart people, like really good people inside Facebook. And they want their company to be better too. So that's a long way of me saying, if I'm advocating for anything, I'm advocating for tech to be better. I'm advocating for tech to be what I thought it was when I was 25 years old. Do you want to ask that in a different way?

Because I feel like I could elucidate on that a little more, too. No, I think you shined through, right, and gave me an answer that I appreciate. I'll tell you what, I want you guys to always, I want you all to always, if I do tend to shade too far against, I try not to. If people, like, I've come down in the last year or so on Google, especially because of YouTube was doing atrocious things with their algorithms, I have been coming down on Amazon. But here's the point. I try not to. There's no, I am not against anybody. So if, you know, if you do feel like I shade that way, let me know. But the promise that I always make to you is, if I am critical of anybody, I

doing it out of that love of tech that I just described. And then number two, I hope that when I do do it, it's because they deserve it. If I have to be openly critical, then you've done something to deserve it. And so that's it. That's all I'd say about biases and things like that. But number one, I think that this show, my job is to be a utility for you all. And like, you want the news and you want to know what's really. going on. So if it comes down, being biased, telling you what's really going on in a biased way is not

helpful. Well, here's what I think because really it turns out that Google's an evil company. No, no, no. What I'm trying to do as much as I can, because I'm not like some great insider or something, but I'm not just reading you headlines. I'm trying to tell you this is what's really going on behind these headlines. Here's what's going on below the surface. And some of that is airing dirty laundry more than, you know, like a nightly news sort of stentatarian delivery would be. But I'm not, like, the show would not be useful to you if I did have huge biases, if I did have an agenda to pass. My only agenda is to try to tell you this is what I think is really going on in tech, and that's it. So that's why I'm trying very, and also I think I've found, and I've said

this to other people in the content industry. There's a huge underserved audience. There's nothing that you can do these days that won't get partisan in some way. And I mean that partisan in terms of political parties, but I mean that like look at the freaking Tesla Bull versus Tesla Bears thing, or you name it. There's not a topic on this planet now that you can do that there won't be one side versus the other side or whatever. And that is so friggin, frustrating and tiring at this point that I've said this to several people, you know, offline. Like, you, there's an audience that you can serve if you can just go straight down the middle. And that's impossible for a lot of things.

I admit that. But the more you can do that, I think that there are certain people that are like, you know what, thank God I can turn on Brian's show every day. And he just gives me the straight shit and that's it. So hopefully that's what I'm doing. All right, y'all, I'm going to let you go. FYI, I don't know if those of you that can see the video, remember how I described my kids and everyone coming in.

As you can see, there's the two desks now for my kindergartner and my four-year-old have their two desks, and then to the other side of that, there's my wife's setup over there. So for a long time, this room was all mine. I've been invaded, but thank you all for listening. Thank you all for participating on this. and I'm going to throw this up within an hour if y'all want to listen back and let's do this again

because I think there were some great questions on there and be well as I say on the other show everybody. Talk to you soon.