The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Jonathan Hirshon: Internet Anonymous, The Food Dictator, Author & Horizon PR

Episode Date: August 17, 2019

Jonathan Hirshon: Internet Anonymous, The Food Dictator, Author & Horizon PR

Hi, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. If you're watching us on Facebook Live and Periscope, please subscribe to the show as well. You can go to thecvpn.com or chrisvosspodcastnetwork.com and see it. I've got a super interesting show that's going to blow your mind and we'll get into it. So just stick

with me here. Jonathan Hirshon is on the show today. We've got him on audio and there's a good reason he's on audio only and this is going to really blow your mind. So you're going to want to stay tuned in. No switching, no flipping. Jonathan is known as the guru of Silicon Valley and that was awarded to him by Business Week. He has exclusively focused on high-tech PR for three decades. He has extensive corporate and agency PR experience, as well as a history of orchestrating a wide range of successful global public relation campaigns at Sony, Apple, SGI, and Pioneer, and as counsel to a host of Silicon Valley hottest startups. He is architect, some of the most successful launches and public relationship programs

in Silicon Valley history, and he's been profiled in Businessweek, New York Times, Fast Company, the BBC, and San Jose Mercury News. He's contributed to several major tech news outlets. A couple of interesting things that we're going to talk to him on the show today. He has no pictures of him on the internet, at least intentionally, I suppose. He may show up in a background, but there are no pictures of him. That's one of the reasons he's not appearing in the video. And he also runs thefooddictator.com. You're going to be able to see that on Instagram as well. And that's how I also got to know him. And he has the book Hover on Amazon. Welcome to the show, Jonathan. How are you doing, buddy?

I am doing well, sir. How are you? This is awesome. And I've, you know, I've been following you. We talked about this in the pre show. I've been following you for a long time on the food dictator on Instagram and you put together some of the most beautiful food. What's the Instagram plug too that we should put in? What's your thing there so people can find you on Instagram? Instagram.com slash thefooddictator. The food dictator. He puts up the most beautiful food

and it's the best food porn in the world really when it comes down to it. And every time I've seen it, I've just been like, oh my gosh. And now he's expanding it. In fact, I think you're launching a podcast. Is that correct for it? That's correct.

We'll be recording the first three episodes, hopefully today and tomorrow. Then it'll take about a week to get through Apple's approval process. And then Spotify, Apple, all the usual suspects, Google. Now, the thing you're going to love about Spotify is they'll probably have it up in like an hour or two or really fast. They're the fastest one that will get you up and Google Play will probably be second. But yeah, if you need help on any others, let me know. Luminary is really good too. But man, Spotify, they are really hungry. When I launched the other six podcasts recently, Spotify just had them up and Apple was

like, yeah, we'll get around to it. You know, the whole Apple attitude, which you were for Apple before too. Oh yeah. I know that attitude quite well. Indeed. It was forged under jobs in the original regime. It was solidified when he came back for the second coming. So yeah, the culture of secrecy and arrogance is kind of baked into the DNA in a good way. I mean, the truth is, as a company, arrogance and confidence are two things that can be either a great thing or a bad thing. Arrogance, to me, is confidence

without something to back it up. And in this case, Apple can be arrogant because they have great products and they can back up the weight when they say they've got the best. A lot of the times, not all of them, but a lot of the times, they do have the best. So, no, we can live with that. So, let's start off by talking about this journey that you've been on

where you don't have any pictures of you on the interwebs. Yeah, that's correct. So, how did this start? Was it by accident or intention or give us the overview of it yeah it was intentional uh it goes back to about 1994 i think it was when mosaic which was the first consumer internet browser first became available as a beta and you know i'd been on computers since you know since forever since the late 70s literally uh but i But I'd always been on these walled gardens before the public internet. So things like CompuServe or Genie or things like that. So the old, old things. But once the public internet became available for the first time, it occurred to me that

this is going to be huge. And I've always been private. And it occurred to me that I wanted to try to challenge myself. And I thought the best way to try to challenge myself was to do what I normally would have done anyway, which is try to avoid getting my picture taken. This time, though, 15 years, nothing. And it kind of morphed from being a dare into what I'll call performance art. It's something where I want people to ask me questions about why I'm not on the internet. It's designed to spark a conversation so that people think more about online privacy. I'm a huge privacy advocate. I always have been. And if this is a way to basically educate people about do's and don'ts about online privacy, then I'm all for it.

And if it also keeps my face off the internet, well, that's just a nice little side effect. So are you intentionally private? Have you always been private? Always been very, very private. There are some pictures of me as a child. My dad was a huge shutterbug, but realistically, there are no real pictures of me anymore, at least from modern. That's what you look like now.

Exactly. You know, people who meet me face to face, they obviously know what I look like. But, you know, the challenge is always, you know, how do you keep yourself off the internet first and then plan for the contingency of eventually, you know, it's going to happen. Someone's going to take a picture of me and post it, whether it's innocently or maliciously just to break my streak, whatever happens, it's going to occur. How many years without being on the internet? In fact, I'm getting sold. I don't even know how old the internet is anymore. Let's see. It's since 1994. So it's a long time. So did you just go for a couple of years without your picture and you're just like, well, fuck it.

I'm just going to run with it. Or did you very early on just go, I don't want my picture on the internet? A little bit of both. I mean, when I first joined Facebook like 12 years ago, a lot of people wouldn't friend me because I didn't have a profile pic. I had the blank image of the noob. And eventually I just decided, okay, I've got to put something up there. So I've got this whole rotating like 50 different images that I use as my profile pic. And it's everything from a shocked cat to different movie stars to random images, you know, just things that I like.

And, you know, it actually, it's a way for me to actually express my mood more than anything else. So if I'm feeling really happy, I've got a picture that shows that. If I'm feeling depressed, I've got a, you know, a tragedy mask, you know, from the comedy tragedy thing. You know, it's just a way that people don't need to know what I look like to know how I feel. And it's a weird thing because in many ways I'm the most public hermit you'll ever meet.

You know, I hate going out. I hate meeting people. But at the same time, I practically live my life on social media. You know, I post, you know, probably 20 or 30 times a day. Yeah. And I love your feed. It's always some of the most interesting stuff. I mean, you're one of the, you're one of the few people that I really follow on Facebook. In fact, I've got my Facebook dialed back so hard that, you know, the group show up in my thing and I hate that too. But you're one

of the few people that just, you, you find the most interesting stuff on the internet. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a curated feed. So, you know, it's no different than if I was running my own blog or anything else. It's just a way for me to share what I find interesting with, you know, a large audience. And people do seem to like what I post, which is great. And it's certainly appreciated. And I try to strive for diversity. And, you know, there's some things that, you know, I, one of the biggest problems with Facebook and social media in general is it sets up what I call echo chambers. You know, your friends, you tend to hang out with people who think like you. And you tend to listen to people who talk like you.

So that's always been the case throughout history. The problem with social media is it's amplified it to like the nth degree. So it's gotten to the point now where people literally only hear the news and perspectives of the people who think like they do. If you're on the right side of the scale, the conservative side, you tend to listen to conservative news sources. If you're on the left side, you tend to listen to liberal news sources. There are centrists, a few of those left, but one way or the other, you just tend to get that cognitive bias, the reinforcement of what you think. So for me, I make it a real point to befriend people who are on the other side politically of me. I don't agree with their politics, but I like who they are as people. And that's part of the problem we've run into on Facebook is we tend to judge people now by their politics. If you like their politics, you like them. If you don't like their politics, you don't like them, which is insane. You know, we're a lot more than our political affiliation, right?

You know, we're more than Republican. We're more than Democrat. You know, at the end of the day, you know, we're Americans. We're members of the human race. You know, we have a lot more in common than we choose to admit. But because of that cognitive bias issue, people don't see the conservative side of the news or the liberal side. So I post both. And it's interesting when people on both sides politically do comment

on whatever it is I've posted that might have a political bias. Yeah. Most of your stuff is really entertaining. It's great food on Instagram and then just really great fun stuff. I don't remember you dealing much into politics, but you find the most interesting stuff scraped off the internet, posted, and you're just like, wow. It used to be back in the day I would go to Reddit for the most interesting stuff. Or Dig or something like that. Yeah, Dig. Wow, that brings back some memories wow

i forgot about that uh yeah dig uh there was some there was some started with an f fost.com or fart.com or there was some guy who used to curate like all of the crazy stuff like all the florida man stuff you know yeah florida man florida woman of my favorite names. And I can't remember what website it was. Fost.com or Fost. It started with an F. And this guy, somehow, he would scrape the wheels. So let me understand this correctly. So are you married? I am.

So you must have, like, agreements, verbal agreements with the people around you. Like, don't take my picture. Don't post them on the internet exactly so take pictures as a family i'm just kind of curious on rare occasions my wife will take some selfies with me on occasion and because she's my wife i will indulge her and i will take them but they stay with us you know so she's she's in an agreement so you can't ever leave your wife basically not that you want to but you just So you can't ever leave your wife, basically. Not that you want to, but you just can't ever leave your wife because otherwise she can really screw up your whole system.

In theory, that's true. There are actually lots of people who could do that. You know, a lot of my friends from high school have old pictures of me and things like that. But, you know, at the end of the day, the purpose of it is to, like I said, spark conversations, spark people to think more about their online privacy. And like I said, I'll give you a good example. Five years ago, I was going to give a huge talk, and I give lots of talks all around the world, which is always a

source of great concern for me. Because when I'm on stage, I'm talking to anyone between a hundred and a few thousand people. And there's a really good chance that there's someone going to be taking a picture. So I'm always very nervous about it. But five years ago, I was invited to speak in Croatia. And it was a huge event. There were like 4,000 people who were attending, mostly Croatians. And I was really concerned because unlike a lot of parts of Europe,

Croatians aren't as bilingual as several other, you know, like in Scandinavia, everybody's bilingual with English. You can count on that. In Croatia, that's a lot of people are bilingual, but not all of them. So I was really worried that there'd be a language barrier problem and somebody would just innocently take a picture and post it. So I'm thinking to myself, God damn it, you know, this is like 20, 25 years. I'm going to, I'm going to ruin it for myself. So I was thinking, how can I avoid this? And it occurred to me, there's a really old movie called Spartacus. Do you ever watch it? Yeah. Yeah. So it's got Tony Curtis and a bunch of other people And Kirk Douglas is Spartacus. And at one point,

the Romans have captured him. He's leading a slave revolt against the Romans. Wait, but aren't we all Spartacus? Well, exactly. So here's the fun part. So they've got about 3,000 different Jews and they say, Spartacus, if you stand up and identify yourself, because we don't know what you look like, you'll spare all of these people. Otherwise, we're going to kill them all. So Spartacus, if you stand up and identify yourself, because we don't know what you look like, you'll spare all of these people. Otherwise, we're going to kill them all. So Spartacus, being the honorable man that he is, stands up and says, I am Spartacus. And then immediately the guy next to him, who's one of his dearest friends, stands up

and says, no, I'm Spartacus. And then other people stand up. And eventually everybody is proclaiming at the top of their lungs that they're Spartacus. So the Romans can't identify them. So it occurred to me there was maybe a really cool way to move that into the digital world. Wow. Which was, so I told all my friends on Facebook, look, here's the situation. I'm going to this thing.

There's a good chance my picture is going to slip out. And once it's out, you know, it's out. But I figured, I told all my friends, I want you to start tagging as many pictures of me, as pictures as possible as me. It can be a man, it can be a woman, it can be an animal, it can be a steaming pile of dung. I really don't care. And as a result, do a Google image search on me. There are thousands of pictures tagged as me. Oh my God. Not one of them is me. So the good thing is that there's this giant sea of different images that aren't me.

So that if my picture did inadvertently slip through the web, it would be one of thousands. And unless you've met me, you wouldn't know that that's actually me or not. I called it the Spartacus debate. And one of my friends on Facebook was a writer for Fast Company. He thought this was a really cool idea. It was very kind. He did a was a writer for Fast Company. He thought this was a really cool idea. It was very kind. He did a feature on me for Fast Company. And then the BBC picked it up and did some stories on me as well and a few other places.

But that defense, it only works for a very few people. Because the way image and face recognition works is you have to have what's called a canonical image, which is an image that's been identified by a trusted source that says, you are who you say you are. So if there was a picture of me that the New York Times posted and said, this is Jonathan Hirschhorn, that's a canonical image because the Times is trusted. And it says, if it says I'm me, then it's trusted. And once that canonical image is identified by Google's algorithms, it will apply that recognition to anything that matches, which means that once you're out, you're out. But because there's no canonical image of me, any of them could be, you know, there's no way to create that. And I'm very, very careful to make sure that

people, you know, I don't get photographed by canonical news sources. And, you know, people, it's funny, you know, people, first, they usually ask why, then they say, you know what, this is a really cool idea. It's really cool. And, you know, they're actually jumping for it. So that Croatian gig, for example, you know, 4,000 people in the audience, you know, I explained the situation, everybody was super respectful. My wife walked in like 20 minutes late because something happened. She had to delay herself before she came in. And now we have an agreement. She can take pictures of me. But nobody knew who she was.

So she picks her phone up and she starts to get ready to take a picture. And she almost gets tackled by like 30 different people saying, no, no, you can't take his picture. You can't take his picture. And she's like, but I'm his wife. We don't know that. I'm sorry. You can't. It was awesome. So I, you know, let's make it really clear. So you have a fucking cult, Jonathan, what's going on there, man? It is weird, but let's make it really clear. There are lots of people who don't have pictures on the internet. Lots of them. Anybody over the age of 80 probably doesn't have a picture on the net unless their grandkids took it and posted it.

Anybody who lives in an area where cell phones or pictures or the internet aren't common, large parts of South America, for example, or Africa or Asia, none of those people have pictures. So what makes it interesting isn't the fact that I don't have a picture. What makes it interesting is the fact that I work in technology and I work in communications and I don't have a picture. That's what makes it a little unusual. But there are probably millions of people who don't have pics. I just happen to be a weird hybrid that, like I said, lives publicly but doesn't have it. So that's where this weirdness comes in. So when you speak in front of groups, do you have to explain to people, like, please don't take my picture? So you give it the supposition and kind of do a verbal agreement with them?

Exactly. So the first slide before I even walk on stage is a picture of a camera with a slash through it. So there's no language there. It's just an image. Wow. You can get it. Wow. Then when the host introduces me,

if I'm speaking abroad, you know, they'll introduce me in the native language and they'll explain, you know, here's this thing, please don't take his picture. And, you know, again, people are totally respectful about that. And yeah, I mean, just recently in June, there's a huge trade show for the VR and AR

industry called Augmented World Expo, where I was really lucky. The organizer asked me to run a panel with five of what we call the OGs of VR, the original gangsters, the people who in the 90s did the first wave of VR. And I moderated the panel, which was amazing. But the way that AWE works is they videotape the entire stage. There's no way to avoid getting photographed. Usually I can just step out of the frame, but there was no way to get out of that for AWE. So I'm trying to figure out what am I going to do? Am I going to walk in on a mask?

Am I going to come in with this giant Kylo Ren robe, Sith thing hiding my face? And I decided actually, and it worked really well, which is that since I'm moderating a panel, I just sat in the audience with a wireless mic. And I just, I was just the voice of God. People didn't see me, but I asked all the questions and it went over really well. People was's like this is a really cool idea I think it's something I'm just going to try to do more often I think yeah it's just amazing to me that you get away with it because I've had so many times where um I don't know people are taking pictures of me and they'll tag me on Facebook and I'll be like oh I didn't know

you were taking a picture of me that that looks great, the backside of my giant ass. Thanks for taking my best side. Yeah, thanks for sharing. Best side without my face. But I'm not sure that that appeals to anyone. But no, it's just kind of interesting to me how you're able to maintain this and it becomes like a thing. Like, you know know even trusted friends like

i've had friends that i've been friends with them for years and something comes up they betray me steal from me that's usually what it is it's usually money um i've you know done in which case by the way they're not friends yeah those are users and i try to those are toxic people yeah life is too short i try to stay way far away from people like that yeah in fact half the people that i blew off when uh you know we had the giant racist come into office uh it would probably have said oh you're gonna unfriend me chris i'm gonna post your pictures yeah that's a real dick move uh that's a sign of uh somebody who really just doesn't have their shit together and so you're to take this as far as you can.

You're just going to go as far as you can. Like if you die, I don't mean to infer that you should be dying anytime soon, but if you die, are we going to at least find out at the end? Oh, absolutely. And in fact, I'll tell you what my final joke is, and actually very few people know this, which is my last joke is when I finally do pass on, I'm going to have my picture sculpted onto my tombstone in 3D.

There you go. No one will believe it was you. See, this is the problem you have. You've cried wolf so many times that no one will believe it's you. People will still think it's like what you did with the Croatian crime. Yeah, but at the end of the day, and I'm sure at some point before the inevitable end, the picture will slip out.

And again, that'll be it. I'm adding this to my bucket list. One of these days I have to at least meet Jonathan so that I at least know what he looks like. Always a good thing. I won't ever post your picture because I won't betray that because that's too cool. But still, I just want to know so that I can be like,

well, I knew what he looked like. It's nothing spectacular. You know, people write me and say, can you take your picture off the internet please and not show your face ever again oh how rude is that uh i remember years ago i worked for a car dealership when i was a kid uh called uh jerry signer and jerry would do this thing where he would you know he was like classic car dealership owner where he'd be you know on every fucking tv ad every other every other ad on tv ad nauseum right and jerry thought

he was the coolest guy in the world but he he just had literally no personality and it looked half the time he would shake his finger like his wrist was surgically attached to his stomach and the only thing he could move was his finger up and down and he just looked like an idiot on tv and i remember we went into a sales meeting one time and he came in and you know he got it and he came in he read this letter that someone wrote uh in salt lake city county and she this gal wrote him and she says you know i am so sick of seeing you on TV. She goes, how much money do you need to make so that we don't have to see you personally

on your TV commercials anymore? She goes, I've included a dollar and I would like to get everybody in the county, in the state to send you at least $1. And will that be enough money to make it so that you will never appear on one of your commercials again yeah there are quite a few things you know any used car dealership in any

state in this country that qualifies uh growing up in new york city there was this uh electronic chain called crazy eddie and you know the guy who was on the commercials was just a spokesperson but he was so i mean so obnoxious so so annoying. And I, I, I wouldn't be surprised if people did the same thing and just told him, you know, what, what will it take to get you off the air? Yeah. So there's that. So let's get into your food dictator stuff. We'll move on from that, but it's an interesting story. It's interesting life. It's an interesting agreement you have with the people around you that, you know, you end up uh like stuff one of my friends it's kind of funny one of my friends who uh i think he has a barbecue blog or something every time i post a picture of trump uh facebook wants to tag him

and for some reason some reason facebook you know it's like you say once it has that uh thing it wants to it you know it'll pretty much use you for everything so uh offsetting with that tagging really helps but it wants to always tag my friend i'm like that's whatever you got facebook you got it wrong and they still don't get it but yeah if you if you ever get on the internet with the thing but uh you know it's interesting to me too because you can walk through manhattan and show up on the there's no way from my understanding there's no way to walk through manhattan without showing up on a camera somewhere it's where vegas for that matter on the strip you can walk the entire strip from the stratosphere all the way to the luxor it doesn't matter your constant

surveillance whether you're on the sidewalk or going through the casinos i think the only place you're not is the bathroom and only because somebody sued to prevent that from happening. So, you know, I have a driver's license picture. I have a passport picture. I'm in the clear database, you know, so I can go, you know, travel internationally quickly. You know, it's, like I said, it's not like there are no pictures in there. It's just making people aware, maybe a little bit more cognizant, a little bit more aware, I guess, is really the right way of putting it, of their online privacy. I'm not asking people to do what I've done. It's nuts. Nobody in their right mind should do this. But what it does, you know,

a good example is, you know, I have a friend who loves posting pictures of their kids and who doesn't, right? But I was like, you know, you do realize that, you know, this child is actually part of what's now, the latest is generation alpha. So it's generation Z and now it's generation alpha. Anybody born in the last nine years is generation alpha. And they're going to be the first generation to have been brought up completely with social media from the day they were born till the day they die. And every time, you know, posting pictures like that, that's great for you. It's great to share with people, but you've taken the right of privacy away from your child. And that's not, honestly, that's really not that cool. You know, I would, I tell people, you know,

hold, take as many pictures as you want, you know, share them privately, but don't put them up on Facebook or anywhere like that. And then when, when the kid turns 10 or 11, you know, and can make their own decision, you know, ask them, are you okay with this? Do you want me to, can I post all this stuff? And if they say yes, then go to town. There's your cache of images. But if they say no, at least they have the chance to do what I've done. The entirety of it, at least a tiny part of it. Because again, at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with having your picture online. But what is wrong is when you start giving away parts of your privacy that you can never reclaim.

And images are one part of that. Yeah, most definitely. Once it's on the internet, it's pretty much there. Yeah, I mean, even if you put it up on Facebook as a public post and you delete it 15 minutes later, congratulations, it's too late. There's this wonderful thing called the Wayback Machine, which indexes the entire internet,

and every 15 minutes, it basically sends the entire Facebook Firehose API, and it archives it. So on the Wayback Machine, you can't delete it. It's there forever. Forever. Forever. Forever. Forever. Forever.

Forever, man. It's crazy. Yeah. And until Europe came up with GDPR, they have the right to forget now. So Europeans can tell Google, I want all of my pictures removed from the index engine. And if you live in Europe, you can do that.

You can't do it if you live in the United States because we don't have GDPR yet, unfortunately. I get the right to forget requests from all my ex-girlfriends, but I want to forget that I ever had anything to do with you. I'm like, yeah, I get that a lot. So let's get into thefooddictator.com. But this has been amazing to me. And you know what's great is we recently had this whole episode with the Face app

and everybody's like giving the Russians basically their facial banking thing. You know, you'll be the only one who has a safe bank account in the future. Many people have told me exactly that. And the fun thing is, you know, when you start using these face-morphing apps, like Microsoft a couple of years ago did the same thing in aging app, and everybody was doing it on Facebook. You know, here's what I look like when I'm 60, 70, 80. But they didn't read the fine print, which is that any picture that you upload to Microsoft,

they have the right to use in any of their advertising. And somebody found out that they had their picture in a Microsoft ad and they'd signed the rights away. And, you know, that's fine in one case if you want that, but a lot of people don't. And, you know, you're literally giving all of those rights away when you play with these apps. So, you know, nothing is for free.

Facebook, you're the product. And Twitter, you're the product. Anything where you don't get charged a fee, you're the product. And Twitter, you're the product. Anything where you don't get charged a fee, you are the product. And as long as you're okay with that, like, for example, you know, Amazon and Facebook know more about me than I know about myself. And you know what? That's okay. Because in Facebook's case, they actually deliver ads to me that I actually find relevant and useful. So I'm okay with that. If they gave me the option to pay five or 10 bucks a month to not get any ads and not get indexed, I would pay it. But unfortunately, they don't. So if I choose to continue to use that service, you know,

there's a price to pay. And that is that they target me with ads. Amazon, like I said, they know more about my shopping history than I know about myself. And I'm okay with that. They know more about some people's porn history than they know about their society. All true. All true. And, you know, things like incognito mode, you know, in Chrome, you know, that doesn't protect you from a whole bunch of lots of different things. You know, people don't realize that there's a way to fingerprint your browser. So as an example, I use Chrome version, I think 72 on Mac with this version of the operating

system with this set of plugins. And guess what? That is a unique ID. Nobody else has that specific set of circumstances, those plugins, that technology. So my browser is actually instantly identifiable as me even if i'm in incognito mode wow so if you you think you're not getting tracked in incognito mode you are sadly mistaken uh it's crazy the internet i just i've just given up on privacy i'm just i'm just like whatever man have fun with it i've given up but'm not like you. I'm not in a good place where I can defend a position anymore.

It's not easy. business you're you're like a you're like a jack of all trades from what i've seen um and then of course you have you've got your book hover you people can get that on amazon uh what's hover about it gives a plug on that yeah hover is just basically a series of haikus that i've written in english uh they're the classic 575 uh for better for worse i've been called one of the best haiku poets in that classic style in english and it's something i really, I've been called one of the best haiku poets in that classic style in English. And it's something I really enjoy. I've been doing it literally since I was in high school. So Hover is just a compilation of those arranged over a period of chronology and also arranged by theme. So they're arranged by the seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter.

And each of them are, you know, I love haiku because they really give you a way to encapsulate, I call it like emotional espresso. It's a very quick, very deep emotional connection that's like a flash and it's gone. And for a lot of people, that's a great way to consume poetry. You know, people don't necessarily want to deal with, you know, long spoken word poetry or any kind of long rhyming poetry, but three lines, five, seven, five syllables per each line. You know, if you can pack a lot of emotion into each of those, then you've done something pretty special. And I'm really happy with that. I've been able to do that. Nice. And it's called Hover Haiku as Emotional Espresso. And it's just on

Kindle. You can find it on amazon.com and uh yeah pretty interesting um and it's it probably serves people's uh short attention span these days where yeah you know anything it is short attention span theater and as somebody who has add believe me i can fully sympathize so that's the way i like to consume information is short digestible bites i should probably put those in my emails because one of the problems I have with emails is no one will fucking answer the second question line. They'll always answer the first question line and then they never read the second question line.

And you're just like, dude, you didn't, the other questions, like I've had to try everything in the world to get those read and just people just do not have that attention span anymore. It's, it's really sad. But again, you know, some of it's a situational, some of it is generational and some of it's just genetics. Like I said, in my case, you know, as somebody who's had ADD their entire life, you know,

short attention span theater is kind of the way I live. So the poetry just reflects that. Oh my God. I just pulled up your website, the food dictator to reference this thing. Holy shit. You got a beautiful bowl of, what is that by the way? I was wondering what that was on Instagram. The latest post? Oh, that's actually, it's what's called a curry base. So in the UK, the curries that they have there are what's called, they're actually a hybrid. It's British and Indian cuisine together. So a curry that like in India, like a chicken korma is a

very different thing in India than it is in the UK. It's prepared very, very differently. And people who like British style curries, you can't make it unless you have what's called this curry base. And it's a very secretive process. No curry house will ever share it. You have to kind of reverse engineer it. And what it actually is, is it's almost like a weak tomato curry soup. And when you stir fry that, there's a ton of onion in it and that onion caramelizes. And then you put the spices in and those caramelize on top of that. So you're building layers of flavor that you don't typically do in an Indian style curry. Whereas in a British style curry, you are building it layer by layer. And that curry base is something that you, you know, I'm going to post three different curry recipes in the next couple of days.

You know, I'm posting, I posted one yesterday called a fall, which is insanely hot British curry that was basically created by a curry house. This one customer kept coming in and saying, it's not hot enough. It's not hot enough. It's not hot enough. So finally the owner got so fed up that he created this curry and it's basically, you know, STFU, right? You know, this will get you to be quiet once and for all. And you know, the guy promptly started bleeding from the nose and vomiting repeatedly. Bleeding from the eyelids. And thus the fall was born. And once you've got that, the fall is super, super hot. Then there's another one called a madras, which is pretty hot. And then there's a chicken korma, which isn't hot at all. But all three of them have the same foundation.

They all use that same curry base. The difference is it's those final finishing spices or additions that you add to the base but if you don't have that base to a brit the curry never tastes right you know what you should have is a curry that's so hot it's like ebola where you just start pooping out your organs the curry is so you can go to a fall will do that to you so you can go to a fall we'll do that to you so you can go to uh the food dictator.com we're speaking about and also on instagram um and the food porn that you're posting is just so beautiful it's just um it's just so gorgeous i mean all the food that you post every time i see it i'm just like floored i'm just like oh my god there's a hershon tibetan chapali am i pronouncing that correct deep fried meat pies um what else is on here and you give the recipes too which is really awesome

and the hershon ultimate greek tazatsiki dip does that pronounceatziki. Here's one that's the Hirshon Jewish Cat Skills Chinese Roast Pork and Garlic Sandwich. This is one of the things I love about your feed is like you can throw in this mishmash of all these different best of items and you've made it

and you're just like, holy crap, I think I just went around the world in my mouth. Well, thank you. And the truth is a lot of these a lot of these recipes, you know, I try to preserve them because a lot of them are like that Jewish Chinese pork sandwich. I mean, that's a perfect example. I mean, that doesn't make any sense, right? Jewish Chinese pork. I mean, the way that sandwich works is it's Italian garlic bread with sliced Chinese roast pork char siu. And then it's got Chinese duck sauce, they call it. It's like a sweet and sour sauce. So you've got Chinese, you've got Italian, and you've got Jewish. It's this weird thing that it came up in the Catskills in the 1950s.

So if anyone's ever watched that show on Amazon, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, same time period. So what was happening then was a lot of Jews were becoming secular. So they weren't observing kosher laws anymore. So one way that they decided to show off the fact that they were sophisticated and not mired in the past is they created this weird bastardized sandwich, different cultures, and ate it in front of their parents. Their parents, you know, put their hands to their forehead and said, oh, my God, what a Shonda, what a terrible. Wow.

But, you know, for 10 or 15 years, that was the sandwich in the Catskills. That's crazy, man. And even in New York. See, when you say Catskills, I think of the movie Deliverance, so I don't even think of food. Well, you know, there are mountain food. You know, the truth is, like in the Appalachians, there's some great cuisine there.

I believe there's great food everywhere. I mean, even in places where you would least expect it, you always find a couple of gems. And, you know, I try to cover food from literally every country on the planet. There's always something. And that's what I really try to preserve are how to make these things the right way. I mean, the reason why I came up with the idea of the food dictator is, you know, the first post I ever wrote was five years ago, and it was the food dictator manifesto. And it basically said,

look, the classic definition of a dictator isn't what most people think it is. Most people think of, you know, like Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong-un or whoever. But the classic definition of a dictator is somebody who dictates, somebody who knows what they're talking about and can show you the right way. So a teacher would be a dictator. A coach would be a dictator. Someone like that. My parents were dictators.

And mine too. But it was more Saddam-ish. They do cross the line. There was a gulag in a prison and stuff. Exactly. So for me, I created this persona of the food dictator. He's kind of based, you know, if you look at the picture, it's like some 1950s Stalin-esque type thing. It's always very funny.

It's very fun too because you look at it and you're like, yeah, the food dictator, all right, I want to join this food revolution. Exactly. So, because you look at it and you're like, yeah, the food, all right, I want to join this food revolution. Exactly. So, you know, we have citizens of TFD nation, you know, it's all of these things where you try to involve people. And I try to involve a combination of the history of a dish and how to make it the right way.

So it's history and food, which are the two things I enjoy most in life. So it's a great thing for me. I love doing it. And like I said, I'm preserving a lot of recipes that people have either forgotten about or don't remember how to do the right way. So what's your process? Do you, do you, when you want to find a new dish to make, I imagine you're constantly making them since I constantly see them. Not as much as you might think. Okay. A lot of these recipes date back a long time, like 10 or 20 years.

So I've made them in the past, but I haven't made some of them in quite a while. So some of them are just based on old history. Some of them are based on things that I do make. Some of them are simple enough, like the tzatziki. It's a very simple recipe, but those are the most profound ones because if you screw up an ingredient with something that's only got five ingredients, you're going to taste it. It's going to be off. So it's little details. So like when you make tzatziki, it's basically yogurt with garlic, cucumber, maybe some dill, and some salt. That's it.

That's the classic Greek version. But the way that I'm doing it is, you know, the classic Greek version actually is with sheep's milk yogurt, not regular cow yogurt, because they raise a lot of lamb in Greece. So, you know, I call for, if you can get it, and here's where you can buy it, you should try the sheep's milk yogurt. It's going to give you a much more authentic flavor. The cucumber, if you don't scrape the skin off the cucumber, it can be very bitter. So scrape some of the skin off. You'll have a much better tzatziki. Drain the water off the cucumber, which can make it watery. If you don't do that, it doesn't work. The garlic. If you can use really good garlic, use it. And my twist on that was instead of using dill, I actually use dill pollen because dill, when you mix it with yogurt, it tends to get kind of, you know, slimy and it just wilts.

Whereas the dill pollen actually tastes more like dill than the dill itself. So it actually increases the flavor, but it doesn't get that, you know, wilted approach to it. So have you ever thought about starting a restaurant and doing all that? Or is it that would just be fun? It would not be fun. I mean, it's one thing to create things like this for a small group. It's another thing to do it for 12 to 14 hours a day. And my wife used to be a line cook.

And believe me, she knows the horror of being on the line. It's really hard work. Yeah, it's a lot of work. And even if you're not on the line and you owe the place, the average restaurant, I think it's something like in the first six months, 80% of all new restaurants fail. And of that remaining 20%, half of them will fail by the end of the first year. Do some of your friends end up eating this food? Do you share it with them?

Oh, absolutely. So after this call, I'm going to find out where you live, and I'm going to move close by. San Francisco is a wonderful place. Oh, fuck. No, I, after this, uh, after this call, I'm going to find out where you live and I'm going to move close by. San Francisco is a wonderful place. It's. Oh, fuck. No, I'm screwed now. Uh, not doing that.

Uh, but so you got, I mean, and so on the podcast, what are you going to be doing? You'd be talking about each individual disc when you're making it or. It's going to be a combination of things. You know, it's the first one is just going to basically introduce what the concept behind the podcast will be. The set, the subsequent ones, you know, I'm thinking along the lines of, you know, they're going to be short because for me, again, it's short attention span theater. So the ideal podcast for me, if it's just me talking is 15 minutes. If I have a guest, I'll try to keep it to under 30, but that's it. That's as long as, as far as I want to,

I want to keep these short. So like, you know, on one podcast, I'll talk about the different styles of pizza. And there are like six of them through the United States. Oh my God. How they differ from things like that. In others, I'll talk about like a style of cuisine, like maybe Guangzhou style, Cantonese style, Chinese cuisine. So I'll invite a friend of mine who's a professional Chinese chef on,

and he'll talk about that with me. So it'll be a back and forth, and we'll talk about the history of it, how to do it, what makes for this, what makes for a good version of X, Y, Z, whatever that might be. I'm just drooling already. I'm looking over more of the food dictator, the Herschon Korean Savory Scallion and Scallop Pancake. Pajeon. Yeah, that's actually a classic Korean dish. If you go into any Korean restaurant, they always carry it. And pajeon is, again, one of those really simple things that's just totally delicious. I mean, a lot of my recipes have a hallmark is that they're kind of complex. They have complex ingredients.

Really? Hard to make, but they're complicated. Yeah. But pajeon is a great example of something that doesn't need to be complicated. It's really simple and it's savory and it's just delicious. Yeah, it looks great. I mean, that's what I'm saying on the pictures that you post on Instagram. It is some of the best food porn. And I follow a lot of different food people on Instagram because, well, I mean, you can look at me and be like, he's eating a lot of food. The hershon british bangers and mash with onion gravy uh what

else is there the hershon brittany cream of muscle soup i guess what i'm trying to say is i mean you you really it's like traveling all around the world with you on instagram and the food dictator.com because i try yeah you've taken all these recipes and it's not just like one cuisine. It's like everything. And sometimes it's this wonderful mix of, oh my God, this is food porn right here. The Hirshon Haitian seasoning paste. Oh wow. Look fast in the restaurant world. If you slop it down onto a plate, it may taste delicious, but it's not going to be a great experience. Whereas if you plate it well, and it doesn't have to be fancy, it just has to be plated well, and it also tastes delicious, then you've taken it, you know, one step further. And when you suddenly realize, you know, here's the history of why these recipes were created, You know, who started them? Why were they started? How were they made properly? You know, a great example of that. You know, I did a recipe six months ago.

It's this fermented butter that's very popular in Morocco and Yemen and in, surprisingly, Israel. It's been made the same way for thousands of years. Wow. You can't make true Moroccan cuisine without something called smen, which is this fermented aged butter. And, you know, most people aren't going to take a big hunk of butter and bury it for a year and dig it back up. But if you're willing to try it, I tell you how to do it the right way. Is that how you do it?

You bury it for a year? Yep. Oh, my God. In a clay vessel. And it just slowly ferments over time. You take it back up and off you go. Now, most of us aren't going to do that. If you have a yard and you're willing to try it by all means, but the way that you can actually, once you understand that that's how it's made, you suddenly realize that you can actually do a massive shortcut version of smen, which is instead

of waiting a year to do it, it can make it in 10 minutes, which is you just take some European cultured butter, which has got some like yogurt, it's got some bacteria and it's already slightly fermented and you mix it with a little bit of blue cheese. Guess what? It's 99% of the actual product and you can make it in, like I said, 10 minutes. Now, would I still want to do the original if I could? Yes. But let's recognize the truth. Most of us don't have the time or the inclination or the patience to wait a year. So here's a way to do it. Another good example, there's an old Chinese dish, which is a preserved lemon duck. Now, preserved lemons in China are not the same as they are in Morocco. You know,

Morocco, they're aged for maybe a couple of months. The Chinese preserved lemons are aged for about 10 to 12 years. Wow. You can't even use them until they've been aging for at least three years. Now, again, you're not going to probably have the patience to do that, but there are ways to do something very close and i want people to try the dish but you know it's not feasible in today's world to do it so i tell you how to make the preserved lemons the original way if you want to wait those three to twelve years or i give you how to make it so that it's 99 of the way there wow and maybe you'll be inspired to try it so i'm gonna love tuning into your podcast and what are you gonna

what is the podcast for me called the food dictator or just the food dictator so people you're gonna have to send me a link to that because i'm gonna have to i'm gonna have to make sure and eat though before because like right now i'm looking at your website and i'm starving that that is a risk that people run oh man i'm just sitting there just going uh i it's a wonder you can't hear me drooling on it if i start slurping on the show that's because i'm drooling people looking at the uh the food dictator uh uh dot com uh this is amazing dude you're you're a really complex guy i mean you've you've worked at apple, did you say you worked at Facebook at one time? Oh, no, no, no, no. I worked at a Sony. I was in charge of the PR for back in the early nineties when Sony was the, uh, the biggest and most prestigious company brand wise in the world.

I mean, it was, it was number one in everything. That was amazing. Uh, that was an incredible experience. And I worked, worked at Apple for a couple of years. Uh, I was at Silicon graphics for a while. And, but most of what I've been doing through my career has been on the agency side. So people hire me and I work with my clients to help them with standard public relations stuff. Nothing spectacular. And you do a great job of that. I've worked with you. You've got some great clients. And then, I mean, you're in a great place for it, Silicon Valley, right? That's why I moved here. Yeah, yeah.

And people need PR there. And I mean, you're just like a jack of all trades. Is there anything else we need to know about? No, I think we've covered most of the morning. We covered most of the morning standouts. So we don't have his picture on the internet. And it's quite the game. And like I say, I'm going to have to meet you one of these days just so that I can say, well, I knew what he looked like.

Like if somebody tries to fake at the end, like here's – like I imagine at the end, like the biggest joke you could probably pull is like – this is something I would imagine. Who's that taxi comedian pulling? Or he tried to – where he kind of implied he was going to fake his own death. Do you know the guy I'm talking about, the comedian from Taxi? Yeah, it's Andy Garcia. No, not Andy Garcia.

It's, I can't place his name. Andy, I think you got the Andy right. Kaufman? Andy Kaufman, there it is. Yeah, there it is. And so he used to joke about how he was going to fake his own death. So when he finally died of cancer, um,

at least we assume he did. Some people think he's still running around. There are some people who still think he does. Yeah. And, uh, you know, I mean,

there's people for a long time, you know, Elvis, you know, every time I go in the store, I'd be like, Elvis is still alive. I'm like,

okay, whatever, man. But, um, and there's people think Tupac's still alive and he faked his own death, but, you know, I would have this imagination that you pull the same stunt like

you pulled in Croatia where you'd have like a million obituaries published with a million papers. That's a really good idea. That would be like your final FU in the internet. I'm kind of digging that. I may have to take you up on that. See, now I'm really going to have to meet you so that I can be like, I know. It's it's like oh that was the reference i was going to use earlier i grew up with

kiss uh in the day and kiss Detroit Rock City man Detroit Rock City but for for like a decade no one knew what kiss looked like behind the makeup and so that was kind of their thing and for them it was a marketing gig you know and it was and it was brilliant and they even had the unmasked album where they pulled their masks off and they're wearing their makeup underneath the mask and you're just like oh whatever the difference is they used it as a marketing stunt to sell more records i legitimately just want to be left alone leave me alone the uh but yeah it's kind of like kiss and it's like even when uh i can't remember which kiss album it was where they finally showed their faces

uh and you know there's no way they could have put they could pull that off like they did in the 70s there's no fucking way in fact I'm surprised they got away with it as long as they did in the 70s. But, yeah, it was just funny. Even when I finally saw their faces, I was like, come on. It's a letdown. Well, it was a letdown a little bit. Gene Simmons certainly is not as cool looking as you would think he would be. And, you know, I think Paul Stanley is a good good looking guy um that was kind of weird to say but i i like paul stanley i think he's really cool um i've been to a kiss concert

harman kardon put on a kiss concert where we're in the front row we got to hang out with them all um and uh in a little private concert they do at csES every year. But definitely like Gene Simmons, like you look at Gene Simmons and you're like, you look like someone's dad, man. Well, in this case, he actually is someone's dad. I mean, and that's the thing is that it's actually true in public relations as well. It's basically doing is you're creating something that's larger than life.

You know, a lot of my clients are very small. Some of them are only a couple of people, but the public relations campaign makes them seem much larger, much more influential, much more outsized in their influence. And that's really what PR is really supposed to do, right? It's to make you seem a little bit, you know, bigger than life. hand have a beer with you or maybe some food uh and and that way if you do pull that stunt at the end where no one still has your picture i can be i can be that guy what was that political thing where he goes i knew jack kennedy dan quill and you know jack kennedy oh yeah that was lloyd benson yeah i can at least go i knew what jonathan urshan looked like and that's not jonathan urshan that's true i just want to be able to the guy who could be like that's not Jonathan Herschel yeah that's true I just want to be able to the guy who can be like that's not him so yeah and I got to say you know when Benson

you know that was one of the the great all-time disses in politics oh that was so beautiful Nan Quill was such a dick so it was so great man that guy that guy was like uh anyway I don't want to get into politics but uh it was some of the gaffes that he used to do were pretty funny. Potato, potato. Potato, potato. But that was nothing compared to what we have now. So going back to those days. So everyone check out Jonathan's different platforms.

You can go to thefooddictator.com. And I got to tell you, don't go there if you're hungry. Because even if you've got a full there if you're hungry. Cause, uh, even if you've, even if you've got a full belly, you're going to have a problem. You're going to look at this food and you're just going to,

I need to eat some more, uh, Hirsh on Turkish, Adana ground lamb kebabs. And then, uh, uh, you can find him of course on the interwebs.

Uh, he'll have the podcast being launched soon. So watch for that. What's the Instagram again? So we can get that plug for you. Uh, uh sure it's instagram.com slash the food dictator and then he also does pr so if you're uh looking for great pr agent especially one in silicon valley i can give him a total thumbs up review uh do you want to plug your uh your i think it's horizon i think pr it's horizonpr.com it's uh nice and simple there you go yeah and Jonathan does a

great job for his clients I've worked with him at some of the events and uh he's got a wonderful cache of clients and and he knows what he's doing crap he's got a background all the way back to Apple pre-second term Steve Jobs and uh do you know our friend uh I just spaced his name off. He worked with Apple and developed the iPhone. You know who I'm talking about? Oh, Tony Fidel? No, he might be one of the guys. It's our other friend.

I'm sure you know him because me and Robert Scobo are all good buddies. And now I can't. He doesn't do a lot of internet stuff because he works for a bank now, so he has to be really professional, unlike the rest of us, or at least me and Scoville and everybody else. Andy Grignan. Yes, I do know of him. We've never met, but I know of him.

His reputation is excellent. Yeah, he's got the greatest stories. Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs came back the second time. Well, I'll give you, maybe we can part on this, but this is a lot of people in Silicon Valley, everybody knows the term elevator pitch. You know where that actually comes from? Where?

I'll tell you, because there are actually very few of us who still remember it. So back when Steve was during his first tenure at Apple, in their first headquarters facility, main HQ was three levels high. So executive management was all on the top floor. And if you made the mistake of going onto the third floor and taking the elevator down to the first, it would not help you if Steve Jobs happened to walk into the interview. And he did this a lot. As the doors were closing, he would turn to you and he'd say, tell me who you are and justify why I should keep you.

Oh, my God. And you had 20 seconds from the time those doors closed to the time you got to the first level to justify yourself. Oh, my God. Are you serious? And if he didn't like your answer by the time that 20 seconds was up and those those doors opened it opens right to main reception and security he would stick his head out go to the front desk and say this individual is no longer employed by apple computer box their shit up box their shit up take their badge and it's off the ground oh my god dude so that's where elevator pitch comes from that is where elevator

pitch holy shit i have never heard that story you know there are very few of us who still remember it but he was such a prick yeah he was uh a genius i mean let's let's be completely the greatest salesman of all time but as a human being really not one of the nicest people i've ever worked with you know i i've worked i worked with a lot of ceos uh during uh my early years when before I really became fully self-employed and on and off. I was trying to start little companies back then. My first little company was like a subcontractor business, but I worked with some great CEOs and they're really innovative. They're really brilliant. They taught me a lot. I wouldn't be here today without some of the chips and ticks and things they taught me but i also saw that high add where their create where their destructive parts of them uh just barely stayed behind their creative parts and you would look at the you would look at the the uh the wreckage behind them from their destructive uh patterns in their massive creation and you're just like one of these days your destruction is gonna overtake you know it was like they were always operating like that skier that you see where the

avalanche is chasing them yep and they're just barely staying ahead of it and you're just like i don't know how you fucking keep doing this for so many years staying you know right ahead of that thing and i know andy has some great stories about getting into it with steve jobs um and i think some people have seen that on some of his shows and stuff we'll have to have him on to talk about it uh he has some of those greatest stories but he doesn't he doesn't have a whole lot of love for andy and i think i quote this because i think he did it on uh one of the one of the things, but when Steve Jobs passed away, he was like, I'm good, riddance, or I don't care. And I think he stated that

in one of the film documentaries that are there, so I'm not outing that. Yeah, Steve was a very divisive figure. You loved him or you hated him, and most people, it was both. So one of my biggest beefs with Steve was actually nothing to do with his management style. It was actually the fact that he never gave a dime to charity in his life.

Yeah. And I know a lot of really worthy charities approached him, and he just basically told them to go F off. His widow has done amazing work with charities. She set up foundations. But during his time, no, Steve never gave a dime to anybody and then such a dick to his daughter yeah like i said there's a there's a lot to admire about the man and there's more to dislike yeah and it's important that the the legend and the myth don't overshadow the reality of who he was he was a very complex man yeah you know most people don't realize, maybe more do now,

but he's half Syrian. His father was a Syrian immigrant, a refugee. And I always tell people that America was built on immigration. And if people had blocked a Syrian immigrant from coming in, we wouldn't have had Steve Jobs today. Oh, can you imagine? I've talked about that lots of times where I'm just like, you know, I mean, can you imagine the innovation and stuff? I mean, the head of Google right now, he grew up sleeping on a dirt floor in India. Yeah, exactly.

And he's the CEO of Google now. And, you know, some people bash Google for whatever. But I mean, still, you know, the things of these, I can't imagine a world without the iPhone being created. I mean, my whole job technically is because of the iPhone and what it created on social media. So it's crazy. But we'll have to have you on again.

Maybe we can talk about some of these other stories and talk about some other stuff. I'd love to. I mean, the truth is I'm kind of the unofficial historian of Silicon Valley along with a few other people. And there are lots of stories that I wish people knew more about because we wouldn't be where we are today without knowing where we came from. Book, book, book, book, book, book, book.

So, you know, many people have asked and, you know, there's one person in particular who's equally a journalist friend of mine who goes back as long as I do. And I thought that it would be fascinating to do a book from both sides. So he covering things like Apple from an outside perspective and trying to get in

and me covering Apple from the inside trying to describe what happened going out. And most people only get one half of that story, not both. Were you, were you, and I want to wrap the show because we're going long, but did you know my friend Michael Chong? Yes, absolutely. I believe it was during that period of CEO that you, when you left Apple, that he was dumpster diving in for his magazine. I forget the name of it. I'm looking for it on this thing. But he was dumpster diving Apple's dumpsters and getting the secrets and they were so pissed off, the CEO was, because they couldn't figure out how he was getting the

secrets. And he was just- Yeah, it's just old school. It's just dumpster diving. It's like there's no sources. It's just open the bin and dive in and come out with something magnificent. Michael used to just piss the hell out of him. I think it was the CEO when you left. He used to piss the hell out of him. He actually called him out one time. I think it was Mac Week or something know, it was funny because everybody else at Apple PR had a very antagonistic relationship with Mac Week because it was a tabloid and it dug into our history and all of our dirty laundry. I loved Mac Week. And, you know, the truth is that it's the sign of a healthy journalist community when you have people doing that kind of job because it keeps us all honest yeah when when journalism turns into just you know reprint my press release as a publicist part of me is very happy and part of me is horrified because i want people to go deeper than that yeah and when they're doing that they're doing their jobs and press releases are pretty dry i mean you've got a you've got a you've got a you've got a

taken you got to take and pump those up a little bit, put some life into them, at least when I cover them. Whenever I see some of them, especially in the tech world, especially highly technical shows like the NAB Broadcasters Association, those things get really deep on the technical. And they're not really made for consumers. It's the business-to-business back end. And you're just like do i need to go to college to read this fucking thing it's true and uh i i think i need to wear a scientist trench coat stuff anyway jonathan it's been wonderful to have you on the show and i'm i'm honored to be your friend and uh to be able to work with you and eric with you i'm so i'm so

happy too that i finally know who's behind the food dictator. I mean, literally for years, I've drooled over your Instagram and I've not connected those dots. So I'm glad you're finally coming out and making sure everyone, because I'm seeing it now on Facebook where you're posting the stuff and talking about it. I'm like, that's the guy. Well, I really appreciate it, man. And the feeling is a hundred percent mutual. So thank you for having me. Awesome sauce. So everyone, be sure to go check out his book. You can find it on Amazon.

It's the book Hover. And if you love haikus, I got a few friends that love haikus. It's probably a great read. He is the master of so many different things. You can go to thefooddictator.com. You can go to his Instagram and watch for the podcast to be announced as well. And of course, if you look for his picture, you won't find it. So there you go.

Anyway, thanks to my audience for being on the show. We certainly appreciate you guys. Be sure to subscribe at youtube.com. Fortuna's Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button. Be sure to go to thecvpn.com. Tell your friends to go there. Chris Voss Podcast Network.

There's seven podcasts you can take and subscribe to, uh, there and, all that good stuff. And you can find it on iTunes, Spotify, I heart radio, Jesus luminary.

There's like, there's like 10 different places that are major, uh, syndication for the show that you can take and get it from. Thanks to my audience. Thanks to Jonathan. And we'll see you guys next time. Thanks again, Chris.

Thank you.