Hey, Adam curry, John C. Devorah. Sunday May 19 2019.
This is your award winning game nation media assassination
episode 1139. This
is no agenda, getting hits and broadcasting
live from the frontier of Austin, Texas and the capital of
the drone Star State. Almost like in the morning, everybody.
I'm Adam curry,
and not from silica. Well, actually, I'm great. Now
northern Silicon Valley. I don't know I'm on the move. I'm John
C. Dvorak.
He's on the move everybody. Yes. Yes. Welcome to episode number
1139. Of the best podcast in the universe a special day.
Actually, you know, I've seen a lot of shows that are starting
to do different new numbering differently.
And you've been talking about this for a while you talk about
season, seasons
and series, and no,
no, no, you know, it's like, I know what I know what you're
thinking.
I think in season I'm thinking season 11. Ladies and gentlemen.
Wow, these guys are great. I need to be interesting. The way
to do it. I need to binge listen
to season 11. Show number 39. Or whatever
it is. We'll think about Yeah, yeah, kind of it makes
it sound more broadcast D.
Maybe that's exactly the problem with it. We shouldn't try to
sound more broadcasting or podcast these.
Yeah, this is true.
So well, today is a big day.
Yeah, you're getting married? Yes. And so we this is actually
I had to. I know. It'd be tough for anyone to imagine how we can
do this. But we're doing a show just before the wedding. So like
a few minutes before the wedding. We're doing this. And
then you're gonna run right to the wedding right after we close
this and ship it. Yeah, right.
And once I say I do, then I go back to upload and do the RSS
feed. Yeah.
workaholic. Exactly. So what we have today for the dedicated
listeners is a couple of interviews that I did. Right one
with Anthony Scaramucci.
Now wait, hold on a second. This is months ago. You did this,
isn't it?
Yeah, but it was I knew it wasn't gonna be used to the
wedding. So I make it very evergreen.
So okay, so wherever greeny as in ho hum. Or just Qatar.
Very interesting stuff. A lot of personal stuff. We go into an
actual discussion. And for example of Donald Trump's
weight.
Now, but do you talk about that Scaramucci? Does he have a hot
wife?
Yeah, he's got a hot wife in New York. We also talked about his
restaurant. He has a restaurant. Did you know that?
No, but somehow it does not surprise me. And even better.
I'd like to know if I can go there when visiting Manhattan
and say, Tell mooch? It's curry from no agenda.
I can give you the answer that yeah, get the fuck out. Not
happening. Right. Is so even with the interview. I couldn't
get that leeway now. Then, then we're gonna have a little just a
little over an hour discussion with the crystal cliff.
I said Chris. Oh, okay. Yes. Yes, please. So writer,
very fast astronomer. You can go look at his TED talks, if you
want to see what he's like. He's very excitable. And he's got a
lot of thoughts. And I worked with him for years back in the
days of tech TV before actually MSNBC. I believe he was on that.
He was on that operation for a while. Like, anyway, I've known
him for he lives nearby. And so I figured, and I have nobody's
heard from him for a while. So I thought an interview with him
because he has a lot of interesting thoughts. So what
did you talk about with them? More techy than than Skerrit?
mooch? Yeah,
we're kind of talking about
the plight we talked about what your pal? PROFESSOR TED talks
about usually. The plague of the internet, the nice of social
media, the negative aspects of computers in schools, the
negative this
the unintended consequences of technology. Yes.
And so that's a fascinating interview. So I think people
enjoy it. Well, as we'll get started, let's just go right to
Anthony Scaramucci. We have here Anthony Scaramucci, who just
finished a book called Trump to blue collar president. And I
will say at the beginning, I've read this book, and I think it's
I can highly recommend it. It is very entertaining. It's kind of
a interesting romp between the Anthony's background and Donald
Trump's background. And it was very, very well structured. I
liked it. So what drove Huge Anyway, welcome to the no agenda
show.
Well, John, thanks for inviting me on and I'm you joined my
mother as the only two people I know that have read the books.
I'm very delighted to have met you over this pocket. But in all
seriousness, thank you for the comments because I really tried
to structure it in a way where I thought it would provide some
entertainment, but also some sociological background of why
the President was able to gravitate so many blue collar
people to his base and to his agenda.
A couple of things about the book I want to ask right away,
which is, I've read a lot of these types of books written by
Italians. And yours is probably the only one that doesn't have a
more of an emphasis on the cooking of the grandma.
You didn't read my first book, okay, I mean, I got all I got it
all i got it all out of my system. And goodbye, Gordon
Gekko talked about my, my Nana, and they are how she used to hit
us with a wooden spoon if we weren't paying attention. And if
you if you if you read a lot of books about Italians that are my
age, they are all reminiscent of the plastic covering on the
furniture in those people's homes. Okay, my, my grandmother
and grandfather had rugs that were plastic runners over them,
and they I think my grandmother waited until she was about 65 to
take the plastic off the couch. That was an uncomfortable 40
years of that couch, man.
Yes. In fact, I recall that to era personally, I remember
seeing people that had everything covered with plastic.
So what are you saving it for somebody else?
Right, exactly. Sound like me, as I said, My nana, what is it?
What it's all? I mean, it's gonna be in the next generation
or what?
So, so are you the cook?
No, I'm actually a an Italian mama's boy, which makes me the
eater and not to cook. You know, I'm the guy that dropped his
underwear, right where I took it off and my mother swooped in
behind me. And the next thing you know, it was ironed and
pressed. Okay. And so fortunately, that ended for me
in 1982 When I went to college, and so now I'm basically I'm
very clean. I probably shower twice a day, but I'm the most
disorganized train wreck, because I had an Italian mom and
I'm an Italian mama's boy.
You are a hedge fund guy. Correct. And I want to just ask
for the just the general listener. Can you describe what
that means? What is what is running a hedge fund entail?
What we what I think the public generally thinks is just you
just, you just rake in lots of money doing pretty much nothing?
Yeah, I mean, obviously, that's, you know, there's a lot of
jealousy in the media. So the media wants to characterize it
that way. But there's $3 trillion in our industry in
terms of assets under management for a reason, we actually do a
pretty good job for people. So you would come to a hedge fund
manager, if you were looking for like a high single digit rate of
return a 789 percent return with very low volatility and relative
consistency. And so a lot of people have money in the stock
market. But there's a lot of volatility there, which saw a
10% correction in the month of October 2018, as an example, but
what a hedge fund manager if they're doing their jobs, right,
they generate a high absolute return with low volatility. And
so it takes a lot of work. There's 60 people in my
organization. I started this company, with three people in
2005. We're about to celebrate our 14th year in business, this
coming March. And we've got about $10 billion under
management. And one of the things that we tried to do is we
tried to democratize the industry. And so I set up a
structure. Having gone to Harvard Law School and
understanding the security regs, I set up a new structure, which
has been replicated now, where we're able to have investors
with minimums of about $25,000. So I've sort of opened up the
hedge fund investing to the mass affluent. I wrote a book about
this, in 2012, called The Little Book of hedge funds, which was
basically a primer or an explanatory book on what people
should know about hedge funds, the pluses and the minuses for
that matter. So and that was well received, and we have about
41,000 clients, over $10 billion under management. And you know,
one thing about the president, he made me as famous as Melania.
And Ivanka, I didn't have to, I didn't have to sleep with him or
be his daughter, but he may be pretty famous. And so it's
raised the profile of my business, which has been
helpful. Publicity is good. Yeah. Yeah. No question in my
business, certainly, because we've got good performance that
backup the publicity.
Well, you've been on a lot of shows. I mean, you've been on a
Dr. Phil. Yep. You did a thing for Facebook. Yeah. You went on
Stephen Colbert. Right after you were released from the White
House. Yep. What did you think of that experience? Because I
watched that episode. And I thought it was, I thought they
were rude to be honest about it.
Well, I mean, look, they're angry about the president. They
don't like the president. They're there. They're building
a fan base of anti Trump stirs. So when I expressed the
willingness to go on the show after Stephen was excoriating
me, during my time inside the White House, I think they were
all taken aback. But I had to take incoming, I was happy to go
on and give my point of view. I was on Bill Maher show this past
week, and I've done his show a few times. Again, it's like
being a Yankee in Fenway Park, or a Dodger in Fenway Park, you
know, it's a rough place. But I feel that we've got to get back
to talking to each other. You know, we may not agree
ideologically, we may see the country going in different
directions for different reasons. But if we don't talk to
each other, I think it's a very big mistake. I like to tell
people, I'm a patriot first, and a partisan last, I have a
certain philosophical view, based on my years of experience
in business and my observation about what works from a point of
view of policy. But what I don't want to do is ever close myself
off to the other person's point of view, John, John Kennedy had
a great line which I share with everybody. He said, I spent a
lot of time understanding the other side, because there's
obviously very smart people on the other side, and I may learn
something from them, or conversely, they may sharpen,
and provide me with more ammunition for my own argument.
And so we have to do that in our society.
You get a perverse thrill when you try to just describe a
situation and Bill Maher, and part of that description and
tail, somebody's getting all worked up. And Bill Maher
actually goes, kind of ballistic right in front of you.
Well, I mean, I can't tell you I'm getting a thrill because I'm
trying to explain something and you know, but they, sometimes
they have a hard time they you know, it's very emotionally
charged, you know. So what I think what I'm able to do
though, is I'm able to detach myself a little bit from the
heat of the argument and try to relate to people, where I think
they really live is when all the emotions die down. Where they
really live is in that common sense altimeter where they can
sense when someone's speaking, common sense as opposed to spin
or ideological pablum. And I like going on these shows,
because, you know, I experienced Washington, I felt everybody in
Washington was on spin cycle. But most New Yorkers are on a
rinse cycle. And so for me, I can sit there. And you know, I
don't have any prepared notes, I don't have any sound bites, that
I'm ready to spill out of my mouth at a moment's notice. And
I'm just trying to respond and interact with somebody on an
intellectual basis. And, and hopefully, you know, if I'm not
winning them over, at least I can explain directionally why
half the country feels the way I do.
What do you think Trump's top skills are?
He's got an unnatural, unnatural level of charisma unnatural. It
has to do with the fact that he has decided that he is going to
be completely uninhibited. In a media environment. That's 45
years of doing radio, television, public speaking,
signing books, writing books, promoting his brands, he has a
completely uninhibited approach. And, again, I'm not picking on
these people. But let's go over the 17 other candidates that
were in that race that we're running against them for the
Republican nomination, you know, they are, you know, they've got
the millstone on their necks of consultants speak the millstone
on their necks of practice, can't say certain things that
could be offensive. And so he has that capability. He's got
unbelievable political instincts, unbelievable. And I
write about that in my book, at the end of the day, he could
have had 10 political consultants telling them to pick
choice A but he felt choice B was the right choice, he would
go with choice B. He had people telling him Listen, you're not
going to win in Wisconsin or or Michigan don't spend any time
there. And don't spending time in Pennsylvania that that states
really not purple. It's been blue for 32 years. Don't spend
any time there. And he looked at that and said no, there's an
opportunity there. There's a vacuum of advocacy for these
blue collar people, you know, the the left spent their time
focused on Listen, a couple of dolphins got killed from eating
plastic straws, absolute tragedy. I'm not trying to make
light of it. But they spent their time focused on that or
the polar ice caps melting. Again, a disturbing fact and I'm
not trying to make light of it, but they left out of the
equation for at least a generation what was going on in
the middle class. And the lower middle class. And whether you
like the President or not, he saw that opening. And he did
something that has to be marveled at. If you're a
political scientist, he, he hijacked the Republican Party,
from the establishment Republicans who hate his guts.
And then he reached into the Democratic Party, and he stole
their base and moved it over to the Republican. So again, you
can hate him. But this guy's got incredible political instincts.
And he's a showman. And by the way, he's an entertainer. Don't
lose sight of that. He's the entertainer and chief, he knows
how to get a crowd route riled up he once said, or somebody
wrote about him, that he's the only guy that can fill an arena
without a musical instrument, right? He just shows up. He's
gonna say some crazy stuff. Yeah, at any moment. It looks
like there's going to be a car crash. And he's out there,
mallet propping and talking and as usual zaniness and there's a
10,000 people waiting online, to get into the overfilled capacity
of that arena. Those Those are skills. He's also a gregarious
guy, you know, the media will paint him as not being the case.
But when you're in his presence, he's a lot of fun to be with.
Does he get a lot of sleep?
I actually cannot figure that out. I mean, somebody should
examine this guy because he has a supernatural capacity to not
get sleep. And I'll just quote one of his doctors. He's the
only human being that we've met, where his eating habits are not
affecting his health. So I can't figure that out either. Okay, I
I've had more than one meal with him. One interesting one in the
White House, where he was pounding down the beef
wellington, which is like a filet mignon wrapped in this
bakery crust. And he was like It passed the sauce over your
Pasmore that gravy. Like mince gravy is probably like 5 million
calories. You know, I mean, he pounds it down. No problem has
unlimited amounts of energy. This is a guy that can do 11
campaign stops in four days prior to election. This is a guy
that was speaking in Altoona, Pa at 1030. At night. We were all
exhausted. He gets back on the plane wants to fly to Michigan
do one more campaign stop at 1230 in the morning. That's him.
I don't know how he does it. But that's him. And he's 72, buddy.
But here's a lesson for your listeners as pockets. Don't
smoke, and don't drink, which neither thing the President
does. And you too can fly around on Air Force One like a maniac.
What do you think your ways?
Why you any mean trouble? This is like breaking news. Well, how
about this? How not to 39 as that I think is published wages
to 39. I will take the over on that. He'd be mad at me for
saying I don't know what he weighs. But it's not 239.
One thing that you would insofar his as his skills are concerned,
something that you kind of pointed out in the book, which
is the skill of timing. And this is related to his doing the New
York skating rink. Yep. And it's it seems as though he was in the
right place at the right time. Or if he was premature and
trying to do something he would come back at exactly the right
moment and then kind of swoop in. And which is the way I kind
of felt he ran for president don't question. It was a timing
thing. No question
because he looked at running for president at a pause that
stopped. He looked again for running at President in 1993 and
stopped. And then he took a very serious foray in 2002,
potentially grab the nomination of the Reform Party flew out to
LA. He was practicing his negatives on John McCain, who we
thought was going to be the Republican nominee. The first
time I heard the words I like my heroes uncaptured. Were in an
interview, you can go back and Google this. He was being
interviewed in 2000 by Dan Rather, for 60 minutes. And he
was testing that out. Because he thought John McCain was going to
be the Republican nominee in 2000. He abandoned that, because
his political instincts correctly dictated that you're
not going to win the presidency in this country, from a third
party. And so he stayed out of the fray really contemplated the
2012 race did not want to run against the Presidential
incumbent. good instincts there because very hard to defeat an
incumbent unless you have a disaster going on in the
economy. And so we didn't have anything we had a stable economy
and 12 and proving an economy very hard to beat a sitting
president. So he waited it out. And then he struck the nerve of
the anxiety that's taking place in our system related to the
blue collar experience and the decline in living standards. And
he went out there and preach that mantra. And at that mantra,
by the way is tied to immigration because the illegal
immigration has certainly affected wage growth in our
society and And he went out there. And he made that case.
And he made the case in a way that was unbelievably
unorthodox. And even though we were outspent almost two to one
by Secretary Clinton's campaign, and we were outmanned, I would
say almost three to one by her. He was able to capture the
presidency because he was able to get his message out in the
American media, in a way that was nothing short of staggering.
It was billions and billions of dollars of free media, whether
they were televising a rally where they were interviewing him
or he was calling into their shows. He literally was able to
use the media as almost a third arm of his campaign strategy. Do
you serve? I don't, but did you? Did you catch that analogy about
surfing in there?
Yeah. I mean, as I read, this is what what is this doing? And
here, he doesn't seem like a surfer.
I'm not a I'm not a surfer. But I can discern waves because, you
know, there's a conjurer def wave in our economic system. And
there are other ways, Elliot wave theory for investing. And
my point, the metaphor of the surfing for your listeners,
because I really feel that these politicians are surfers. And
they have to get on that surfboard and ride a wave into
sure that fits their personality. As an example, Jeb
Bush would have been a phenomenal presidential
candidate in the early 90s to mid 90s. wrong candidate for
2016. But a phenomenal guy, Governor Romney, same sort of
thing. They their personalities are just too bland.
You are a supporter of Romney, and then you kind of switched
over to Jeb Bush before you finally latched on to the Trump
bandwagon. Yes. How did that happen?
Well, because I didn't believe them. You know, I write in the
book that I'm sitting with him the day after the apprentice
ends. We're having breakfast in the Trump Tower. And he's
telling me he's running for President. I'm laughing. I'm
like, Yeah, running for president.
We weren't the only one doing that, of course.
And he said that. Yeah. Every I said to him, he said, You
weren't watching the apprentice last night? I said, No, of
course not. He goes, Well, you're the only one that wasn't
watching it. I was fantastic, as I'm sure you were. But he said,
Well, it's over. Now I'm running. I'm running for
president. I said, No, you're not. He said, No, no, I totally
am. So let me tell you, let me say you're at 2%. In the polls,
you're not going to run for president, because I'm at 2% in
the polls, because people are like you, okay, they think I'm
not running. But the minute I start running, I'm going to
shoot to the top of the polls. And I'm going to stay there
until I win the presidency. And I gotta tell you, you know, at
least on the Republican side, that's what he did go take a
look at those polling numbers. You know, there was nobody in
shooting range. Yeah, a couple of guys won, because of the
party system and the establishment, they won a few
primaries against them, but very few. And, you know, he was
right, right at the top as it related to the popular vote
among registered Republicans. So I didn't see it. I admit that in
the book, I also didn't see the level of economic desperation,
despite the fact that grew up in a blue collar family, I have
spent too much time with wealthy people. And I have to confirm
biases of running my hedge fund and interacting with wealthy
people. And so when I descended into these towns with then
candidate Trump, I write in my book that it was quite eye
opening. What I saw in those towns, and the composite of what
I saw is that we went from a generation of aspirational
working class families to desperation ones, and about 35
years. And the public servants of the established class, didn't
really see it. And if they saw it, they were indifferent to it.
And so he was able to capitalize on that in a way that I think
will be viewed as historic.
Well, talking about hanging out with the rich, can you explain
to me and I'm from this area? How the richest guys in Silicon
Valley, many billionaires, there's quite a few of them are
all Democrats?
Well, I can't, but I mean, what I often think about there's a
level of guilt, and there's a level of self preservation.
That's more important to some of these people than actual public
policy. And so what ends up happening is they are sitting
there with a boatload of money, they feel very guilty about it,
and they feel that they can be progressive or ultra liberal.
And that'll give them a pass. And that's by and large been
true from the American media. So if you're super rich, but your
liberal American media leaves you alone, if you're super rich,
but conservative, they burn you in effigy, and they try to
demonize you and so, you know, to me, I think it's more of a
self preservation thing than it is a principle based thing
because how did you get the money? You got the money because
we've set up a market based system in our society which has
led to incredible growth and innovation and job creation and
unbelievable success for people. And and you know, we have a
society that will reward people for their ingenuity and risk
taking you cannot systematize despite what the left says,
You're never going to be able to systematize an equal outcome, we
should be way more focused, from a policy perspective on figuring
out ways to create more equal opportunity, where our
educational system K through 12, the public system is a failure.
It's broken, it's very uneven. We should be spending more time
figuring out a way to get a kid who's living in a less than
affluent neighborhood, a good public school education as
opposed to trying to figure out how to overtax people and
wealth, redistribute, it doesn't work. It slows down growth, it
slows down opportunity. And it stunts the system. And if you
don't believe me, we have 150 years of documented history on
this throughout the world where people have tried it.
When you first showed up at the White House, and then left 11
days later. My take on it was that well, here they brought
this guy in as a hatchet man to get rid of rats, Priebus and
ban. But as I read the book, it's obviously was a more
convoluted road. It wasn't as though they just brought in you
as a hatchet man to get rid of rats Priebus. Yeah, but that's
that's kind of what looks like in hindsight.
I mean, I definitely serve that purpose. There's no question
about that. But if you you know, if you remember in the book, I
was offered the OPO position. I accepted that job, Priebus and
Bannon tried to block me from that job. And then I did
something really, really stupid. I mean, he did many things
stupid. But the biggest stupid thing I did was like, put my
pride and my ego into trying to secure that job. You see,
that's what I what let, let's back to the you mentioned the
Bannon and Priebus forming a coalition of bad guys. Would you
thought was peculiar because they weren't similar characters
by any means? And they wanted to block you from that particular
job. Why do you think that was? I mean, did you have some sort
of a better in with Trump, did you because you knew him more
personally. No, I knew him personally. Or what was the
purpose of they're trying to block you? Why didn't they just
let you go there? And then just, you know, leave you there? Yeah.
I
mean, that would have been a better strategy, I think for all
of us, right. If he's left me alone, I wasn't, I think
previous probably figured I was tight with the President and who
knows, you know, him, him and me together. You know, remember
previous was an establishment guy. He was flooding the zone
inside the White House with RNC people that were not necessarily
loyal to the president, but were, you know, more loyal to
Priebus. And so I think he looks at me and for that matter, not
to take it so personally, to me, he looked at guys like Giuliani,
Chris Christie, John Lithgow was a Suffolk County Chairman out
here on Long Island, he looked at all those people and said,
Okay, these are New Yorkers, I'm gonna do everything I can to
block these New Yorkers from coming down here to Washington.
And so, and he was successful doing that. So he slow rolled
me. And he slow roll those guys, I was probably the only guy due
to the determination of my personality and the persistence,
where I was like a dog on a bone, I wouldn't let up until I
found my way through the door at the White House. And so you
know, and then once I got the job, I probably mishandled it in
a number of different ways. You probably shouldn't start your
first day at the White House with a chainsaw and a hockey
mask from Jason's Friday the 13th movie, you know, once I
started the chainsaw, I went after those two guys with a
vengeance. And I should have been more careful about that.
You go after abandoned in the book a little bit, not as much
as you could. It's a lot of it's subtle. And which brings me to
the question. That brings me to the question of you claim a
claim and I don't want to use that word claim because I don't
like it. But you say you're, you're a class clown.
And I'm a class clown. Or he was a class clown.
No, you were a class clown. Yeah, I
was a prankster in school. No question about that. I
had you still? Well,
I don't know. I look I had I had a reasonable high IQ and I had
an okay work ethic. I got serious once I got to college,
which helped me get into Harvard Law School, but you know, I
don't know I play for laughs there's no question about that I
have. There's an entertainment streak in my personality. You
can see that there's some irreverence in the book in terms
of the way I describe certain situations myself included. But
I would say that Ben and you know that he was he was a guy
when he thought he needed you. He was very polite, very
seductive, but he was a guy when he didn't need you. You were a
disposable piece of tissue. And so all of that stuff is coming
back. act to roost on Bannon now, you know, he's, he's Spitz.
arised. Okay, and what do I mean by that when Eliot Spitzer went
down 10 years ago, because he was so mean and nasty to so many
people, there was nobody there to save him. And so he Spitz
arised. And now he's going to rallies where five or 10 people
around him and, you know, he's he's lost an element of his self
proclaimed guru nature. And, and so look, I mean, but for me, I
thought he's just very dishonest. He's an unbelievable
leaker. If you look at what the President said about him, and
the press release in January of 2018, it was virtually identical
to what I was saying about him. Unfortunately, I got caught on a
hot mic, which is fine. But, you know, the journalist took it
totally out of context. I, he was trying to get me to do a
profile with him in his magazine. And I'm like, not self
promotional like that, like Steve is and then I used an
inappropriate word. And he said, Okay, I've hit the jackpot here.
Let me run this over to CNN and exaggerate what happened. So
it's fine. I'm a big boy, I paid the price. But my job. I write
about it honestly, in the book, I'm very accountable for the
mistake.
But actually, you don't write about it. I don't think you're
necessarily as firm as you could have been. I mean, that was a
chickenshit thing that happened from a journalist perspective.
Well, I I generally speaking, it doesn't happen. But no,
it's how we Kurt said in 40 years in Washington, he's never
seen a journalist. Do that to a governmental officials. So but
you know, that's okay. There's a first time for everything. I
made the mistake by talking to the guy, right, so I'm gonna
have to own that. shouldn't talk to him.
That back to Bannon. Yeah. Early in the book, you say that Steve
Bannon, you compare him to a blood sucking vampire bat? Yeah.
I mean, when later in the book, you have this sense, which is
the only thing I've actually excerpted for this interview,
because I thought it was it was pretty funny. Because it was
subtle. It was like it was it was kind of literate, but at the
same time rude. Act of leaking addiction never ends. Well.
banants sure didn't remember how he looked leaving the White
House. A Harvard educated Cook, draped in contemporary hobo.
Yeah.
That's pretty good, though. Right.
I thought it was quite good. I think it was you actually put
some thought into it. Because he, he's wrote the book around
that.
Yeah, a couple of cents. Yeah, he's a cook. He's ultimately a
cook. At the end of the day, he went to Harvard Business School,
he worked at Goldman Sachs. He was in Hollywood. I mean, he's
hit the triangulation of every one of those nexuses. And then
he tries to pretend that he's some outsider that's focused on
ethnocentrism and white nationalism. I mean, I think the
guys are incredibly flawed guy, but wickedly smart and very well
read. I, I made a joke at one of the college campuses is that you
know, if you ever are doubting God, or if you falling into the
trap of atheism, just remember this as seductive and as smart
as Steve Bannon is. God made him so ugly, and made him dress so
inappropriately, that his ideas will never be taken seriously,
thankfully, by the civilization so. So to me, he's not my cup of
tea. I've offered to debate Steve Bannon. I've offered to
debate Ryan's Priebus any place anywhere. And I'll continue to
wait on that you you you it I think you know he is I was on
his radio show. He said that he's in love with Ryan's peers
is one of his best friends is no great. Invite writes Priebus on
your radio show with me. Let's have an honest and candid
conversation about what he's really like with the people that
he worked with inside the White House. You think that'll happen
my brother? Okay, hell hell will freeze over before that happens.
Well, I
there's no reason for him to want to do that. Now of course,
there is Rance Priebus. Now,
I don't even know I apparently I think he went back to his
Wisconsin law firm. And I think he's keeping a low profile.
Because, you know, I mean, he brought up a lot of people. I
mean, it's not forget about just me. He just burped up a lot of
people. And so he exposed his full blown insecurity in that
job and he exposed, exposed his low levels of low self esteem
and low self confidence. AAA players go out and try to hire a
plus people. A C players like a guy like him, they'll they'll
hire D's and F's.
Why did Trump hire him?
Well, I think Trump felt that he had. He had helped them with the
apparatus and technology around the RNC. And I think Trump felt
a level of loyalty. And Trump also felt that if he had him in
the White House, he was tight with Paul Ryan and he was a
member of that Washington sediment that he could help him
drain the swamp. But what the mistake that the President made
is that he put a cesspool operator In the most important
job in the system, and so all that guy was doing was pouring
more sewage into the system, you're not you're not going to
drain the swamp. By bringing a cesspool operator that's lived
in the swamp for 15 years in to drain the swamp, they're not
going to do it. They Their goal is to outlast you. And to
continue to work the lobbying and currying of favor business
inside of Washington to line their own pockets. They're not
they're not there to serve the American people. The American
people are under that thing. The American people know that. One
of the biggest reasons they had to get me out of there. I don't
know if you saw my first press conference. But the my critics
of my first press conference like you were too honest, can't
you can't talk the truth like that from the White House
podium. What are you nuts? And that's America, but the American
people know it that, you know, one thing that the President has
done for the society is he's fully exposed. The cockroaches
that live in the kitchen known as Washington. Okay, the lights
are on now. They're crawling around stunned that they're
being caught with all their nonsense.
We'll try it well. Subject good cockroaches, do you think the
White House was bugged?
I don't know. I would I gotta believe no. But I will say this,
they dismantled the Oval Office in August of 2017 and rebuilt
it. And so I'm hoping that the answer is no, I don't know the
answer.
It just seems like a lot of the stories that the media was
picking up on always predate the moment that the Oval Office was
reconstructed. just coincidence, maybe I'm not sure
coincidence. But it's also previous and bad. And they were
60 to 70% of the leaks, once they were removed, the leaks
really did go down dramatically, still leaking. Every White House
is going to leak but it's not not leaking with that level of
animosity and that level of venom towards each other. You
know that that's gone down a lot.
You, what do you think of the New York Times hit piece on
Trump, which have you read in great detail, there's the recent
one, where Trump apparently never had any money to begin
with. And it was pretty much financed by his father Fred. And
if you read between the lines, it kind of implies against all
logic that Fred Trump was a multibillionaire that could just
throw tons of money at his son.
Yeah, I mean, listen, I've seen the documentary active measures
of he's apparently, he's a puppet of Vladimir Putin. And
now he may, you know, he just siphoned all the money off from
his dad illegally. And, you know, I've heard all of these
different things. But if you really look closely at the
article, whatever happened there between him and his dad, it was
clearly inside of the seam of the tax code. And I took
taxation and law school, there's a very famous decision. The name
of the justice is justice Lerner hand, you could Google the
decision. It's about what you're allowed to do and not allowed to
do as it relates to the tax code. And, and justice hand
basically says you can be aggressive, as long as you're
inside the seam of the code. And so I think that they're
stretching things a little bit in that story. I don't know if
the President got a million dollars from his father to start
his business or $413 million to start his business. But it
doesn't really matter to the average American. I think that's
the point the average American views him as a very successful
guy. He was successful in real estate, he had a rise and fall,
which I described in the book, and then he rose again. So
there's a level of force and determination in his
personality. He went on to become a television star. I
don't think anybody can take that away from him. And then
from the process of being a television star, he switched
over to American politics, and in 17 short months, became the
American president. So, you know, I'd like to think that
given the high profile nature of the President's life over the
last 40 years, if he was really doing something aggressively
nefarious as what is being described, he's such a high
profile target for a DEA that wants to be the mayor or the
governor they want a god at after him with a vengeance. So I
put about the same level of weight on that story as most
Americans do, which is you know, moving on
I think that's probably what the reaction was. But it was
followed up then by in an anonymous op ed which was rare
Britain by some suppose it insider in the White House. Do
you think that was an insider in the White House you think what
do you what's your take on that and who you think might be so
you
know, I got an 11 day PhD and Washington scum beggary Okay, so
I can tell you that there's no way a senior guy would have
written that. And so what they would have used as a cut out,
they would have gotten one of the junior guys to write that
and put it in there. And so what that is, is that's a, that's a
cockroach survival note. And so the the chef is in the kitchen,
he's going to be here for four to eight years. But my fellow
cockroaches I'm going to survive him and so will you. And when I
returned back to cockroach land after serving this guy, I want
you not to treat me poorly. And that and that's basically what
that was. That was a to me, it was the most dishonest and most
disloyal thing. You're serving the elected President of the
United States, the leader of the free world, you may not like
him. But if you don't like him, and you don't like his policies,
then leave. I just think that that was the most dishonest,
most disingenuous thing. And again, a another example of why
the American people actually hate the swamp and they hate
every aspect of the swamp.
What's the New York Times grudge against Trump?
He has been right and they have been wrong. That's the that's
the grudge. They they had a circular two years ago. They had
a seven or eight page circular on the case against Donald
Trump. And it wasn't just an editorial. It was like an eight
page circular that they inserted into the newspaper. And, and
then they had to apologize to him after the election. They had
to apologize to default. You follow what I'm saying? So yeah,
I mean, I mean, this was a form of the apology.
While the the apology was we were to bellicose with our
rhetoric, we were too negative. I mean, they've ramped it up
subsequent to that, but I'm just saying that the New York Times
is they don't like the President's policies. They don't
like the President's personality. And they don't like
the fact that President is winning. And they've been on the
losing side of the argument for the last 36 months. So so
they're, they're gonna continue to be in that camp. And he's
done a masterful job of getting these left leaning media
establishments to hate his guts. He has figured out by throwing
Molotov cocktails or puffery or exaggerating statements, they're
going to act like hall monitors, fact checking him and the whole,
you know, Charlie Brown teacher about what blah, blah, you know,
that's what they're doing on their television shows. And he's
laughing. He's laughing. He knows that he's got them totally
distracted. And as John Stewart said, the other day, that he has
figured out that he may be a narcissist, but they're as
narcissistic as him. And he's made it about them, and they
love talking about them on their shows. And so that was a
masterful thing that he's done so far, masterful.
You liked stones movie Wall Street. I did mention this in
the book I did. But you didn't mention the Wolf of Wall Street.
I would like to know I mean, Wall Street is the Gordon Gekko
movie for anyone doesn't remember it with greed is good.
And all those sorts of cliches. and The Wolf of Wall Street, of
course, was more about the excesses. What did you what? And
you're in the business. So what do you think about comparing
those two movies? What do you think of the Wolf of Wall
Street?
Well, the reason I liked the Wall Street movie is that I was
a young man, I was in my mid 20s, when that movie came out. I
was 23 or 24. And I was aspiring to go to Wall Street. And so
even though it was a cautionary tale about greed and excess, I
thought it was well presented and Michael Douglas won the
Academy Award for it. And in the second movie, Oliver Stone came
to me and gave me the opportunity to play myself in
the movie. And so there's pictures of me in my office here
with Josh Brolin and, and Michael Douglas with my kids.
And so I learned a lot about the artistic interpretation of Wall
Street. And I My first book was called good by Gordon Gekko, how
to find your fortune without losing your soul. And basically,
it was a it was titled that way to talk about the fact that
greed actually isn't good. And you have to take a long term
approach to things in the world of financial services. And so I
am fond of that movie for those sentimental reasons. Um, I was
asked to be in The Wolf of Wall Street, I have a good
relationship with Leo DiCaprio and Bo Deedle, who played one of
the roles in the movie, and I elected not to be in that movie
because that movie was not about an interpretation. There was a
fact set related to this guy, Jordan Belfort, where he
literally did everything that you're not supposed to do as a
money manager. He fleeced the people. He sold them things that
were are literally dreams, pipe dreams. And he did many, many
illegal things. And so, for me, I'm not saying there isn't a
darker side to Wall Street, there clearly is, I believe
there's a darker side to journalism, there's a dark,
darker side to medicine, unfortunately, we're human
beings and darkness lives in a lot of different sectors of the
economy. But I was not a supporter of that movie. Because
one of the problems with a movie like that, because it is
factual. It's it's back to that cliche that one bad apple could
spoil the whole basket of apples. And so, to me, you know,
I've had, it's my 30th year on Wall Street, but for my brief
interregnum at the White House. And by and large, we've tried to
do a good job. The reason why we're running $10 billion, is we
have a good track record. And we're honest people. So that's
the reason why I compare and contrast the two things.
And the early days, you were a supporter of Obama in some way,
because you raised money for him after you met him at the
University Club.
Yep. Why had I had gone to school with him? I can't
honestly say we're close friends in school or anything like that.
But I had a lot of friends of mine at Harvard Law School, that
were friends with him, I was less involved with politics. At
that time, I was a right of center person. And I'm
reasonably far left on social issues. I believe people should
be able to express I don't think life liberty and the pursuit of
happiness is only for straight people. I think that everyone
should have that opportunity. And so when he presented
himself, I said, Okay, that seems like you guys like him?
You know him personally. And I said to myself, rhetorically,
how many times in my life, am I going to know somebody that's
actually running for president and could possibly be the
president? Little did I know that that would that wouldn't be
the first time you know, and ended up working in the White
House for a short period. But but you know, when he started
becoming more progressively left driven on the economy, and more
progressively left driven on business, I sort of returned to
my Republican roots. But I do like the president. I like
President Obama had a lot of respect for him in his life.
He's the Jackie Robinson of American politics. And we may
not agree on everything related to the business side of things
or the economy, but I am happy with the social progress that
was created during his administration.
You use the phrase, he slammed dunked you in the book, maybe
twice? Yeah. And it's it was it even in context, I can't figure
out what you're talking about.
Well, I was on a, I was on a television show with him in
2010. It was at the CNBC Town Hall, public life at the Newseum
down the block on Pennsylvania Avenue. And he came in there and
they were interviewing him. And I was an audience participant. I
asked him a question. I said, Mr. President, nice to see you
again. We reacquainted ourselves. And then I said, When
are you going to stop whacking Wall Street with a pin Yatta
stick? So the first thing is if you're an Italian American,
don't use the word wack on live TV in front of the President. I
think that was mistake number one. And then mistake number
two, is you know, he was adamant that Wall Street was a big cause
of the financial crisis. And so he came back at me very hard.
And of course, he's the president. I'm not I didn't get
a chance to rebut them. And so he metaphorically slam dunk me
on that live television show. So much so that Jon Stewart that
night on Comedy Central lampoon me to the great delight of my
teenage children at that time. What do you say? John Stuart,
basically,
what did
Obama's oh what did Obama say? Obama said that. I was wrong
about him hitting Wall Street with a Vinyasa stick and that
Wall Street was the real cause of the problem of the crisis.
And that the greed on Wall Street did overcome wisdom. And
it was a pretty heavy, healthy invective at our industry, not
necessarily me personally. But he came back very hard at that,
at that question, and in hindsight, I was trying to lob
in a softball. I thought he was gonna say, well, there's
definitely a nexus between Wall Street and, and Main Street, and
we have to keep that harmony, but he was not hearing it. You
know, that was playing on you. Yeah, exactly. Right. And by the
way, that was a month or so before the 2010 midterms. And so
being a politician, he was like a dog with a bone and he was he
was going at that thing very hard.
You do this thing called a salt salt Conference, which is a
gathering of I had fun hedge fund folk. Yep. You book Bill
Clinton once
I did, I booked President Clinton. I've had John Brennan.
I've had Joe, Vice President Joe Biden. I've had James Carville.
I've had Donald Brazil I but I've of course I've had Governor
Romney, George Walker Bush, Tony Blair. I really tried to make
the salt conference and all party, all ideological
experience. I'm not looking to make it a conservative
conference event or anything like that. I may have certain
conservative ideas, but I also brought the Human Rights
Campaign guys who were working on the legalization of gay
marriage in the US. And, you know, I'm a believer in that.
So, you know, I might, I mean, I guess the one of the main
reasons I could never run for office, the fact that, you know,
thank God, it would like to keep my family together and stay
married. But another reason is, I don't fit ideologically in
either one of these parties. You know, I do
ask about the Clinton thing, because I was wondering if you
recall what his speaking fee was.
At that time, it was a lot less than it is now. I think he's two
and a quarter now. He was probably one and a quarter 150
Back then remember, that's almost 10 years ago, though.
That's 1,500,000? No,
I'm sorry. 150? Us 1000? Probably he's probably 225,000.
Today. Those are probably That's not. That's not me breaking any
rules of confidentiality.
Those are? Well, you know, this I've been I've been represented
by a number of speakers bureaus. And I know what the what the
rules are. And if you want to book bill, if you want to find
out Bill Clinton speaking fee, create some sort of a function
and then call one of them and ask them what it cost to get him
and you'll get that number, I think
that says, I think that's his going rate right around now. I'd
rather he did a very good job. He was articulate and
thoughtful. And he answered questions. And, again, you know,
you may not agree with everything that he has to say,
and there may be elements of what he had to say, related to
the economic stewardship of the 1990s under his watch. But you
know, at the end of the day, I think it's a valuable voice. You
know, I would I would as an example, I don't know if he
would ever be available for this, but I would be interested
in booking President Obama. No problem. And of course, at some
point, President Trump,
I'm, I'm thinking he's going to be available. Okay.
Well, I'll have to see I'm sure. I'm sure. It'll be a lot of
dough, though. That'll be another consideration for me.
Can you explain the Trump Cruz relationship?
Um, no, I actually can't. I mean, I don't think anybody can,
but I can I can offer up some some things about life and the
political expediency I think that the scarring and the
battering in terms of the way these guys went out each other
in 2016, has been subordinated to political survivorship and
the President's need to have somebody that's right, leaning
in a red state and keep the red state red. And so they've
subordinated some of their personal invective towards each
other. And it goes back to that age old adage that politics
makes strange bedfellows so you could read what they've said
about each other. And you would say, Okay, those guys are
probably not gonna be talking to each other anytime soon. But yet
they had a rally, where there were 10s of 1000s of people at
the rally in Houston. So it's gonna be close. But I do think
Ted, Senator Cruz wins in Texas. If you look at the latest poll,
do you have a publicist?
I have a PR person for skybridge. I had a publicist
coming out of the White House, because I thought I needed
somebody to bounce some ideas off of in terms of how I was
going to recover from that. Media excoriation, but that was
more of like a crisis management person than anything else.
You mentioned you have a restaurant. Yep. What is it?
What's the call? Yeah,
so I have a restaurant on 44th street called The Hunt and Fish
Club. If you know anything about the mafia, I named it after John
Gotti social club. He used to call it the Bergen County Hunt
and Fish Club. So I figured if they're going to stereotype me
in our civilization, why not? Why not put it went up, put that
on my restaurant, so it's a great steak, steak and seafood
place. It's located in the theater district on West 44th
Street, 125 West 44th Street, it's got great ratings, very
strong clientele. It's a beautiful setting. And pursuant
to the free market and market based economics, I made the chef
and owner of the place because he's that good.
Always a good idea. Hey, man. Can I get I'm gonna name a bunch
of people. And if you can just give me a quick response because
we're getting near the end here. Yeah, sure. Just tell me what
you think of. Kind of I think we already know what you think of
Priebus and Bannon. Yeah. Kellyanne Conway.
nice person, very loyal to the President. Great messenger. I
think she clearly helped him win the presidency. 52% of the white
women voters voted for President Trump. And I think you could
really point to her as being one of the reasons why.
I used to follow Kellyanne Conway before she was Kellyanne
Conway in the 90s. And she was one of the sharpest widths on on
talk, talk shows no,
no question. Very impressive, very impressive person,
a Jared Kushner,
super smart. He's shifted into a down gear to be a little bit
less high profile, because of the flak that he was taking from
John Kelly. But I think he was very instrumental in the the
renegotiation of NAFTA. And I think he's helping the president
on the China trade issue as well. And I mean, he's obviously
a very loyal, very smart guy.
John Kelly,
you know, I applaud his service the United States for two years
in the Marine Corps. He also lost his child who is a Gold
Star family member. And so I applaud him for his record in
the military. But he's just in my opinion, as I expressed in my
book, he's just not well suited his management style. And the
militancy of his management style is not well suited for a
civilian organization, and I think he's hurt the morale
inside the White House.
In the book, you say he hates Trump?
Oh, there's no question about that. I mean, I don't, I don't
think anybody believes that he likes him. He's made it clear to
people outside the doors of the West Wing. So it's not like I'm
saying something that isn't true. Ivanka, ridiculously
smart, gifted person, great public speaker, obviously, she's
got some elegance and class, to her style and personality. And I
think she's invaluable to the President. I think she's helped
him in so many different ways. Mnuchin, extremely competent,
very cautious guy has done a good job of pushing through the
tax reform and other regulatory reform. And extraordinarily
bright and again, he's an unsung hero of the Trump campaign,
because he was the fundraising chair and he did a great job on
the fundraising side,
General Flynn,
an American hero, the key got treated badly. I'll just echo
what President Trump said. I don't know all of the facts of
the case. But I think he's, he's a guy like a great deal. I hold
them a very high personal regard, and I hope him and his
family are okay.
The writer Michael Wolf,
is a total liar and fabricator and just this honest
representation, so he would be like the Jordan Belfort of
journalism, you know, he would be like the guy. If you're an
honest journalists, you'd look at you're looking at a guy like
him and shake your head. very dishonest guy,
Sean Hannity.
He's one of my best friends. You know, we grew up very similarly
on Long Island, obviously endorsed the front cover of my
book and the back cover for that matter. And he's a fighter shout
out. He's a Street Fighter. And so when I wake up in the
morning, say, Man, I gotta get to work because I know Sean's
work in three times harder than me. Mueller don't know him. He's
got an impeccable reputation and I do believe that whatever
process is going on there, I think he will treat people
fairly that's just based on reputation. Don't know him
personally. Call me just, you know, again, don't know him
personally, but seems very sanctimonious. He's another guy,
I would love to debate because I read through his book, I can't
tell you honestly read the entire thing. But there's a lot
of sanctimony there and there's a lot of righteousness. And no
one is that infallible. So, you know, when you look through my
book, you'll see that I'm citing a lot of my mistakes and
missteps in life and things I wish I could have done better.
And so I just think there's a lot of sanctimony and, and Comey
spoke and, you know, it's that it's just too disingenuous for
me,
George papadopolis. I
don't know him. He probably got set up. That's what it feels
like. And I think the court system knew that which is why
they gave him such a lenient sentence.
Don, Jr.
Very good guy. super loyal to his dad down to earth. He's
great campaigner. He's got a great message out there. I
campaigned with Dawn in the month of September, throughout
Pennsylvania. And Dan has a very high quality guy. Eric, I don't
know Eric as well. We've generally interacted briefly,
sometimes on the campaign and sometimes I enjoyed television
appearances. But it comes at he comes across incredibly
articulate, and Hope Hicks will hope and I were very post on the
campaign worked super hard on the campaign. And she's
incredibly loyal to the family and to the President. She's got
a great new job now. And I don't think anyone's ever said
anything bad about Hope Hicks, super, super person.
amorosa you know,
amorosa bizarrely even though she said I cried like a little
girl when I got fired, which I'll let, I'll let your
listeners determine whether or not I actually cried like a
little girl when I got fired. I like her, you know. So I mean,
my attitude is amorosa came from nowhere. And I don't think he
should be firing a person like amorosa she worked for the
president for 14 years on and off by sticking her in the
Situation Room and leaving her there for two hours. I don't
think that's the right way to fire somebody like her so. So
I'm not surprised that the current vitriol that's going on
in the Trump Morosa relationship. I predict a a
comeback I Do I Do I predict that they'll figure it out horse
Scott Walker, very solid guys got a tough race and Wisconsin
did a good job for the state. Always found Scott to be one of
the more honest politicians. You know, he was often he was
friends with previous and when I called Scott explained to him
what previous was doing to me he was scratching his head. He
said, This is just nonsensical. It wasn't good long term
strategy on previous his part.
Dr. Phil,
great guy. I went on there with my wife, my wife and I were on
the verge of divorce. Some of it was personal, wasn't just
political as it's been reported. But we love each other trying to
patch it up. And Dr. Phil and Tony Robbins are friends of
mine. And I have to tell you, they were instrumental helped me
keep my family together. So I love those two guys.
Schumer.
I've always had a good relationship with Senator
Schumer and fully disclose to you that I have been one of his
donors. He's always been good to me. And he had a funny line. He
may not even remember this, but he said, We thought you were so
good at your press conference. We were looking for ways to kill
you. He said but the Republicans killed you before we could get
to you. I thought that was very funny.
Very, it's cute. Yeah, Pelosi.
So believe it or not, I've actually interacted with her her
her daughter is an award winning documentarian. And so I don't
believe in her political views. But I do have a respect for her
belief in her political views. And she's always been gracious
to me.
How about Duncan Hunter Do you run into him ever?
I haven't so I don't really I can't really comment on his from
the paper but
I don't really know in your book you do mention some people I've
never heard of. Yeah guy and I think I didn't hear of Hope
Hicks right away either. Because no one has ever done a good flow
chart of White House right. It'd be nice if someone did just a
hint it for anyone Rona Graff and Johnny McEntee Who are these
people?
So Rana graph has been the President's assistant. She
stayed at Trump Tower in the Trump Organization, but for
probably 2530 years. She has been his personal secretary,
enormously talented person and a great person and Johnny McEntee
was the President's body guide throughout the campaign. And
he's now working on the re election. But he's a terrific
guy, young kid, very, very smart. And was there from the
inception.
What about John Brennan?
So John, I know he's spoken at our salt conference. You know, I
have a lot of respect for John. I know the President's sword
them and John sword, the president, but I will remind
your listeners that he's been at a pivot point in all of the
security related to anti terrorism since 911. And he's
made a great contribution to our society, and kept countless
innocent American citizens safe. And I wished that him in the
President would dial back the rhetoric towards each other.
What do you think is CNN
you know, they were rough on me. I write about it in the book
where they were, they are still rough. They made up a story. We
still rough on me. But you know, they have a right to do that. I
believe in the First Amendment. I have no problem going over
there. It's like being a Yankee and Fenway Park, but I have no
problem going over there and articulating my view or my
opinion, but yeah, I mean, they're there. They're not the
President's favorite news organization, that's for sure.
MSNBC, probably a little fairer
than CMB CNN, believe it or not, I think that their coverage from
like, say nine o'clock to seven is probably more fair, more
straight up news, less editorial. isation even though
it is slanted to the left. Obviously, the evening stuff is
very left leaning. But listen, I mean, that's the business model.
Now there's left leaning and right leaning outlets.
What did you think of the Mitt Romney? The moment when he comes
out and trashes Trump with one of their really just excoriated
commentaries, calling him a criminal, or less,
I thought that was a mistake I suggested to MIT's body guy and
Chief of Staff Spencer Swick the day that he was making that
speech to please not make that speech. But I think that was a
mistake. And I think that that's MIT will go on to win the Senate
race in Utah. And hopefully he'll find a way to bridge that
gap. And work closely with the President. There are two great
guys. But man, they've got very different personalities. I think
that's me overstating the obvious.
What do you think you said that you follow a couple of these
economic cycles? Do you think that right now the way the
markets acting, I also do a stock market thing I used to
write for the Forbes and Barron's and a number of other
published publications, I'm into cycles? Yep. Do you think that
the market right now is at a top, and it's kind of splashing
around up there, or it's creating a kind of a high bottom
line? I think it's more of a high bottom just because of what
I know of the economic stimulus and the furthering of that, and
how that's going to affect earnings. I do think the Fed
will be forced to slow down their rate rises. As these
interest sensitive areas of the economy start to slow down the
Fed, you'll start hearing from the Fed that they're moving back
to data dependency, as opposed to just quarterly or monthly
rate rises. And so I meant to say month, quarterly rate rises
and so, so to me, I think we're at an interregnum, in a bull
market. I think the bull thesis is still intact.
After all these years, yeah,
yeah, exactly. It's 11 lavena. You know, remember, these things
don't die of old age, they die of deteriorating fundamentals.
And so we are cheating history. Your listeners probably know
this, but it's worth repeating. The American economy goes
through a recession once every eight or so years. And so we're
cheating history. Right now. We're in the 11th and a half
year of an expansion. But I still think we have some room to
go because of the way the tax stimulus is affecting our GDP.
It's been a real pleasure to be on with you, though. Thank you.
Good questioner.
Well, I want to thank you for being on this interview. We do
these every so often, and we put them together. And as part of
the, our show process, we take a day off, and we put these
interviews on and that's, I read your book, I thought it was a
book I can easily recommend, I think people especially
travelers, you could read, probably read the book on a
round trip flight.
That's what I was hoping for exactly what I tried to create.
I tried to create a airport book where you're going to your
destination and returning home, you'll finish it. And hopefully
I've left you with some honest insight into what I saw at the
White House, but also during the campaign.
Yeah, it was very, very entertaining and had a lot of
good chunks of irony and other screwy things in there that the
gossips out there would love this book. I think you're gonna
have a good time reading it. I want to thank you for being on
and we'll talk again, maybe sometime I'm in New York and buy
a cup of coffee after.
Exactly come in and we'll lament the market together. God bless.
Okay, great to see you soon. Thanks.
I'm going to show my school by donating to no agenda. Imagine
all the people who could do that. Oh, yeah, that'd be fine.
Well, yeah, people
just want to say nice. They would that was different. I
haven't heard the mooch that way. I liked that a lot. That
was good. Tom Starkweather I was just gonna ask you who set up
the who set it up for you because that was good. produce
the show.
Oh, good. And this is when I had on my screen my my Skype screen
I had the picture of of Al Gore with blood all over his face
holding
like the Friday the 13th Yeah.
mooch looks at it and he starts to have a second thoughts about
doing the interview. And I remember
start where there Tom I think he had to he tried to go a day
beforehand and they were giving him a hassle like security
clearances and all kinds of weird stuff. It wasn't easy.
Yeah. Well thanks to Tom for that and thanks to Anthony. That
was good I liked that. That was interesting.
So we don't have any people to thank because on one of these
interview shows we don't we keyword carrying over all the
donations to the next Thursday show
right which will of course will also have a wrap up of the
festivities which are taking place as we speak a
wedding and then maybe some interviews at the wedding. God
Wait a minute, are you bringing your Are you bringing as
weddings today?
Are you bringing your zoom recording
bringing the Zoom material
out God, well make sure you talk to Tiffany and Willow though.
Yes, I will definitely Oh yes. The big one, then well, zoom, a
zoom. So not a Zune. Now. It's
a Zoom, zoom. So
so we want to remind people that this show is also requires
support. So if you can help us to go to node, you will get a
newsletter. But some people don't get that. And divorce
iq.org/n. A, and you have all the links there for donating.
Yeah. And you can see how the value network works. We had Tom
Starkweather, who we only knew from end of show mixes, all of a
sudden Tom is like available and producing, producing an entire
interview segment with us in New York. And I think he gets a kick
out of it as well. And he has an actual executive producer.
Credit or like a big one, in fact, as the executive producer,
because you know, we have nothing has a producer. Yes. And
the producer, exactly. The right, exec and producer.
He's the showrunner for the
show runner. Oh, yeah, we should add that to his, to his credit
show runner show run?
Yes. Move on to Cliff Stoll, who I interviewed in person at at
his house. Very interesting place in Oakland. And here we
go. I've known cliff on and off for a long time. And he used to
do a What's weird
about it is I used to know you for a long time. Still do know.
Yeah, I think so. Usually, if one person he knows another one
for a long time, the other one, it's transitory similar. Cliff
used to do these editorial spots where he would, more or less
just say get off the computer and go outside and get some
fresh air. And that was his message. And it was his message
every time he gave a big editorial. And I think it's
still your message.
My I don't have any messages anymore. That is the medium the
message No, I'm my feeling is enjoyment of life. Having
something to do having something worthwhile in your mind in
worthwhile around you. You can get in a lot of places.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of places that you can spin your
wheels so and and avoid doing cool things, or do what feels
really cool and neat, but ends up at the end of it all feeling
well. I'm not sure I did anything. My that's my day.
Yeah, yeah.
It's everybody's day. Now you had you still give speeches?
Occasionally, I saw I saw an old TED talk of yours once. I did a
TED talk. Yeah. was silly. Well, you're jumping around on the
stage and new
ideas. Don't give them a standing target. Yeah, no,
this is a comedians do this. They walk back and forth on the
stage for the reason that it keeps the keeps people from
falling asleep.
Asleep. Sure. But to me, it's also what did my father say? If
they're going to throw tomatoes at you, make sure they usually
miss. But but when I went to the this TED talk, I thought, Oh,
I'll have an hour to talk.
So that is only 18 minutes. That's
right. I get there. And the guy says, Oh, you've got 18 minutes?
I say, yeah. But I've outlined an hour's talk. He says, Well
compress it down. So instead of just that easy, Oh, yeah. So I
just said, Oh, I'll keep the same things. I'll just talk
really fast, which is pretty easy. Because one of the very
few things I learned in grad school was talk fast, and get
out of there before they can understand what you're not
saying.
That's a good, it's, it's I never learned that, but I can
understand it. Now, let's go over some of the things that
some of your ideals, one of them that I wanted to talk about. And
the the one at the top of the list is something we always
talked about a little while ago, which is computers in schools,
throw them out? Well, I'm not sure whether you should throw
the school's out, or the computers out, throw one of them
out.
Explain yourself, because people said, well, you know, the
computers are what the kids are gonna have to work with. When
they get to business and they get into real life, they're
gonna have to learn how to use these computers worse. And of
course, they're all i All I see him using him for his to play
games and message, but I would assume that you had a good
course and in how to do Google Search might not be a business
or a computer,
or is it that the nature of computing especially
commercialized computing is that it becomes easier and easier to
get things done? 15 years ago, oh, we have to teach computing
in schools so that kids won't be left behind. No. Kids learn
computing really easy. The hard stuff to learn. How do you put
together a legible and understandable sentence? How do
you write a? How do you write a page of prose that is reasonable
to get you who say, to put on your resume? Or to get you into
college? Or? Or get to get through your classes next week?
My concern is not can kids use computers? My concern is Can
kids use their minds? It's we all know computer skills go out
of date real fast.
Oh, yeah, no try go back and use a Windows 3.1 system and see how
far you get. Yeah, the
language that you learn today, Python, Haskell, oh, in 10
years, it'll be obsolete, there'll be something new for
you to learn. And the same is true of various applications.
Every application is evolving. Few of them are static. No, I,
there are some things that it's really useful to know. And I
think these can and should be taught in school, for example,
how to read for meaning, how to write a concise, expository
statement, how to write prose, how to write how to put together
a mathematical argument how to how logic works.
That that students, very few students graduate from college
today. Having read Shakespeare, well, which is more important to
figure out how Microsoft formats words or Shakespeare formats
words, I don't know, which is more important. But I'm
astonished that the question is, isn't even brought up. And well,
lots of people spend lots of times, lots of time playing
games. Nope, nothing wrong with it. But we have so much time in
our life, that can be distributed in lots of different
ways. And some of the cool ways that you can spend your time is
Oh, I gotta I gotta watch a movie tonight, I gotta visit. So
I've got to talk to somebody, I've got to play a game I've got
to cook. We have a finite amount of time, every day, and of
course in our life, and in the time that we spend spinning
around in an artificial world is time that we're not learning,
challenging life skills, and practicing them. Well, obvious
example. For the past 2025 years, there have been surveys
on campus of shyness, psychologist at Stanford, does
an annual survey, asking people how shy Are you? Great at
normalize, it turns out that there's a great deal of shyness.
It's increasing year after year. Well, nothing implicitly wrong
with this. But why are people more shy? Why are people
spending less time talking to one another? They're more afraid
of talking to one another? Well, it's because through their life,
it's easier and far more welcoming to interact with a
silicon screen than it is to interact with a real human
being. It's hard to say, oh, yeah, I'll just come over here
and say hi, and hack around with you and fool around. It's much
easier to say, Oh, I'll type on this. Tap away on this tablet.
There's less investment in local community today, where 50 100
years ago was commonplace that people would volunteer free time
at churches, red cross L Elks clubs, things like this just
volunteering time at the hospital. Today, they do not
there's much you know, there's several books, one of which is
called Bowling Alone. That points out that bowling alleys
are finding lots more people bowling, but fewer people
joining leagues. It seems that people don't have time to
coordinate with others to see them face to face. But they
still want to sharpen their their bowling skills. Our larger
community loses out when we when I when you don't volunteer and
put hours in meeting people hacking around after shul after
church after fooling around after school. There's a sense of
hey, I'm really busy. I don't have time for that. Well, I'm
really busy but still
how busy See our people big if you go outside and I've made of
a collection of photos of people who are just like this all the
time looking at their screen wherever they go on this go to a
platform at a railway station, they're all there like this and
it's actually very picturesque pictures because of the the
comedic nature of it to see a whole bunch of people lined up
not I mean, a train could come through with a big, you know,
big buzzsaw and kill them all and no one would notice it.
Or, or, or they could put a chainsaw and just chop off their
hands holding they're holding their cell phones. It's it's a
fascinating problem. And I'm my thoughts are I'd rather be
talking to somebody than collecting messages and reading
email.
You believe there's an addictive nature to this addictive these
to this thing? I mean, and what causes what's the model of
addiction? Essentially, every
one is hyper social. I
mean, you just went on about this antisocial behavior, but at
the same time, it don't you think it's kind of hyper social,
it'd be all plugged into 35? We don't really know.
Okay. When somebody, friends me on Facebook, are they my friend?
You have a Facebook account? No, I don't know what to do when
somebody friends, yes, I blah, blah, friend, blah, blah, blah,
are they my friend is the definition is my definition of
friend, someone who's connected to me by way of a social medium.
My idea of a friend is, hey, I've got an inner circle of a
half dozen people that if I'm feeling down, I can call them
and talk. If I'm hungry, I can say hey, let's go out for coffee
and lunch. People that I can wander over to their house with
little or no warning, and just talk and in cut catch up on
things. My definition of friend isn't someone who sends messages
to me, by way of a of a widespread application. There
are many, many people who have 1000s of friends on Facebook,
probably many people have 10s of 1000s of friends. But if one of
these people stopped some on the street, do they say Oh, how's
your daughter? You know what, you know? Is your dad still
sick? Are you you know, can they converse and have a heart to
heart conversation? Why don't you Why don't we just putting it
another way
go? Why don't we? Well, we back off from that concept and say to
ourselves, we've redefined friendship. And so a brand is
now defined as theirs. So there may be two two categories. You
have the Facebook friend, and you have a real friend. And do
people realize that the Facebook friends not as a foe friend or
do they do are they seriously thinking these are real friends?
I don't
know I have no experience in social media. I'm the wrong
person to speak of it. I wish that there were more analysis of
it by those who are professional insists sociologists and I have
been rejected by leaders forever. I think that
sociologists are very happy to work academically and they and
here's a here's something that's screaming out calling Analyze
Me. Why is it that people say oh, I've got 2000 friends on
Facebook. I got it yet they're going around sort of unhappy. I
don't know. I I'm a physicist. I'm a computer jock. I'm a
mathematician, I'm sure but
you don't find any any attraction of social media.
You're not attracted to any aspect of it, like a Twitter
account where you can make snide comments to the public at large
to wish to make snide comments No. Snyder's
Yeah. She's the only valuable thing you could do on these
two you reminded me of of what is it? It's crackers to slip
through riser. The drop ski in snide, hot damn, I remembered
that. Right? Is
that an E. Cummings? Notes
from Mad Magazine in the 1960s? Yes, crackers to slip Arizer the
drop skin snide means it's foolish to bribe a policeman
with counterfeit money. snideness counterfeit money. So
what I'm getting at is more. What? email, Twitter, online
communications is fantastic for staying on top of things. But I
want to get to the bottom of things. What I want to do is
understand things more deeply. In that means Not being
interrupt driven, not being pushed around by every notice
that comes to me rather researching and learning and
working in a few small areas, and becoming as as direct as
possible in a small area. In not try to keep up with 1000 online
friends, more I'm, I'm I'm and this is not a critique of people
who spend a huge amount of time online or on Facebook, it's more
what I find works for me. In my heart, I want to be closer to my
wife, I want to be closer to my kids. I want to be closer to my
community, my neighborhood, we're going to be making plum
jam sharing it with the people next door. Well, I can't share
my plum jam with people who are on social media. Sorry, there's
only about three dozen jars of it in the first color. People
live next door helped me pick the plugins. These it's not like
I'm saying this is a wrong thing to point your life at. It's more
I'm saying for me. And I suspect for many though not all others.
There's something lost if I spend a lot of time poking
around at a computer poking around at a screen. Rather than
screwing around with friends with relatives and and having
depth with a few people rather than shallowness with a large
number of people who have I just laugh at me and say I'm all
wrong. It's all right. Nobody
says that. Because nobody knows what's right. A. And I've never
heard anybody defend social media, they just, they just did
find it as a fun thing to do it for as a sigh. I don't know, I
have to be honest, if I don't have a Facebook account either.
And so I always baffled by the some of the Facebook because it
just kind of stirs you up. And it doesn't really accomplish any
10 years.
10 years ago, I ended up on something called LinkedIn. A day
doesn't go by that I don't get notices saying XYZ wants to
connect to on LinkedIn. Oh, yeah, LinkedIn. And I'm, I just
have no idea what to do with these things. People from across
the globe want to connect with me as if I have something to say
or something useful to help them with? I don't
I think you may be exaggerating, but LinkedIn is really what's
purposes. It's to create kind of phone networks of people who
maybe could offer your work.
I can offer nobody any work. So
you don't need to be on LinkedIn.
Yeah, it's a I just have concerns that will popping the
stack. You're asking about schools. My feeling is the
things that we should get out of education are not how to use
computers. That's pretty easy. In fact, it's hard to find a
teenager who doesn't know how to use Facebook who doesn't know
how to efficiently search on Google. It's hard to find a
teenager who's bad at texting. They exist, I'm sure but they're
probably pretty rare. But find a teenager who can stand up in
front of 30 students and recite a poem, play the clarinet.
Explain how explain the importance of Pericles, the
Peloponnesian War, how his speech laid the groundwork for
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, you know, that's something that
I'd hope at least some of the better, better kids in high
school would be able to do and would be a little bit nervous
about what would be capable of doing yet if we consider that
the point of of schooling is to teach you a trade while Okay,
learn C plus plus here, here's how you use pointers and here's
how
Yeah, it just they don't do that. By the way. They don't
teach kids how to use know how to code in C Plus Plus they
don't do this I don't know to be at well, you know, I don't know
as much as I should. But I'll but from what I can tell this,
the computers are considered ancillary to like a history
course. So you can teach A little bit, have you read a book
and then do a lot of research online?
Suppose for a minute, suppose suppose for a minute, I was an
evil, horrible, terrible human being that might be true. And my
idea was, I want to wipe out curiosity. I want to get rid of
curiosity. Well, one way to do that would be to say, I'm going
to lock people up and not let them near any information, I'm
going to keep the books away from them, keep the internet
away from them. Make sure that they don't have access to
information. Well, let get glint, get rid of their
curiosity. Hello, they'll be more curious than ever. What's
out there? Please turn it around, though. If I want to get
rid of a kid's curiosity, what if I gave this kid a machine?
That answered every question that kid came up with? correctly
with, you know, in a nice, a nice high res screen, right?
doable, doable, and even had some movies and videos to show
kid kid says, you know, how do flowers grow? Or what? Why is
the sky blue? And it comes up with a perfect answer. That
would be a wonderful way to eliminate curiosity, because you
never experience the joy of doing an experiment and figuring
it out for yourself. All you have to do is ask that question
online and get a wonderful, easy answer right back to you. If you
want to eliminate curiosity, provide people with facile
immediate answers. Well, what does any of the search engines
Take your pick? What do they do? They provide us with facile
easy, quick answers to essentially any question we ask.
Our effective the does this have on students? Well, seems to me
that it's a wonderful way to throw a wet blanket on our
indigenous curiosity that each of us is born with. Why should
I? Why should I explore the world and ask questions? If I
want to know what what life is like in Seung Hye China? I'll
just ask the computer. No.
You can be on a train anywhere in the world. And you see the
same kids that you're talking about. Instead of looking out
the window at the crazy sites, yes. You seen this?
The instead of instead of looking around saying, Wow, I'm
looking at some nasturtiums flowers. Oh, what are they
doing? Like? Do they close up? Or stay open? Oh, no, I'm gonna
look at a screen and stay up on social media or I'll be asking
questions or trying to copy and paste together some some report.
My point is not that, oh, computers are harmful. Rather,
my point is that we should be asking ourselves, what is it
about an interconnected world that gives us the heebie
jeebies. And one of my points has, when I taught to I taught
eighth grade Buck 19 years ago, in teaching eighth graders,
there lots of kids who were fantastic online and texting.
And it was surprisingly difficult to get them to just do
ordinary curious stuff. Stuff that is great. No, no, they were
perfectly happy not to be doing athletics. But sitting on the
side texting. They were it was sad to me.
It's right. It's always been pathetic to me, but sad is a
good way of putting it. I'm not.
What I'm not saying is these kids are turning out all wrong.
Rather, I'm asking. Could it be that our love affair with a high
tech information system may be leading our kids and adults into
rather dreary, unhappy lives? I don't know. I hope not. But
might be to ask.
I think the I don't know what I asked. I think they are. I think
the unhappy life is ahead. So you see too much evidence of
your kids being suicidal for why as a 17 year olds go to bed, of
course. But we're also drugging these kids. There's a
great deal of okay, nobody has it either. Izzy, between age
three at age 31, might say nobody has it easy at any age.
It's real tough to be a teenager. I don't know whether
teenage suicides are remaining the same going up or going down.
It saddens me deeply to hear of any suicide at any age, because
people have so much to contribute to this very mundane,
dreary world. And the only way the world becomes more
interesting and lively or more wonderful place is by people
doing things and making it a better place. And to the person
who say, ah, what am I have to live for? I've screwed up or
there's, things are boring, I can look around and say, there's
so much to learn. There's so many cool things going on here.
There's so much to do with your hands with your heart with your
head. And yet some people let go. Can I find it very sad. And
I'm, my concern is goes to something you said before a few
minutes ago about the word snide. It's easy to be snide.
It's easy to be sarcastic, but that is something to do. Oh, of
course, it's something to do. Be critical. be mean? Yeah, it's
easy to say mean hurtful things to a classmate. To to it's even
easier to say a mean hurtful thing on a posting on some. Yes,
some board and course.
And people specialize in
it. Oh, yeah. People work hard to troll around the whole
institutions in St. Petersburg, where they train people to do
this. And at the same time, I feel, you know, the community I
want to be a part of. It has some sarcasm in it. Yeah.
There's, there's people who scarf, but on the whole, it's
largely self supportive. And friendship is oftentimes built
upon mutual interests and mutual support, rather than, Oh, I'm
more snide than you are I'm biking make them flashy or piece
of sarcasm than you can not do that. Or I'm talking myself into
a corner I'm sure
that people will have in the corner. Yeah.
But I'm, I'm still
by think you're right. Generally speaking, it's everything you
say is, is accurate. It's like, there is the situation as it now
exists is terrible. And then they want to move on to things.
And then when the other issues crop up, based on technology,
you end up with people advocating, for example, voting
over the internet, which seems to me to be just fraught with
insanity.
Yeah, I mean, there's, there's lots of problems with online
voting, not least of which is identity. But also is the
implicit lack of temporal thought of, oh, I'm going to
actually think about this for a long time, rather than I'm not
clicking on a checkbox. How do you feel about this? Check here?
Click here. Oops. 10 minutes later, maybe not. There's a
certain seriousness that happens when you actually vote walk to a
voting booth and that you don't that I don't get at least a log
into website says, What's your opinion? I XYZ Oh, survey monkey
wants to know. How long do you cut your shoelaces?
How often are you online? On a daily basis, do you have a
computer in the house? Yeah, I have one downstairs, there's
one downstairs. I
would you get on a do you get stuck on it like most people,
you get to go down the rabbit hole.
I have a little business making and selling glassware. Yes,
Klein bumps. And I'm in communications with
mathematicians who like to send and receive email. I answer a
bunch of email several, probably a couple hours a day of outside
of that. Well, what did I do this morning I unpacked a bunch
of glassware. I cut some tiles with a diamond saw. I putting
together a kitchen counter using using some kind of Penrose tiles
that so I'm in last night. I was up till 10 o'clock with my wife.
We're both reading books from seven till 10. So I try to keep
my computing in My screen time is 11 in the morning till over
lunch till two in the afternoon to three. And let's try to
minimize it a day. To me. A successful day is a day that I
don't get in a car and I don't see a screen. That to me is a
completely successful date.
Now, if you have you ever been since you do a go, you're not
computer illiterate by any means. Do you? Is there anything
online? Everything's online now?
Or have you seen no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I
planted some tomato plants two weeks ago. Throughout online?
No. Okay. Well, you're making some plum chairs. I'm
just saying it's not online. Now. Right? Look at
look at this. This is this is glass. Yeah.
And it's not for sale online. It's,
we're here that's not unlike what I meant.
What I meant by that on the computer, specifically, not in
the world in general. Most things are online. And have you
ever been surprised by anything you've seen in the last few
years where you go, Oh, my God, this is really great. I didn't
think I'd ever seen anything like this before. Here it is.
I've seen an enormous number of things online that I've opened
my eyes say, Wow, this is impressive. That this is
available to me online is it's close to magic at the same time,
for all the flash for all the HTML five for all the glitz and
astonishing websites. I don't think I've ever seen a website
or really anything online that I call caring, kind, supportive,
deeply touching.
Maybe it's not possible. The things
that move me most deeply for, like the difference between
seeing a child grow up in your home and become an adult? Well,
there are billions of photos of people growing up and becoming
an adult online through nothing like the experience of justice
vs Herot, of course. And there's millions of websites that tell
you how to be apparent to the foot. But inevitably, you'll
learn yourself. And the advice that you get online is worth
every penny that you pay for it. It's a Yeah, I've seen plenty
online that have that's opened my eyes and what I don't go
around saying is wow. If only science people or math people
had this available to them 200 years ago, think of what they
could have done? Nah. When I see what people like Gauss, what
Einstein what Maxwell Newton did. They were phenomenally
constrained, with us with incredibly primitive tools. Yet,
with those primitive tools, they were forced to be creative.
Today we have extremely high quality digital tools. And as a
result, we needn't be creative. What do I mean by that? Oh, you
will give me a minute to think this one out. When I was a kid
in art class. Class was sort of divided into two those people
who could draw a tree that looked right. And those who like
me couldn't draw a tree. I couldn't draw a tree and look at
it stared and didn't look like a tree. And the art teacher said a
way of discarding us. We were the creative ones. And it took a
while for me to realize that creativity is the inability to
copy those who are able to look at a picture and make a copy of
that. They got along well in this art class. Those of us who
just couldn't copy, no matter how we tried, we couldn't copy
we're at the severe disadvantage. We were the ones
who are called Creative. You don't think that was just
disparaging? Of course it was disparaged. Well, certainly, you
should have been there. Through my life. I've realized that
creativity, that institutions whether they're schools,
businesses or institutions don't value creativity, they value the
ability to get along and fit in properly. You know, the square
peg in the square hole. Creativity is rarely valued. I
want somebody to drop drop toy. It looks over there. Just copy
that. Well, the one thing that you find across the board in
computing is cost Copy and Paste. It's an it's built into
every operating system at the most fundamental levels, copy
and paste. Well, to me that says, it's the nature of deep
down computing, that it encourages working within a
system that's built by fits into OSX, or Linux or Unix, or, or,
or Microsoft operating system, yet, making photocopies or
duplicating words or duplicating images, sort of tells me this
isn't a very creative process. If it's creativity that I want.
I think I'd rather see somebody use their hands or get away from
the screen. Maybe I'm all wrong about this. There's lots of
creative people who are online, no doubt, there's lots of
creative efforts. But oftentimes, it's in the Tools
push us towards oh, I'll just copy it out of here, slightly
rewrite it and paste it over there. But looks like my work.
Good enough. I wish someone smarter than me would explore.
What do we mean by creativity in a digital domain? Not just Oh,
that's a really creative thing that I see online, but rather,
what I mean, like you, I've sat through so many horrible
PowerPoint talks.
I've given them Yeah, I mean,
just what a fantastic way to poison a talk use PowerPoint, so
refreshing. so wonderful to hear somebody do a talk, entirely
improv, you know, without, you know, without using a projector
without using a computer without being organized in advance, just
saying, Hey, I'm going to talk about perfume and
what you've done. No, of course, we all have. Well,
that's the nature of doing public speech to come up with
something on the fly. I don't want to be pre programmed.
That's right, and bring a bunch of questions for you. If you
haven't noticed. Well, that's
that's the nature of you.
I do. I do. But yes, I can do it. I could actually have
questions down. I go through them. But let me throw a wet
blanket on you.
Pull that if you're gonna throw what blank I get gets more.
Okay. Yeah, so I am. I know for me doing a talk. It's
improvisational performance.
I like, well, actually, when we do our podcast is all it's
improv. It's Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But let's talk about
evidence. It's really wet blanket. Because I want to hear
the reason I'm going to do the wet blanket is because I want to
hear your analysis of it. Sure. Early on, in the days when you
were more of a prognosticator pundit, you made the prediction
that ecommerce is never going to go anywhere. And it's just a big
joke. Me? Well, of course, I
was wrong. You're wrong.
But can you analyze why you were wrong?
I was invited to do a talk on it. Ecommerce actually is not.
That was a couple couple friends of mine. I was sitting around
talking at the time what you could get online or essentially,
magazine subscriptions. I thought, No way. It's my
interest. That's ironic,
of course.
Too, today, of course, magazine subscriptions, what's a
magazine? What's a rather, what I felt at the time was the
richness of going to a store retail shop, couldn't be matched
by things online still can't. I felt that that was far more
important than it actually turned out to be. People are
perfectly happy saying, I'll order this, I'll click on this
and it'll be delivered to me and I'll have the thing without the
experience of going to the store. For me, personally, I
felt then and unfortunately, I still do feel now that
purchasing and shopping should be a extension of one's persona,
and shouldn't simply be picking things from a menu in the sense
that my feeling is if shopping means acquisition, and acquiring
stuff. Buying something by simply clicking on I want that I
want this I want this other thing, click on it, pay for it
and get the stuff to me that it feels shallow compared to Oh,
getting something in supporting the small business or the
bookstore that provides it Yeah. And I realize now that this
mental image that I had then may very well have applied to me,
but it sure didn't apply to very many other people. There are
lots of people for whom, oh, I don't want to go to a grocery
store, I'd rather have it delivered. I don't want to meet
the person. Well, this
brings you back to your earlier discussion about the antisocial
behavior of people who are online all the time. Yeah, no,
I, I have. I have discussed with people, that fact that they
don't like to go to the store at the grocery store to buy stuff,
they'd rather have it delivered. I don't understand the mechanism
because I like buying stuff online. I use Amazon
extensively. But I love going to the grocery store to see what's
fresh to see what I'm going to cook it based on what's
available, as opposed to just randomly picking something out
of a recipe book and then having it delivered to me. So I don't I
don't know why both can't exist in the same sphere
need to, but they died. Okay, okay, well, way off. Off topic.
I live right next to Berkeley. As you know, I'm in Oakland,
about 10 blocks from here, five blocks from here. 10 blocks from
here is a little tiny grocery store, truly a mom and pop
grocery store called Star market. It's been there since
the 1920s. During the Depression, the owner of the
store gave up credit to local neighbors so they could get
through the Depression old fashioned, very old fashioned,
that man's grand son still runs the same grocery store. And the
prices are probably 20% higher than the nearby Safeway that's
two blocks away, and Safeway sells the same stuff cheaper.
Well, my wife and I go to the star grocery store, we have for
30 years, we will always and we know the owner, we know the
checkout clerks, we know who's who we get together. There's
friends of ours that we talk with there. We can. It's a
meeting hall, in the way that the safe way isn't in a safe way
instead of meaningful. Having goods delivered to my doorstep
certainly is not. You don't even see the person who drops the
stuff off. If I want a rich community, or I know the people
around me, and I'm invested in them, and they're invested in
me, necessarily, I'm going to have to go out meet them
someplace at times. I did not understand that. 2030 years ago,
that this really was a really rather silly, rare thing to ask
of people. People can you hey, I'd rather save, save money. And
especially I'd rather have it delivered to my door rather than
go out and walk along and Island. Yeah, pick things. Off
grocery start off grocery shopping. Yeah, I was wrong. But
boy, was I wrong. And
you can get I was. The wrongness of it is always is always a
variable. And what I mean by that is that if if it wasn't for
Amazon, and the genius of Jeff Bezos insane genius, you don't
know that it wouldn't have caught on. I mean, the
difference is structures were there for it to go either with
sure just alive knows, because I've been writing about
technologies efficiency.
Economic efficiency is a powerful, powerful engine. And
online. Online ordering and personal delivery is damned
efficient, and more power to it turns. At the same time. I am
rather I guess I live in a quaint world. And I'm never
looking around.
So quaint. What are you looking across?
Well, what I see often will also some old wallpaper that seems to
have been from the 1920s the original wallpaper. Yes, yeah.
And it's yellowed, but it's quite attractive. I kind of like
wallpaper in general
people. Yeah, it's a bit Oh, that's the house when it was.
Yeah. What was built in this guy right there. He's a member of
the wobblies, the International Workers of the World.
Oh, yeah. Remember that group? Yeah. Yeah. And
bout, okay. Okay. Don't broadcast
shop though. There's gonna be going out for sure. seems silly.
Oh, that's a
story to tell you. So about 3035 years ago. 1984. So, I'm in
Berkeley and I'm working up at callate the the physics
apartment and I'm bicycle by this house and house sign in the
House says this is for sale this house Oh great your house for
sale by owner so I walk in there's 100 people crowded in
house costs costs a fortune. I walk out and say No way. I'm not
gonna buy a house like this. Don't think anything of it. Next
day bicycle buy there's a guy sitting on his porch looking
over papers and I yell out to the guy. Hey, Mister, did you
sell your house? Guy yields back? Yeah, sold. Take it off my
bike, go walk up to him start talking. says hey, I sold three
offers. say well, what do you do? He says, Oh, I'm a laborer.
Larry, say you're a labor lawyer. Do you know about the I
WW your actual workers world? He says boy do I? I'm reading a
book about it. Really? I say Tell him you must know songs of
Mr. Block. He says I sure do. And he starts going, Oh, Mr.
Block, you were born by mistake. You take the cake. You make the
egg. So I joined and I take the next verse. He takes this verse.
We're seeing all these old labor organizing songs from the 1910s
to each other. Yeah. And it's going back and forth. Padley and
we're talking about the International Workers a world
there, keep them who they love. And half an hour hour goes by I
said, Geez, I gotta get to Cali. I'm a postdoc. I gotta get in.
The guy says to me, you can't go yet. You got to buy my house. I
think Come on. No, seriously. He says, No, I want you to buy this
house. I say first you got three offers. Second. I can't afford
it. I'm just a postdoc. They don't pay me nothing. Third, I
got an apartment downtown Oakland cheap. He says, The
House likes you. Everybody else who wants to buy it as an
investor? I say okay, I'll buy it. pay you whatever. anybody
else's thesis, shakes my hand said sold $160,000. I say, Yeah,
but look, I ain't got that kind of bread. He says, I don't care.
I like you. True story.
So what was the year that distant 1883 84?
The guy says, so we go around this guy's mortgage broker and
he laughs at me. A postdoc in physics at Lawrence Berkeley
Labs. They say yeah, they pay me 20,000 22,000 a year. He says,
You're gonna have to make 35 36,000 to afford that kind of
mortgage. Please. Well, that's my boss. My boss guy named Louie
Alvarez. He thought Nobel Prize winner famous. Yeah. So you
know, Louis? Yeah, I went to Cal Yes. So I go to Louis and say
hey, you know, I want to buy a house. Gotta make 35,000 Didn't
crumble you. You're never a copy ad or son on air. I want 35 top
dog for a skirt or up okay, for next six months here. Get this
paper site. So give me a reason as a research associate for 35
grand. Like get this thing sign. Show it to the mortgage brokers
mortgage Pro. It looks at CES. You work for Louie Louie
Alvarez. Wow. He says, oh, yeah, you got enough money for now he
steps things we dive bicycle over to a bank. Look. Three
months later, I own this house. I've never had it inspected. I
don't even know how many bedrooms there are in it. I
don't know other than being ripped off. All I know, is the
guy who's selling it and his wife are labor lawyers. And
they're really friendly. And that and so I move in. And the
guy was right. The house liked me. And I liked the house. And
so that's what you see here. That's the original of the house
very little embroidery in that story.
Well, these things happen. Yep. That is actually pretty funny
story. And it's
it's sort of if I had done it the right way talking to real
estate
in the house that like Yeah.
And who is saying this is the way to do things, it's
it but it works. It's sometimes worked since you were up at that
do one of the guys up there one of the just as an aside one of
the researchers physicists up at the at the lab, and I don't
can't remember which one it is but he's got this theory that he
brings out once in a while that the earth is on a collision
course every something like $70 million is in molar Yep, rich
mode. It goes through the asteroids and it gets kills off
every nemesis. Yeah, Rich. Well,
he's he sharp He in fact, he was one of Louis students. Riches
still up there. I'm sure I haven't seen him in three or
four years but he's, you
love to sit down, chat with him.
Just get a hold just about that.
He did theory it makes nothing but sense and it seems to be You
can't it's almost it's unprovable. But but the wipeouts
the
Yeah, yeah, the historic record going back millions of years
seemed to indicate
rich Mahler of nemesis. In fact, Rich was one of the guys who
figured out after Louis and Walter Alvarez figured that it
was a giant meteor that hit the Earth wiped out the dinosaurs.
Rich was one of the people figured out what happened. Oh,
enough, crud was put in the air. Right that we had a climate
change for a few 100 years. That's what killed the
dinosaurs. Yeah, like they were hit by
the vegetation. Yep. These guys needed big plants. Yeah, yeah.
Yep. And, and suddenly, things turned cold because sunlight
wasn't getting down. So it was working with people like that
was such a joy. It was up. I'd say Don't get me started. But
yeah, that's how I.
Yeah, yeah. Well, that group is all around you. Yeah, I was
like, as a matter of what we're doing account, I was a history
student with whom? Well, candidate stamp was
just read his book on the Civil War, not which one right over
there the one of the causes of the Civil War,
they've always got that seven or 10 essays. Just read a very,
very good book.
Yeah, this guy right here. Just just reread it two nights ago.
Yeah. Oh, I read this book. I mean, the guy's smart. just
collecting, you know, he has a Marxist revisionist view of why
was there a civil war? He has? A little
bit. I think the whole department somewhat like that.
But
it really, yeah, he was my counselor.
Every time I tell people that they go, what, who. And the
thing was, he was a very funny guy, because he, he's a rubber
stamp counselor for one thing, and he looked over what you're
doing. And he's very casual, very, he's very funny. I never
took I don't believe I took a course from him. I took a course
from May and went to Jordan and some of the other hot shots. But
it was always funny to have him as, as the guy who was because
it's very impressive. This
reflects back to what I was trying to say earlier, that I'm
no good at saying it. I'm, I believe that the ability to read
in and review history is damned important. And allows us maybe
not to learn from the stakes, but at least to better interpret
what's going on in current events. And one of the things
that I'm saddened about in schools today is that they don't
know anything. Well, they're not history is considered, oh, we'll
teach you the following facts rather than just Yeah, rather
than, Oh, there's five ways to interpret what happened here.
This book is the best 50 ways to interpret the Civil War. Yeah,
it's a superb example of why Why saying, Oh, the Civil War was
caused by slavery. Oh, a lot of people say that. A lot of people
say no, it was caused by economic forces. Others Oh, no,
it was caused by birth. But it was inevitable given the Marxist
model. I'm like, Ken, I love computing. I love programming. I
love technology. But I also like, appreciate and admire
critical thought. And I don't see enough of that being
promoted. It's a reason why I think history especially needs
not just to be taught, but needs to be appreciated. That's the
hard part.
Saying you have to find enthusiastic teachers that can
teach it to people who know that they will like it that you have
to people don't know, you know, it's like the good marketing is
what they always said about Steve Jobs. He says he doesn't
study the market. He tries to guess what people don't know
they're going to like, because if you ask somebody, would you
what would you buy? This is brand new? And you'd say, I
don't know. I don't think so. This is weird. Yeah. But if you
could show someone you know, you get them to as well try it. You
get them to start using things and get them to go on it and
start thinking differently then all of a sudden, it becomes a
huge thing that would have never been predicted there. If you
remember the Xerox machine with a first copying machines, they
studied it. They said nobody wants these machines because
nobody wants to make copies. They've said the same thing with
the with database managed nobody wants these things because
Kodak in the digital image, sort of sympathetic
story.
Rochester invented it. Yeah, yeah. And more than invented it.
They promoted it within a very small community. thinking, Oh,
if we keep the secret over here, we'll be able to keep this cash
cow running Host. Yeah, but it's a,
but people don't appreciate it history because they're not kind
of convinced. Or they're not. There's the enthusiasm. It's
different. This time, it'll be different. We're not gonna make
the same mistake, you know, Cassandra keeps walking out
saying, Oh, no, no, no, no bad things are gonna happen and go
away. Cassandra, you bother me. We're gonna we'll do it the
right way this time?
Well, it's never done the right way. That's the problem ever.
Of course, so. So can stamp. Just absolutely cool.
Yeah. He was the he was he is the most brilliant of the
analysts of the Civil War when it comes to causation. Everybody
else discusses various aspects, but causation is still up in the
air and there's been like it, I think you're right. They are not
just slavery. So none of these, then there's some wacky things
in this particular book. There's one or two of these things that
are just like what I can't remember offhand. But I do
remember
enormous and this is why 40 years old to get his
book. And his book we're talking about is the causes of the Civil
War. Edited by Canada stamp is a bunch of essays, including
Lincoln's and Jefferson Davis, Frederick Douglass, and a whole
bunch of crazy off the wall stuff.
And, and there, and the interviewer studied under this
guy can stamp which impresses the hell out of me. Wow. That's
perfectly for you. Similar, similar feelings of
Yeah, well, you're working with Louie Alvarez for guy. I mean,
those other guys. There's a lot of famous people Seaborg
but it was all your work with these people and what it was
like midnight, I was writing code. midnight or so. Louie
walks in the door and said, What are you working on kid and I'm
saying, Well, I'm work writing computer code. What's it for?
It's 1130 midnight or so? Um, you know, writing was he that
Gruffalo. He was gruff, gruff, to those who he felt needed
gruffness. And if you didn't know you, well, you got
gruffness from him. You tried to be a son of a bitch, but he
wasn't very good son of bitches turned out to be not a nice guy.
But I said, Well, I'm working on reading code. What's that code?
What's that line? Therefore? I say, Well, I'm working on off
axes, hyperbolic mirrors for the Keck telescope. Yeah, but what's
that line for? Well, I'm trying to figure out what the Fourier
transform is of an off axis hyperboloid. That's a hexagon.
He says, Well, what's that line for? I say, well, that
particular line, you're pointing to figures out, you know, what's
the sine side of the angle of incidence coming out to the
mirror and blah, blah, blah. Don't explain it. Half an hour
later. He says, Okay, keep going. Okay. See you tomorrow.
It was like, it was like, I had to explain town. He needed to
understand down at the grain of sand level. Yeah. And if I could
do that, if I could actually explain it that level. He was he
felt I was okay. And I was able to, so I was okay in his mind.
And he so he didn't put up with bullshitters
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, you got nowhere few. Every Friday at his
house, there was a Friday meeting at his house of physics
jocks. And it was scary stuff. You were you got in front of two
dozen physicists, all of whom were up for blood, you better be
able to defend yourself. And I just caught a computer hacker
who is breaking into our Unix boxes, right? This was your
this is your cuckoos. Yeah, the book what was the full title?
cuckoo's egg stalking the wily hackers?
You invented forensic computing?
Yeah, yeah, it was the first. Yeah. So anyway, so I go to
Lewis house to do a talk. And I start talking about this. And it
was the first time that I ever had to explain what it means to
break into a computer. I had to explain what is the ARPANET?
What is the Internet Protocol, what's TCP? And I had to explain
it from the register stack, all the way up to the highest level
what you know, how does the email work and how do you? What
year was this? This was 1986. And doing this in front of
Louis, I mean, then the rest of the gang It was scary stuff.
Because not because you don't know it. It's because you're in
front of you're in front of the real examination group. And I
passed, you know, people said are flying colors, no problem at
all. You. You showed the old man your stuff you You did okay. And
that was enough for me. That's
that I became a best selling book, there was a
became best selling book, it gave me the license to do stupid
things. And I've done plenty of stupid things with that
licensing, mathematical modeling, but the I'm, it's time
for other people to be doing cool things. I'm sort of
seeing anybody out there doing cool things. Oh, yeah, I
met some people doing 3d printing of, of completely
bizarre mathematical shapes. And I'm saying, Wow, real neat to
see people taking weird fractal images, poking them into into
plastic. I'm seeing people do. Of course, some cool things that
I've bumped into this. A guy that I know who's working on the
collision frequency in planetary rings, and modeling it in a
computer in a most creative way, using Markov chain, stuff like
this. Just stuff that I know that, Oh, I see somebody doing
it so much better than the way I would do it. And I'm saying,
Wow, very pleasant. Very nice. And then there's lots and lots
of pedestrian stuff, just like when we're in at Berkeley.
There's people who waste their time saying, Oh, I got to level
up to level 17 in this big deal. So that which is where we
started talking to begin with. It's well, I guess I'm not
cynical thing. Oh, get off my grass. I did all this great
stuff. Nobody will ever know if people. I'm thoroughly impressed
with some of the stuff that I see happening in computer
security. I regularly follow? Don't you kept up? I've kept up
and I'm, I'm really impressed with how forensics people, you
know, people unwind digital attacks, and confined signatures
of just who what group? Was it that did this? Yeah. How are
they hiding? How are they pushing things around? And it
impresses the hell out of me. I'm impressed with companies
that are organized to let let their computer jocks just watch
to see what the traffic is. And see what's weird at unwind it
really impressed? I'm impressed with. Frankly, I'm impressed
with the security systems that are growing up in places in our
modern operating systems. Security, itself is being pushed
sort of further and further to the left in the development
charts. It used to be Oh, tell me a problem. And we'll patch
it. But build insecurity bake it into an operating system? Not
now. That's not for us. We got to we got to make meet this
deadline. Important. Yeah, security will become important.
If so you tell us you got a problem? Tell we'll fix it.
Increasingly, it's OH, security is a spec at the beginning. And
and you don't start writing code without having first baked it in
at the start very impressed. If
anything is specific, anything specific that you did, that
catches your eye?
I'm seeing by kick, can I I'm seeing a major company in
Silicon Valley. Essentially, freeze releases, that freeze
releases, but make semi major releases that do nothing but
more deeply addressed security problems. Which to me is
astonishing. In other words, a major release coming out that
does look adds almost no features, but just makes the
whole thing more solid. I'm delighted I'm impressed. I'm
seeing the I'm seeing less and less reliance on passwords, more
double factor authentication. I'm seeing good things in that
direction. enormous popularity of capture the flag and even
lock picking amongst computer security people just take
colspan I just just have big smiles when I see this happening
there's we have
a number of listeners our podcasts who are technical to
say the least but a lot of penetration tech testers pen
testing. I hear the stories from them. There's fascinating it is
a point where some of them actually have to break into the
facility. Yeah. Oh yeah. Tutor and puts up man and see what
happens a smile
to me that once upon a time there once upon a time, the
stuff didn't exist. And now it's, it's in one sense again,
to to people to others. It's, oh, I'm actually going to break
in and leave leave a little poop for somebody and see if they
stumble across it. Still others I know a friend of mine that a
computer security get together showed me how to repin all the
locks in my house. And it's not though known how to do it before
we lose that oh, you show me I'll do master and sub master
insurance loop now. Mastering sub mastering on my league lock
on my front door. Big deal. You know, somebody from your podcast
will probably come by and pick it now. It's, it's, I'm tickled
to see this happening. It's like yeah. Oh,
do you do any work in the field anymore?
No. I speak occasionally, of in a most embarrassing way for me
to talk about computer security. It's like inviting. It's like,
inviting Dwight Eisenhower to talk about politics. I know I've
I'm old hat. Old school. I felt long ago that the network the
ARPANET, which evolved into the internet really was a an
academic playground for fooling around and having a sending
email, you didn't have to put a stamp on a letter, you could
send email it would get across the country in the same day,
sometimes within the next few minutes. And right now. The
academic playground soon became commercialized, became a
playground for people to develop cool things, and for a few
people to make bad things happen. The development of
malware leaves me not very happy. The use of computer
computing as an intermediary between peace and war leaves me
very cold. I'm very sad at what I see happening. Using going
back to the stuck Stuxnet days where computers were weaponized
as a to promote political points of view. And now that what
happened in the 2016 elections leaves me really cold that theft
of information online, is used to cause to bend elections.
It's, I find it very upsetting. But then he I'm, it's not. This
ain't my world anymore. I sure.
Well, that's not going to end.
Yeah, it's going to get worse. Yeah, it's gonna,
it's gonna get worse with the
one minor thing that I'm observing. And I hope that the
people who are listening to your podcast who are really tuned
into computer security, I hope they'll say, Yeah, you know, you
have a good point there. Maybe I have a bad point here. I think
that OSS, and widely deployed applications are becoming more
secure. There are more people working to detect problems and
fix them than there ever has been before. That gives me hope.
It means that it's, I hope, in the long run, going to be more
difficult to steal credentials to to pose as somebody else. The
spread of false information, I think will always be a
challenge. But the theft and manipulation of information, I
hope will become increasingly difficult, maybe of all wrong.
Well, how about this, you know, you do have an issue with the
people who are the computer users that are ignorant. And for
example, you talked about the stolen data that Podesta data
was stolen on a phishing attack. Some click on this boom, this
whole thing's done. Is that that that seems to be the be the
bottleneck here the
ignorance of surely yet at the same time, two factor
authentication, quality crypto being used. That requires Oh Oh,
I have to use facial recognition and a fingerprint to to only get
into one email. I hope that with time fishing will become less
and less effective. Just as people as people become better
at something I was going to mention that I've been thinking
about, and you probably can say this better than I can. I've
been thinking that what happened to the fax machine? Remember the
fax machine or the
doctor still use them so to pharmacies?
What killed the fax? Well, my theory is, we don't have any
faxes, not because they didn't work. Well, they were great. Not
because they were expensive. They were cheap. What killed the
fax was the exploitation of the fax machine by fraudsters in
places like fax.com. That just bombarded people's fax machines
with crane the paper? Yep, yep, drained the paper and used until
finally people said, I don't need the stupid fax. And people
stopped using it just because it was such an annoyance. My claim
is, that's what's going to happen to voice telephony that
people are slowly refusing to answer their telephones.
Because, hey, there's so much scam. There's so much just Robo
calling us I believe. And I think what we're going to see
happen in the long run is people simply say, I'm not going to use
the phone. If if I don't recognize the person calling me.
I'm not going to answer it. And what will happen will be the
telephony, the telephony system that has taken you know, what,
150 years 130 years to develop? I think it will slowly with her
in the entire reason being that it's so cheap and easy to scam
to scam people. Yeah. And through I don't know if I hope
I'm wrong, or I hope I'm right. But I think that with time
people become immunized to it and say, Hey, I'm gonna answer
the phone. And and as things get exploited, people develop
immunological responses.
Yeah, stop using right. And a lot of the millennials to this
day don't use the phone hardly ever. They just text everyday
texted?
Sure. And the people who are most exploited are old people,
because they're accustomed to trusting.
Oh, well, they're more susceptible to getting scammed.
Yeah. Yeah, often? Sure. Well, on that note, I think we've got
enough material here. I think I'm gonna stop
cursing. Yeah. And I'll show you something cool down here.
And that was Cliff Stoll in Oakland. I got a lot out of that
interview. I haven't seen clip for a while. And I thought it
was fascinating to chat with him like that. And the cool thing
about him is he's one of those guys who could just talk. Yeah,
so if you're like to interview people, you don't want to get
yourself too involved, you know, with your own opinions that
people don't want to hear us all the time every year. That's
true. That's true. That's true. So why did they want to hear
more of me so I Cliff loves to talk so as you could tell, it
was quite entertaining in every which way.
I loved it. Thank you for doing that. John. It was extra extra
curricular activity. For the wedding for the show for
humanity. Thank gets me out of the house. And it's true. I
everybody we'll be back next Thursday with a regular episode
and deconstruction of the best podcast in the universe. And
remember us at the vortech.org/na We'll have a
double donations, people to think on the next show. Coming
to you from Austin, Texas in the morning, everybody. I'm Adam
curry,
and from on the road. I'm John C. Dvorak. We return
on Thursday right here I no agenda until then, as always, I
do smoke photos and such.
Oppo boruch.org/and, now everyone can share a secret