Podcast appearances and mentions of Alex Berger

We are holding our 6th annual Hot Mic Mock Draft today   Guests that will be drafting:   Drew Trafton, Forum Content Producer   Dillon Vogt, WDAY Meteorologist   Scott Engen, WDAY First News Anchor   Alex Berger, WDAY Producer

Send us a textToni Coppers is met zijn reeksen over politiecommissaris Liese Meerhout en privédetective Alex Berger al jarenlang onze meest geliefde misdaadauteur. In de warme weemoed van Oostende komt hij graag thuis, én vindt hij ook een geliefd decor voor zijn boeken.In deze aflevering van ‘Oostende Bonsoir' vertelt hij onder meer hoe hij als kind de eindigheid van dit leven al diep in de ogen heeft gekeken, en hoe dat hem een leven lang als mens en als schrijver is blijven begeleiden.

In this episode of "F-Stop Collaborate and Listen," host Matt Payne chats with travel blogger, writer, and photographer Alex Berger. Berger discusses his journey in travel blogging, emphasizing the importance of storytelling and creating content that resonates emotionally with audiences. He shares insights from his experience creating YouTube videos about Danish culture and repurposing them into a successful podcast format. The conversation delves into the challenges of managing creative projects alongside other life responsibilities, balancing perfection with authenticity, and the joys and struggles of maintaining a generalist approach in photography. Berger also talks about his product Mist Defender, highlighting the lessons learned from its development and launch. They reflect on how their varied experiences enhance their photography practices and discuss the importance of finding new passions to sustain creative enthusiasm. Resources Mentioned on the Podcast: Jeppe Michael Jensen podcast episode Support the podcast on Patreon Join Matt's Podcast Mailing List Alex's book, Practical Curiosity Alex's lens cloth invention - Mist Defender Alex Blog, Virtual Wayfarer Alex's YouTube videos on Danish Culture Alex's recommended photographers: Anders Nordsted, Charly van den Braack, Frank Otto Pedersen

Pour écouter l'épisode en entier tapez "#445 - Alex Berger - Producteur - Le Bureau des Légendes : la série française qui a conquis le monde" sur votre plateforme d'écoute.

Producteur franco-américain, Alex Berger a produit des centaines de programmes en tous genres : films, séries, clips, pubs…Son objectif : s'inspirer des modèles américains, et rendre la production audiovisuelle efficace grâce au rôle du 'showrunner' encore méconnu en France, et en plaçant l'écriture au centre du processus créatif.En 2008, il s'associe avec le réalisateur Eric Rochant pour fonder TOP-The Originals Productions.Ensemble, ils créent Le Bureau des Légendes, l'une des plus belles réussites françaises et la plus grosse vente des séries non-anglaises sur iTunes. C'est aujourd'hui encore la première franchise du groupe Canal+.La série a atteint les 120 millions de CA, comment ? En s'exportant et en multipliant les produits dérivés par la force de la propriété intellectuelle.Le “cœur concept” se base sur un agent du département le plus secret de la DGSE qui tombe amoureux d'une femme sous sa faute identité.Le réalisme des épisodes va jusqu'à séduire le directeur de la CIA.Dans cet épisode, Alex décortique les clés qui ont fait le succès de cette série et de ses autres projets audiovisuels :Comment faire un lancement de série réussi : le PMDC (Promo, Marketing, Digital, Comm)Les secrets pour être aussi efficaces que les AméricainsL'histoire folle du Bureau des légendes avec la DGSE et l'importance du “cœur concept”Comment s'exporter aux US sans perdre son IP (propriété intellectuelle)La méthode pour utiliser la puissance du storytelling et de la technologieComment trouver des financementsTIMELINE:00:00:00 : Le producteur français le plus américain00:18:23 : Ne plus jamais rater ses lancements avec le PMDC : promo, marketing, digital et comm00:31:52 : Pourquoi les américains sont plus efficaces que nous00:44:17 : Partir de zéro : la méthode pour réussir en 202500:54:35 : Comment trouver les financements pour la production : titrisation et “Other people's money”01:12:15 : Vendre la série à l'étranger et faire un raz-de-marée01:22:13 : L'histoire folle du Bureau des légendes avec la DGSE01:40:29 : Quand une série prophétise la réalité (attentats et difficulté du métier d'espion)01:56:17 : Utiliser la puissance du storytelling et de la technologie02:13:19 : L'enjeu de la propriété intellectuelle et l'exportation du concept aux US (The Agency)02:36:30 : La Maison : la réalité derrière les grandes familles du luxe02:50:25 : "You are what you watch" : l'influence de la fictionLes anciens épisodes de GDIY mentionnés :#400 - Arthur - Pirate de la radio, bouffon de la télé, roi du PAF#422 - Inoxtag - Vidéaste - Casser YouTube et rebattre les cartes de l'audiovisuel#233 - Pierre-Antoine Capton - Mediawan - Culot, audace et ambition pour mettre l'audiovisuel à ses pieds#429 - Nicolas Dessaigne - Y Combinator - Le berceau des futurs géants de la tech#437 - James Dyson - Dyson - “Failure is more exciting than success”#320 - Michael Horvath - Strava - You are what you do every dayNous avons parlé de :Le Bureau des légendesTOP - The Originals GroupL'organisation de la production chez TOPFederation StudioLa Maison (série)Éric Rochand (réalisateur)Les Patriotes (film)Black Doves (série)The Agency (serie)Décret SMADThe West Wing : à la Maison-Blanche (série)Les recommandations de lecture : Power PatateTechnopolitiqueYou Are What You WatchLes MouettesVous pouvez contacter Alex sur Linkedin, Instagram, et Facebook.La musique du générique vous plaît ? C'est à Morgan Prudhomme que je la dois ! Contactez-le sur : https://studio-module.com. Vous souhaitez sponsoriser Génération Do It Yourself ou nous proposer un partenariat ? Contactez mon label Orso Media via ce formulaire.

En Côte d'Ivoire, le pouvoir ne semble pas vouloir donner suite à la demande de l'opposition d'ouvrir un dialogue inclusif sur ce qu'elle appelle les « défaillances » du système électoral. Par ailleurs, le pouvoir laisse aux députés d'opposition la responsabilité de déposer ou non une proposition de loi en faveur de l'amnistie des opposants qui, à l'heure actuelle, ne peuvent pas être candidats à la présidentielle d'octobre 2025. Amadou Coulibaly est ministre de la Communication et porte-parole du gouvernement ivoirien. Il répond aux questions de Christophe Boisbouvier. Et tout d'abord, il s'exprime sur la deuxième édition du SICA, le Salon international du contenu audiovisuel, qui s'ouvre demain, mardi 5 novembre, à Abidjan. RFI : En Afrique, l'industrie audiovisuelle est dominée par deux pays anglophones : le Nigeria et l'Afrique du Sud. Quelle est votre ambition ? Amadou Coulibaly : Notre ambition est de positionner la Côte d'Ivoire, pays francophone, justement, dans cette industrie audiovisuelle et cinématographique. Nous pensons que nous en avons les moyens. Nous avons les infrastructures qu'il faut, nous avons les hommes qu'il faut, nous avons le matériel qu'il faut. Il est important, donc, que la Côte d'Ivoire qui, pendant longtemps, a été la plaque tournante de la musique au niveau du continent, puisse occuper également cette place au niveau du cinéma et de l'audiovisuel. Telle est notre ambition donc.Alors concrètement, le SICA, le salon qui s'ouvre mardi 5 novembre va réunir quelque 250 professionnels.Oui.Donnez-nous un peu leur profil ? Qu'est-ce que vous attendez d'eux ? Ce salon va réunir aussi bien des producteurs, des réalisateurs que des acteurs et des acheteurs. Nous voulons constituer un marché qui va permettre justement de pouvoir échanger des marchandises entre réalisateurs, producteurs et différents acheteurs. Nous avons pratiquement une trentaine de chaînes de télé qui seront présentes, aussi bien des chaînes africaines que des chaînes européennes ou américaines, comme Natyf TV du Canada et TV5 Monde, Canal+. On aura aussi des speakers. Nous aurons Alex Berger, producteur de la série à succès Le bureau des légendes. Nous aurons aussi un producteur turc qui vient, Isef, qui va nous partager son expérience. Donc, c'est quasiment le monde qui se retrouve. Nous avons plus d'une vingtaine de nationalités qui seront présentes donc en Côte d'Ivoire à l'occasion de ce SICA. Au Nigeria, le succès de Nollywood, c'est-à-dire du cinéma local, doit beaucoup aux aides de l'État. Par exemple, en 2010, le président Goodluck Jonathan a lancé un fonds d'intervention de quelque 200 millions de dollars avec l'aide de deux banques nigérianes. Qu'est-ce que peut faire l'État ivoirien pour ses producteurs, pour ses réalisateurs ? L'État a déjà pris des initiatives, il s'agit maintenant d'augmenter ces initiatives de l'État. Au niveau du cinéma par exemple, il y a le Fonsic, qui est le Fonds de soutien à l'industrie cinématographique. Au niveau de l'audiovisuel, il y a les compétences de l'ASDM, qui est l'Agence de soutien au développement des médias, qui a été élargie pour prendre en compte la production audiovisuelle. Justement, l'ambition du SICA, c'est de faire participer le privé. Vous faites bien de souligner qu'au Nigeria, c'est avec l'aide de deux banques privées que l'État a pu décupler son soutien à l'industrie cinématographique. Donc, nous voulons faire connaître cet écosystème au secteur privé, notamment aux banques, assurances et autres sociétés privées, afin qu'elles viennent soutenir l'État dans cette initiative. D'ailleurs, nous aurons deux panels sur les financements : un panel avec les financements publics et des acteurs publics comme le Fonsic, l'ASDM et la BNI, qui est une banque publique, et un autre panel exclusivement réservé aux banques privées, panel qui sera animé par un avocat d'affaires. Selon un récent rapport de l'Unesco, le secteur de l'audiovisuel et du cinéma représente déjà en Afrique quelque 5 millions d'emplois. Quelle est votre ambition ? Il faut que la Côte d'Ivoire puisse faire du cinéma un secteur qui soit véritablement pourvoyeur d'emplois et créateur de richesse. Les quelques indications que nous avons au niveau du pays indiquent que ce secteur contribue à environ 3% au PIB. Nous avons l'ambition de faire augmenter cette contribution au PIB. Et au moment où le chef de l'État a décrété donc une année de la jeunesse, nous pensons que le cinéma peut également apporter sa contribution en termes de création d'emplois pour les jeunes. Donc le cinéma et l'audiovisuel ont leur place et nous ambitionnons donc de l'occuper pleinement. Mais ne faut-il pas pour cela qu'il y ait des narratifs africains qui intéressant les producteurs internationaux ? Vous êtes là en plein cœur d'une des raisons pour lesquelles nous organisons ce SICA. Oui, l'Afrique a un narratif à proposer au monde et les échanges que vont faciliter le SICA vont permettre à l'Afrique de proposer ce narratif. Mais nous restons ouverts. C'est pourquoi nous parlons d'échange. En termes d'échange, nous avons par exemple une coproduction africaine et européenne qui est aujourd'hui sur une plateforme. Et je veux parler de Bienvenue au Gondwana, tourné en Côte d'Ivoire et en France avec des acteurs français, des acteurs ivoiriens et des producteurs français, je parle des frères Altmayer. Donc, vous voyez, il y a une collaboration qui est possible et le SICA veut être la plateforme qui ouvre cette collaboration, qui tient compte du narratif africain. Amadou Coulibaly, vous voulez aussi que la Côte d'Ivoire devienne un lieu de tournage incontournable. Mais vous savez bien que, quand un producteur cherche un pays pour tourner, la première question qu'il se pose, c'est combien ça coûte ? Alors s'il vient chez vous, est-ce qu'il va devoir payer des droits de douane et des taxes ?Déjà, ce qu'il faut savoir, c'est qu'avec la politique mise en place par le président de la République, l'investissement en Côte d'Ivoire est très incitatif. Il y a des dispositions qui ont été prises pour rendre attractif le pays. Mais je suis d'accord avec vous que le secteur de l'audiovisuel reste un secteur particulier et nous sommes en train de travailler de façon à mettre en place un dispositif qui soit adapté à ce secteur-là, de sorte à pouvoir exonérer tous ceux qui sont intéressés à venir tourner en Côte d'Ivoire. Donc, exonérés de certains frais. Nous y travaillons et très bientôt, nous ferons une proposition au gouvernement pour que notre pays soit encore plus attractif du point de vue du cinéma et de l'audiovisuel.Tout à fait autre chose, monsieur le ministre. Le 21 septembre, 15 partis politiques de l'opposition, dont le PDCI de Tidjane Thiam, ont écrit au gouvernement pour lui demander d'ouvrir un dialogue inclusif afin de « corriger les défaillances du système électoral ». Qu'est-ce que vous répondez ? Je voudrais rappeler que nous avons eu une dernière phase du dialogue politique qui a été ouvert de décembre 2021 à mars 2022. Au cours de cette phase, l'un des premiers points qui a rencontré l'adhésion de toutes les parties, ça a été de dire que, aujourd'hui dans notre pays, les institutions sont toutes installées et fonctionnent normalement. Il a été convenu que toutes les questions relevant du fonctionnement de certaines institutions leur soient adressées. Nous sommes aujourd'hui un État véritablement démocratique, nous sommes un État de droit. Je peux comprendre que, à une certaine époque, on s'en référait au tout-puissant président de la République, mais aujourd'hui les institutions fonctionnent. Donc, moi, j'inviterai l'opposition, pour certaines de leurs préoccupations, à s'adresser aux institutions qui en ont la charge, et, relativement à cette question, je pense que l'opposition peut s'adresser à la Commission électorale indépendante. L'opposition affirme que dans sa composition, la CEI, la Commission électorale indépendante, n'est ni équilibrée ni impartiale. Est-ce que vous seriez prêt à envisager une réforme de cette CEI ? Je rappelle, en citant ce dernier dialogue politique, que c'est à l'issue de celui-ci que le PPA-CI [de Laurent Gbagbo] a intégré la Commission électorale indépendante. C'est donc dire que tout peut se régler au niveau de la Commission électorale indépendante. Mais je pense qu'il n'est pas juste de prétendre que cette Commission n'est pas équilibrée. Au contraire, l'opposition y est majoritaire, puisqu'ils ont cinq représentants et la société civile en a six, dont deux du barreau et un de la magistrature. Évidemment, elle a beau jeu de dire que le représentant du chef de l'État ou du ministère de l'Intérieur sont proches du pouvoir, mais je rappelle que, lorsque Laurent Gbagbo était au pouvoir, il avait un représentant aussi bien de la présidence et un représentant du ministère de l'Intérieur. Ce sont des dispositions qui existaient bien avant que le RHDP n'arrive au pouvoir. Vendredi dernier, sur RFI et France 24, vous avez pu entendre l'opposant Charles Blé Goudé qui lançait un appel au président Ouattara pour qu'il fasse passer une loi sur l'amnistie afin que lui-même puisse être candidat l'an prochain. Pensez-vous que cela est envisageable ? Une fois de plus, je le répète, nous sommes un État de droit où toutes les institutions sont installées ou fonctionnent. Je suis toujours surpris qu'aujourd'hui, on veuille toujours en revenir au chef de l'État, alors qu'il y a des institutions qui fonctionnent. L'Assemblée nationale est le lieu où on peut faire également des propositions de loi. Il me semble que l'opposition est très bien représentée à l'Assemblée nationale. Elle pourra bien sûr introduire une proposition de loi à ce niveau, parce que les lois que le chef de l'État peut prendre sont encadrées aujourd'hui. Et est-ce que le RHDP au pouvoir serait prêt à voter une telle proposition de loi ? Mais il faut que déjà elle arrive sur la table de l'Assemblée. Et après ? Et après, le jeu démocratique va s'imposer et puis il appartiendra aux députés, qui sont les députés de la nation, une fois qu'ils ont voté, de juger de l'opportunité d'adopter cette loi ou pas. 

Hallo liebe Senfis zu einer weiteren Folge, Volleyball mit Senf. Heute war einer der erfolgreichsten österreichischen Volleyballer zu Gast im Podcast. Alex Berger ist der mittlere Bruder von Markus und Christoph. Die beiden waren auch bereits bei mir zu Gast. Alex spricht in dieser Episode über seinen Werdegang und über seine Spätstarter-Qualitäten. Obwohl Alex immer wieder Rückschläge erfahren musste, kam er danach stets besser zurück. Ganz nach dem Motto: 2 Schritte zurück und 3 nach vor, hat er sich nach Niederlagen oder Verletzungen immer wieder aufgerichtet und von Aichkirchen, nach Wels, über Innsbruck, Frankreich und Italien nach Polen gespielt. Viel Spaß mit einer weiteren Folge, Volleyball mit Senf. https://www.instagram.com/bergeralex12/

I speak with Alex Berger, Founder and Creative Director of Nashville-based creative agency Weird Candy. He's shepherded the visual translation of artists like The Critical and Yot Club as well as tastemaker labels like War Buddha and 3 Sirens. We kick off this conversation with Alex offering a impromptu brand appraisal of... me. And with that we jump into a discussion of why artists have such a hard time tackling the necessity of articulating their particular flavor in a succinct and relatable way. I'm not gonna say this turned into a therapy session, but Alex did help me reframe this piece of the artist game in a way that was both empowering and actionable.

If you believe in the impossible, the Field of Dreams episode will come true. That's right folks, this week we're finally talking about Kenny's favorite movie (and favorite actor) with writer Alex Berger.We break down the inexplicable emotional impact of this movie, walk through the potential casting disasters (and a few possible successes), and debate how the magical realism would play with critics today. We also take a walk through the career of the dreamer himself, Kevin Costner.Find Alex at: twitter.com/AlexBergerLAPodcast Like It's 1999: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-like-its-1999Twitter: twitter.com/podcastlike1999Instagram: instagram.com/podcastlike1999Reddit: reddit.com/r/podcastlikeits Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Alex, as she's commonly known through our local channels, is a doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental medicine. Jess and BJ initially connected with Alex through yoga, and since then, she has assisted them, as well as other members of Team YogiTriathlete, in reaching higher levels of health and wellness. After a recent visit with Dr. Alex, Jess realized that although both BJ and she have sought treatment through Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine for twenty years now, they had not had a doctor of this medicine on the pod...until...today. In addition to a doctorate in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, Dr. Alex's dedication to being the best healthcare provider she can be has led her to advanced certifications in acupuncture techniques, herbal medicine, nutrition, exercise, yoga, meditation, mental wellness practices, and mind-body therapies. She specializes in pain management, stress reduction, menopause support, hormone balance, digestive health, and emotional well-being, all of which are relevant to the longevity of endurance athletes since, after all, endurance is all about being in it for the long haul. So please, dive into this episode and enjoy this brilliant soul and skilled practitioner of one of the world's oldest and most effective medical systems. Your listenership is greatly appreciated; thank you for tuning in. In this episode: - Working with a fear of needles - What is Chinese medicine? - Definition of a cell - The CEO of the body - Lifestyle signals through your pulse, tongue, and energy - Benefits of cupping - Cold vs. warm foods - Menopause in Chinese medicine - Men's health - Endurance sports and Chinese medicine - Building blood - Dr. Alex has your back - Origins of Dr. Alex's career path - Pursuing your passion

On this week's episode, I talk about all of the different types of "producers" there are working in Hollywood as well as what some of their specific responsibilities might be. Tune in for much more!Show NotesFree Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/courseFree Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/freeJoin My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlistAutogenerated TranscriptMichael Jamin:I would prefer to do another show like that as opposed to a big budget show faster. Let's shoot it faster. I just like it better.Phil Hudson:Buddy. System was pretty quick too. I mean, we shot the In sixMichael Jamin:Weeks. Yeah, buddy System was equally fast. And even still, it feels when you're on set, it's like, oh, this is so boring. Even still, it takes a long time to get each side.You're listening to screenwriters Need to Hear This with Michael Jamin.Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin, back with Phil Hudson for another episode of Screenwriters. Need to hear this. At least until we rename the podcast. We're toying with that idea to open it up. But I don't have an idea yet. I don't have a name yet. So for now, this is what we're going with everyone. That'sPhil Hudson:News to people. I don't think people know thatMichael Jamin:Yet. No, it's news. You're leaking. APhil Hudson:Little hint.Michael Jamin:I'm leaking a hint and it's because I want to open up the conversations a little to broaden out. So it's not just about screenwriting, but also about people who are interested in the arts and reinventing themselves and just putting it out there. So we're going to hang on to that, but for now, we're going to keep talking about this subject, but we will, I'll still talk about screenwriting, so don't want to panic. I'm still going to talk about screenwriting. I just want to open up to more inspirational art stuff. AndPhil Hudson:I think for you, two years into the podcast, it started as a thing during Covid to help people out with this specific space. But your social media has grown to include all creatives and a large percentage of the content that people are consuming on your social media. Forgive me for calling it content, but that is being consumed by people who are more in the creative fields. We have people who've signed up for your screenwriting course who are financial analysts, and they write about finance and they talk about the value of story and story structure. We got artists, novelists, all kinds of people. And so yeah, this makes sense to me, especially as you've kind of outgrown the persona of just being a TV writer and being more of a creative inspirational figure in the space.Michael Jamin:So that's what the plan is. But until then, we're sticking with this name. But okay, everyone, so today I thought we would talk about the title of today's episode is What the Hell Is a Producer? Because no one knows. It's like one of these terms in Hollywood that everyone, it can mean so many different things. It's unclear exactly what a producer does. And I think everyone, when I post on social media, everyone gets it wrong. So we know what a writer does. The writer writes, we know what an actor does. We think we know what a director does, but often people get that wrong. But that could be another episode. But as far as a producer, it means so many different things. So I'm going to break it down and you're going to help me with this. Phil. First we're going to take a step back. So right now the Writer's Guild is on strike against the producers, the Alliance of Motion picture and television producers or the A M P T P. So that's very misleading. It sounds like we are striking against producers, but we're not in this sense. The producers are the studios. So think about Warner Brothers, universal, Sony, Netflix,Phil Hudson:Amazon, yeah, apple.Michael Jamin:So they produce film intelligence shows. So we are striking against the producers of film and television shows, but we are not striking against film and television show producers, which would be, I know that's confusing P GPhil Hudson:A, right? Is that where you're going? Right.Michael Jamin:So that would be, when you think of the P G A, sometimes you watch a film and it says someone's name, the P G a, that's the Producer's Guild of America. So those are people who are producers. They work on the show or the movie that's being made. So anytime you have a film or a television show, you have a production staff and they are there every day and they are so on a TV show in particular, the writers will dream up a sequence or a scene or whatever it is, and then they'll sit down with the producers whose offices are right next door and say, can we make this happen? Your job? We thought of it, but now you have to actually make it happen. And sometimes they say, we can't. You have to. You're going to break the bank. And sometimes they say, okay, we can do this. And those people are producers. Okay, but that's in tv. I'm going to talk more about TV first.Phil Hudson:And there's a note too here too about the P G A, I don't know if you're going to touch on this, but they're not a union that is basically a group of people who have kind of unified or they've basically agreed to be an association, but because they are technically employers, they cannot unionize.Michael Jamin:Oh, really? And so are you in the P G A?Phil Hudson:I think I'm eligible, but I have not joined. I've not pursued it, but it's definitely open.Michael Jamin:But don't you get your don't they help provide health insurance,Phil Hudson:I believe is the D G A and P G A. They've pooled. So basically these producers have agreed to pay into these funds and do these things to provide pension and healthcare for their members. But the difference is they are not effectively a union. I think legally they cannot be a union. So the term guild can be a bit confusing, right, because there's the W G A, which is a union, notMichael Jamin:Really, I don't think WGA is considered a union. I think it's considered.Phil Hudson:I thought they were. I thought that's why they're able to strike because they are unionized. NoMichael Jamin:ThinksPhil Hudson:The collective bargaining is by Definit definition of union. I thought there's a great point.Michael Jamin:I thought there. There's some what add. I thought there's some differences, slight differences, but okay, so now we're going to talk about producersPhil Hudson:Of, it's two different unions. So it's the east and the west combined forces. So there're two different unions that are working togetherMichael Jamin:In what? OhPhil Hudson:Yes. So the writer's Guild East is a union and the Roger's Guild West is a union. And then they join and that's the guild. That's what they represented, two different unions.Michael Jamin:So when we talk about producers on a TV show, this is so unclear and I'm going to try to clear it up and it's going to be still confusing. So producers, like I said, on a TV show, their job is to, for the most part, make it happen. Make whatever we dream of, make it happen. So if we set a scene that takes place in the amusement park, the producer's like, okay, how are we going to shoot there? How are first we got to rent out of Ineson Park, we have to move the cameras there, we have to license, have to buy the space out. And that's producing it. If you want special effects, they're going to have to make sure all those people are there on the set that day. They coordinate the whole damn thing. And there's many different levels of producers, the line producers, the one who deals with mostly making sure we're on budget, making sure. Then there's also like you are, you're an associate producer. What's your job as an associate producer?Phil Hudson:So the saddle associate producer came up this season. It was recommended by an actual producer, savvy Kathy or Kathy, I always mess up her last name, but S'S awesome. She's a 24 and they were trying to figure out a title for my new role. And there are specific titles they can't use because they are managed by union. So facilities manager and things like that. And in basically live tv, anyone who manages the stages or the set or controls things on the ground, that's an associate producer title. So she's the one who encouraged everyone to give me that title. My role was very much, I was an assistant to the producers. I kind of handled anything that they wanted to delegate down. I had their authority to make things happen. My first day I fired somebody because that person was breaking rules and I had to do that. I handled plumber issues, I handled facility issues. I was in charge of making sure that everything got cleaned. If someone needed something, it was my responsibility to make sure that that got coordinated with the production office. So it was basically a liaison between the producers and the other people and the rest of the set. One thing that I found funny is there's this, I might've talked about it on the podcast and forgive me if it's redundant, but there, do you know who Jordan is on Conan Conan show? He's one of his associate producer?Michael Jamin:Yeah, I think so. Yeah.Phil Hudson:So his skit came out of, I believe this came out hearing it from Conan. It came out of the last writer strike where they didn't have anything and one of the other producers was like, Jordan, you have such interesting interactions with him, maybe you should just record those. They're just fascinating to watch. So he became a figure on the show and he had Jordan on a podcast and Conan's like, what is your title? He's like, well, I've had many titles. He's like, but what is your title currently? And he's like, it is associate producer. And Conan goes, if there has ever been a more meaningless title in all of television, it's associate producer. I was like, it feels accurate. It's an honorary title. You get respect on set, people respect what you say, but it doesn't really come with many perks.Michael Jamin:Sometimes it might just be a catchall for something that they don't know what to, I started my career as a joke writer on the Mike and Maddie show, which is a morning TV show. I was a writer, so I used to write jokes, but they didn't want to pay me. If they had called me a writer, they would've had to pay me Writer's Guild minimum. And so instead they didn't want to give me that title, they just called me a segment producer instead. And so they could pay me less. But my job, I suppose, was producing segments of it's morning TV show. And so the segment I was in charge of was the morning chat when the hosts are just talking from the camera and they're making jokes about stuff. And then also sometimes we would do remote segments. We did one thing where Dr. Ruth was giving them a tour of some sex store. And so I was there on site just pitching jokes for the sex toys. So I was a producer, but did I really know how to produce? Nah, it's really rare. No,Phil Hudson:But that's a very typical thing. Even from cable shows, morning shows on cable, those are producers. You have producer titles. So my friend's sister was dating a producer on the Late show and he was a producer, but what was he? He was effectively a joke writer. He wrote jokes for the show and he was responsible. But I know people in Utah and New Mexico who are producers and their segment producer, they go out and they like, we're interviewing the person who makes the largest cookie in America. They make sure it gets done. That's it rightMichael Jamin:Now, here's where it gets a little confusing in tv. If you watch a TV show, you'll often see many titles that have the word producer in it, producer, supervising producer, executive producer. Many of those people are just mid to high level writers who don't really have the same functions. They don't do the same jobs as the producers do who work next door who actually make it happen. So is no overlap in the job responsibilities, but the job responsibility of say, executive producer who is probably also the showrunner would be, and also maybe some lower producers like supervising producer. You might be in charge of casting, you might have some editing responsibilities. You also have to know how when you write the whole season, you often will say, is this producible? And that comes with experience. So for example, if I was on a show and we're breaking episodes one through 10 and I see too many locations, it's my job as let's say a co-executive producer to say, we don't need all these, we can combine scenes with locations here. We can be more efficient, even though I'm not actually producing it. I'm wearing my producer's hat that we say.So just so know that it's not all producers on a show or actually on the production side we're also, yeah,Phil Hudson:I had a friend who was an actor and she made a comment once, she's like, all those producers at the front of a show are just writers, don't you? And I was like, that sounds great. I would like that. But the term for co ep, which is what you and your writing partner are on Tacoma FD have been many times, my understanding of this is you're effectively qualified to run the show and often need to do that when the executive producer is off on set or dealing with the casting thing or managing calls with them. So you're running the room, you're making sure it happens. And I've heard that term referred to as the strong number two.Michael Jamin:Yeah, the number two. Yeah.Phil Hudson:Yeah. So you're the boss, you're there to make sure that the ship stays going. I mean, yeah, it's basically the showrunner's, the captain, you're the first mate you take over when they're need arrest or break and you have the same authority to get things doneMichael Jamin:Basically. So those are our producers. Now there's a common misconception that sometimes people think in TV that producers are the people who raise the money, they put together the money for the project. I want to assure you, we don't touch a nickel. It's like we don't spend our own money. The studios are the ones who are in charge of raising the money. It's their money. So we never open our wallets only in rare exceptions. So for example, I've been involved in projects where someone might be an executive producer and they may put together let's say 10 or $15,000 to shoot a presentation, which is like a down and dirty pilot, a cheap pilot just as a sales tool, but they won't spend a lot of money. It's like very little. They're not investing. A TV show might cost a million dollars to shoot, we're talking about 10 or 15 just to put it on its feet just to show people kind of what it looks like. And this doesn't even happen a lot for the most part in tv executive producers are not in charge of raising money. They don't touch it. We work for the studios. The studios, it's their money that we're playing with. So get that out of your head. It's not a money position in television.Phil Hudson:And I think this is another definition thing too, where it can also be confusing because there is often another executive producer who is that guy who is doing that at the studio. They get that title, right?Michael Jamin:Well, they don't usually get the title. They don't usually get the title at the studio. So that's the catch. They don't get a title. They work for the studio.Phil Hudson:I thought I've seen, I thinkMichael Jamin:They might have a production deal, which is a pod. So for example, often this is why it's so confusing. Often a producer will have what we call a shingle at a studio. So the studio Warner Brothers is paying their overhead. They give 'em a pod, which is a producer over overall deal, and they say for two or three years you have a pod at the studio where you will help develop TV shows. You'll find writers, you'll maybe put together talent, maybe directors, you'll package it, you'll kind of work on the package together and then pitch us the studio, the idea, and then if we like it, we'll shoot it. And if not, we won't. But the person who has the deal, sometimes they're just a highly paid actor on a hit show. They may have a shingle. Sometimes they're just really straight up producers who have a shingle and they will get an executive producer credit on the TV show. But the studio has their own people in charge who oversee the production on the creative side. Development executives or current executives do not get credit on it. It'd be a Warner Brothers show. So I don't recall ever seeing them ever get cut credit on a show unless they sometimes get fired or leave the studio or whatever, and then they get her own production shingle. So that's common.Phil Hudson:And that makes sense because the credit that I'm thinking about, that person who has that EP title, there are three of them and two of them are managers who sold the show. So they did that. They packaged things for Warner to come. So sometimes, and the other was the producer of this production studio making the show, and they were line producer, but also had a producer credit.Michael Jamin:Sometimes a manager of the talent of you, the writer or the actor may get a producer credit because they negotiate for it. It's not uncommon. Often those managers, it just depends on what they do. Often they don't show up. They might have a parking space right in front of the sound stage and they never show up a hundred percent.Phil Hudson:So that's true for Taco fd. And they do show up. They show up for one, maybe two times this season, typically once they pop in, spend about half a day, bring their kids and then they go.Michael Jamin:So it's not really, that's just not their focus. Their focus is on kind selling shows, not actually making them, but occasionally I know some of them. Dave Miner is actually pretty active. I know he helps out. He'sPhil Hudson:One of the ones I'm thinking about. Yep, that shows up.Michael Jamin:He's a manager at Three Arts who also has a executive producer credit on his show, and he's involved more in the day-to-day, but not, it's the degree that the runners want him to be helpful and he is helpful, but it just depends on really the relationship that the producer wants to have on the TV show and what they want to do and what the showrunner is asking of 'em. But I've been on other shows where they have done very little or I was on one show where the producer, the executive producer was a manager of the talent and it seemed like she did everything in her will to help get the show canceled because she was completely inept. And eventually the show was canceled. Then I was like, boy, are you dumb? But it happens. So okay. But again, they don't raise money, and this is on the TV side.They don't raise money with the exception of occasionally, maybe they want to help make a presentation or they put some money together, but they're not financing the show. In the rule in Hollywood, you don't want to put your money. Now if you are creating your own TV show, as I'm talking to my audience, how do you guys break into Hollywood? And I'll often say, Hey, put it on film, put it put up your YouTube channel. In that case, you are putting your own money. Yes, you'll be executive producer putting your own money up, but this is until you break in. And even then, I don't recommend you putting a lot of money. I'm talking about a couple of thousand, not a millionPhil Hudson:Listen episode. Was it 99 where we talked about that? I think we hit on that 99 or 1 0 1. But yeah, think about that. Your story is probably not going to be worth but's. Still a good learning experience, butMichael Jamin:Yeah, it's not a great return on investment. But on the film side, it's a different story. Well, I should say it can be a different story. So if you're making a film, a producer, or it might have a similar function as a producer overall, Dylan and tv, they help put together the project, they have a deal or a shingle at the studio. But again, they're not putting together the money the studio is putting together the money. On an indie film, it's a little different. Often people, the indie filmmakers have to fundraise and so they'll often say, Hey, if you give $5,000, I'll give you an executive producer title on the show. And so in that case, they are helping raise the money.Phil Hudson:Yep. They're finding financiers to do it. And they're typically the ones I know of from the indie films that I've been a part of or seen marketing campaigns. They're typically made their money on pharmaceuticals or their lawyers and big time lawyers or their business people, dentists. And they just, again, we did talk about this recently, but oftentimes those people did not pursue their craft in order to pursue the paycheck. And this is their way of participating. Some of 'em, it's a new venture they're trying to get into. But yeah, that thing oftentimes, yeah. And oftentimes they're looking at it as a tax. They have money they have to spend anyway. It's okay if it takes a loss, why not put on a producer hat and help make an indie film?Michael Jamin:So this idea of when people say, I want to be a Hollywood producer, why? What exactly. Often you don't even know what that means. At the end of the day, if you want to be a producer, you are a producer today I'm a producer. And it just means you are going to hustle to make it happen. And I've worked with many producers who were really just people who hustled. They didn't have some great know-how. They were like, okay, I have a script. How am I going to get this script into the hands of this actor who I don't know? Well, I'll hide it inside of a pizza box and I'll deliver a pizza with a script inside. I've known producers who've done that. They're just hustlers and they've managed to put people together. And so that's what a producer is. A producer just makes it happen.And so sometimes when people say, how do I become a producer? You do it. You just do it and worked. I had on my podcast, Jim Serpico, who's the producer of Marin, he, he's just like a normal guy who hustled, who was always figuring out ways just to make it happen, to get, if you wanted an actor, he's like, we didn't have an in with the actor. He goes, I'll figure out. I'll call someone who I know, someone who might know someone who might know this actor. I'll make some calls, give me a minute. And that's what he was, he was just a guy who was hustling put to just kind of make it happen. And that's how we learned that ultimately cervical learned a lot more about the business. He was very hands-on. He was helping scout and he knew how to shoot and he was really very helpful to have on set. But he really was just a guy who just wanted to do it. I'm here to get it done. That was his attitude.Phil Hudson:I'm thinking about Richard Perello, who is the producing partner of Broken Lizard, and I had the opportunity to be the producer's assistant on Quasi. And when I was doing that job, the line producer, he's U P M and line producer, and he was also a producer on Quasi, and he's also that on Taco. He's guy named Matt Melin. He sat down with him. He made it really clear the producers in film are very different than TV because you can have all of these producers in TV and you have to service them. But on film, there's really one producer, and that's the producer on set. They're the creative producer and that's very much what Perlo was. So his whole point was serve him. If the guys need something, get it done. But if you can hand it off to pa, do it. Just be there for Rich.And that's what I did. I was there. I was there before him. I had his coffee ready, I had his sides ready. I'd set up his chair. If he had something he needed done, I'd run it. I knew what time to go get his coffee after lunch, I'd go get his lunch order. I do all of those things. And at the end you think me, because he's like, I just needed to spend that much time. You think you for taking care of me. It allowed me to focus on the set. And when I was there observing, sitting behind him in the chair in video village, he's like, we need more greens here. We need this here. And he did the same thing. He worked with the guys through their indie films on all of their indie film projects and just learned with them negotiating, figuring out how to get things done. And like you said, they're just hustlers. They get things done.Michael Jamin:So if you want to be a producer and you keep, and you're asking, well, how do I break into Hollywood to be a producer, then you're not a producer because the producer is someone who just gets it done. I will. They figure it out. And so I would say if you want to be a producer, you spend some time on set, learn what all the various jobs are, observe, and then find some kid with a script fresh out of film school or not out of film school and say, Hey, I want to work with you. Let's produce your script.Phil Hudson:Now you're I on the same line of logic. I had another conversation recently with a 24 because they've told me they want to push me down this producer path and they're open to working with me outside of Tacoma depending on what happens if we get picked up. And I said, well, what would be, because the next step for me would be a production supervisor, which is part of this producer path. Then the next would be assistant U P M U P M, line producer, and then potentially producer. And I said, what would make me a good production supervisor? And they said, learn the production side. Learn budgeting. If you could be a line producer's assistant, if you sit in on those conversations about money and how much that rig cost or that lens costs and how much we can afford to do this or that, said, there's no way that's not going to be helpful as a producer. And then she said, I know you want to be a writer. So the other thing is the best collaborators also understand production and budget because they are more willing to give and take. They know what to fight for the creative, they know what to let go of. So it's only helpful as someone who wants to be a showrunner as well.Michael Jamin:Also 8 24, they make some really good stuff. I know it's not exactly what you want to do in terms of writing, but it's likePhil Hudson:It's not something that I turned down no had conversations to about not bad. Yeah, we had conversations about me going to Houston to be a production supervisor on a film, but it was all dependent on the rider's strike. And this was back in April, and I talked to her recently. Everything's been pushed into next year on most of their production slate. They do have waivers from the Writer's Guild, which I don't think people, a lot of people understand. And the waiver is really that they've agreed to every single term the Writer's Guild put out, and they're a small indie film. They're not one of the big studios. And because of that, the Writer's Guild like, sure, if you're going to meet our demands, go ahead and make whatever films you want to do. And they're just continuing to make 'em happen.Michael Jamin:Hustle,Phil Hudson:They're hustling. It's same thing.Michael Jamin:Hustlers. Yeah. So that's why anyone who wants to be a producer, you can be a producer and you don't have to ask permission. WouldPhil Hudson:You say it's street smarts more than book smarts here? Because I know the book smarts are important from a budgeting and a finance perspective, but I also seems to me someone who can just make things happen. That's the job, make it happen.Michael Jamin:For example, we're on set on Marin, we're shooting on book locations, the low budget show, we're shooting some neighborhood, and the minute they see the people see these trucks, the film trucks, because everything comes in these trucks, all the equipment, for some reason the leaf blowers show up that day.Phil Hudson:Lawnmowers are on, theyMichael Jamin:Call each other the minutes that the director yells action, suddenly the leaf blowers show up out of everywhere. You can't shoot with a, and so the producers say, just hand out a hundred dollars bills. That's what a producer do. Hand out a hundred dollars just to get 'em to go away. Yep.Phil Hudson:Because it's costing him $10,000 every minute or whatever, every hour. It'sMichael Jamin:Definitely a shakedown with these guys. DoPhil Hudson:I think it's 10 grand an hour on a low budget show? It's 10 grand an hour for the set. I talked to this, I was talking to someone about the cost of that. It's crazy. So it's worth a thousand dollars to keep the machine running,Michael Jamin:But that's what a good producer will do. Also, if it looks like rain, a producer will figure out, alright, we'll work with the associate producer, first assistant. Yeah, first ad to figure out what the shooting schedule will be. Okay, we will move this around. And sometimes the director will get into that conversation as well as the showrunner, but often you'll just turn to the producer. What do you want to do as a showrunner? I don't really give a crap. What do you want to do?Phil Hudson:Yeah, that's the other thing that's interesting that I don't think a lot of people understand is when you're making these projects, I always in my head assume they would be shot linearly and they're not. They're blocked shot because they have to be because the expense of moving the equipment and setting up shots, it's such a time suck, and you're paying all those people for those man hours. It's just easier to shoot. We're in the garage, shoot everything in the garage right now. So you have actors coming in and they're shooting the last scene of a movie, first thing, and they have spent maybe two or three rehearsals with their co-stars, and it's this incredibly emotional moment, and then they have to jump right into the levity of the first act. It's really fascinating that the complexity of a schedule, and that's again, something I would've assumed a producer would do. And no, the first ad does it and then the producer vets it to make sure it's going to meet the budget. Like the line producer.Michael Jamin:Yeah. And then before that, seen a shot. As the part of the showrunner's job, we'll run up to the actors and say, okay, just to refresh your memory, shooting so much out of order. Sometimes we're shooting not just scenes out of order, but we're shooting entire episodes. We're shooting episode two and episode three at the same time.Phil Hudson:Block shooting episodes. We would do that all the time on Tacoma.Michael Jamin:And so we would run up to the actress before we're doing, before each scene, just to refresh your memory, this is where we are in the storyline. This is what you're playing here. If you read it, you might think, okay, I should be happy. But now you're mad at this person from the earlier scene.Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljamin.com/watchlist.Phil Hudson:That's another thing I've seen too, which I think is incredibly valuable, is really good showrunners make the actors sit down and read the scripts out loud with them to make sure that they read everything. Because I've seen a propensity for actors to just read their lines and they don't understand how it fits into the full thing. That's not all actors, it's definitely not all actors, but I've seen a lot of actors do that.Michael Jamin:I have not worked on a show where that was a problem, but now that you mentioned, I have to probably keep my eye open it, but I'm sure in some shows actors can get lazy. But I haven't worked on, because Marin was a little different. Marin, he was the only regular because of the budget and everyone else was a guest star, meaning we would hire that actor for maybe five out of 13 episodes. They were not regular. So regular means you're on every single episode. So if you're a guest star and you're only doing five episodes, you you're going to come prepared. You're not going to sleepwalk your way through it. And so Mark was always prepared, and although often he was always prepared, but easily confused given how much he had to do in every single episode. So you had to go, just remind him where he was emotionally in each episode. But for the actors, the guest stars, they were always well, ohPhil Hudson:Yeah, you're on it.Michael Jamin:You're on it. Yeah, they're on it. They knew they were not goingPhil Hudson:To work. Hats off to circuit codes on that too. What is it? How many days? A two and a half days to shoot an episode.Michael Jamin:Yeah. And towards the end we got three. But that's crazy.Phil Hudson:That's wild. It's crazy wild. We had, I think is it eight days? We would block, shoot. So over two weeks we'd shoot two episodes. So I think it comes out to be like five days per episode, and it's still skinnier teeth getting by to get everything.Michael Jamin:So we were really running gun, and I used to say, as long as someone's finger was in the lens, we got it move on. There wasn't enough time. And so we would shoot everything in a, we would shoot, we block the scene, shoot the first thing in a first run in a master, which is kind like a rehearsal, but you're in a master, so you're everything, you're wide. So if the actor's not perfect, it's fine. You're only going to use the master to open the scene at the end, the scene, and then maybe a couple of times in the middle. And so we'd shoot the master and then go into coverage, which means going immediately to closeups. Wow.Phil Hudson:No mediums or anything like that.Michael Jamin:Very few. And then youPhil Hudson:Didn't have time.Michael Jamin:You don't have time. And occasionally in each episode we would give the director maybe one or two vanity shots like, all right, fine, you want to set up a crane or whatever. But you don't have many of those. But I worked on another show, God, it was so annoying. It was the director, we had more time. And he decided to put a camera, it was a car scene. He wanted to install a camera on the edge of the car so he can get a closeup of the wheel as the car was racing down the street. And we used that chauffer half a second, and it took hours to set the stupid shot up. And I'm like, why are we doing this? What's the point of this? Is anyone impressed by seeing a wheel of a car as it races down? Who cares? That's not what this show is. So sometimes I feel like you can more, you can waste time with shots that are completely unnecessary for the audience is not going to appreciate it more. I don't think anybody's going to appreciate it.Phil Hudson:Well, anyone listening to this who is interested in indie film, what you're describing, and the way you shot Marin is indie film. What is it like on average? And correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's three pages per day is a good shooting day for a TV show or a feature. And a feature might be half a page because they're doing bigger, broader.Michael Jamin:No, we were doing sometimes 11 pages aPhil Hudson:Day. Indies is 10. Yeah, I was going to say in is 10 you're doing,Michael Jamin:Sometimes we did 11. It was like, man, we got a lot to do. A lot to do. It's crazy. Oh yeah.Phil Hudson:I can't imagine that the crew just hustling nonstop.Michael Jamin:Yeah, they were hustling and there's just no time to waste. But when you watch that show, no one thought. No one thought it was like it was sloppy.Phil Hudson:Felt like every other high quality film. And I think what's cool about that too, and I think you learned this when you study indie film, is there's a style that comes out of that. The minimalism almost adds to the value. And then we've talked on the podcast previously about the value of an art director or an art supervisor and how they can come in and really change things. In our Marin, we talked about the photos and they're out of focus, and that's where the art is. The Nissan Cent and everything else that's happening in the scene, the music comes into play to pick things up. But yeah, it's fascinating.Michael Jamin:The thing is, I would prefer, as crazy as that sounds, I would prefer to do another show like that as opposed to a big budget show faster. Let's shoot it faster. I just like it better.Phil Hudson:Buddy system was pretty quick too. I mean, we shot the buddy sixMichael Jamin:Weeks buddy system was equally fast and even still feels when you're on set, it's like, oh, this is so boring. Even still, it takes a long time to get each shot, so I don't get it when, but also, there wasn't a lot of people being self-indulgent on Marin. A lot of actors was like, no, stop horsing around. Know your lines. We don't have time. So it forces people to focus. And you know what? The crew, they loved it. I think they got paid less than other shows. There was no overtime on Marin, but they loved it. They wanted to go home with their family. They didn't want to spend their lives on set. They were happy to work 12, 13 hours a day. Go home.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, I want to highlight one thing that you were talking about here. What you're describing as a showrunner is why the showrunner is the executive producer. You have to dictate what shots are important. You have to dictate the stone, the tone and style of the show. You have to make sure your actors are prepared. You have to make sure your actors understand what are going on. And I know there's specific union rules about who's allowed to talk to the actors and who isn't allowed to. The doctors who can talk to the background and who can't. But the fact that the showrunner is there to serve the entirety of the production rather than just the ego of an actor and understanding things at every detail, the nuances of which ash tray, what colors the car we're using, you're making all of those decisions to sculpt and build this that is a producer.Michael Jamin:And often you, let's say a black car and the producer says that car's going to cost a thousand dollars more than a silver car. He is, all right, let's get the silver one. I'll live with it. But also, there were times, plenty of times when we were running Marin where it's like the director would set up a shot and I'd yell off, we're not going to use this shot, so keep it going. I'm telling you, because the short winner has final say over cut, not the director in tv. So I'd say, I'm not going to use this shot. So don't waste time getting it. Spend your time somewhere else on a different shot that you'll like, but not this one. Because that comesPhil Hudson:From decade, a decade plus of doing the work of writing and being on sets. And I think that's another main thing that they're talking about with the strikes, the ability for writers to be on TV sets has gone away. Because unless your showrunner wants to invite you to the set, which praise to Kevin and Steve, they will always invite the writers when their episode is shooting and they can come sit in video village and hang the actors and watch their show get made. But a lot of productions, writers are not on staff and they have to work. So they go get another writing job and they're sitting in another room writing. You don'tMichael Jamin:Learn any of this stuff. Yeah, you're notPhil Hudson:Learning how to be a showrunner. That's a lot of what the writer's guild striking about right now too, is staffing minimums, but also standards of how many people you want to have on set so people can learn the job of running a show.Michael Jamin:Right? There were times where, let's take, I see you're shooting. It's an emotional scene and they're covering in a, well, let's say they shooting in a wide, and it's an emotional scene. I'm not going to play it in a wide, I'm playing in a closeup. It's emotional. I'm going to be in a closeup or let's say it's a two shot. And also I know to make the joke pop, I'm not going to play it in a two shot. I'm going to play, jokes often have to play in singles or overs. So someone says a joke and the other person reacts to it, and it's the reaction that's funny. And if you play it in a two shot, it's not funny. And so there are things like this that you learn on set as an experienced showrunner or whatever writer you'll learn on set that you are not going to learn if you're not there. And so yes, this is partly what the strike is over. Sometimes you're getting shot coverage and they've crossed the line, and so these shots don'tPhil Hudson:Match. Do you want to define that for your listen, soMichael Jamin:Hard to explain without drawing it out, but basically,Phil Hudson:Do you want me to explain it or you want,Michael Jamin:I can explain it, but it's hard to imagine whatPhil Hudson:It's, who will crossing the line? Because you'll see an image of it. But I think for the listeners, you want it in their car.Michael Jamin:So imagine you're shooting, okay, so imagine you are shooting a multi-camera that come on a stage or any play on a stage. So the line separates the actors and the audience. There's a line there, imaginary line. And so the audience never crosses the line to watch come across that line to be on the actor side. And the actors never cross the line to the audience's side. And so when you're shooting a scene, imagine that the cameras are on the audience side. They're always behind that line and they never cross the line. And the problem is once you cross that line with a camera, the images get flipped.Phil Hudson:So it's very disjoint when you cut in post because all of a sudden someone was on the left and now they're on the right. Right.Michael Jamin:So if I'm talking to you in this shot here, we're doing this video podcast. I'm looking right at Phil, and Phil is looking left at me. That's how it's always going to be. I'm always looking right at Phil. And wePhil Hudson:Intentionally talked about that when we were setting up the video podcast. Who's looking right? Who's looking left? So that there was this line, so it wasn't disjointed. I don't set my camera up on the right hand side, and I'm on vacation, so I have this other camera. But normally if you look at it, it looks like we're having a conversation looking at each other.Michael Jamin:For the most part. Maybe in a movie or TV show, the camera's not going to cross the line because it becomes disorienting unless the director wants to disorient you, which is okay, that's a creative choice. ThePhil Hudson:Other place would do it. And there's a book on directing. I read really early on in my studies that talked about this as principle, and it was really hard for me to understand. So that's why I'm saying Google it like Michael was telling you to do. But imagine there's a parade coming down the street and you're watching it from this angle, and if you jump to the other side, it's flipped. That's the flip. But if your camera moves on a dolly around the other side in your brain, you now understand, but you can't go back to the other side now. So you can flip it, but you can't hop scotch back and forth becauseMichael Jamin:That's the T. Yeah. Can reestablish a line. You can always establish a new line. But one of the most difficult things for a director to shoot, it's not a car chase. It's not an exclusion. It's four people sitting at a dining room table. It's wild. That's really hard to shoot.Phil Hudson:The blocking in that is wild. You see, they literally chart it out in a CAD software and it says, this person's looking here and this person's looking here. And you have where your camera goes so that you remember meticulous about that,Michael Jamin:Which is why you'll often see as a cheat, you'll see if it's a table one character sitting on one side and then two characters sitting on the other side, they're not sitting all around the table, they're just sitting on opposite ends of the table. And even that's kind of difficult to shoot. And I'm not a director, although I have director, but I still, when I have to work on scenes like that, I have a pencil and pad making notes to figure out if we're shooting on the right side of the line. It's so complicated.Phil Hudson:Yes, it's a three-dimensional chess. You're just, yeah,Michael Jamin:It's easy. A good DP can do it, no problem. They can see it andPhil Hudson:They'll tell you,Michael Jamin:They'll warn you. Yeah. And the script E, they'll be able to help you as well. But often the director is not so much of a help because that's just not what they're worried about. Or maybe they don't have the experience to worry about it. And so as a showrunner, I busied myself one season of Marin learning all about this, but it took a season to figure out how to do this because I dunno, I'm a slow learner. But anyway, so that has nothing to do with being a producer, but Well,Phil Hudson:It does because you have to pay attention to those things, and you have to know those things. So as an executive in your audience right now, that is not predominantly, we talked about the beginning, but largely screenwriters or people who are interested in film, I think that it's really important for them to understand that you're not just showing up smoking a cigar in a chair, barking orders. You're focused and paying attention. You have binders with notes. You have everyone coming to you with a thousand questions over and over again.Michael Jamin:And I'm lucky because I have a writing partner. Well, if I don't have the answer, I can punt it to him and he'll probably have the answer. But we often divide responsibilities that way. So I understand the camera's a little better. And he does. He does as much of the other. He's really good at figuring out where we are in the script and whose attitude, who knows what at which moment. Like, man, how do you remember all this stuff? But he also looks at me the same way. How do you know all this stuff about the camera? And that's why when people say, I want to be a showrunner, it's like, hold on. Do you know what a showrunner does? It's a hard job. Yeah.Phil Hudson:The Rider's Guild has training programs on this because it is difficult, and again, it's part of the strike because they're, is my opinion, just my opinion. But I think a lot of times, corporations, I get it. Their job is to maximize profits and their job is to satisfy the demands of their shareholders. And it's a quarterly game four times a year. They're just making moves to satisfy that. And the Writer's Guild looking at it as 20, 30 years down the road, they see this hole where there's going to be a gap where no one's going to know how to run a show when this group of showrunners retires or moves on. There's not going to be anyone with that skillset and that knowledge because they don't have the repetitions and the time on set and the observation, and we haven't even talked about post and the value of being in post to learn these things too. And we can't use that shot because this, or there's a better take. The notes that I have to manage and maintain for the showrunner in order to get, I give him the lemi so that he can sit and post and understand what shots were taken, all the scripting notes, everything. They're going through everything to make those decisions and posts. And it's largely that stuff. Then those decisions being made on the day when they're filming. Yeah.Michael Jamin:The thing is, you mentioned the showrunners program at the writer's club. I had a guest on here, Alex Berger, who I worked with many years ago, and he's at the level now where he's ready to get his own show. He just hasn't gotten his own show, but he took the showrunner's program at the writer's club. It's a free program you have to apply for though. And he says that he learned a lot. And I was like, oh, tell me what you learned. And I was interested to know what he learned, run three shows, but it doesn't mean I know. No, I'm doing it because I never went through the program. But I was like, oh, that makes sense.Phil Hudson:I found out about that show. And again, I've talked about this documentary many times, but it's a showrunner, the Art of TV writing. But that's great. And they go in and they talk about that program, and they interview the director of the program and what the job is. And the thing that really stood out to me was quality scripts on time. That's the main thing. That's your job. That is the linchpin. And my assistant, Kevin, I hired an assistant in my agency who's a script coordinator, and he worked on a bunch of shows, but he was telling that one of the shows he was working on got canceled because the showrunner was not turning in scripts on time. And a very well known showrunner too.Michael Jamin:Yeah, it definitely happens. And on most of the shows we do, we try to get all the scripts done in pre-production. And the crew, the production staff is so grateful because that way they can plan ahead. They can decide which episodes to shoot. It's a hard enough job as it is without getting the script the night before. Imagine getting the script the night before and then telling 'em, okay, now you have to find, I don't know, a roller rink to shoot in the day the next day. How are they going to do that? So you have to get, this is when things get dangerous, when people are overworked or working late and cutting corners. So it's the job of the showrunner. And I think what the problem is, is I've been lucky I've had studios because these low budget shows that the studios are very, for the most part, hands off and they let you do your job. But on a high budget show, the studio may throw out a script the night before. We don't like it. And it's like, well, damn, do you understand what kind of stress this is going to put? Not just on the showrunner, but the entire crew inPhil Hudson:The families of the crew and the showroom as well. I know there are people on our crew who are working on the reshoots of Thor Love and Thunder, and they were working 14 hour days, seven days a week for two weeks straight. Terrible. And it is just like, Hey, it's going to make a billion dollars. We'll pay all of the overages and it'll all come out in the wash. We just got to get it done. And they did it shooting on a studio in Burbank, and then they have to drive home at three or four in the morning and then have turnaround.Michael Jamin:Yeah. Oh, I mean, these crew members really hard, hard, it can be a hard job. It could be a hard life. And soPhil Hudson:Yeah, you're getting home at 4:00 AM and then going to bed, you miss your kids. You wake up. I mean, even just, and I'll just say this, when I had my first kid, we were shooting quasi, my kid was almost a year old, and there were days I didn't see my kid, weeks. I didn't see my kid leave in the morning before she got up. And I'd come home before she went to bed or after she went to bed. That's heartbreaking.Michael Jamin:Heartbreaking. I hate that. Right.Phil Hudson:So it's what it was, and it was 30 days of that, and then it was over, and I was just very gratefulMichael Jamin:At, you can see the end in sight. At least you can go, okay, it's 30 days. I could. But if this is your life and okay, it's 30 days now, but your next movie is also 30 days, and then 30 days after that, a different movie, that becomes really hard. Yeah.Phil Hudson:Well, I think that speaks to as well, what your priorities are and what you want out of life. We talk about how if you want to be a writer, you have to learn how to write and you have to write for free, and you have to get notes and get feedback. You have to learn all these skillset sets. But I don't think a lot of people think about the quality of life that they want to have. And there are a lot of people, I think when I told you I was having a kid, you were telling me that you had an assistant or someone that you knew was a really good writer, really talented, and they just moved out of LA because it just no longer fit their family lifestyle. I can't remember who you were telling me.Michael Jamin:I don't remember who that was.Phil Hudson:Yeah, I remember I had the conversation. It was like literally you were telling them that. And then I was like, well, by the way, I'm having a kid after that. Because things shift and things change. Priorities change when you have a family, priorities. If you don't want to have a family and you're happy and you just want to make a career awesome and good for you, it's a balance. And I have a very supportive wife who lets me chase my dreams and do my things, and she hopes,Michael Jamin:But it could also be feast or famine. It can also be, you don't want to turn down this job. You don't know when your next job's coming. SoPhil Hudson:Yeah, imagine if I didn't have an agency that I'd built for the last decade. I'd be in a real bad spot right now with two kids. Yeah,Michael Jamin:Exactly. Yeah, right. There are aPhil Hudson:Lot of people likeMichael Jamin:That. I said, you're smart to have this other income stream, multiple income streams in Hollywood. Yeah. Well, there we go, Phil.Phil Hudson:Good stuff. Any other thoughts on producing orMichael Jamin:I don't know. I think I hit it. Do you have anything you want to add to this?Phil Hudson:No, I think it was a very helpful conversation. I hope people, I found it very enjoyable personally. I mean, just hearing you talk about these things and the nuances, it's just kind of sets the stage for what the job really is. And I think the mistake or the folly we often run into as creatives is we have this delusion of grandeur that we're going to make it in Hollywood and we're going to win an Oscar, and we're going to do these things. And you have to have a little bit of that suspension of disbelief, which is what we ask our audience to have. We have to suspend our disbelief about the reality of what our world looks like to chase our dreams and our goals, but we also need to be grounded and understand what the stakes are. And I think that's one of the values that you bring in the podcast. And what we see from people talking about is just, we just read the reviews the other day, just going through a bunch of 'em, and you and I we're really appreciative for anybody who's leaving reviews. So if you enjoy,Michael Jamin:Yeah, please go and leave us a review on Apple, if you like ourPhil Hudson:Show on iTunes. Yeah. But yeah, it's like people are just like, there's gold. Every episode's full of gold and wisdom. I just really think that it's a credit to your realistic take on of this, Michael. I just think you're just preparing another generation of writers and producers and creatives to just understand. You may never make it in the way you think you will, but it's still worth pursuing if you want to just keep doing it.Michael Jamin:Yeah, yeah, and that's a good point because I do know before I wrap it up, I have spoken with people who chase the money after college because for various reasons and all that may be completely legit, maybe they didn't grow up with money, and so having money in the pocket really felt good, some stability, but then they reach a certain age where the money does no longer fill the hole, and so then they start chasing, they want to do something a little more creative with their life.Phil Hudson:There's a Ben Fold song called The Ascent of Stan, and it's talking about this corporate guy who gets laid off after 30 years and he goes home and he puts his slide deck in and he projects it onto the wall and traces it because he's going to paint this thing and it's just all pointless. What has my, basically when it's like, what has my life been, I put 20, 30 years into this corporation and they just escorted me out one day and here I am just trying to find my art again. And it's like, what's the point? And that's reality. ButMichael Jamin:You don't need anyone's permission to start making your art today. Maybe we'll talk more about that in another podcast, but yeah, don't wait for, just start doing it. Start creating it. Love it. Alright everyone, thank you so much. We got a lot of good free stuff on my website. Go visit it and you can get all the things. You can get a free screenwriting lesson. You can get an invitation to my free screenwriting webinar, which we do every few weeks. Got another one coming up. Well, I dunno when this airs, who knows? There'sPhil Hudson:Always one coming up at this point, which is, there's always one, a lot of really good feedback.Michael Jamin:You can learn more about my book, a Paper Orchestra. When that drops, you can see me on tour. You can just get the book, the audio book working on. You can get a sample script that I wrote or a couple simple scripts you could get. What else can you get,Phil Hudson:Phil? The newsletter, weeklyMichael Jamin:Newsletter we give away. Phil's in charge all giving Phil's in charge of giving it all away. IPhil Hudson:Just take from Michael guys, it's allMichael Jamin:He gives it away.Phil Hudson:I'm Robin Hood and we're just handing it to the masses,Michael Jamin:But it's all go to michaeljamin.com.Phil Hudson:Asked me to give it away. To be clear, everyone, Michael's like, Hey, if I wanted to learn from someone, I don't want to read their script. Can we put my scripts up here? I'm like, yeah, I'll figure out how to make the form and the email auto drip campaign work and make sure the tags are functioning.Michael Jamin:Yep. He's the digital marketer. So you go check out ruck ss e o as well if you're all your digital marketing needs. Okay, everyone, thank you so much. Until next week, keep writing.Phil Hudson:Thanks guys.This has been an episode of Screenwriters Need to Hear This with Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for Michael's monthly webinar@michaeljamin.com/webinar. If you found this podcast helpful, consider sharing it with a friend and leaving us a five star review on iTunes. For free screenwriting tips, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter. You can follow Phil Hudson on social media @PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane Music by Ken Joseph. Until next time, keep writing.

On this week's episode, Writer Adam Pava (Boxtrolls, Lego Movie, Glenn Martin DDS and many many more) talks about his writing career, and why sometimes when he writes features, he doesn't always get credited. Tune in for much more!Show NotesAdam Pava on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adampava?lang=enAdam Pava on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1106082/Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/courseFree Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/freeJoin My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlistAutogenerated TranscriptAdam Pava:I think that's the main thing is have samples that show exactly what your voice is and exactly what makes you different than everybody else, and what you can bring to the table that nobody else can. I think that's the first thing, but to get those open writing assignments, I think it's just a cool errand to even try because they're just so risk averse to hire anybody that hasn't done it before. I think the better shot that you have is to make smaller things and then they'll seen you've done it. You're listening to Screenwriters Need to Hear This with Michael Jenman.Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. Welcome back for another episode. I may be retitling the name of my podcast. So I'm, I'm going to be vague for everyone, but I'm here with my next guest, Adam Pava, who's a very talented writer I worked with many years ago on show called Glen Martin, d d s, and he works. We'll talk. I'll let you speak in a second. Pava, you just relax. I'm going to bring you on with a proper introduction because you've worked a lot, lot of features, a lot of animation. So I'm going to run through some of your many credits. Some of them are credited and some of them just are not so credited. We're going to talk about that even though you've done the work. So I think you started early on on shows like Clone High, Johnny Bravo, I'm going to skip around.You worked with us on Glen Martin d d s, but then you've also done Monsters versus Aliens Dragons. I'm going to jump around, but wait, hold on. I'm skipping a lot of your credits, Pavo, a lot of the box trolls you've done, you work a lot with Lord and Miller on all their stuff, all the Lego movies, goblins. You have something in the works with Leica, which is one of the big animation studios which you're attached to direct as well, and then also some other shows. Let's mention My Little Pony dreamland. What else should we talk about? A bunch of the label, it's hard to talk about the credits because so many of 'em are things that are either in production or development that they're not supposed to talk about yet, or they're things that I was uncredited on. And so it's a weird thing.And why are you uncredited? How does that work? It's super different from TV and movies. So back when I worked in tv, I did tv. I mean, back when we worked together it was like what, 10, 15 years ago? Something like that. But I did TV for the first decade of my career and everything you work on, you're credited, even if you're just like the staff writer in the corner who says three words and doesn't make, get a joke into the script. You're one of the credited writers. Movies are a different situation. It's like one of these dirty secrets of Hollywood where they always want to credit one writer or a team of writers. Sometimes it'll be two writers that get the credit if both of 'em did a huge chunk of the work. But the thing that usually happens these days on big studio movies anyway is they will go through three or four writers over the course of the years and years of it being in development and all those writers who worked on it before the final writer or sometimes just the first writer and the last writer will get credit and all the ones in the middle won't get credit.Or it's like the W G A has these arbitration rules where it's like, unless you did a certain percentage of the final shooting script, you're not going to get credit at all. So even though the guy who brings catering gets credit and every person on, so will you arbitrate for credit or do you go into these projects knowing that you're not going to get credit? Usually I go in knowing that I'm not going to get credit or I will. Sometimes there'll be a situation. I did about a year's worth of work on the Lego movie, the first Lego movie, and Phil and Chris, Phil Lauren and Chris Miller who directed that and wrote the first draft of the script and the final draft of the script. They're buddies of mine and so I'm not going to arbitrate against 'em and I want them to hire me in the future and I love them and they really wanted, they're written and directed by title, and so of course I'm not going to arbitrate in that sort of situation.And also to be fair, I don't think I would win that arbitration because they wrote the first draft and it was already the idea and it was brilliant and it came out of their minds and it was awesome. And then they had me do four or five drafts in the middle of there where I was just addressing all the studio notes and all the notes from the Lego Corporation and all the notes from Lucasville and all that kind of stuff while they're off shooting 21 Jump Street and then they come back. So you were just doing it to move it closer and then they knew they were, yeah, exactly. They knew they were coming back onto it and they were going to direct it and they would do another pass. They would do multiple passes once it goes into storyboarding once it's green lit. So I was just trying to get it to the green lit stage, so they had written a draft and then I did a bunch of drafts addressing all these notes and then we got a green lit off of my drafts and then they came back on and they started the storyboard process and directing process.And the story changes so dramatically during that process anyway that the final product is so far removed from the drafts I did anyway, but it was a valuable, my work was needed to get it to that point to where they can jump back onto it. But very little of that final movie is anything that I can take credit for and I wouldn't want to take credit away from them on that. So I do a lot of that kind of work. Did they have other writers that worked on Legos movie as well, or just you? On the first one, it was them and me. There was these two brothers, the Hagerman brothers who had done a very early treatment, but that had set up the original idea for the movie of Allego man sort of becoming alive. So they got a story by credit, and then they definitely always have a stable of writers that they bring in to do punch up work and to just watch the animatic and give notes and stuff like that.So there's a whole bunch of people that are contributing along the way. Funny, they come from tv, so they really run it. They run it as if they're still on TV a hundred percent. They have their writers. And so I've gotten to work on a lot of their projects as one of their staff writer type people basically is the idea. So it's all uncredited work, but it's great work. They're such great guys and you're working on really cool things every time. And so now there's a new, in the last few years, the W G A started this new thing called additional literary Material credit. And so if Lego were to have come out now, I think I would've gotten that credit on it, but at the time, that didn't exist, so I got a special thanks. And how did you, oh, really? Okay. And how did you meet these guys?They gave me my first ever job before I knew you. I mean, I had written a movie script that was an animated movie. This is like 99 or 2000. I was just out of grad. I wrote it while I was in grad school. And Wait, hold on. I didn't even know you went to grad school. Did you study screenwriting in grad school? Yeah, I went to U S C screenwriting. Oh, I did not. I hide it from you. Why do you hide it? For me? I don't know. It's a weird thing where I feel like a, it's like I was in this weird secondary program that wasn't part of the film school. It was the master's of professional writing and screenwriting. And so people would get confused and I didn't want to lead them on, but also I just feel like it got me to a place and then I was like, I didn't want be part of a good old boys club where people are just hiring U S C people or whatever.That's the whole point of going to USC for Yeah, people ask me, should I go to film school, get an M F A, and my standard answer is, no one will ever ask for your degree. No one caress about your degree. The only thing they care about is can you put the words on the page that are good a hundred? But why did you, but what it did offer me, and I'll get back to how I met Phil and Chris in a little bit, but this is a good side conversation. It gave me an opportunity to do some internships on a couple of TV shows. And that was super, super valuable. So when I was at U SS C, it was 99 and 2000, and so I interned my first year on a little show called Friends, which was still on the air. I was on the air at the time.I was just the stage intern. So I was moving the chairs around during the rehearsals and fetching coffees and getting frozen yogurt for cast members or whatever, just shitting my pants, trying to be a normal human being around all these superstars and was not, I wouldn't say it was the best experience of my life. It was definitely one of those things where I was like, everybody was super intimidating and everybody was really busy and the cast were in the middle of a renegotiation, so they're all showing up late. It just felt like everyone was angry the whole time. And I was like, dunno if I want to work in tv. But there was one writer's assistant who was just like, yeah, because on the stage you're a writer, you need to be in a writer's room, you should be an intern in a writer's room.And I was like, oh. And then so I was able to get an internship on Malcolm In the Middle, which had just sold, it was in his first year, so it was a summer show. So I jumped onto that in the summer and was able to do that. And then in that writer's room, I was like, oh, these are my people. These are actual, wait, you were an intern. They let you sit in the writer's room one. It was like for doing all, getting the lunches and making the coffee and all that stuff. Linwood was nice enough to let me just observe in the room for one day a week just to, well, if I didn't have other stuff I needed to get done. So it was super nice as long as I didn't pitch or say anything and I was just, I never would.But it was cool to, that experience showed me that show was so well written and it was so tight and those writers were all geniuses or I thought they were all geniuses. And then I'd go in the room first, I would read the scripts and I would think, oh my God, I'd never be able to do this. And then I got in the room and I'm like, oh no, they're just working really, really hard and banging their head against the wall until they come up with a perfect joke. And then by the time it's done, it seems like it's genius. But it all was just really hard work, really long hours to get to that place. So that taught me like, oh, maybe I can be one of those people. If I'm just one cog in this room, I could do that. And so that gave sort of the confidence to do that.So I had done those. Getting back, I can loop back into the Phil and Chris thing now because this actually connects really well. I had done those internships. I graduated U Ss C and I had this script that I'd written as my final project or whatever, and it was an animated movie, and I thought you could just sell an animated movie, but I didn't know, they didn't teach me this in grad school that at the time they developed 'em all. It was like only Disney and Dreamworks were doing 'em at the time. This is 2000. And they just hire directors and sort of were an artist in-house to sort of create the stories or back then that's how they would do it. And so I sent it to some agents and the response was always like, Hey, you're a really funny writer. This is really good.I can't sell this. I don't know anybody that buys animated movies, but you should write a live action movie if you can write it as good as this. And so I wrote another movie that was Live Action, but it was silly. It seemed like it might as well have been an, I go back and read it now and I'm like, it's basically an animated movie, but it didn't say it was animated, it was live action human beings. And I submitted it to a small boutique agency at the time called Broder. I don't know if you remember them, Broder Crow, we were there. Yeah. And so Matt Rice was an agent there at the time, and he had on his desk, his assistant was Bill Zody. I dunno if you know him, he's a big name agent now, but he was an assistant at the time.He read that script that I wrote and was like, oh, you know who this reminds me of these other clients that Matt has, Phil and Chris. And so he passed it on to those guys and they were looking for a writer's assistant on Clone High because they had just sold their first TV show. They were a young hotshot writers that were just deal. And so I met with Phil and Chris, and they hired me as the writer's assistant on Clone High, which was like, they were the same age as me. They were just like, we don't know what we're doing. But they're like, you've been in a writer's room, you've been knock on the middle and I friends and you, I didn't know anything. I didn't know what I was doing at all, but it said on my resume that I had had these experiences.So they thought I would be a good writer's assistant for that reason. But they were the coolest dudes from the very beginning. They were just like, you're the writer's assistant, but also you should pitch in the room. You should act like you're another writer. We have a really small staff, we have seven writers, and you're going to get episode eight. I mean, it was crazy. They were just like, they gave me a lance and that never happens anymore. How did they get an overall deal when they came? Oh, it's the craziest day. So they went to Dartmouth, they made each other at Dartmouth and then they were doing cartoons while they were there studying animation. And one of Phil's, I think it was Phil, I think it was Phil won the Student Academy Award for a student film that he did. And it was written about in the Dartmouth Alumni magazine.And there was a development exec at Disney whose son went to Dartmouth and read that article and was like, Hey, called them in their dorm room. And we're like, if you guys ever go out to la lemme know. We'll set a meeting. And they literally, the day after they graduate just drove to LA and then called 'em up and we're like, we're ready to get hired. And it worked and they got hired, it worked. They got hired just to do Saturday morning stuff, and they did that for a little bit and everything they were doing was too crazy for Saturday morning, but it was like Disney. But then Disney was like, well, you can start developing stuff for adult Disney or for primetime stuff. And so they came up with the idea for Clone High, and it originally sold to Fox as a pilot to be after the Simpsons or whatever, but then it didn't get picked up and then M T V picked it up and then they had a show.So it's crazy what a trajectory their career has. Yeah, I know. And now they're running Hollywood. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah. They were good guys to meet right away mean honestly, it was like to become friends with them and just to ride their wake and get some of their sloppy seconds and some of the stuff that they don't want to deal with, it's honestly, it was great. Did they call you a lot with stuff like that? Hey, we don't want to do this. It's yours less now than they used to. I mean, there was a point where I was one of their stable guys that they would call. I think they have met a lot of people in the 20 years since then, but early on it was like, I mean, even their first movie was Claudio with a Chance of Meatballs, and they brought me on to help rewrite the third act at one point.And it was just from then on, they would always send me their scripts and just add jokes or to give feedback or whatever, and they've always been like that. And then I've noticed the last maybe six or seven years as they've gotten these huge deals and all their projects are now just these massive things, it's not quite the same relationship where they would just text me or email me and be like, Hey, read this. Now. It's like they have a whole team of people. They have a machine now, but we still are friends. And then things will come up where they'll hire me for things here and there. I wonder, honestly, I don't want to make this differe about them, but it's so interesting. I kind of think, I wonder what it's like to be that busy. It almost feels like, oh my God, I'm too busy.They're so busy. They're the hardest working people I know. It's like people always wonder how this stuff comes out so good. And it's not that, I mean honestly, it's just good because they stay up later than everybody. They never stop tinkering with things. They're never satisfied. They always think the next thing they do is going to ruin their career. And so they run on this fear that propels them that, I mean, they harness it. It's not like it's a secret. They know that this is what makes them great and utilizing all their friends utilizing, they're the kind of people that are the best idea in the room wins. If you could be the PA or the head of the studio and if you have a great idea, they're like, let's try it. And they also try a lot of stuff that doesn't work and they're given the leeway to go down a lot of dead ends and then realize that's not the answer, and then back up and then try it again and try it again and try it again.And that's how a lot of animated movies are done. And so it drives everybody crazy, but also creates amazing product. That's what, because I've interviewed a couple of guys who worked at dreamworks, which John Able who does a lot of the kung movies, and he describes it the same way. I was like, wow, it's so different from writing live. It's so different from writing live action. The whole experience sounds exhausting to me. Do you find it the same? Yeah, I mean when I first started in it, I was like, this is ridiculous. Why don't they just write a script and then shoot the script? And then over the years, I've learned to love the process. I mean, I was frustrated early on when I would realize how much gets thrown out and how much changes and how much. It's just, it's out of the hands of one writer.And I think a lot of it is also just ego thinking that you could do it better than everybody. And then once I embraced, oh no, you have a bunch of really brilliant storyboard artists and you have a bunch of really brilliant character designers and head of story and a director and all these different people who, and layout artists and even the animators themselves, they all add something so vital and valuable to it, and you learn stuff from each of their steps and then you're just given the leeway to be able to keep adjusting and adjusting until you get it right. And that's why animation comes out so much tighter often than live action is just because you've been able to see the movie so many times and keep tweaking and tweaking until you get it right. Now there is a point where sometimes I feel like you can take that too far and then it just becomes like, oh, we had a great version, four drafts to go and now we've lost our way, or we're just spinning our wheels or whatever.See, that's why I get lost sometimes. I've been in shows where you rewrite something to death and then someone says, we should go back to the way it was, and I'm like, what was the way it was? I don't even remember anymore a hundred percent, and I've stopped ever thinking You can do that. I used to think I would hold out hope though they'll realize that the earlier draft was better. They'd never do. It's like everybody forgets it, and then you just have to have the confidence to be like, well, we know we'll come up with something better together that it'll be from the collaborative mind of all of us. And then I think now I've seen actually the last few years, there's a little bit of a tightening of the belt budgetarily, and that leads to faster schedules. And so instead of having seven times that you can throw the story up from beginning to end on the storyboards, like the reels and watch this movie, you can only do it three times or so.That gives you a little bit more of a window of like, okay, we got to get it right in three drafts or whatever, in three storyboard drafts. And who's driving the ship then in animation? Is it not the director in this case, it's Lord Miller, but they're the writers. Well, Lord Miller are often the directors, and so when they're the directors, they're in charge when they're the producers, they're in charge When they're on the Spider Verse movies, for example, they're the writer or Phil writes them and then they hire directors. But Phil and Chris are the producers, but they're sort of like these super directors. They're very unusual. Yeah, it's not, yeah, that's an unusual situation. But other movies somebody do at dreamworks and there's somebody do at Leica Leica, it's like the director and the head of the studio, Travis Knight, who it's his sandbox and it's his money because he's a billionaire that funds the studio.He has the ultimate say, and so the directors are always working with him, but it's always collaborative. It's always like you get in a room. When I'm working at Leica, it's always like me, the director and Travis trying to figure it out, and he's trusted me to be, I feel like he doesn't trust a lot of people. He is kind of closed off in that way, but once you earn his trust, you will be in that room and you'll figure it out together or whatever. But every movie's different, and sometimes I'm on a movie just to help fix it for a little bit, and then I'm just a fix it person that comes in for a little bit. Sometimes I just add jokes. Sometimes I just, there's been movies where it was a mystery animated movie and they're like, can you just rewrite the mystery?I was like, what a weird assignment. But I had three weeks still. But in this case, they're calling you. How are you getting this work? Just reputation, they're calling you out of nowhere? Mostly now it's reputation. I mean, sometimes I'll be submitted to it. I mean, the first time it's always like you have to be submitted. And I mean, I can tell you how I got hired on box rolls. That was a big breakthrough to me. I mean, it was after I'd done, so Lego was obviously just having known and worked with Phil and Chris forever, and then they got hired on Jump Street, and they needed somebody that they trusted to dear the ship for a while while they're gone. And so I was able to do that, and that was a huge big break. It was like, you couldn't ask for that. I just, I'm the luckiest guy in the world.But after that, at Leica, they had a draft of a movie before it was called box Rolls, it was called Here Be Monsters, and it had been in development for years and years and years and gone through a bunch of writers and they hadn't quite figured it out. It was kind of a mess. It was a big sprawling story that had a lot of moving parts to it, and they had heard that on Lego, I was able to harness a lot of the crazy ideas that Phil and Chris had and put it into a structure that made sense. And so they asked me to come in and do the same thing, or before they even did that, I did a punch up. I got hired to do a punch up on that movie, and I knew that it was going to be a huge opportunity to impress them.I really, really wanted to work at Leica because at the time, they had only had Coralline come out and I loved that movie. And then I had seen maybe ParaNorman had come out or it hadn't come out yet, but it was about to, whatever it was, I knew it was a new animation studio doing really unique original stuff, and I got asked to be part of this round table, and it was all these heavy hitter Simpsons writers. It was like J Kogan and Gamo and Pross, all these people that you're like, these are all legends. They've done a million shows and they get hired to do punch up all the time. That's like their bread and butter, right? I'm not so sure anymore, but okay, no, no, but this is in 2011 or whatever.And I was like, I am going to take this script and analyze it and come up with character moments and come up with, I'm not going to be able to compete with those guys with the best joke in the room necessarily. I'll have good jokes to pitch, but I'm going to have like, oh, what if we adjust the character to be more like this? And where those guys were all, not those guys specifically, but the room in general, these were all guys who were maybe reading five pages ahead and then pitching off the top of their head. And I spent a couple of days writing jokes in the margin and ideas in the margin, and I killed in that room. I got a lot of stuff in and to the point where a few months later when they needed a big overhaul, they asked me to come in and do sort of what I had done on Lego, just take this big thing and hone it down into, so it was a rewrite job at the beginning, and then it turned into three years of working with the director in the studio to change that story.We threw everything out and started over basically a couple times over the course of those years end up, but how are you get paid? Are you getting paid on a weekly scale? Because I don't know how that would work. Do you get paid? It starts off with a draft and then it'll be a typical thing like a draft in two rewrites, but you quickly run through those and then they keep needing your work. At least they're not getting free work out of you. They're picking no, then it turns into either a day rate or a weekly rate, and that's where I bought my house.I made so much money on my day rate. They would literally just, Leica would call me and just be like, oh, we're going to record an actor in a few days. Can you just go through all their scenes and write three or four alts for every joke? Just have a bunch of stuff. And I would spend a few days doing that, and then a day rate, you get paid really, really well, that stuff adds up. Or they would be like, we just need one more pass on the third act, or we just need to go through the whole script and remove this character. And so all these little weekly assignments, and then you're just like, that was very lucrative doing it that way.Michael Jamin:Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljamin.com/watchlist.Adam Pava:You usually, because done so much animation and it sounds like you always set out to do animation, is that I did set out to do it, and then I didn't set out to only do it. I thought I could do both, but you kind of get pigeonholed a little bit. It's hard. I've gotten hired to write a few live action movies, but there were always a live action movie that had an animation element to it. It could be a hybrid movie or be a family movie that they think, oh, because you've done family work, you can do this. But nobody would ever hire me to just do a horror movie or whatever. And I don't know if I'd be the right guy for that either. I think my sensibility tends to be more animation based, but also, I think movies are such a different thing than TV where there's like, they're so expensive.If you're spending $80 million or whatever, you want to hire somebody that's done it before. So it's really, really hard for the studio bosses or even the lower level executives to fight to hire you if you've never done that kind of thing before. And so you get, it's not pigeonholed. I love doing it and I love the work, but it's also, I get why I get hired for certain things and not for other things. But also I feel super lucky because animation is one of the only parts or the only genres of film that has not shrunk over the years. Movies in general, they've stopped making live action comedies almost completely, except for stuff on streamers. They don't make rom-coms anymore. They barely make action comedies. It's like they make superhero movies and Star Wars movies, but then animation movies are evergreen. And so I feel really lucky that I sort of fell into this area that there is still work to be had.So yeah, I mean, you really have put together a really pretty impressive career. And I know not all your credits, not all your work is credited, so what I mean? Yeah, well, it's either uncredited or there's so many projects that died Vine. So it's like you read my, I said you that list of credits and it's like I'm looking at it over earlier today. Oh, it's just a list of debt projects, but that's expected. When you go into it, you go, okay, they're not all going to go. That's expected. It's all right. I was looking at my, I was organizing my, it's a strike, so I have time to do these things, organizing my folders on my computer and putting everything in, and I had over 150 folders of each. One is its own project, and not all of those are work that I've done.Some of them are like, I got sent this thing to pitch on, and then I had one meeting and it went away. And some of 'em I did a few weeks on, or some of 'em I just did day work on, but 150 projects over the years. Some of 'em I'm on for a year or two or three years. So it's insane. And so the hit ratio is super low of, I got really lucky when I transitioned out of TV and went into movies. It was like the first two things. Well, I sold a thing to Dreamworks that didn't get made, but then right after that, it was Lego and box trolls. They both came out in 2014, and I worked on both of 'em, and I was like, oh, this is going to be easy. You work on a movie and then it comes out and then it's cut to 10 years later and it's like nothing else is my name on it has come out.I've worked steadily. I've worked really well. I've been very happy. But it's definitely, it's a different thing than TV where you're just working and getting credited all the time. Well, yeah, but it also sounds like, I don't know, it sounds like to me, maybe I'm wrong. It sounds like you don't need to hustle as much doing what you do. No, I feel like it's the opposite because on TV you can get on a show and you're running for years, but on a movie you always know what's going to add, but they're coming to you. People are coming to you with offers, in other words. Oh yeah, sometimes. I mean, yes, the ones that end up happening, that's true. But there's so many that I'm just on a list at the studio, but I'm in a bake off with six other writers and I don't get it.So you put a lot of work so people don't know what to bake off is. So this is when you have to pitch to get the job and you have to put in several weeks of work. That's the worst. That's just the worst. And that's the majority of my life. Oh, is it? That's like, yeah. Yeah. So there's definitely, I mean, between Phil and Chris and Laika, I have, and a little bit of Dreamworks now. I'm doing my third movie for them right now. So that's pretty good over 10 years, three movies. But other than those places, it's always like you're getting sent stuff, but that doesn't mean they want you. It just means they want to hear a bunch of takes, and so you have to try to fight for the job if you really want it. Or I used to spend months or maybe eight months coming up with the take and having every detail worked out.And then I realized over time, they don't actually want that. They want a big idea and some themes and some ideas of what the set pieces are, and they want to know that you, I mean, honestly, it's, I don't even recommend that young writers go out for them because you're not going to get it anyway, because they're always going to go with somebody that has done it before. Especially, I mean, not always, if you might be the rare exception, but so much. Well, then what do you recommend to young writers to do? Dude, I don't know. I mean, I think you have to write great samples. I mean, I think that's the main thing is have samples that show exactly what your voice is and exactly what makes you different than everybody else, and what you can bring to the table that nobody else can.I think that's the first thing. But to get those open writing assignments, I think it's just a fool's errand to even try, because they're just so risk averse to hire anybody that hasn't done it before. I think the better shot that you have is to make smaller things, and then they'll see you've done, it's not even try to get these big studio things, get a small indie thing if you can, or make your own thing if you can, or just try to work your way up in a smaller way. I mean, all the big name directors out there all started on small indie movies. And I think that's got to be the same for writers now too. So many fewer movies. Is there anything that you're doing on the side just for the love of it that you're creating for yourself? Or is it, I haven't, in the last few years, I haven't.I've just been busy with work, but during the pandemic, I had plenty of time. Nobody was buying movies, and I am wrapped up on something and I had an idea that I thought was going to be my next big sale, and that it was an idea about a virus that went, it was a comedy thing, but it was this idea where it was sort of based on the idea that Christmas is getting longer and longer every year, where people put up their lights in decorations sooner and sooner, and you start seeing the stuff for sale in October or whatever. And so I was like, oh, it felt like Christmas was a virus that was slowly taking over the world. And I was like, what if it's a zombie movie, but Christmas is the virus? And so it was sort of a Christmas apocalypse thing where Christmas takes over the world and one family didn't get infected and had to fight back.So I was like, this is going to be a big seller. And then I was like, and then Covid hit, and it was like nobody wanted to buy a thing about a virus taking over the world, so I literally spent the pandemic. To answer your question, I wrote it as a novel. Instead, I wrote it as a middle grade novel, a y, a novel. Did you publish it? Not yet. We're trying. So we're out to publishers, and it took a while to figure out literary agents, which are very different world and everything, but the idea is to hopefully sell it as a book and then be able to adapt it as a feature. But yeah, it was so fun to write, and it was so freeing to not be stuck in 110 pages and to, I mean, I already had the whole thing outlined from the pitch when I was going to pitch it, so I knew the structure of it, so I just kept it as the structure of a movie, but I expanded on it and got more into the character's heads and that kind of stuff.But I had such a fun time writing that, and I was just like, man, someday when the work dries up, I am going to look forward to writing novels instead. And oh, yeah. The funny thing is when you describe the literary word going out to publishers, it's not that different from Hollywood. You think It is. It's not. It's the same hell. Oh, absolutely. But you and I haven't had to deal with breaking into Hollywood in a long time. And then in the literary world, they're like, oh, you've written movies. We don't care. We don't care at all. So it's starting over. And U T A tried to help a little bit, but they're like, we don't really know what to do. And then, so it's, I've been, my manager has been introducing me to editors and stuff, literary editors, and they've been really receptive, and it's been good trying to find the right one and the person I jive with. But it's very much like, oh, you're starting from scratch all over again. And for less money, no money. I mean, literally, I don't know how you would make a living off of this. I mean, I think we're spoiled a little bit, but what was the money they were telling you? Can you say, I don't want to say you don't, but it was basically about, it was less than a 10th that I would get paid on a movie.It was about my weekly rate. So I was telling you, I do weekly jobs on movies, and it's like if I do a weekly on a studio movie or I could sell a novel, or you could work five years on a novel, and I'm like, oh, this is not a way to support a family, but it was really fun. Someday when I'm just doing it for fun, I would love to do it. Wow, how interesting. Wow. So your best advice, because you're not an animator, you're not even an artist, are you? No, I don't draw or anything. I just love animation. I just always loved animation. So I don't know. I think when I was in seventh grade when the Simpsons started, and that blew my mind, and I was like, I remember telling my dad, I think I want to write on this. It was the first time I recognized, oh, people are writing these jokes. It was very, I think, more self-aware than most comedy was. And I was in junior high and I was just like, I want to be a writer on a show like this. I never was a writer on that show, but a bunch of other stuff.Now, as far as directing, because I know you're attached to possibly direct this project, where does your confidence come from that to direct? I mean, I don't know if I have confidence in it. I mean, I would want to co-direct it. In animation, you often get paired with another, if you're a writer, you'd get paired with an experienced animation director who comes from the visual side. So either an animator or a store wear artist or visual development artist. And I just feel like some of the projects I've been doing, you sort of act as more than just a writer anyway. You're sort of meeting with the creative heads all the time, making these big decisions that affect the projects. And at a certain point, I'm like, well, if I write something, that project that I, that's at life that I was attached to, it probably won't even happen at this point.It's been a few years, and it's kind of sitting there waiting for Travis to decide if he wants to make it. But it was a personal project to me, and it was like this would be the one that I was like, I would really want to see this all the way through. And I'm sure at that studio at this point, he's, Travis himself who runs the studio, is kind of directing all the latest projects anyway, so I would be co-directing with him. And so he would really be in charge, and I would just be, they're up in Seattle, right? Portland? Yeah, Portland or in Portland, yeah. So do you go up there a lot for Yeah, when I'm on a project, so usually it's like if I'm just writing it before it's green lit, which is most of the time I'll just fly up there for meetings just to get launched or whatever, and then go back up after I turn it in to get notes. But if it's in production on box trolls, and then there's another upcoming one that I did a bunch of production work on, they'll fly me up there to work with the board artists and stuff. And that's a crazy, that place is so nice.It's like a wonderland. I mean, it's like this giant warehouse downstairs that they have all the stages and they're all covered with black velvet rope, I mean black velvet curtains. So to keep all the light out and everything. And that's where they're moving all the puppets and everything, the stop motion. And then upstairs it's like the offices, and it just feels like a corporate office building with cubicles and stuff. It's very weird. But you go downstairs and it's like there's people animating, there's this huge warehouse where they're building all the props and they're like armature section where they're adding all the skeletal armature to the You never went with us to, because Kapa was like that in a cup of coffee in Toronto when we did Glen Martin. Yeah, it was amazing though. Similar. But Kapa is doing it on a budget, and these guys are spending so much money, it's not a viable way to make money to make these animated stop motion animated movies.They don't do it to make money. He does it. He loves it. Oh, really? Oh my gosh. Yeah, because Travis Knight is the son of Phil Knight who've gone to Nike, so he's got sort of a lot of money, and it's his hobby shoe money. He's got shoe money, but he is a brilliant animator. He is a super smart, interesting dude who wants to make things that are different than anybody else. And so it's an amazing place to work because nowhere else do you ever have the conversation of like, oh, we could do this if we wanted to do it, where more people would see it, or we could do it this way, which is cool and we want to do this. It's fun and weird.Not that he doesn't care about an audience, he does care about an audience, but it's not most important to him is making something that's awesome to him for the art. And so it's a very different way of looking at things. But I've been in situations there where it's like we're doing upstairs, doing a rewrite with me and the director changing the whole third act or whatever, and then I go downstairs and just tour the stages and the workshops, and I'll meet a puppeteer who's like building this giant puppet who's telling me this is the biggest puppet that's ever been created in Stop motion, and here's the 17 different places where I can articulate it. And I'm just thinking like, dude, we cut that yesterday upstairs. Oh no. And he's been working on it for a month. Oh, no. But I can't say anything. I'm just sort of like, oh, yeah, that's awesome.It's so great. You're doing great work. Anyway, I'm going to get back upstairs. That's so heartbreaking. But they burn through so much money just doing it all by hand. It's so crazy. But it's so beautiful, so I love it. And so you were literally upstairs, they gave you a small office and you just start typing? Yeah, that's literally, I mean, usually when I'm there, it's like they just put me in some random cubicle that nobody else is using or it's not a cubicle, a little office that is or whatever, somebody office. And you'll stay there for a few days or a few weeks or what? Yeah, exactly. Depending on how much they need me. So it either be a few days or a few weeks. And then on box rolls, I was up there. I would be up there for a week, relining some stuff, and then I'd come back home for two weeks and write those pages up.And I mean, I'd be writing in the evenings after the meetings and stuff too, while I was up there. But when we are rewriting, it's a train that's moving and it's like the track is you're running on a track and you got to keep pressure. What did you think of staying there in Portland? Did you like it? I did it. It's hard because my family's here and life is here, but if that movie had gone that I was attached to Coder Act, we were planning on moving there for that for three or four years. That's how it would take. Interesting. Would you have sold your house here or just rented it out? I'd have rented it out, I think. Interesting. Yeah, you, it was like we were having all these conversations, and then it's the longer it goes, we're like, that's probably not going to happen.We don't have to think about this right now. How interesting. That's so key. It really takes that long, man. Oh yeah. They're so long. And then also, it's like there is this weird thing in animation where it's not uncommon for a movie to go through two or three directors over the course of its many years in production. So it's like, why? I know. Just because they're beasts. And sometimes in the same way that you're changing the story so many times over the years, sometimes you make such a drastic change that it's no longer the vision of that director, and it's just not a right fit anymore. And I've seen that happen on a lot of movies that I've been on. I mean, Boxtrolls didn't end up with the same two directors that it started with. One of the two stayed on it, but the other one didn't.Oh, no, this sounds very frustrating to me. It sounds It does. And then other movies up there have gone through different directors, and so I was like, even if I had gotten hired as the director, I was in the back of my head. I always knew this might not last even if I'll do my best and I'll try to make it work. But you haven't even started and you're finding I'm being fired. Yeah, totally. But I mean, it's a weird thing. It's not TV where you're on a show for a year and then hopefully you get the second year if you get one. It's like in movies, they fire and hire different writers all the time, and so directors less, but writers, it really is pretty common. I've been on both sides of it where it's like, I used to take it really harder, fired off a movie.You're like, oh my God, did they not like the draft? I did. And usually it's like, no, we liked it, but now there's a director on it and they want to take a different direction. Or Oh, the director has a friend that they want to work with that they work with as a writer. Or other times I've been that guy that a director has brought on to rewrite somebody else, and I always try to be super nice about it. Now that I've seen both sides of it, I always try to reach out to the previous writer and be like, Hey, I just want you to know it's in good hands. Or sometimes if I'm the one that's fired, I reach out, be like, Hey, if you want to know where the skeletons are buried, happy to get in lunch with you. Just to be like, here's the pitfalls to look out for.This is where people don't realize that people on the outside just don't realize what it's actually like when you're the writer. You're a successful working writer. And I think they have a very different vision of the reality of a hundred percent. I didn't know the job was, I thought the job was going to be writing the whole time. Most of the job is it's playing politics with the studio and the executives and the director and Well, what do you mean politics, getting navigating the notes? What do you mean? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like the notes, but also the personalities. It's like a lot of the job I feel like is to go in and to make everybody feel comfortable with where you're taking it. Because you walk into a room and sometimes you could feel like, oh, the director thinks they're making a very different movie than the head of development thinks.Then that's different than what the producer thinks. And that's different than what the head of the studio thinks. It's like I've been in a room where it's like Jeffrey Katzenberg is just like, guys, guys, guys, you're all thinking about this all wrong. And you just have to be like, okay, how can I find solutions that makes everybody happy, that make everybody happy? And that's a huge part of the job. I mean, honestly, when I did the Lego rewriting with Phil and Chris, that's what the whole job was, was just like, how do I make Warner Brothers who didn't know what they had? They thought it was a toy commercial. They were very skeptical of the whole thing, Phil and Chris, who wanted to make some beautiful art. And it was cool with cool ideas. And Lego Corporation who wanted to make a toy commercial and Lucasfilm who didn't want their characters to be in it, and DC who didn't know whether they should be or not.And you're just like, how do I get in a room? And and usually if you come up with a great gag or great joke that articulates the, that illuminates the tone of the thing. So they all go, oh, okay. That's the thing. So the round of notes, like you're saying, oh, it's incredible, but for everybody and everyone's got conflicting. I don't even know walking into that job, and all I care about is I don't want my friends, Phil and Chris to think I fucked up their movie because they're trusting me just so I keep it moving. But I would think even for them, it's like, how do I get this movie made when I have so many competing notes and to their credit account, great, but still that is a hundred percent to their credit, they have a genius ability to, not only are they great writers and great directors, I think more than that, they have this sense of how to make everybody in a room think that the ideas came from them.It's like, yeah, they're great at, they'll go into a room, I think sometimes having some ideas in their pocket, but it feels like the room came up with the ideas together, and then everybody's like, yes, we did it. Pat ourselves on the back. And everybody, the executives' seem happy. But sometimes it actually does come out that, I mean, those brainstorm sessions really do create a new idea, and sometimes it's them trusting the process that that's going to work out. And sometimes I think they literally are like, well, we can go this way or this way, but I know it'll be easier if they think they had the idea. So let's go this way for now. And then later they know it's going to change a thousand times anyway in the storyboards, and then they could figure it out for real later. Because all these see people like that.They're very well paid, but in my opinion, they're earning every penny of this a hundred percent. They're earning every, it's not that easy. This job, I feel like I've gotten better over the years where I've taken my ego out of it. I used to have a much bigger ego, you might remember, but I feel like I can be, now, I can just go in a room and be like, I'm just going to try to help. I'm just going to be like, how could I make everybody feel comfortable? How can I make everybody feel like we're on the right page together and create this thing? I know that it's like the process is going to take years and years, and the relationship is more important than the individual story note or whatever. It's like that's what's going to matter over the long term of this project.It's that we all trust each other and that we can make something great together. And that's more important than fighting for a joke or fighting for a story moment or a take, or even exactly, either. It's about fighting the relationship, and I've said this before, it's about the relationship is the most important thing, and sometimes you have to sacrifice what you think is the best story, the best moment for the greater good of the relationship. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Wow. I feel like this has been eyeopening even for me, and I feel like my eyes are fucking opened. You know what I'm saying?We've done some movie work, but obviously we work mostly in tv, but the movie side, the movie side was never really appealing. I remember because we shared the same agent for our futures, and I remember he gave us a conversation. I was like, I dunno if I want to work in movies again. It's weird. It sounds hard. It's different because in TV you're the boss, right? I mean, when you're the showrunner, you're the boss. Yeah. You've been there for a long time. And in movies, you're never the boss. I mean, I gave up on, I mean, before I worked with you, there was one TV show I ran and I co ran with my friend Tim, and we were the bosses, and I hated it. I did not enjoy it. It was like all the meetings and all the decisions and the budgets and the interpersonal relationships and all that stuff.I was like, I was not good at it back then, and I don't know if I'd be better now, and I just was like, you know what? I just want to be part of a team and I want to be a writer. And it's like in movies, that's what you are. You're just part of this big team in a different way. I mean, I guess when you're a staff writer or coming up through the ranks and tv, you're part of a team too, but you can be like, you're also a much more integral part of the team, the one writer on it at the time. Or in movies, you're like, when you're the writer, you're the writer and they all look to you for that one job. Or if you're on a staff when I'm on a show with you or whatever, you might look to me for one type of, it's very different. I'm a cog in this room.It's never, you never have to be a hundred percent on your A game every day for you can showing it in a little bit coast. Wow. Adam Paval, what an interesting conversation. This is enlightening for me. Very enlightening. Yeah, man. Are you having everybody on from the old days, Brian? Well, I had Alex Berger on a while ago. We talked a little bit about that script that you guys wrote together. Well, there's two things on Glen Martin. You were always pestering me to do a musical. Yeah, I think, I don't know how to write a musical. And you're like, this is why I've work in animated features. I've written three musicals since I, so lemme let you do the movie. I was like, dude, I don't know how to do so go ahead and knock yourself out. That was fun. And then you guys came back with that Christmas episode. I thought you guys both hit it out of the park. I was like, let's shoot it, let's shoot it.I think it took, because that was all second year stuff and it took a little bit of time to figure out tonally what we were doing and then just to get a little crazier. And then, I mean, those episodes were like, yeah, I could be a little bit more myself of writing the weird stuff that I wanted. I mean, the other one I remember fondly is that weird Funshine episode. Was that the musical one or was that, I don't remember. Dude, fun cine was, it was like the planned community in Florida that was basically celebration Florida and they all realized that everybody was on being drugged and were lactating out of their breast and all that. Oh, that's right. Now I remember the guy, there was a scene where there's a pregnant man or something. It was fucking nuts. And I was like, oh, now we're writing the show that I could write.The first year, I think it was a little bit more like I was a little square pa in a round hole where it was like I didn't have a family at the time and it was a family show. It was about a dad and a mom trying to navigate their crazy kids and I was like, I don't know what the fuck. Crazy in that show. It's a shame. We didn't do more seasons. We weren't nuts. It was fun. It was a fun time. For sure. I got some of the puppies right over there, so see, yeah, I got the one you gave me of me that one from the college episode. Oh right, the college episode. That's right. We put you in. You ran the gauntlet I think, didn't you? I think that, yeah, that's exactly right. Funny. Yeah, funny. Adam, Papa, where can people, is there anything want, we can plug people, find you.Are you on social media? Is there anything? I'm not super active. I'm on Twitter. You can find me on Twitter. Adam Papa or Adam or whatever it's called now. X X, I'm on X, but don't really, I'm not super active on it. I don't have anything to plug. Everything's going to come out in four years. Yeah, right. Yeah. Look for Adam Papa in four years when something drops to the movies. That's the process. Dude, thank you again so much for doing this. This was a really interesting conversation. I haven't talked yet, spoken to anybody about this kind of stuff. You are a wealth of information. Alright. Yeah, it's fine. Everyone, thank you so much. Until the next episode drops, which will be next week. Keep writing.Phil Hudson:This has been an episode of Screenwriters Need to Hear this with Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for Michael's monthly webinar @michaeljamin.com/webinar. If you found this podcast helpful, consider sharing it with a friend and leaving us a five star review on iTunes. For free screenwriting tips, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter. You can follow Phil Hudson on social media @PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane Music by Ken Joseph. Until next time, keep writing.

On this week's episode, Writer/Executive Producer Alex Berger (Blindspot, Glen Martin D.D.S, Quantum Leap, and many many more) talks about his writing career, thoughts on breaking into the industry as well as his experiences taking a "Showrunners Course" through the studios.STORY NOTESAlex Berger on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1584238/Alex Berger on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexbergerla?lang=enFree Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/courseFree Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/freeJoin My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlistAUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPTAlex Berger:They said, when you're interviewing a director, ask if you're the showrunner and you're interviewing somebody who's coming in to do an episode of your show, ask the director, do you cook? And if so, are you a person who uses a recipe or do you like to improvise? And there's no right answer to that, right? But if you cook and you're the person who is going to measure out the exact number of grams of flour and the exact number of grams of sugar, that's kind of how you're going to approach directing. If you're going to come in with a shot list, you're going to be going to stay on time. You're going to make sure that you move the set along. And if you're the person who likes to kind throw a little salt to throw a little sugar, you might be a little more improvisational on say you might be a little more, more. There's little things like that that you're going to how to dig in on this with those. NowMichael Jamin:You're listening to Screenwriters Need to Hear This with Michael Jamin.Hey everyone. Welcome back to Screenwriters. Need to hear this. Michael Jamin here. I have another wonderful guest today and this guest, we're going to talk about drama writing because he works primarily in drama and his story is fascinating how he broke in. And we're going to get to please welcome Mr. Alex Berger and he's worked on Alex. Let me introduce people to some of your amazing credits here and you can fill in in, I'm just going to go for some of the highlights. Well, I know you did Kil, you co-created Glen Martin d d s, which is the show. My partner ran Covert Affairs, the Assets Franklin and Bash the Mentalist Blind Spot. And currently you are a writer on Quantum Leap, so you got a lot of drama. Burger. Welcome, welcome to the podcast.Alex Berger:Thank you so much for having me. It's, it's good to be here. I've been enjoying listening to it.Michael Jamin:Oh man, I'm so happy you're doing this. Let's talk. Let's start from the beginning because I think it was so interesting about your background. So many people say, how do I get a showrunner attached to sell my show? And you kind of sold your show, your show, Glen Martin, d d s. You were pretty new to the scene and then you got a show on the air without much experience. So how did that happen?Alex Berger:Yeah, I'd been out here for probably five or six years and I'd had a couple of staff jobs. I'd had a job doing a sort of comedy variety show before that. That was a very sort of small potatoes thing. But that came about because Steve Cohen Cohen, who I know you've talked about before, was a friend of mine and had mentioned this idea that Michael Eisner had for a long time about a family who traveled the country in an rv and they had writers attached for a long time. Tim and Eric of Tim and Eric Show were attached to write the thing.Michael Jamin:I didn't know any of this.Alex Berger:They got a 60 episode order on their other show, and so they had to back out. And so Steve would come in and pitch a take. So I came in and I pitched a take, and Michael Eisner, who had just left basically running Hollywood, he was running, Disney had just started a company, and he had just had larynx surgery, so he couldn't talk. So every time I pitched something, he had to write his response on a computer, which was fun, but a little challenging.Michael Jamin:But what was the idea, how much, when you pitched your take, what did they give you?Alex Berger:He had said Family lives in an rv. Basically it travels the country and animation. And he had more than that. I mean, it is been almost 20 years, so I've forgotten. But he definitely had a real idea. He'd had this idea for 30 or 40 years that he'd wanted to do over the years at Disney and he wasn't able to do it. So he had a pretty formed idea of what he wanted the show to be. ButMichael Jamin:Was it dentist you came up with that throughAlex Berger:Development? I mean, that was sort of like Steve and I, Steve became sort of a, and it was almost like an incubator instead of a typical situation in which I would come in and pitch a show, he kind of brainstormed with me and created the ideas with me, and we kind of toyed with a couple of different versions of it and came up with the idea of him being, why is he on the road and what's he driving in? And came up with the idea of a dentist that was in his mobile dentistry unit and sort of built some of the characters around that. And it kind of kept getting added to,Michael Jamin:Because all that stuff became comedy gold throughout the seasons. We were like, what kind of idiot has a dental car? Who does he think, what kind of clients? How does that work? And it all became fodder for the show,Alex Berger:For the circus at one point. And it was doing dental work on animals, if I remember correctly. But it was definitely, I didn't think I'd seen that before. So that was kind of one of the things that was fun to explore.Michael Jamin:And so you came up with all the, well, at least the dynamics for the characters, because what I remember, we watched the, I dunno if it was a pilot or presentation that you saw, but yeah, the characters you invented were funny. You had the dumb kid, he had the daughter and she had an assistant, which we hadn't seen that before.Alex Berger:It was definitely even more than other experiences I've had in development, very much a team effort. And then we had sort of come up with a script, and then I think you had Eric Fogle on the show before, and Eric came on and was also sort of added his vision both in terms of look and feel and tone and story, and was digging in with us. And then Michael on his own, paid for an eight minute pilot presentation. So they made an eight minute stop motion, basically the first act of the show. And he took it downtown and took it everywhere. And we ended up setting it up at Nick at night with this 20 episode order. And I think that's when you guys sort of made the picture, right?Michael Jamin:So you started, I'm curious. It's funny how I never even asked you about this. So at that point you had to meet showrunners for a show you created, which we're going to talk about a second. Did you meet a lot of showrunners?Alex Berger:I met none of the showrunners. I met you guys after you'd been hired.Michael Jamin:Oh, really? I wonder how many they had. SoAlex Berger:The tote system was, they wanted to sort of make that decision. And so they met with showrunners and had decided they were very much immediately captivated by you guys and were really excited about, and I don't think it was a pretty quick decision. And then they had me come to meet you guys.Michael Jamin:Now the thing is, I imagine you were very easy to work with and to your great credit, I always felt like you just turned over the keys and it was like, okay, here you go. And it was never an ego thing if you, but was it difficult though for you?Alex Berger:I mean, I can give you the answer that I was thinking at the time, and I can give you the answer that I have in retrospect. I think at the time I felt like, I don't know. It's a good question. Let me give you the answer in retrospect first, which is in retrospect, I know that I was inexperienced to know, especially about comedy writing a lot and certainly about running a show. I think at the time I was very happy for you guys to come in and run it. And exactly as you said, take the keys. I think that I felt intimidated because it was a room full of really seasoned comedy writers. I knew I was one of the least experienced writers on the show, and yet my name was on the show. So it was a kind of a weird game. It's not like a typical situation in which a more experienced writer comes in, but they've never run a show.So they pair them with a show runner and then they're really a triumvirate or something. I definitely felt like experience wise and sort of comedy chops wise, I was with folks who'd broken 2, 3, 400 episodes of cool sitcoms that I really admired. So I felt like I wanted to contribute from a character and comedy perspective as much as I could, but I also felt like I was learning on the fly that I had my name on. So it was definitely tricky to sort of figure that out. But you guys were great about never feeling like you were stepping on toes, and you always would consult with me, especially at the beginning, but it was very clear that it was your show, but it was also that you wanted me to sort be on board with what we were doing.Michael Jamin:And I mean, it was a fun room. I mean, maybe I shouldn't speak for you. I thought it was a fun room. Yeah,Alex Berger:Yeah, it was great. I mean, it was like I'd never been in a sitcom room before. I mean, I've been in a couple of drama rooms as an assistant and a writer, and those rooms are more buttoned up and a little more like, let's come in at 10 and start talking about the story at 10 15. And there's definitely bits and sort of digressions, but a comedy room has a certain energy that you can't replicate. And it was really fun to be in that room. And I've been in rooms that are a little bit like that since, but never anything that was, I laughed quite so much, just had it.Michael Jamin:I was going to ask you about that, right? I haven't worked in any, we've done dark comedy, but never drama. And so I'm curious, you've done a lot of drama. So are the rooms, are they really what you're saying? Are they buttoned up? Are they sur because it's still a creative shop?Alex Berger:It's fun. I would say this is based on a very small sample size of my two years in Glen Martin. And then just listening to comedy writers talk, I think comedy writers find the genius through procrastination. I think that it takes the tangent sometimes to get you to the gold. And I know you guys, especially more than other comedy writers I've known, were very focused on story structure. I know from your time with Greg Daniels and Seaver had bought a book at the mall,And it was very important to you that the story felt like it had load-bearing walls, but it did feel like more free flowing and there were room bits and there was a whole sitcom inside that room of three characters, both people in the room and people we were looking out the window at. So that's definitely different than other shows I've been on, other shows I've been on, it's a little more like, all right, let's get to work. And especially these days with room hours have gotten shorter and so on less. And I've been in Zoom rooms for the last couple of years, so it's even less of a roomMichael Jamin:Basic. Oh, so gotten, haven't gotten, your last rooms haven't been in person either. YouAlex Berger:Haven't? Yeah, I've been in three Zoom rooms since the pandemic.Michael Jamin:It's funny you mentioned because comedy rooms have room bits and our offices were on Beverly Hills and Big glamorous street in Beverly Hills. We would look out the window, and you're right, we would create stories when we weren't making stories for the tv, we were making stories for the regular characters that we would see outside our windows.Alex Berger:Yeah, I mean truly. I know you had Brian and Steve and a couple of other people from the show on. I have not laughed that hard in a room.It was a blast. And I also think there's value to it creatively. It's not wasted time. I think it's just a different way of getting to the process. I remember hearing once of, I can't remember which one, it was a Simpsons writer who would be on draft. He had two weeks to write his draft, and he would past around the fox lot for 12 days and then write the draft in the last two days. And someone asked him, why don't you just write the draft for the first two days and then be done? And he said, because I need those 12 days of pacing to get me to the last two days. And I think copywriter are more prone to that kind of way of thinking. I think.Michael Jamin:See, see, I don't remember that way always. I always get nervous when that story's not broken. I always want to crack the whip seavers more. Like that's, but to me, I was always,Alex Berger:When you were in the room, it was more like, let's stay on story. And when see, it was a little more. And then when you guys were both out of the room, it was even more free flowing, which is not to say that all of the eps weren't trying to keep us on story, but its like it's was a silly show about silly characters and absurd, every premise of every episode had a massive degree of absurdity to it. And so you wouldn't be too serious in a room like that, or you wouldn't be ready to make that kind of show. I mean, at least that was my take on it.Michael Jamin:I would describe that as a writer's show. It was always about what made us laugh and not the 15 year old kids who shouldn't be watching or the 10 year old kids. I knowAlex Berger:It was either Brian or Steve who said it was a show with a demographic of nobody.Michael Jamin:Yeah,Alex Berger:The demographic of the 15 people in that room for sure. We all really enjoyed watch them. They're all really funny. They'reMichael Jamin:Funny.Alex Berger:It was on the wrong network.Michael Jamin:Oh, for sure. Steve and I were horsing around procrastinating on some work we were doing, and for some reason we stumbled on, maybe it was some guy's YouTube channel where he was talking about Glen Martin and this guy nailed it. It was like he was in the room. I don't know how he knew every, it seemed like he knew where we messed up. He knew where we got it. Right. I was justAlex Berger:Amazed. I saw that video and I was like, I can't believe somebody watched the show. I thought that literally, I could not imagine that this guy was that deep into the show.Michael Jamin:Oh no. I get a lot of comments on social media like, oh my God, you ruined my childhood. Really? Like you gave me nightmares.Alex Berger:My wife's cousin is like 25 or 26, and he's dating a girl. And on the second date, he asked her what your favorite shows are. And the second show she said was Glen Martin, d d s. And when he said, oh, my wife's cousin wrote that show, she was instantly smid with him. She gave him so much gr.Michael Jamin:Oh, that's so funny. I mean, it was a wild show, man. Too bad. That was a shame. We were going to spin it off too. We all, oh yeah,Alex Berger:Stone spin off right behind. OhMichael Jamin:Yeah, there you go.Alex Berger:The Drake Stone. Yeah,Michael Jamin:All my dolls. Yeah. As soon as they went under, they go here. Here take some. You must have some dolls, right? They give you some dolls. I haveAlex Berger:Alen Martin Puppet and an Alex Burger puppet, and my kids constantly want to play with them and I won't let them.Michael Jamin:Who were you in the show? I don't remember what kind.Alex Berger:I think I was a Greek God carrying somebody at some point in some fantasy sequence and they would reuse the puppets. That was what was so funny. So I think that was one thing, and then they reused me as another thing.Michael Jamin:And did you ever get out to Toronto to see theAlex Berger:No. Did you go upMichael Jamin:There? Oh yeah. We went once and Fogel and I had a very romantic dinner together on top of the Toronto Space Needle or whatever they call that. I sawAlex Berger:Them shooting the pilot presentation, which they shy in New York. It was incredibly cool, but just I've always found set to be tedious in general, but I can't imagine how tedious it must be to do stop motion.Michael Jamin:Do you go, oh, I think they wanted to poke their eyes out, but do you go on set a lot for dramas? Yeah. Is it just your episode or what?Alex Berger:Depends on the show. I did this show called Blind Spot for five years, and basically we would have a writer on set for every episode and we would try to make it your episode, but oftentimes it was the writer who wrote the episode had a baby and is on maternity leave or they can't go to New York at this time or if they went to New York and they wouldn't be back in LA for the breaking of their next episode. So we tried to shuffle it around a little bit and it's trickier when it's out of town. You've got to make people have life that they've got to plan around. But you're going for three and a half weeks to New York.Michael Jamin:Are most of your show shot out of town?Alex Berger:It's been mixed Quantum Leap, which is the show I'm on now is Shot Year on the Universe a lot. Blind Spot was New York Covert Affairs, which I went to a lot of episodes for, was in Toronto, which was a lot of fun. And then I've had a couple Franklin, imagine the Mentalists were LA and it's been sort of a mix.Michael Jamin:How many day shoots are most of your shows? Dramas?Alex Berger:It depends on the budget of the show. Blind Spots started as nine and then was eight and a half and some tandem days and by the end was eight. They keep pulling money budget every year. Quantum Leap I think is eight.Michael Jamin:Interesting. And then what do you, as a writer on set for comedy when on set, it's like, I want to make sure they're playing the comedy right, making jokes, but what are you looking for that the director isn't covering?Alex Berger:Well, first of all, it's a lot of times if you have a great director, it's a team effort. So the director is obviously in charge of the set, but if you have a director who's collaborative, they're asking you, do you feel like that works? Or which take do you feel like was better? It's blocking work for you and your main job is just to make sure that you're the protector of the script and a protector of the story. And it's not like, excuse me, you didn't say the word there. Although there a Sorkin set, they will keep you word perfect, but it's more like, actually, I know you want to change that line. It doesn't feel comfortable in your mouth, but it's really important that you say this. It's going to set something up that we're doing in three episodes, or Hey, just so you know, when you're saying this to this character, you're actually lying and you're going to be revealed to be.It's a lot of making sure that everybody knows the episode up to the episodes we're leading to. And then, yeah, there's still a lot of shows I've worked on have a fair amount of comedy. So you're still making sure jokes, land and actors, this doesn't feel comfortable in my mouth. Do you mind if I say it like this? Or if you work with an actor who wants to have a little bit and wants to assert a line, sometimes I need to be the one to say, okay, well then that means that this person needs to say this line after to keep a joke going.Michael Jamin:Right? Right. It's interesting, and especially when scenes are shot out of order, it is easy for actors to lose track of where they are in the story. So that is theAlex Berger:Part I really like is Prep, because I've worked on a lot of big shows, big action shows and into you fly to New York with your script in hand and you're so excited. And then the first thing that the line producer tells you every single time is, we're $400,000 over budget. Before you even say hello. The fun part to me is the puzzle of how do you protect the story with the constraints of we can't shoot this in nine days. I've walked into episodes that were supposed to be seven day shoots, and the board came out and it was 10 days. And so you've got to figure out, okay, we can move this back into the house so we can take this care, we can do this here. And actually the shootout that happens after the bank robbery, maybe that happens off screen, stuff like that.Michael Jamin:So are you doing a lot of rewriting on set then?Alex Berger:It's usually in prep.Michael Jamin:Okay. In prep,Alex Berger:By the time you're on set in a drama, you're pretty close to set to go unless something changes or an actor nowadays, if an actor gets covid, then all of a sudden you're taking that actor out of the scene and rewriting the scenes and why are they, that kind of thing.Michael Jamin:And then are your showrunners ever on any of these shows ever on set? Or are they always sending proxies? Yeah, itAlex Berger:Depends. It depends on the show. So typically on the shows that I've been on, the showrunner, the showrunner was there for the pilot. They're usually going to go for 1 0 2 just to, it's been four months and they want to reestablish a tone and kind of be a leader, and then they'll try to pop in and out a bunch during the year so that it's not like they're just coming when there's a problem. And then when the show's in la, the showrunner will usually try to pop by after set, especially if before the Zoom Room thing, the writer's room would wrap at seven, the production's still going, so they usually come for the last couple scenes, something like that.Michael Jamin:How many writers are there usually on these hour shows?Alex Berger:I mean, I'm curious to hear what your answer is for comedy too, because it's really shrinking in the beginning. I mean, Glen Martin was what, 10, 12, something like that, including if you're Partners is too, and then it's gotten down to 10 and then eight. And then I think Quantum Leap were about 10, which is a big staff, but the Netflix show I just worked on was six. The show, the Assets that I did, which was a limited series was five. And this is a lot of big issues of the strike is these rooms are getting too small. What are the root comedy rooms like now? Because I know there's been, it's like sometimes it's like 25 people in a roomMichael Jamin:Well, on animation, but I think those days are kind of overAlex Berger:Or big network sitcoms aren't there.Michael Jamin:I don't think they're that big. I don't think there aren't big network sitcoms anymore, but I don't think, I mean it was never,Alex Berger:What was the Tacoma room?Michael Jamin:Oh, it's probably eight or so. But that's a small cable show,Alex Berger:But they're all small. I think they're all like that now. Even the network comedies, unless you're Abbott, they're all 13 or eight orMichael Jamin:Yeah, I think even just shoot me back in. This was in the day, I want to say maybe 10 or 12 times. Oh really? That's it. Yeah. Yeah, Roseanne. Roseanne was famously Big. Fred had a big staff, but that was Roseanne. It was a giant show.Alex Berger:And The Simpsons, I know there's these shows that have the two, I mean the drama rooms, there's a bunch of writers who having a big staff and then they like to split the room in two and break two episodes at the same time. A lot of showrunners actually want a small staff and hate having too many voices. I like a big room. I like eight to 10 people because you're always in a drama room, especially you've always got one writer on set, two writers on draft sometimes set, so there's three or four people gone every single day. So your room thins out real fast, and I think you need at least five people to break a story.Michael Jamin:Oh yeah. Now the thing is, you're a funny guy. You have a good sense of humor. You started in comedy, but do you miss at all comedy or do you feel I'm a fish in water with drama?Alex Berger:Yeah, I was in over my head in comedy, I be the guy who can do a little bit of comedy on a drama staff than that guy in a comedy room who's mostly focused on story. I mean, I felt like, obviously I wrote Pilot and I felt like I had a voice on that show, but it was clear to me that this was not the type of show that I was going to be thriving at. I really enjoyed it, but it was like just comedy wasn't my thing. I love writing on a Funny One Hour, Franklin and Bash, which was a legal show, was essentially a comedy that had the stakes of a drama, but the tone of a comedy. And I love because I like being able to go to the serious scene to have the emotional he, to not have to have a joke at the end of every scene. And then I've written some pilots and stuff that have a fair amount of comedy, but I always want, and I've written half hour dramas. It's just I want the pressure of three jokes a page and beating a joke and beating a joke and beating a joke. It just wasn't my pace.Michael Jamin:Well, I got to say, I think it was probably the last script you wrote was you and Pava teamed up to write a Christmas episode. Oh yeah. And you guys crushed it. I remember coming back, you guys turned it in, whatever you guys did together, were like, you guys, you're going to do this together. Probably because PA wanted to write a musical. I was like, Papa, I'm not writing a musical. And he probably did, but you guys turned in a great draft. And I was like, if that show had gone, I'd be like, I remember thinking, well, these guys are going to be stuck in a room together for a long time. Because yeah,Alex Berger:That was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun. And it's funny, I want to show my kids the show. They're really young and there's not a lot of episodes that are appropriate for little, that one's pretty tame. That one's pretty tame. We did a rom-com parody sort, the Wedding planner parody, and then we did a, what was it? I forget the other ones. It was a lot of fun.Michael Jamin:Oh yeah. What is nutty stuff? So now the dramas, I'm sorry. When you go off to write your own pilots, when you're developing your own, is there a unifying theme tone that you like to pitch? Yeah,Alex Berger:I would say two things. One is fun. I don't want to write some things super dark. I don't want to write. I like watching shows like that. I watch Last Of Us and The Leftovers and a lot of shows that are real bleak and I really enjoy them. But when I'm living in the world for 12 hours a day, for eight years, I want it to be fun. I want to have a certain amount of lightness to it and sort of levity to it, which is not to say it has to be a comedy, it can still be a drama. There just needs to be something fun about it. And even when I'm writing on a show like Quantum Leap, we've had episodes that are really serious, but the ones that I do, I try to make them, I did an airplane hijacking episode, but I tried to make it fun and sort of like an eighties action movie. And then the other thing I would say is sort of optimism. I try to write something that makes you think that the world is going to be a better place. I've written a lot of political shows and politics is pretty dark these days. One, my take is sort of, but if we do this, we can all get through it. None of those have gotten on the air. So maybe that says something about what people feel about optimism these days.Michael Jamin:Well, it's also a numbers game, but how do you feel, let's say you were given the keys to run your show, got on the air somewhere, eight episodes on the air. How do you feel? Feel about that? Yeah, let's do it. I'm ready. Or like, oh my God, what did I get?Alex Berger:Both. I mean, I did the Writer's Guild showrunner training program a couple of years ago, which is phenomenal. WhatMichael Jamin:Was that? Tell me all aboutAlex Berger:That. It was great. But so essentially it's a six week every Saturday, all day, every Saturday college course on how to run a show. And it's run by Jeff Melvoin, who's a really seasoned showrunner, and Carol Kirschner, who's been working in the business forever. And then they bring in John Wells is usually a big part of the program and they bring in really heavy hitter showrunners all the way down to people who were in the program last year and then got a show on the year. And they're like, bill and Ted when they come back at the time Machine and Bill and Ted's, and they're like, you're in for a crazy journey. And so it's really cool to hear from all of those people and they focus one day is on writing, one day is on post one day on production. And what I learned from that was having been on staffs for something like 250 episodes of tv, I've learned basically all the things you can do in terms of book learning to run a show.But the last 20%, you can't learn until you're there. Sort of like if you read a hundred books about swimming, you kind of know how to swim, but if you dropped out of a helicopter ocean, you're going to have to figure it out and you're going to be drowning while you're doing it. And literally, I don't know if this was your experience when you guys had it, but every other show I've talked to says nothing fully prepares you for it. So I have a couple shows in development right now, and if you told me that they were to go, I think the first feeling would be utter terror and like, okay, let's do it. Let's go. This is the time to do it. And I've run a lot of writers' rooms and stuff like that, but I've never actually had the keys to the castle, soMichael Jamin:Interesting. Right. Okay, so you've run the room, you've been breaking stories, you're in charge of that. Now time in terms of tell me about the short run is problem You apply, how do you get in?Alex Berger:You have to be recommended by somebody and applied and they want someone, they're trying to find people who are the next shows up. And so people in the program have a pilot that's already been shot and that's already ordered a series, but they don't know how to run a show. You people who've worked in features or worked in writing novels who are transitioning into television. So all the production stuff to them is totally new. And then you have lot of people like me who sort came up as staff writer, story editor and just worked their way up the ranks who've been around for a while, who just haven't taken that next step, who want to know more about what it's like to run a show. I loved it. First of all, it was like being in college, man, it was just absorbing material and taking notes at a frantic pace and reading that they recommended. But it was just so interesting to hear. It's like this, your podcast is so great because you could hear people speak, but these are people who are specifically targeted at the demographic of you're a co eep and you're about to run a show. Here's what you need to know.Michael Jamin:And so you don't pay for this, right? Or youAlex Berger:Do, the guild pays for it and the studios pay for it. It's a phenomenal program.Michael Jamin:And then it's so interesting. And then, alright, so then how big of a cohort, how big of a group isAlex Berger:It? 30. And it's a bummer because these days it's been on Zoom and so you don't really get to the year. I did it in 2017 or 2018. And so I got to know those folks and they were sort of, yeah, again, my cohort and three quarters of them are running shows and everybody else's EPS or eps, running rooms. It's a very fun dynamic to have a group.Michael Jamin:What are they teaching you? I'm so curious as what they teach you. I bet there's stuff I don't know. And we've done three shows. What are they teaching you about post that you were surprised?Alex Berger:The overwhelming, the first thing they tell you when you walk in the door is quality scripts on time. The bug that they gave me, the showrunner program, quality scripts on time, and that was basically the theme of it was being efficient, being and knowing when to cut your losses and say move on. And knowing when to say this isn't good enough. And so for posts, it's like, are you the type of person who wants to be in post for 10 hours a day? That's fine, but then you need to have somebody who's going to be overrunning the room, or do you want the writer who produced the episode to do the first and the second cut? And then you do the last cut and they bring in editors and they talk, editors tell you about what they want to hear. A lot of things that I'd been in post a lot before I was in that room and then editors were telling me things that I was doing that annoyed the crap out of them. And I was like, oh, little thing like what? Snapping, when you say cut there,Michael Jamin:Oh,Alex Berger:That annoys.Michael Jamin:That annoys them. It's like a dogAlex Berger:Thing. Yeah, exactly. And a lot of editors, some editors want line notes. Some editors want you to say, this scene doesn't feel funny enough, I'm not getting the comedy. And then they'll say, okay, let me take another swing at it. And you need to feel like, is this the type of editor that wants to do it on their own or that type of showrunner that wants to do that. But broadly speaking, it's essentially a leadership training program. The nuts and bolts stuff with all stuff that I had seen up close being a lieutenant on a show, there are a lot of little tips that I picked up here and there and when I get a show, I will go back to my notebook and frantically look through it, but it's mostly about how do you lead, how do you manage, how do you fire people? How do you delegate? How do you tell people that they're not doing a good enough job but give 'em a second chance? Interesting. They bring a lot of directors in, stuff like that.Michael Jamin:What was the last thing youAlex Berger:Said? How to interview a director? How to interview director. A big director came in and talked to you. Here's some questions you should ask when you're interviewing. Here's a great one that they said. They said, when you're interviewing a director, ask if you're the showrunner and you're interviewing somebody who's coming in to do an episode of your show, ask the director, do you cook? And if so, are you a person who uses a recipe or do you like to improvise? And there's no right answers to that, right? But if you cook and you're the person who is going to measure out the exact number of grams of flour and the exact number of grams of sugar, that's kind of how you're going to approach directing. You're going to come in with a shot list, you're going to be going to stay on time, you're going to make sure that you move the set along. And if you're the person who likes to kind of throw a little salt to throw a little sugar, you might be a little more improvisational. I say you might be a little more, more. There's little things like that that are like how to dig in on this with those people.Michael Jamin:Now I'm learning. What else can you share with me thatAlex Berger:Might be helpful? I can get my notebook you,Michael Jamin:Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljamin.com/watchlist.I remember when we're running Glen Martin, which is the first show we ran a lot of this, and you probably weren't even aware of this, A lot of it was me. If I was at the board or whatever, it was me like, okay, I want to make sure I'm not losing the room. I want to make sure everyone, no one's losing focus. And I think part of that was make a decision even if it's a bad one because you can lose the room if you can't pull the trigger. You know what I'm saying? It's so frustrating. You guysAlex Berger:Did a good job with that. And then I think that decisiveness, I think is actually one of the most important qualities in the showrunner, but also willingness to admit you were wrong if you made a decision and moved on and then a day later you realize you were wrong. You have to and say, I made the wrong decision. And one of the things I've learned running that I've really tried to do when I'm running a room is if there's an idea floating around that I hate, but it's getting energy and it's getting excitement, I try not to step on it until it either burns out on its own or it's reached a critical mass and I'm like, look, I think this is not going to work, but let's talk it out because there's nothing worse as having come up on staffs. And this is one of the most valuable things when you've been a staff writer and a story editor as opposed to getting your own show as the first thing that happens to you is you know how demoralizing it is when everybody's super excited about something now it's not going to work. It's so demoralizing. Yes, A lot of times you think it's not going to work. You just sit there back and listen for 20 minutes and you're like, oh, actually, you know what? There is a version of this that'll work if I just add this one thing. It's an organism and you're leading an organism and it's very hard. You guys did a great, and you guys are a team, which is even harder because you've got to read each other's minds aboutThis works.Michael Jamin:You bring a good point. I remember one time, so when Glen Martin, I would go, I would direct the actors on Wednesdays or whatever and see would be running the room, and I remember coming back at the end of a long day directing, come back to the room and you guys had made a lot of progress on the script and everyone's excited. Everyone's excited about this idea and you guys pitched it to me. I wasn't getting it. I didn't get it. I was like, I didn't want to shit on it because I could tell everyone was so excited about it. And so I just kept on asking questions just to explain it to me so that I would get on board.Alex Berger:That's a really hard part is and because I've never been the actual showrunner, I've never been the one, I would be like, I'm sorry we're vetoing this. A lot of times what I would do, because I was a number two, was if I hated something, if I left the room and then I came back and I hated something, I'd be like, look, I'm not totally on board with this idea, but let's give it its day in short and let's pitch it to the showrunner. And I would try, when I would pitch it to the showrunner be to not give away which side I was on or to say, look, here's one side of the argument, here's the other side of the argument. But when it's ultimately up to you, it is hard because I always analogize it to in Family Feud when the first four people give their answer and then that last person has to give the final answer and they want to go against the rest of the family. It's a hard thing to do. You're wrong.Michael Jamin:Yeah,Alex Berger:I guess, I don't know. What was that experience like for you? Did you feel like it was like you had to balance? What was your favorite idea versus losing another 10 people's morale?Michael Jamin:It wasn't even about my favorite idea. It was more like I just want to make sure if sea's on board than I trust, I trust him. But it's also like I wish I can remember what the episode was. It just didn't make anyAlex Berger:Sense to me. No, I remember that a couple times. Every show I've ever been on has had that. Every show I've ever, the showrunners left the room, the room gets excited about, something comes back in and it's not what they want, it's just part of show running. The value of having a staff that's been together for a while is the longer the staff has been together, the more you can say, oh, secret and Michael are going to hate this. We shouldn't even this path. Versus early on, you're going down a million paths you don't know. But once you get to know the showrunner, you kind of get to know what they like and what they don't like.Michael Jamin:Yeah. There was another idea that we had in that, I don't remember what we were all on board, but Seaver wasn't on board. It was something crazy.Alex Berger:Oh, I think it was the radio episode and there was something about wires or no wires, and they weren't recording the music the whole time,Michael Jamin:Who wasn't recording music.Alex Berger:Glen went to, you got to cut this out of the podcast.Michael Jamin:No one's going to care. ButAlex Berger:It was like there were a lot of room bits that I think that's the problem with room bits is they take on a life of their own and then they're an inside joke. And if the runner comes in and there's a room bit in the script, it's an inside joke. It just doesn't work. You weren't there for the beginning of it, which is a good sign that it's not a good story because the audience wasn't there for it either. But I think it was Glen becomes a radio producer named Stacey Rappaport.Michael Jamin:Yes.Alex Berger:His wife was also named Stacey Rappaport. Yes. And I know he works for Stacey Rappaport. And anyway, the whole time it was the, you guys were doing the Brady Bunch, Johnny Bravo episode basically as aMichael Jamin:Yeah,Alex Berger:Remember the debate was like, were they actually recording by the way? I will say again, you can cut this out early, but it's not relevant at all. But I grew up watching the Brady Bunch for whatever reason, even though I'm 10 years younger than you guys. And that was number one reference that you guys talked about. So I did feel like at least I got those references.Michael Jamin:Oh, it's so funny. I remember that. I remember because I think I was the one who pitched the name Stacey Rappaport.Alex Berger:I remember because I had a friend named StaceyMichael Jamin:Rappaport. Oh really? That's so funny. It was just a man's name that the joke was that Glen was going to choose a new identity for himself and he chooses a woman's name.Alex Berger:What have you gone back and just watched full episodes of the show?Michael Jamin:No. And everyone, people want to know about. People ask me that a lot. I don't touch. I should. I love that show, but I don't touch anything that I've written. I just don't. It's over and I don't know why, but you doAlex Berger:Just not even about Glen Martin. That is an interesting thing about writers is whether they want to go back. I go back and watch stuff and I hate it because I'm like, but because Glen Martin was not really mine. It was such an organism of the room. I laugh when I go back and watch it except the one I wrote, which I don't like.Michael Jamin:Oh my God. We had some fun in that show. But okay, so when you take, I have so many questions for you. When you were young, when you were a kid, did you want to be a writer? I know TimeAlex Berger:Know was a profession. I loved television. I was a youngest kid. I was raised by the Cosby Show and the Brady Bunch and G I F. And my idea of a family was basically what those families were probably to go back, rethink the Cosby one. And then even in college, I interned at Saturday Night Live and late night with Conan O'Brien back when he was on, which were fantasy camp, especially the s and l one was truly a dream come true. And it still didn't occur to me that it was a profession that I could go do. I was go to law school and then a buddy of mine, we were in Jerry's Subs and Pizza, which is an East coast person you probably remember. And we were sitting there talking about what we're going to do and he's like, like I said, I'm going to go to LA and be a writer. And I said, how do you do that? And he said, someone writes this stuff, why couldn't it be us? And it just gave me this epiphany of like, oh yeah, everybody who's out there as a writer at some point wasn't a writer and just got out there and learned how to do it. And so we all went out together and we kind of got our start.Michael Jamin:Did your friend become a writer too?Alex Berger:Yeah, we all ended up creating a show together. So the earliest thing that we did was we were on the high school debate team together and we walked into National Lampoon, which at the time was doing low budget cable programming, and the head creative guy there just made fun of my resume the entire time and made fun of debate. And then by the end of it said, there's a show here. And so we came, pitched him a show called Master Debaters that was a debating society, and we ended up getting to make, it was like our film school. I knew nothing about how to make a TV show and that one, I was throwing the keys to the castle. I was casting it, writing it, producing it. I was in it, posting it with every crisis. But it was so low stakes because the budgets were tiny and they were in syndicated cable stations and college campuses. No one would watch me. So I got to learn by doing and I loved it. It was great.Michael Jamin:Interesting. And then, all right, so then you became a writer and then you just kept on writing. I guess mean it's not an easy path, but you've made a really pretty good name for yourself over the years.Alex Berger:Yeah, I mean, thank you. It was a winding path when I came out, I thought for a minute I might want to be a development executive. I read a book by this guy, Brandon Tartikoff, who used to run N B C called The Last Great. It was like basically made it out to be, you're sitting in your room and the smartest people in the world come and tell you what TV show ideas they have, and then you pick the eight of them and pick the order in America Shears. And so I worked in development for a minute and I was not what it was like at all, and I was miserable and I was jealous of all the writers who were coming in. So I said, that's the job I want. And so I quit. WhatMichael Jamin:Was it I didn't know you worked at VO for? I wasAlex Berger:Assistant. I was an assistant in development at N B C.Michael Jamin:What was it like then?Alex Berger:It's very busy and not as creative as I wanted to be. I actually really enjoyed the conversations I had with the executives when it wasn't time to do my job and it was just time to talk about tv. But the actual job I was doing, I was terrible at, I mean, it was a lot of keeping track of who was calling, and I'm an absentminded first, butMichael Jamin:That you're an assistant. I mean, surelyAlex Berger:You, but it's a long time before your branded Tartikoff, right? Almost everybody else under branded Tartikoff has a lot of business responsibilities to do. And it wasn't, that's not how my brain works. My brain needs more free time. I think if I worked at a place that was smaller that was incubating three or four shows, I probably would've enjoyed it more. But we had 50 comedies and 50 dramas in development, and I was trying to get of all of them and who was calling and the letterhead changing and all this stuff. And it was just like I was not good at it. I mean, my boss even said to me one day, he said, you're a very smart guy. Why are you not very good at this? And we had a nice conversation about that. But the main thing was the writers that came in that I was, can I get you a coffee?Can I get you a tea? Can I get you a Coke? I was so jealous of them. Door would close to the pitch, and I just wanted to be in there listening to. And so I realized I should follow that. And so I didn't last that long. I left like eight months and I quit. I at the time had been, I think had a couple of writing jobs, like smaller writing jobs lined up that show Master Debaters had been optioned of VH one. So we were writing a pilot for VH one and a couple of their small writing jobs. So I went to go do those and then got back in the beginning of the line as an assistant, I was a writer's assistant on a show, and then I was an assistant to a showrunner and then I stop.Michael Jamin:So it's a brave move for you to leave that behind in.Alex Berger:It was definitely, I mean, I had some stuff lined up, but it was definitely a risk, but I just knew it wasn't the right, I was in the wrong place. But it's interesting, it was an incredible learning experience. I knew how development work from the inside, and I still think I know more about what's actually going on at the network than a lot of my peers because I was on the other side. And then the folks I met who are the other assistants to the other executives are now all executive vice presidents of networks or presidents of networks or I met my agent because he was an assistant to an agent that used to call, and then he signed me while he was still a coordinator. One of the people on that hall now became the president of Fox, another one who I've dealt with a lot became the president of N B C. I met a ton of great folks through that who have become friends and allies over the years, and I sold Joe to,Michael Jamin:But okay, so it's probably changed lot since you were in assistant that was probably 20 somethingAlex Berger:Years ago, 19 yearsMichael Jamin:Ago. So what is it like then that we don't understand?Alex Berger:I think the main thing that I didn't understand, and this has for sure changed and certainly in cable and streaming is just a volume. They are not spending as much time thinking about your script as you are by definition. But in development, there are literally 40 to 50 scripts at least back then on both on comedy and trauma. And so my boss, who was in charge of both has a hundred scripts to keep track of. So he was very smart and could make a judgment very quickly about a script, but he would read it once, sometimes read it again, and then he was making a judgment about whether it was a show. So as a writer now I know they're reading fast, they're reading it at three 30 in the morning, or they're reading it on the plane, I've got to grab attention fast, I've got to hook you in. I cannot lean, oh, the great twist, wait till the Great Twist. It's on page 55. And when I'm pitching, it's the same thing my boss said to me, I hear 300 pitches a year. I typically hear about five ideas I haven't heard before. The other 95 I've heard before. It's about take, it's about the writer, it's about their passion. And so when I go and pitch an idea, the substance of the idea is the second most important thing. And my connection to it and why it has to be me is the first most important.Michael Jamin:And that's the hard part. I feel that's the hard part because usually you think of an idea, you can't really, I don't know, you're a hundred percent right. They always, they want to know why are you the only one in the world who can write this idea truthfully? It's like a lot of times you're not a lot of times like, well, this is the characters we created. It's a funny situation, but there's probably a lot of people who could write this idea.Alex Berger:I think that what I have seen, and I've never done this, but I know folks who have is, I knew a writer once who his sort of why me paragraph was, I just run a show for a bunch of years. I came off of running that show and I didn't know what I wanted to do next and I had an identity crisis. And so it got to the idea of identity crises and here's a spy show, an action spy show, but at the center of it as a character going through an identity crisis. So it's notMichael Jamin:GrewAlex Berger:Up and my dad was a spy, and therefore sometimes it's emotional or sometimes I had this interaction with a guy on the subway and I couldn't stop thinking about it. And it led me to this show. And sometimes by the way, you retrofitted sometimes you already come up to the show and then you've got to come up with that first paragraph that's retrofitted and sometimes often it feels organic even though it was come up with thatMichael Jamin:Word. That's so interesting because I'm glad you said that to me. It almost sounds, it gives me some soce knowing that, because a lot of times we'll say, okay, this is why we're the only ones, and this is from seabird's idea home life or my home life, and then it doesn't sell. And you're like, well, I don't know what to do now. But you're actually broadening it out into a thematically, it's more personal to you. It's not necessarily a dynamic. It's more like,Alex Berger:Here's how I think about it. I think that, and I could be wrong, and by the way, it's different in a comedy because you've got to make 'em laugh in a comedy, and I know certain comedy executives don't laugh, but for the most, if you're funny in the room, they're thinking, okay, I want to be in business with these pets, but in drama, are there twists and turns? Am I hooked on this? Is this going to fit with something that we have on the air? Do we have something similar? But I always think what they're going to remember when they've heard six, they hear six to eight a day, and then at the end of the week they go tell their bosses about the ones that they bought. So what they're going to remember is, oh my God, you'll never believe the story this guy told about the time that he was held hostage on the subway, or you'll never believe that, or a cool twist or a cool character. They're not ever going to remember the third beat of the pilot, or when pitch episode ideas, here's soMichael Jamin:Interesting.Alex Berger:I think you need that stuff to be in there, but what they're going to remember, it's like when you walk into a house, when you're looking for a house, you remember, oh, I was dazzled by the kitchen and the master bedroom had the fullest bathroom and yeah, yeah, it had five bedrooms and five baths, which is what we need. But it felt like this when I walked in. It's like, how do they feel? That's another, I'm sorry to ramble, butMichael Jamin:No,Alex Berger:For drama. I think in a pitch, if you can make the executives feel how the show is going to make them feel, that's a successful pitch to me. Comedy's a little different, I think. ButMichael Jamin:Interesting. I feel like I'm learning a lot from you actually, because I mean, honestly, we'll sell shows and we'll not sell shows.Alex Berger:We're learning all that time from you guys for 40 episodes on the murder.Michael Jamin:But a lot of this is, like I said, we will sell a show or we won't sell a show, and I won't know why. I don't know. I'm not sure why this one sold this one, the other one didn't sell. I can, but that'sAlex Berger:Why I really don't like Zoom pitches because you can't. I love, that's actually my favorite part. I think it comes from, like I said, I was on the debate team in high school and college, and I loved trying to persuade someone who was not necessarily on my side at the beginning that I'm right. And I viewed every pitch as a miniature debate. I'm debating against the person who says, don't buy this. And I love the feeling of like, oh, I've got them hooked, and they're now, they are going to buy the show as long as it continues to go on this pace. And I hate the feeling of, I think they've checked out. And actually when I've memorized a pitch, when I think they've checked out, I'm talking, but my internal monologue is, well, I guess we didn't sell it to Fox. All right, well, if we can sell it to Fox, we can go to a B, C. Because I'm sort of like, I've moved on.Michael Jamin:How much off book are you have notes or not?Alex Berger:I've developed this method that I got from this guy, Martin Garra, who I've worked for eight or nine years for some blind spot, and now on Quantum Leap, it's different, but I love it, which is, it's different on Zoom, but when we go back to in-person pitches, what he does is he brings in his laptop and he puts it on the table in front of him and it acts as a teleprompter. And so he's looking up at you making eye contact and occasionally looking down. And then he is got a remote that flips page to page and the script is there word for word. So if you're like, oh shit, I'm about to get to the part that I always mess up, then you just look down and read for a minute and they know you've written this. It's not like no one is under the illusion that you walked in and RIFed for 20 minutes off theMichael Jamin:Topic. Does he do this in person or on Zoom?Alex Berger:Both. On Zoom, it's so easy because you can have your screen, but in person, I thought, oh, they're going to think it's offputting. But because I was practiced, I got to the point where 70% of it was eye contact and the laptop was there as the security one did.Michael Jamin:And what program is he using? That's a teleprompterAlex Berger:Work.Michael Jamin:Oh, so you're just scrolling. Oh, you're just clicking.Alex Berger:There's this Bluetooth remote that he uses that I was now in my drawer, and it's just you click and it's to the nextMichael Jamin:Page. You have a Bluetooth remote that works on your lap. I didn't even know this such a thing. I'm learning so much from you Burger.Alex Berger:Oh, you know what? I've lost it. Oh, here. Yeah, so it's like a little U S B that plugs into the back of your computer, and then you're just like, you click, click, click and it's, you look like you're giving its head talk it 5% easy. And I actually think in a comedy pitch, it might come off as too dorky, but for a drama it's like, I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to deliver a pitch. And I wrote it. And the reason I find it useful is a lot of times when you're developing with the pod and the studio and then also the non-writing show runner, so many Sunday night, you're getting notes for a Monday morning pitch and stuff's changed. So if I get to the section that just changed, I might look down a little bit moreMichael Jamin:Interest. So I was going to say, are you going in mostly with pods these days for people who don't know that they're producers on the overall deals at studios, but is that how it works in dramas as well?Alex Berger:I don't think I'm going to show on the air anymore without an entourage. So when I was on Blind Spot, it was produced by Greg Ante and I did a couple pieces of development with him and then also with Blind Spot. I just think there's the business side of it, which is that these networks want to be in business with their 800 pound gorillas and the not. So if you walk in with one of them, even if it's my vision a hundred percent, and it's my personal story, the fact that this brand is behind it really helps. And then I also, I actually enjoy the process of crafting the idea with smart people. I don't want to work with a pod who's annoying and gives dumb notes or a studio who does that. But every pod I've ever worked with, if I'm stuck on an idea, I'll say, Hey, can we hop on the phone for half an hour and work out this story problem? You guys have each other so you can get in a room and hash out a story problem. But I need to talk. I cannot think through anyMichael Jamin:Interesting,Alex Berger:And we'll work it out. Oh,Michael Jamin:So you'll really use them as a resource. It's so interesting.Alex Berger:I mean, this guy, Martin Garrow who runs Blind Spot Quantum Leap, I've developed him a bunch of times and he's a writer.Michael Jamin:Yeah, it's differentAlex Berger:Stuff is acting as a pod. But I can call him and we have such a shorthand, we've broken 150 episodes a week, butMichael Jamin:That's different because he's a writer. He is not, I mean, he's a writer, is writer producer, but he's really aAlex Berger:Writer. So it's Greg Ante. I like working with folks who are on the creative things, and I've worked with producers who weren't writers, but could be because they're a creative, the worst part of that development is when someone gives you a note and they don't realize, oh, that's going to unravel. They think it's two lines, but it actually unravel all. Whereas when you work with people who've made a lot of tv, they're like, look, I know that this blows everything up to do this one little thing, but here's why I think it's better. Or Hey, they gave a huge note. Here's easy fix. It's only two lines.Michael Jamin:Yeah, I mean, that's so interesting. You're absolutely right. There's a huge difference between, I think between working with a producer, producer and a writer producer, because the writers, they just know what's going to unravel everything. I don't know. Yeah, that's ProducersAlex Berger:Are good for like, oh, you know what? Who'd be great for this is this actress. And they make the call and they're good.I find that you find everybody's in this business, they're good at something. Nobody who's come to this business and is just dashing a check. Well, probably not true, but the people that I try to find work with are people who are in this business smart. And even if they're not totally up on exactly what I wanted to do, fix the script, they have something that they're really good at that I want to use. So even if it's, there's one person at this company who's mostly the production person have a really good idea about like, Hey, if we shot this in Buffalo, we could do this.Michael Jamin:Right. Interesting. Wow. I think I've learned a lot from you. Before we conclude, you want to write drama withAlex Berger:Me? Let's go that. Let's talk about drama.Michael Jamin:I think I'm going to get into the drama business with you. I think you're going to be my pod. What advice do you have for young writers? You must have something to Wise to say.Alex Berger:Yeah, I mean, I probably don't have anything wise to say, but I'm happyMichael Jamin:To. Or how are they breaking in the business?Alex Berger:It's funny. The answer was so different 10 years ago to four years ago. It changed rapidly, and it's very different now because of the writer's strike. So if you're talking about what should I be doing right now, if I want to break in? I was just talking to a writer today and my advice to her was, just use this time to write. It's not a good time to try to get a producer attached or a showrunner attached or an agent. It's a good time to just be writing and really writing diligently. And then this is over. And in general, my advice is get a job in the industry, even if it's as an assistant. If you can't get a job as an assistant in a room, get a job as an assistant in post or get a job as a PA on set, just get into the room. Then just keep building a network and talking to everybody. And when your cousin comes and says, you know what? I used my college roommate, I think as a writer, I don't know what he take them up on all of those opportunities because you never know what's going to result in something. The first three jobs I got were from general meetings that I didn't want to take because actually two of them were from people. My mom had metParties in Washington dc but they were another assistant who was leaving their job and happened to open up. And then the last thing I would say is, I think the thing that people don't do as much of it that they should do is engage in the continuing education piece of this. So your listeners to your podcast are obviously trying to learn how to write, and that's important. There's a lot of other good podcasts out there. There's Deadline Hollywood, which everybody should be reading every single day. There's business podcasts like The Town and the Business and Fresh Air that people should be listening to understand the macro pieces of their business. So often you get people who come out here and they have

Steve Baldikoski is an Emmy nominated Showrunner known for Fuller House. He's also worked on Last Man Standing, Glenn Martin D.D.S., Wilfred, and Kristie. Join Michael Jamin and Steve Baldikoski for a conversation about how Steve broke in and what it takes to make it in HollywoodShow NotesSteve Baldikoski on IMDB - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0049747/Steve Baldikoski on Twitter - https://twitter.com/finchbot2000Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/courseFree Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/freeJoin My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlistAuto-Generated TranscriptSteve Baldikoski:I mean, you're, you are sort of clued in to, to what your boss likes. Mm-Hmm. , you also have your own tastes. You, you kind of know what the project is supposed to be. I, I, yeah, I don't know. There, there's no formal executive school on how to give notes. That's why it's kind, it's kind of a weird job because there's no training for it. I don't really necessarily know what makes you good or not good.Michael Jamin:You're listening to Screenwriters Need to Hear This with Michael Jamin. Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. Welcome to another episode of Screenwriters. Need to hear this. I got another great guest today. This is my old buddy, Steve Bobowski. Steve has written on some of the, some of your favorite shows, as long as your show's favorite shows are ,Steve Baldikoski:As long as they're, as long as you have Terrible Taste and only watch shows that are gone after 13 episodes, andMichael Jamin:Then, then these are your favorite shows. But I'm gonna start, I'm gonna, in no particular order of, of, I think I'm going in order Teenager Working. Remember that show Dag with David Allen Greer Baby Bob. Oh, we're gonna talk about Baby Bob. Okay. Yeah. A U s A. Andy Richter controls the universe. People like that show a lot. I, I'm with her or I'm with her. I'm with her. I'm with her.Steve Baldikoski:I'm withMichael Jamin:Her. I'm with her . Eight. Eight Simple Rules. The New Adventures of Old Christine. That was a good show. The Jake Effect. Big Shots. True. Jackson, I forgot you worked that out. Wilfred. Which you could thank me for Glenn Martin d s, which you could thank me for Kirsty, which I can thank you for. Last Man Standing, whatever, .Steve Baldikoski:Yeah. They don't have anyone to thank for that.Michael Jamin:Thank for that.Steve Baldikoski:Save Me.Michael Jamin:Jennifer Falls, Ned and Stacy. And then of course, you were the executive producer and showrunner of Fuller House, the Full House remake. Steve, welcome to the big show,Steve Baldikoski:. Thank, thank you for having me. It's very exciting to be here.Michael Jamin:Wasn't it exciting, man? Oh man. Oh, and I have to say, so yeah, so we started out my partner and I hired Steve and his partner Brian, on, on Glenn Martin dds. And we were always very grateful. These guys turned in great drafts and we were always extremely grateful. Yeah, thank you. And then we would just shovel more work as, as for gratitude, we would just shovel more scripts in your face. Write this one now,Steve Baldikoski:, that was one of the highlights of my career. That was some of the best times I've ever had.Michael Jamin:We had some, you know, it's funny, I asked Andy Gordon in in a, in a previous episode, I said, and I'll ask you the same question. If you had, if you could go back in time and either remake any of the shows you did worked on, or like rebooted or just work on it again, what, what would they be? Any,Steve Baldikoski:I thought you were gonna tell me. Andy's answer . AndyMichael Jamin:Said if you want, Andy said, just shoot me. And true. JacksonSteve Baldikoski:Uhhuh . I, I, Glen Martin was a highlight, and and I think it was an underappreciated show,Michael Jamin:Certainly was. AndSteve Baldikoski:If, if it weren't in Claymation, maybe someone would've watched it.Michael Jamin:You know, we went on the internet, Seabert and I, my partner and I, we went on the internet and we found some guy talking about Glen Martin. And it was as if he was in the writer's room. It was as if he was, because he, he was right on the money . Like he knew what was good about it, what was bad about it. He had theories as to why ,Steve Baldikoski:I think you, you talking about Alex Berger, the creator,Michael Jamin:, it wasn't Alex. It was something like, it was something like Whacko on the internet, but boy, he was dead on. He was like, he knew exactly what he was talking about.Steve Baldikoski:. Well, one, one weird thing that that happened to me, this is slightly related. When, when Brian, my old writing partner and I took over for house in the last couple of seasons, it was right before the final season, and it was after Lori Locklin had her collegeIssues, legal issues with varsity Blues. On April Fool's Day, there was this article in some Likee News or something where someone did a whole, it was a fake interview with me, but it seemed like it was real. And the reasonings that they were talking about getting rid of Lori's character and what would happen after, you know, she was divorced from Uncle Jesse on Fuller House. W it was so well thought out that it, I thought it had to be written by also someone in the room, Uhhuh, because they actually knew like, specific arguments that specific writers had in getting rid of this person. And then it turns out, only if you clicked the very bottom did it say April Fools. And it was all phony interview with me,Michael Jamin:But still they got it. Right. But itSteve Baldikoski:Was, it, it was so eerie that it was, it was probably probably had better reasons to include her or not include her than we did. So there are a lot of fans out there who understand the shows just as well as the writers Do.Michael Jamin:I, I think so. I, I think even on, people talk about King of the Hill and they remember episodes. I'm like, I don't remember that one. And then they look it up and go, I, I worked on it. I don't tell me what happened. It's like, I don't remember it. You know, it's from, you know, very important to some of these people. And you know, they, they, they watch it all the time. And I haven't watched it in 20 years. ButSteve Baldikoski:But did you, there was a moment where when on Wilfrid where David Zuckerman, the creator didn't even know that he had a logic fallacy in the first episode. Do you know the story? No. I think he was at Comic-Con and he, he was, he, it it was about the pilot of Wilfred where Wilfred is trying to get through the fence and a regular dog would crawl through the fence, but instead Wilfred has an ax.Michael Jamin:Right. AndSteve Baldikoski:And then they said, well, shouldn't I take the ax from Wilf Fred because it's dangerous? And then David said, wisely said, no, you can't grab the ax cuz that means the ax is real. And the second he said that someone in the audience held their hand up and said, well, what about the Bong? Yeah,Michael Jamin:What about the Bong? Yeah.Steve Baldikoski:And David had never considered that.Michael Jamin:Well,Steve Baldikoski:But Jar, that was fascinating that, that he, they had never thought of it on set, but out there. Got him instantlyMichael Jamin:Etro gave a headache to write and remember, like, what, who, and then, and then your part of Brian's likeSteve Baldikoski:That, that anecdote gave me a headache to mention.Michael Jamin:Yeah, it was, I remember he just like, don't you think people just wanna see the dog danceSteve Baldikoski:?Michael Jamin:See the dog dance? That was his pitch. . Oh man. Oh my God, what a show. But did you ever,Steve Baldikoski:This whole section is even inside Wilf Fred.Michael Jamin:Yeah, it is inside Wilfred.Steve Baldikoski:I don't think anyone would appreciate that. But did youMichael Jamin:Ever, even when you were running Fuller house, did you, did you ever turn to the, what do the fans want? Did you turn to the, because there's a lot of pressureSteve Baldikoski:On that actually, I have to say. That was a huge part of Fuller House and it was one of the things I think that the audience loved. And it was a unique situation for me because I had, still, to this day, I've seen two and a half episodes of the original full House.Michael Jamin:Uhhuh .Steve Baldikoski:So I didn't know anything about Full House, but other people did. And so if we would want to throw in, we call them Easter eggs, right? Throw in little Easter eggs and bring back, you know, some character that was in an, in a single episode 30 years ago, we would bring those actors back and the audience would go bananas. Yeah.Michael Jamin:But how, how can, you didn't watch any old episodes or, you know, there's so much,Steve Baldikoski:Why, why didn't I, orMichael Jamin:Yeah, why didn't you?Steve Baldikoski:Well part of it is I, I didn't want to actually be beholden to any of the other of the old stories.Michael Jamin:Right.Steve Baldikoski:Because I mean, even, you know, like Fuller House is a little bit of an old fashioned show, but we didn't wanna make it just like completely stuck in the past and, and a show that is only about, that's referencing the original show. And that was more helpful to just have a perspective of like, what's it like raising, you know, three kids in, you know, modern day California.Michael Jamin:But did you feel a, a strong, I guess, obligation to make sure the fans were happy? Cuz I'm show the writers are writing for themselves.Steve Baldikoski:Oh, oh, for sure. We were doing that constantly and you know, we, we knew it. There were certain things that were like, you know, throwing red meat to the audience.Michael Jamin:Oh.Steve Baldikoski:You know, kind of like, like, like if you're doing the show Fuller House, no. You know, no matter what the story you're doing is, or whatever, if you have to, you bring in a dog wearing sunglasses and the audience goes bananas. And then how do you talk? And a, a baby runs in wearing the same sunglasses.Michael Jamin:Mm-Hmm.Steve Baldikoski: and then just the, the audience like tears of joy in the audienceMichael Jamin:Because that's, that, that was an old staple in the original show, stuff like that.Steve Baldikoski:Yeah. I mean, that's just the kind of thing that they would stoop to, you know, . And so, no, but it was, but it was this, it was this, the Four House is a show that like, you know, it really, it really affected me as a writer cuz it was really that time when every week there were 200 fans in the audience. Super fans who knew every single episode of Full House and Fuller House. And so you would get this amazing instant recognition from the audience that you're writing for them.Michael Jamin:Right.Steve Baldikoski:Especially when you would have those little Easter eggs and you don't get that on a lot of shows.Michael Jamin:Right. YouSteve Baldikoski:Know, like I, you know, may maybe on your Just Shoot Me you would have just shoot me fans, but every seat every week was a super fan.Michael Jamin:No. The weird thing about Just Shoot Me, you know, cause we was, we were there the first four years and the, the first season, probably the first two seasons that the audience, they weren't fans, they were hostages. There was people who came from Free Pizza, , you can tell they wouldn't wanna be there. . And they know the showSteve Baldikoski:Prisoners,Michael Jamin:Prison Prisoners,Steve Baldikoski:You're sailors in for Fleet Week.Michael Jamin:It's basically that. I mean, people listening, it's like you show up on Hollywood Boulevard and they hand out tickets, Hey, who wants to see a taping of the show? And then anyone would show up and they would stay warm, cause anybody to get outta the rain. ButSteve Baldikoski:These, no, these were people who came from not just around the country, but from literally around the world to see the show. Yeah. And they would th these people would center their vacation on coming to the show. And, and so, you know, I I mean I, it was also amazing to be able to, like, after the show, you know, if you knew who the people were you would bring them down and, and they would just get a kick out of walking around the set. Mm-Hmm. . And that was another kind of highlight every week was, you know, having these people, you know, have this awesome experience that they've grown up with these characters in this set. And then they're running around on the set, you know, now that they're grown up and they've got kids who, who like the shows.Michael Jamin:Now this set was a repeat that wasn't,Steve Baldikoski:That was kind of amazing cuz you would, it it wasn't just, it wasn't just fans, it was two generations of fans. Right. You know, it was like people who are sort of our age and then they're kids. Right. And, and so, you know, when network people talk about family co-viewing, it really was that it was, you know, parents who still love the show,Michael Jamin:But it wasn't the set was a remake. Right. It wasn't the actually,Steve Baldikoski:It, it was a remake. But I'll I'll tell you, and this is also part of the weird experience coming onto the show, cuz neither, you know, I had no appreciation really for a full house at the time. So before the first show, and this was the entire first season before it aired on Netflix there was a curtain covering the set. And before they would announce the actors, they would, they would lift the curtain like it, like it was like at the theater. Right. And the first time for the shooting the pilot, when they revealed that to the audience, people burst into tears.Michael Jamin:Wow.Steve Baldikoski:Just seeing the set and the couch looking just like it did in the eighties. And the way they really, really mimicked the original set, you know, to the Inch cuz they had the original plans. It was amazing to see people moved by a set.Michael Jamin:Yeah, I bet. ISteve Baldikoski:Bet. And yeah. And so, so that was pretty unusual. And then any line would get, even a mediocre line would get an aureus laugh from the audience cuz they were all, they've been waiting for 25 years to see this moment.Michael Jamin:Now, I imagine you had some of the writers in the show who grew up with watching the original Fall House, who knew more about the show than, than you did? Who?Steve Baldikoski:Oh, oh yeah. Yeah. For sure. And that's why also I felt I didn't need to see the show that much. I'm not recommending people shouldn't do homework .Michael Jamin:Now, one of the things that shocked me when we, when we were working with you, this is long, many years ago, and maybe it was only a season one or something. You shocked me when you said that you, at one point you were, you started as a network executive. I was like, you what? WhatSteve Baldikoski:Well, yeah, Stu, a studio, executiveMichael Jamin:Studio. SoSteve Baldikoski:Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was I was like a director of comedy development at Universal.Michael Jamin:And so tell tell us what, what that means. WhatSteve Baldikoski:Do, should I go back further? Could goMichael Jamin:Back to where you wanna startSteve Baldikoski:To that point. I mean, I never, I never set out to be a writer. I don't even know if you know any of my origin story about this stuff. Oh. I never really set out to be a writer. I always loved TV, but I also love music in, in movies. But didn't even know I was gonna get into the entertainment business until I was trying to blow a year or two before I would get a little bit of work experience and then back to go to law school. You were gonna law school get an mba and I was never gonna be a part of the entertainment industry, but I just lucked into what turned out to be a great job in the mail room at United Talent Agency, uta. And it was like this moment that U t A was on the rise and I, yeah, I was in the mail room where I'm literally working 80 hours a week delivering mail and reading scripts for free and writing coverage, doing that for five months. Then I got on a desk, I worked for Nancy Jones and Jay Surs.Michael Jamin:Oh boy.Steve Baldikoski:I was their first assistants at United Talent, I believe. And then and then I knew it wasn't for me cuz it was really cutthroat. Yes. I, I was learning what I didn't want to do. And working a traditional office that led to I got a job in development. I worked at Aaron Spelling Productions, and then that job got me wait, howMichael Jamin:Did you get a job in development? Cause it's, it is hard to make the transition from being an assistant at a desk to having a non-a job anywhere.Steve Baldikoski:Oh, oh. I, I was still an assistant for Oh, okay. Years. I was an assistant for spelling for one year. Mm-Hmm. , then I was an assistant. I worked for Jamie Tarsus at b c. Right. And that's, and that was kind of the, the, the pivotal moment in my career. Cuz kind of anyone who was Jamie Tarsus assistant moved on to become the next executive. Right. And so that kind of became my path. I was, I, I never set out to do this, but I just kept at getting a job that was just better than the last one. Mm-Hmm. . So I never had the reason to go back to law school. Right. And it was just like they kept on dragging me back in with a slightly better job. So this one year I spent as Jamie's assistant at N B C Frazier had been bought, but not shot.And then Jamie bought friends that year. I can't remember the names of the other shows, but but like, you know, being on set at the pilot of Friends was really that pivotal moment for me where I thought, oh, th this is, you know, really what I wanna do. Like, and I was on the path to be an executive, but I really would look over and the writers seemed to be having a lot more fun. And that's where I, I didn't really even know it, but that was, that was my path to be to being a writer was just kind of hanging out at N B C and, and seeing how things, you know, being a part of. But evenMichael Jamin:When you were an executive development exec, were you thinking, I want to be a writer? Or were you thinking No, no,Steve Baldikoski:Not really. I, I knew like, the executive path was like, was fine and I did that. And on the executive path, when you're no longer an assistant, you get bumped up and you get the office and it was very kind of, there were a lot of fancy trappings. I would wear a suit and I'd drive around all the networks trying to sell co half hour comedies to the networks. And it was it was a good job. But there was just something I still kept on looking at, you know, the writers who were on the floor and thought they were having more fun.Michael Jamin:But Do you, and you were giving notes to writers Yes. As executive. Do you at any point feel like, I don't really, how might, who might I be giving notes to a writer when theySteve Baldikoski:Oh, I, I, I felt that all the time. And because I felt that, cuz I kind of had so much respect for what the writers did. Yeah. That it was, it was hard for me to give as many notes. Cuz I thought the writer probably already had thought these things throughMichael Jamin:Uhhuh .Steve Baldikoski:But where were youMichael Jamin:Getting your notes from then?Steve Baldikoski:What's that?Michael Jamin:Where were you getting your notes from? Where were you getting your opinions from?Steve Baldikoski:Well, I, I have opinions just like, IMichael Jamin:Wouldn't have, I wouldn't have when I was starting it out, I go, I don't know. That's fine to me.Steve Baldikoski:I mean, you're, you're sort of clued in to, to what your boss likes. Mm-Hmm. , you also have your own tastes. You, you kind of know what the project is supposed to be. I, yeah, I don't know. There, there's no formal executive school on how to give notes. That's why it's kind, it's kind of a weird job because there's no training for it. I don't really necessarily know what makes you good or not good.Michael Jamin:And some, a lot of it is just opinion. But I I sometimes you'll get the same notes and which are fair, which is a, you know, start the story journal, whatever. That's a great note that you're always, this is totally valid note. But sometimes I, you know, I've been in meetings and you're like, you get a note, you're like, but that's just your opinion. This doesn't make it better or worse.Steve Baldikoski:Yes. And, and I mean, obviously, you know, that's something you, you will struggle with till the end of time. Yeah. But, but I also always go back to, you know, I, I think there's a, there's a cartoon about this at, at some point, but, but like, if Shakespeare handed an Hamlet, his agent would give him notes. Yeah. And he would say, Hamlet is inactive. Yeah. And then you would make him Mae swashbuckling hero.Michael Jamin:Yeah. Right. Yes.Steve Baldikoski:And that would ruin Hamlet. So, so like, you know, and, and the problem is that like, the, that agent's note would be a well, well-guided note.Michael Jamin:Yeah. Hamlet, that isSteve Baldikoski:A mm-hmm. is a valid thing for him to say, but it also ruins the inherent art of the piece. Yeah.Michael Jamin:You know? Yeah. Had a kick. ButSteve Baldikoski:Then not that writing Glen Martin was the equivalent of ShakespeareMichael Jamin:In many ways. But it wasSteve Baldikoski:Pretty close.Michael Jamin:It was a little higherSteve Baldikoski:. But ,Michael Jamin:We had some fun on that show. But and then when, when you wanted to make the transition, I don't know how, how, how do you do, how did you do that?Steve Baldikoski:So, so, and once, like, and this is just my case, it was shockingly not that hard. My who became my writing partner was one of my best friends in college. And Brian had always wanted to be a sitcom writer. And just kind of had, kind of flamed out a couple of times. And then he was living in San Francisco and having a really excellent career as a, as an advertising copywriter. And I called him up and I told him I wanted to write sitcom with him. And he said no. And then he say he changed his mind.Michael Jamin:Why did he say no?Steve Baldikoski:Cuz I said, fine, I'm, if you don't write it with me, I'm gonna write it with Sue Ale .Michael Jamin:Oh,Steve Baldikoski:Funny. That's a true story. She wasn't,Michael Jamin:Sue wasn't an Sue Nagle who later went on to run H B O and then and Ana and you know, she, she's big, but she, at the time she was, she was, sheSteve Baldikoski:Was not yet an agent or she was a very young one. And we, butMichael Jamin:She didn't wanna write,Steve Baldikoski:Did she? So then we got together and to go to a coffee place to brainstorm. And we got into a, we didn't even make it to the coffee place before we got into a huge argumentMichael Jamin:Over what?Steve Baldikoski:Oh, I don't, I don't rememberMichael Jamin:. This partnership's not going well,Steve Baldikoski:. No, he was, he was not. But, but if you can't make it to the place where you're supposed to think , then it's probably a doom partnership. So anyway, Brian said yes. Mm-Hmm. . And then so over the phone we wrote a spec news radio back when people still did that. Yep. And News Radio had just been on the air. So we wanted to write a show that we loved and also that there weren't a ton of samples of other specs like that. Right. So we, this news radio early on and I gave it to Sue Nagle, she liked it. She gave it to Michael Whitehorn at Ned and Stacy. And we had one meeting Brian flew in from San Francisco. I showed up in my suit from being in an executive. I had to sneak out from Universal and not tell him where I was going. DidMichael Jamin:Michael White hard know you were an executive at the time? Yes, he did. HeSteve Baldikoski:Didn't think, but, but, but that was actually kind of a good thing because Brian was an ad executive. Mm-Hmm. and Ned of Ned and Stacy Right. Was an ad executive. And then also cuz I had, you know, funny corporate stories I think Michael liked that as well. And the fact he gets two people for a staff writer's salary.Michael Jamin:Were you afraid to leave your cushy job?Steve Baldikoski:Less so than Brian. I, if, if I flamed out, I could always go back to being an executive and, you know, that would be fine. Right. And, and in hindsight, that probably would've been the best thing that happened, everyone.Michael Jamin:But Yeah. I mean, itSteve Baldikoski:Wouldn't be here talking to you. I, I, I'd be living in Bermuda by now, .Michael Jamin:Oh, well, you know, learn.Steve Baldikoski:Yes. So, but unfortunately I made it through that year and then made it through the next like 25 years. And so, so that was my, that was my path. And, and it kind of happened really fast that I, so then Michael hired us after that meeting, and then I had to go tell my boss at Universal that not only was I looking for a job, but I had one and it was as a writer.Michael Jamin:Yeah.Steve Baldikoski:And then, and so their business affairs made this big stink that they owned my half of my spec script.Michael Jamin:And what, what are they planning on doing with it?Steve Baldikoski:I, well, that, well, I, I asked them that and I think they were all gonna take my spot in the writer's room.Michael Jamin:Yeah. What you're, they have they own ha you're half of a worthless SPAC script that just got you a job. I don't know,Steve Baldikoski:Value it. It was a weird thing. But they,Michael Jamin:But businessSteve Baldikoski:Affairs won't hesitate toMichael Jamin:Sink a deal whenever possible. . Yes. We remove the joy out of a writer . We have a three hour phone call toSteve Baldikoski:Figure this out. And they, yes, they effectively did steal my joy of that moment,Michael Jamin:. Oh my God. And then, yeah. Then the rest was just one show after another, basically. AndSteve Baldikoski:Then, yeah. And yeah, it started out we got in, at the time there used to be the WB in, in U p n, the Paramount Network. I think like in that, in that time period, this is like 97, 98, there was like the peak of the sitcom. I think there were over 60 half hour sitcoms on the air. And then Brian and I rode that rollercoaster.Michael Jamin:Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not gonna spam you and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljamin.com/watchlist.So tell me about developing your last project.Steve Baldikoski:Okay, so the, the last project that I just developed I sold it to a ABC with 20th. Mm-Hmm. came to me because it was so personal to what I'm going through as a dad. Mm-Hmm. , my youngest kid is non-binary.Michael Jamin:Okay.Steve Baldikoski:And she she was born a girl, Vivian. And then around time, she was about the second grade, she came to us and said that she, she felt that she was a boy. Right. And so that led us down on this journey. You know, finding out, you know, like having a trans kid and non-binary kid and never knowing anything about it. Right. and that kind of led me to want to write about it after I broke up with my writing partner right at the start of Covid. And I was gonna have to write my first thing. So I was gonna write at first I was actually gonna develop step by step BA based on the same concept. I was unable to sell that to H B O Max mm-hmm. . so instead I redeveloped the idea of me being this like hapless dad sort of middle class working class guy in rural Wisconsin, which is where my mom's family is from.And then having this tomboy kid that he just loves more than anything. Hi. Her, his Maisie all of a sudden informs him that no her name is, she's now Hunter. And you're thinking this as a single camera comedy or what? This was a single camera comedy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was structured like a multicam, but, but really that was from, anyway, that was my speck. And what that led me to, to, to, to do is it got me the attention of other people who were in the non-binary trans world. So then ultimately I partnered just through meeting lots of people this woman named Billy Lee, who some people know because Billy Lee was on early seasons of Vander Pump Rules. Okay. and so it was kind of a, like a well-known person in, in the trans community.And then, so Billy Lee and her friend Priscilla had this idea about her own life, which is kind of almost too hard to believe is true. Billy Lee grew up in rural Indiana as a boy. Left home in 18, found out that he wasn't gay, he was actually a, she Right. And went through the surgeries and then, you know, a a lot of turmoil, but then returns back home and fell in love with her best male friend from junior high. And now they're together as an on and off couple. And so it was, how, how do I take that and turn that into a half hour comedy? I know it's a long wind up, but it's a great story that is almost hard to believe. Yeah. AndMichael Jamin:Was her best friend growing up.Steve Baldikoski:Yes. And so we pitched it really as a Netflix H b o Showtime show that would, would show that magic relationship and also have sex and, you know, things that I think would be hard, you know, relatively hard for a, you know, a regular network audience.Michael Jamin:And it's sold,Steve Baldikoski:But it sold to a b ABC because they wanted, there's this great, her relationship with her father is also really what it's about. Right. And it's, it, it is a fa is also a family show about how it took a trans woman to fix this broken Midwestern family.Michael Jamin:Right. AndSteve Baldikoski:Right in ABC's wheelhouse, youMichael Jamin:Know, where where is that now? At likeSteve Baldikoski:A, like a Connor's but with a strong trans element.Michael Jamin:And where is that right now?Steve Baldikoski:It's dead. Oh,Michael Jamin:Steve Baldikoski:Michael Jamin:With every other pilot.Steve Baldikoski:Yeah. yeah. I, I, you know, I can't, I I can't entirely blame them. Like, it, it would be very amazing to see a, b, c put on a show about a trans woman and not have it be one of the peripheral characters.Michael Jamin:Yeah.Steve Baldikoski:I, I, I think that's just a hard sell. Maybe if I was, you know, a more powerful writer, could, could you, you know, jam that down their throat? But I, I don't think, I think the subject matter was exactly their wheelhouse, but also maybe too, too on the bleeding edge for them.Michael Jamin:It, it feels a little like, you know, some somebody somewhere at that H B O show. I love that show. No. Oh yeah. It's a little sim it's it, and there's not trans, but it's, it's similar that, I don't know, that just remind me of It's great. It's a great show. Our friend Rob Cohen directs a bunch of those. Oh yeah.Steve Baldikoski:Oh, I'll have to check that out.Michael Jamin:Yeah. Great show. But, so then, okay, so then what, what else? Like, you, I mean, it's been a while since, you know, since Fuller House, but what was that like? I always ask this, what's it like working with the cuz a lot has changed since you and I broke in. Yes. What is it working on with like the, the new generation of writers?Steve Baldikoski:Well luckily at Four House I was still the new generation of writers . What wasn't thatMichael Jamin:Mean, wasn't that long ago.Steve Baldikoski:I, I still felt young on the show Uhhuh. Cause Cause we had people No, we, we had people who were older and Oh right. And you know, were around the early, theMichael Jamin:Original show.Steve Baldikoski:And so, so it was kind of great to feel like I was on the young side for once. Yeah. but I, I understand what you're, I understand what you're, what you're getting to are like in terms of how the room has changed from started to now, evenMichael Jamin:In terms of preparation because, you know, you can answer any way you want. But it, like, basically there was more when we were coming up, you were on a show for longer. There were more senior writers and you were constantly learning and you were never, I never, you were never like thrown into the hot wa hot water yet. But now I feel like these kids come in and there's no really training ground. There's no, there's even, you know, I think there's an article a couple days ago, there's no mentorship anymore becauseSteve Baldikoski:No, no, no, no, no. There, there isn't. And you know, that's too sad. I think that, I think content in general is as good as it's ever been. Mm-Hmm. . And yet that training system doesn't seem to exist. And I wish it did. When, when we first got in around the Ned and Stacy era, like there still was that you would still feel that like a showrunner would take someone mm-hmm. Under his wing, like Michael Whitehorn did with David Lit. Yep. And Shepherd that person cuz they would have multiple years of Ned and Stacy. And then luckily that turned into King of Queens. Mm-Hmm. and, and you know, soMichael Jamin:There were schools.Steve Baldikoski:Mike were together for a long time. That's the old model. I don't see that anymore. I wish it was there. Because to to be honest with you, like when Brian and I made the jump from co-executive producers of Fuller House to executive producers, it, it was like, we are being thrown to the wolves after 25 years. Yes. Because because of jumping from show to show, to show like younger writers do now all the time. I, I didn't learn those skills mm-hmm. . And so we didn't really know that much about editing, you know, sweetening like it, how's our camera coverage. Right. you know, all all of those little things that, you know, I had to, I had to learn them very, very quickly. And so luckily I had a, a great, you know, you know, crew that all wanted to help us as, you know, learn as well. But yeah, there is no system. I wish there wasMichael Jamin:Like, I even think like multi-camera, like you, back in the day, you'd come out of a school like we basically . We, we kind of came out of the Frazier school cause Levitan came outta Frazier, which came outta the cheer school. And it was like that kind of pedigree that you had and you're just learning from all those people. And then now, like, there's so few multi cams. Like if they were to bring back multi cams, well who's gonna do it? Who knows how to do it? Because it's different than doing a single camera.Steve Baldikoski:It's funny, it's funny you say that because that's why I'm calling onto the business. Yeah. that I'm hoping, I'm hoping that that we can stick around long enough that it will come back at some point. UhhuhMichael Jamin:. Yeah.Steve Baldikoski:I, I love the format. Like, I mean that's, that's one of the things that like really me about Fuller House is you know, I was able to be there for like five years mm-hmm. . and I never really had to worry about, you know, job security and it, it was this amazing place and we, and there were fans of the show and, and it was just great to write for them. And so that spoiled me, you know, now that that kind of is, you know, has gone away now that Fuller house is no longer on the air. Friday night was my drug, you know, cuz you know, Friday night I love putting on a show every week and I miss that.Michael Jamin:Here's my pitch Fullest house. Pay me. That's,Steve Baldikoski:That's, that's a great idea. That's a great, I wonder, I wonder if anyone pitched that to me, before the day I started.Michael Jamin:I wonder if anybody pitched that to me. Your shitty joke. .Steve Baldikoski:So was it one of my low IQ children?Michael Jamin:. Well then, so then what do you do? So what do you do now? I mean you're obviously you're developing and, andSteve Baldikoski:So, so now I I'm, I'm working on a, a, a new multi-camera idea. I'm very excited aboutMichael Jamin:And Gone Steve Baldikoski:Haven'tMichael Jamin:Taken it out yet.Steve Baldikoski:Yeah. no, I'm just, I I I, I think I finally ha I have the pilot story. I'm just trying to populate it with all the other, all the other things.Michael Jamin:Okay. And then, and thenSteve Baldikoski:With all the other characters cuz I basically started with the central character, Uhhuh . It is kind of high concept, but I don't wanna give it away. I I'll talk to you off camera about it. Okay. with the central character and then that led to a bigger world. Then populate that world kind of how to, how I want to, how I wanna fit tonally into that world. Like it's, it's, it's an idea that would, to me, it feels a little in the vein of what we do in the shadows.Michael Jamin:Oh, okay. Yeah.Steve Baldikoski:In terms of like a high concept comedy idea. And because I never worked for him, but like, my hero as a sitcom writer is Paul Sims.Michael Jamin:Okay.Steve Baldikoski:And it, you know, my first spec was Ned and Stacy. I mean, I, I was news Radio. Radio. Yeah. And which was run by Paul Sims, created by Paul Sims. And now he runs mm-hmm. . you know, what we do in the Shadows, which I just think is a brilliant, brilliant show.Michael Jamin:So then what do you have, what advice do you have for people? Do you have any advice for people trying to get into the business now? Well,Steve Baldikoski: that's why I'm here. I thought I was seeking advice from you. Yeah.Michael Jamin:You thought you were a, a job.Steve Baldikoski:I thought people were gonna, I thought people were gonna call in and tell me what to do with my life.Michael Jamin:Yeah, exactly.Steve Baldikoski:I, I mean the, the number one thing is like, if you want to be a writer, I think you probably have to move to LA maybe New York. But if you want to be in TV comedy, I think you have to be in LA Yeah. That's the first thing you have to do is move here and then write all, you can write things that make you laugh. Right. That abuse you, because no one else will probably enjoy it. So you might as well, you might as well . And, and also, and also I think you, you, you have to get creative, you know I think social media is a great way to get noticed.Michael Jamin:Mm-Hmm. ,Steve Baldikoski:My wife happens to be an executive on the TV side, and she bought the Twitter feed shit, my dad says when she wasMichael Jamin:Wild. And that was gotta be 10 years ago now.Steve Baldikoski:And Yes. And I, and I think that was like the first thing that a network executive or that a network has like, bought something on, like no one was buying a Twitter feed at the time. Right. And, and I thought that was pretty clever that Wendy started looking at things like that. And I, I think that's a great place to get noticed. Yeah,Michael Jamin:I agree.Steve Baldikoski:Especially for young comedy writers. Does sheMichael Jamin:Still do that? Does she still actively, does she look on social media for other people like that?Steve Baldikoski:She does that. She also she flips through, they get they get proposals of books that are coming out. Not even books that have been written, but just titles of book proposals sometimes.Michael Jamin:Really. AndSteve Baldikoski:She has scanned through that and bought a series based on one of the blurbs that she read aboutMichael Jamin:That I'veSteve Baldikoski:Never heard that. That was, that that was actually the show Atory.Michael Jamin:I Okay. Cuz that's a good title. ISteve Baldikoski:Never heard thatMichael Jamin:Before. So I would, I would, I've always, cause my advice to given people is, well, it's gotta be a bestselling book, but you're sayingSteve Baldikoski:Oh, oh, oh. I'm not, oh, I'm not suggesting that's a way to get noticed,Michael Jamin:Right.Steve Baldikoski:To, to write a book. Although it's not a bad idea. If you have a great life story, write a book or put it on TikTok.Michael Jamin:Right.Steve Baldikoski:I think, I think just if you have a comic voice, there are a million ways to get it out there. Yeah. and my dear friend, a guy named David Arnold was a writer on Filler House and just started showing, you know, doing TikTok videos of, of him and his wife and kids. And then he, like, I think Ellen DeGeneres was the first to share one of his videos, and then that blew up for him. And then he ended up, he was getting sponsored and he was a, he was a standup comic and it was helping out with his standup business. Yeah. And so at the age of, you know, 53, he was discovered on new media, you know, andMichael Jamin:And what would hasSteve Baldikoski:Become little tiny sketches about his family.Michael Jamin:Oh, I, let's talk about Kirsty, which was you, you were, to me, that was a lot of fun. So that was a Kirsty Alley show. Yeah. And you guys brought us in. They needed a a freelance. I don't know why they, but they wanted to have somebody freelance even though you got a, a great writing staff. Oh,Steve Baldikoski:.Michael Jamin:And I like, we're like, we'll do it. And thenSteve Baldikoski:I think, I think our, I think I think your agent said that your teeth were falling out and if you didn't write a script for the medical Oh,Michael Jamin:Not at all. Honestly,Steve Baldikoski:That show,Michael Jamin:Because that was a bunch of heavy hitters on that show. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. We were only sat, we only sat in for a couple days. We walked you guys, we walked in and then you guys said, okay, here's the story. We, we broke it, kind of go write it. We're like, okay. And but it was a, itSteve Baldikoski:Was to start Ted Damson. Sson.Michael Jamin:Yeah. And, and then, and Marco punted it for se the next season thinking it was gonna be a season two Marco, there's no season two . You don't punt that. You shoot it today before, before they pull the plug. Steve Baldikoski:The old, we will use this we'll use scripts season two. Yeah.Michael Jamin:The old season twoSteve Baldikoski:Trick. I don't know if that was him being tricked or you being tricked.Michael Jamin:Honestly, we had a great time. It wasSteve Baldikoski:A great script. It was a greatMichael Jamin:Script. It was fun. It was just fun sitting in with a bunch of people. Yeah, well, a bunch of writers that I respected. SoSteve Baldikoski:No, that was an amazing, that was an amazing experience. I, I, we like Claris Leachman did the show. Mm-Hmm. like some really, you know we, we wrote an episode for John Travolta. Yeah.Michael Jamin:And was it Michael Richards and Ria Pearlman. And it was like, these are good, these are heavy hitters, these are great actors. So, andSteve Baldikoski:The, the night that Claris Leachman did the show, we went out for drinks afterwards, Uhhuh with her. And I ended up sitting next to Kirsty Allie's assistant. And it wasn't until about 10 minutes into my conversation when she mentioned reincarnation, that I realized that I was talking to a high level Scientologist. And then I, and then I noticed she was doing all these Scientology tricks with me, like deep deeply staring into my eyes and not blinking until I blink. It was, it was, it was very bizarre.Michael Jamin:Wow. I I think we can,Steve Baldikoski:That's, that, that's, that's a good enough reason to become a sitcom writer is Yeah. To have someone do Scientology mind tricks on you. ThoseMichael Jamin:Are, that those are all these, those are always good stories when you Yeah. Can you go hang out on the past? Hang out. Yeah. And then what aboutSteve Baldikoski:When, when Clarus Leachman is far from the craziest person at the table? .Michael Jamin:She was, she was pretty wild. Yeah.Steve Baldikoski:Michael Jamin:Did I ever work? I'm trying to remember if I ever worked with her on something. I think I did, but I can't remember what it was.Steve Baldikoski:Gotta be. Just, just shoot me.Michael Jamin:It might have been. I don't remember. I, I, you know, but Okay. Well let's get to baby, let's get to the, what everyone wants to talk about Baby Bob.Steve Baldikoski:Oh,Michael Jamin:, let's go. YouSteve Baldikoski:Saved the best for last.Michael Jamin:I saved the best for last. Let's talk about baby. Well,Steve Baldikoski:I, I believe that Baby Bob was the highest rated show that I've ever been on,Michael Jamin:But they canceled it so fast.Steve Baldikoski:They canceled it. Yes. I think that was a, that was a disconnect where the high, high ups meaning like Les Moon vest when he was running CBSs, I think he wanted Baby Bob to be on the air. Oh. And so that he developed it like two or three times with multiple casts.Michael Jamin:Right. We gotta have a talking baby.Steve Baldikoski:And it was, and, but the, but the Talking baby always stayed the same based on these commercials. Was it Geico? Yes. I think his Geico commercials with the baby Ba with Baby Bob interviewing Shaq Yeah. Is, it's the concept that got everyone all hot and bothered. And so, so Les Moonves bought the show. This is my version of the story, I'm sure it's only partially accurate. But he didn't really include the lower level executives who absolutely hated the show. And so, as Brian and I got hired on the show, we thought, Hey, it's a c b s show. They must like the show. But the reaction from the executives after every table read was basically, how dare you,Michael Jamin:How dare how dare you have the baby talk? How dare you. WhatSteve Baldikoski:Like, just everything about the show seemed to offend the, the c bs executives incivility who were in charge of the show.Michael Jamin:Were, were there anything advertised guys in it? Were they involved at all?Steve Baldikoski:No, not, I don't think so. Kenny Kenny Campbell is the voice and mouth of the baby. Uhhuh . And then actually I didn't know much about babies when I was on the show, but then now when I look back, I realize how creepy it is that a baby has a full set of adult teeth. Yeah. Yeah. That are prominent. If I saw a baby like that in real life, I would run.Michael Jamin:Do you think that was the problem with the show? Steve Baldikoski:, this is the baby's teeth? Well, well the Mike Saltzman, my dear friend who Yeah. Saltman created the show, described it as Frazier, and they happened to have a talking baby.Michael Jamin:The other, so the other Oh, Freeman was Frazier had, okay. Frazier. All right.Steve Baldikoski:And they just happened to have a talking baby. IMichael Jamin:SaltmanSteve Baldikoski:That was, that was Mike'sMichael Jamin:And what, what were the writers do? Did, yeah.Steve Baldikoski:I don't have a lot of memories. . Okay.Michael Jamin:SoSteve Baldikoski:There were a lot of late nights and one night, I think it was about midnight, that I got into a shouting match with one of the other writers about whether or not Baby Bob was a genius.Michael Jamin:Right.Steve Baldikoski:And the other writer was taking the stance of he's not a genius, he's only talking at six months. Mozart was writing symphonies at, at five or seven, and I was shouting and I was yelling about the other side that Mozart was not talking at sick at six months.Michael Jamin:And was everyone looking at you both outta your mind? ?Steve Baldikoski:Yes. Like, it's midnight. Can I go home?Michael Jamin:Can I go home? How get the baby to dance? That's all.Steve Baldikoski:But, but, but, but, but I mean, part of the lesson there is even a show that you think is so, so simple or terrible that you could write it in it, in its in your sleep. Uhhuh . It's not that way. No. No. Because even a show like that is very hard to write. Yes.Michael Jamin:Yes. BecauseSteve Baldikoski:You have so many layers of people to Please,Michael Jamin:Yes. People ask me is they say is a, is a, is a great show. Hard to write than a bad show. No, they're all, they're all kind of hard to write for different reasons. Yeah.Steve Baldikoski:And that, that was, I mean, definitely a lesson. And then another lesson was despite what we felt like, I like it, it is sort of embarrassing to be on a show like Baby Bob when you're on the Paramount lot and then the Frazier Golf Cart drives by and you're in the same business, but you're not in the same business. But when it came to the ratings, baby Bob did huge in the ratings. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like one of the top, I think it's one of the top new comedies that year.Michael Jamin:And that's so interesting. And, and that's, that's the thing people don't realize as well, is that you, you may be a great writer, but if you're in this lane, it's hard to get out of that lane cuz that's how people see you. Yes. And if you're in a great, even if you're even a bad writer on a great show, now you're in that lane. You're in a great ri you're, you know, you, you're inflated. So Yeah. Yeah. yeah. People don't quite realize that.Steve Baldikoski:Yeah.Michael Jamin:And you take, you gotta take the job, you gotta get you, but you take the job you get, you know, so Yeah. And,Steve Baldikoski:And, and you really, and you really don't know if it's gonna pan out.Michael Jamin:No.Steve Baldikoski:Like I remember talking to Al Jane and Mike Reese mm-hmm. when we worked with them and asking them when they got started, they started on the, started on The Simpsons I think coming off of Gary Shaline show and when they were pitched coming on to do this cartoon on Fox.Michael Jamin:Right.Steve Baldikoski:They thought, I think that they thought it was, it was not good for their career.Michael Jamin:It would kill their career. Yeah. And, and now it would make no difference, honestly. Now you what? You take a job, you know, whatever job you can get, you take a job, you know? Yeah. But back then you could make decisions. You could make choices.Steve Baldikoski:Yes. Yeah. I, yeah. And, and interestingly, like back when Brian and I were making lists of shows, we would wanna be on Uhhuh, Simpsons was like a C-level list at the time.Michael Jamin:Uhhuh Really? CauseSteve Baldikoski:We liked it, but we thought it was imminently. We, we didn't, no one still knew it was gonna be on the airMichael Jamin:40 years later.Steve Baldikoski:Yeah. And you know, cuz cuz being on The Simpsons, I think it was like uncool. Then it became cool, then it was uncool.Michael Jamin:Well, in a way it's a little bit of, it's almost golden handcuffs if you're on the Cho. That that's if you're on the Simpsons now, you you're not gonna leave. Yeah. Cause it's job security and get ready to, for writing Bart jokes for the rest of your career, you know. Yeah.Steve Baldikoski:But the crazy thing is that there are writers who are still there, who were there when I was in the mail room at United Town. Sure.Michael Jamin:Yeah. SoSteve Baldikoski:Th there are peopleMichael Jamin:Who, they've made a career at it who,Steve Baldikoski:Yes. So I was in the, I was on the business side of the business. I became an executive and then I was a writer for 25 years. Yeah. And they're still doing the job from the day I got into the business.Michael Jamin:It's so interesting. It's just so, yeah. It's, and I would think creatively it's hard, but you know, you, but the money will make, will make you feel better. You know,Steve Baldikoski:Money makes a lot of things feel better.Michael Jamin:You crying for your 50? Is there a 50 bill? . I wouldn't know what a 50 bill looks like. Fascinating. Dude, thank you so much. We have a good chat. We had a good time.Steve Baldikoski:Steve. Thanks for having me.Michael Jamin:Thank you so much. This is, I, I don't know, I'm always fascinating in, in learning people's journeys and how they got there and so thank you so much for, for being on my little show.Steve Baldikoski:Thank you. And hopefully you have stuff that you don't have to cut.Michael Jamin:Oh, , sorry folks. If you heard the version that, the edited version, we had a trash, a lot of stuff. ,Steve Baldikoski:.Michael Jamin:All right everyone, thank you so much. Remember, we offer, we got a lot of great stuff for you on my website. You can get on my newsletter, you get my free all that stuff. Go to michaeljamin.com and find out what we got there. And I got another webinar coming up. All right everyone, thanks so much. Until next, next week, keep writing.Phil Hudson:This has been an episode where screenwriters need to hear this with Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson. If you'd like to support this podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review and sharing this podcast with someone who needs to hear today's subject. For free daily screenwriting tips, follow Michael on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok @MichaelJaminWriter. You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok @PhilAHudson. This episode was produced by Phil Hudson and edited by Dallas Crane. Until next time, keep writing.

Get another inside scoop of what it's like to work in Hollywood as Michael Jamin sits down and talks with Eric Fogel, a DreamWorks animator.Show NotesEric Fogel Website: https://www.eric-fogel.com/Eric Fogel Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_FogelIMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0283888/Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/courseFree Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/freeJoin My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlistAutomated TranscriptEric Fogel (00:00):You gotta have, you know, there's, there are a couple of key ingredients, right? You, you gotta have the passion, right. For it, for the craft. You have to have the ability mm-hmm. to have, to have the skills. Michael Jamin (00:14):But you didn't have the ability when you started. Right?Eric Fogel (00:18):I had some ability.Michael Jamin (00:19):Some ability. AndEric Fogel (00:20):I kind of, yeah. I mean, a lot of it is you, you have to immerse yourself and you have to just make things. And you have to learn as you make things. You can't, you know, you can watch YouTube videos all day long, but you gotta like, just get in it.Michael Jamin (00:35):You're listening to Screenwriters Need to hear this with Michael Jamin.Michael Jamin (00:43):Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. Welcome back to Screenwriters. Need to hear this. This is the podcast that it's not just for screenwriters. Cuz I, I have a special guest today. This is my friend and once collaborator Eric Fogel. And he, we were, we were debating like, how do I, how do I introduce him? Cuz he does so much. He's a writer, he's a director, he's an animator. He's now a dreamworks. And Eric Fogel's now gonna tell us is how, how, how all this works. He's gonna explain to me, Eric Fogel, thank you so much for being on the show. Say hi. Hello.Eric Fogel (01:13):Hello. Hello. Hello.Michael Jamin (01:15):You're not an actor though. That's the one thing you, that's the one credit you don't get.Eric Fogel (01:19):I do a little voice acting.Michael Jamin (01:20):Do you do, doEric Fogel (01:21):You know I've done, yeah, I, yeah, I I actually got my SAG card. Yeah.Michael Jamin (01:25):ReallyEric Fogel (01:27):Little, little.Michael Jamin (01:28):So, so for everyone's listening, so Eric and I worked together years ago on a show called Glen Martin dds, which he cr co-created. And on that show, he was the he was one of the, he directed with me, directed the animation. He was in charge of all the designs, all the character designs. And then he had the misfortune of having to fly back and forth from Los Angeles to Toronto, like every week to oversee the animation focal. How did that, how, how did that all come about? How did, how did you sell that show? How did it come about that show?Eric Fogel (02:01):Man so yeah, I think I was, I was in town. I was, you know, I was living in New York at the time, and so I, I was I, I did a trip out here to, to LA to do like, around the meetings. And I was, I was in my I was up in my manager's office and the, the owner of the company, Gotham sh just kind of walked by and she goes, oh, yeah, he should meet Scoop,Michael Jamin (02:31):Right?Eric Fogel (02:31):And I'm like, what the fuck is a scoop? Can I say ? Is that all right?Michael Jamin (02:37):We all, we're all thinking of it.Eric Fogel (02:38):Yeah. Yeah. What's, what's a Scoop scoop?Eric Fogel (02:43):That was my, so that was my introduction. So yeah, we, we set up a meeting, I met with Scoop in LA on that same trip, I think it was my last meeting. And they had a scriptMichael Jamin (02:55):Just a, so Scoop was a, the nickname of one of the executive producers, or Michael Eisner's company.Eric Fogel (02:59):Scoop is a human. Yeah. He was, I guess running development for Michael Eisner's company, which was Tornante. Yeah, right. And they had, they had a script. They had like a version of a pilot that was written by Alex Berger. Right, right. And you know, it was still pretty rough at that time. It needed, needed some love. And, you know, there was no, there were no designs. You know, there was nothing there. But couple weeks later I met, I g I met with Michael Eisner in New York, and we sat down, we started talking about this project, and he had seen some stuff on my reel, and he saw some, some stop motion that I did, you know, I created Celebrity Death Match. So I think he was aware of, of that. But I, I did this other show called Star Val with a studio called Cup of Coffee in Toronto.Michael Jamin (03:51):I didn't realize that was Cuppa, but Wait, hold on. Was that, was, was what Network was surveillance onEric Fogel (03:56):EMichael Jamin (03:57):E. So I wanna, I wanna slow this down. Yeah. I wanna interrupt you for a second. So celebrity Death Match was like a huge hit. I was on MTV for a couple seasons, right? Yeah. And it was a stop motion animation, and you were in charge, and you create, created that with custom and you were in charge of the a It was a big, it was like a big deal for like, I don't know, 10 minutes, but it was .Eric Fogel (04:17):Yeah, no, we, we, we, we ran for Yeah. A couple years and, you know, close to a hundred episodes a lot.Michael Jamin (04:23):So, all right. But then, okay, so back it up and how, cuz you have a very unusual career because you kind of, you've carved a career for yourself that doesn't really, it doesn't even exist really. You know, not many people who do what you've done. Like, how, how did you start when you were a kid? Did you wanna, what did you wanna be?Eric Fogel (04:41):I, I knew I wanted to be in the film business in some way. I think, you know, when I was, you know, I was always drawing like little comic books when I was a kid. And these, these comic books were basically storyboards.Michael Jamin (04:54):Right. Eric is really good, talented artist. So that, I should mention that Illustra Illustrate. I don't know what you would call yourself. You're good though. Go on. You're okay.Eric Fogel (05:03):But by the time I was like, you know, in, in high school, I, I sort of learned that there was like, you could actually go to school to learn how to make films. Yeah. You know, like, there was such a thing. And, and I became aware of, you know, Y u and that, that sort of became my, you know, the thing that was driving me. I even before that, I started taking some film while I was still in high school. I took a couple film classes at, at school of Visual Arts, just taking college level classes there while, you know, still still a kid in high school and starting to like, figure out how to make, make films and, you know, put stuff together. And then I gotMichael Jamin (05:42):Live, it wasn't stop motion, it wasn't animation, it was just film.Eric Fogel (05:45):It was live action. I was still, I was also experimenting, you know, I got, I got a super eight camera, so I was trying, I was trying some stop motion. I was doing like, hand drawn animation. I was just trying everything I want. I was just absorbing everything. Yeah. You know? And yeah. And then got accepted to NYU and inMichael Jamin (06:05):The film program.Eric Fogel (06:06):Film program. Okay. 19. Yeah. Graduated class of 91.Michael Jamin (06:13):91.Eric Fogel (06:13):And, you know, I was pretty prolific there. Like they, I think they only required you to make, to finish like one film. And I ended up making four, finishing four films. Two were live action and two were animated. Right. And one of the animated films was this really violent like a post-apocalyptic thing. It was called The Mutilated. I've heard ofMichael Jamin (06:39):It. Ok.Eric Fogel (06:40):That, yeah, there's actually a,Michael Jamin (06:42):Well, look, you gotta sell. Okay.Eric Fogel (06:44):Yeah. There's a mu later.Michael Jamin (06:46):That's from, and that was from a college?Eric Fogel (06:48):Yeah, this was my college. This was my college film. Mutilate. But the, so this film got got licensed to like a, an animated like a film festivalMichael Jamin (07:02):Called, well, you, wait, you submitted it to a film festival. What doEric Fogel (07:04):They They saw it, they saw it in the Y U Circuit. Okay. Cause premiered there. And then they reached out to me and they said, we wanna a license Mutilators to be, it was a Spike and Mike spike and Mike's Festival of Animation.Michael Jamin (07:19):Right.Eric Fogel (07:20):AndMichael Jamin (07:21):So they paid you forEric Fogel (07:22):It? They, they wrote me a check, and that was the first time, you know, someone was like, paying me to, to make a thing.Michael Jamin (07:30):And then what happened?Eric Fogel (07:31):So I said, all right, that, that worked well. I want to keep doing that. So I just kept making, making like little short films. And I, I licensed a couple more to, to those guys, to the Spike and Mike Festival. And they would do this thing where they would, they would option the film, but they would also give you like com like a little money to, to finish the film. Which was, which was pretty, you know, it's not a, not a great deal. But it was, at that timeMichael Jamin (07:59):It was, these were like shorts, right?Eric Fogel (08:01):Yeah. Yeah. Just shorts. But, you know, you would send them, like, you could send them like a pencil test, and then they, they'd say like, here's a couple grand to finish it. And then, then they would like show it in their, their circuit.Michael Jamin (08:15):So, all right. So then, but you're okay, you're selling some stuff. It's got after college, you're not making a fortune. Yeah. You're, but you also have like a day job.Eric Fogel (08:24):I was I was hired. So I started working in a, in a small animation studio in New York, Uhhuh at that time. And I was learning, you know, just learning stuff. So one of the one of the directors at that studio he, he had a little problem with substance, substance abuse problem. Interesting. I'm not gonna mention any, any names, but he would, he would spend a lot of time just sleeping, sleeping it off. Yeah. And I, and he and I would, I would be animating his shots. And that's how I learned a lot of, a lot of stop motion. It was, it was like a stop motion studio. And I learned a lot. SoMichael Jamin (09:01):You, so you're right. So this is before computer animation, really. You're just kind of you're drawing, you're basically cell by frame By frame.Eric Fogel (09:07):Yeah. Yeah. And just using like a big old Mitchell 35 millimeter camera, just frame one frame at a time.Michael Jamin (09:14):And then, okay, so you did that for a little bit, then what happened?Eric Fogel (09:17):So at, so at the same time, I'm still making these little short films eventually.Michael Jamin (09:23):What was the point of making these short films, though? They're not adding slide actionEric Fogel (09:26):To get a reel together. So, so you to have like a sample sample of your, your stuff. Right. So eventually this real end ends up on the desk at the president of MTV Animation.Michael Jamin (09:40):How, how did it wind up there?Eric Fogel (09:42):I don't know.Michael Jamin (09:44):, but this is a good point. Like, cuz you're just putting your work out there. Yeah. And it's gonna, and it's good. So it's making the rounds, right?Eric Fogel (09:51):Yeah. It's, well, it's, it's, it's making the rounds. I don't know if it's good, but PE people are, there's no, but if itMichael Jamin (09:58):Wasn't good, they wouldn't pass it along. I mean, that's the truth.Eric Fogel (10:01):Yeah. Well, it, it was something, you know, at that time, M T V was, you know, animation was brand new and they, they were looking, you know, they were just looking for weird shit. Yeah. You know, and they saw, they, you know, they probably saw this, this spike in Mike festival and, and you know, like liquid television was becoming a thing. Right, right. And so they were hungry for stuff and, you know, just weird stuff. Right. And I, you know, I had some weird stuff on my reel.Michael Jamin (10:27):Yeah, you did. Well, yeah. And so, okay, so then what happened?Eric Fogel (10:31):So they, so M T v made, made me a deal to option this mutilated.Michael Jamin (10:37):Okay. AndEric Fogel (10:37):The plan was to have the, the Mutilators character appear within the Beavis and Butthead show. Mm-Hmm. . And, and it would be like, it was gonna be like this thing that they were gonna watch on tv and it was gonna be this cool thing that they liked. Right. Kind of fit, fit with their, their thing. Yeah. And then something, something tragic happened there were, there were some kids out west somewhere who burned their family's trailer down. And they said they, they learned how to, like, about fire from Beavis and Butthead.Michael Jamin (11:15):Oh, I, I At least it wasn't mutilated.Eric Fogel (11:18):No, no. But this created this whole wave, like this backlash. And all of a sudden MTV got scared and they said, oh, you know, we got, we can't, we have to be careful. And Mutilators was like violent. Yeah. Even though it was, it was sci-fi it was fantasy violence. It wasn't real. Yeah. But they were, they were just, they got cold feet. So I went to this meeting knowing that they were gonna shit can Mutilators and, and I had already set up like a little studio in my, in my house at, on Long Island, and I was like in production on this thing. So I was, I was nervous. Yeah. So I go to this meeting and, and Mike Judge is actually there. Mike Judge, the creator of Beavis and Butthead, he's, he's in this meeting and they're like, Eric, you know, we we're not, we can't go forward with Mutilators, but we, we like you, do you have anything else?(12:08):And I, I had this storyboard. I actually brought it to that meeting. And this, it was for this other thing that I had come up with about this guy with like a giant head and, and an alien that lived inside of this head. And it was like, about the symbiotic relationship Yeah. Between a guy, a guy, and an alien. And my judge, I just, I'll never forget this. He was kind of like hanging back and he was looking at my drawings and he was just laughing. Yeah. And these other two MTV execs were like, oh, Mike, Mike likes it. We should buy this. And they did and,Michael Jamin (12:44):And Muo was that,Eric Fogel (12:45):That was called the Head. Right. And that was it was part of like, it was called MTV's Oddities.Michael Jamin (12:51):Uhhuh .Eric Fogel (12:51):And that was, I was like 24 or 25. And that was the first show that I ran as a creator.Michael Jamin (12:58):But this is the kind of, this speaks to which is so important. It's like you were making this stuff because you were making it, and you were, it wasn't like, it wasn't even like, you weren't trying to sell that you were just making, you had, you have to have stuff to have.Eric Fogel (13:09):I had an idea.Michael Jamin (13:10):Right. And you worked on it. You didn't wait to get paid on it. You worked on it.Eric Fogel (13:14):Yeah.Michael Jamin (13:15):Right. And so, and you were, you were right. Did you have a small staff on that show?Eric Fogel (13:20):Yeah, we had, you know, we had a full staffMichael Jamin (13:23):On that and now was at Outta New York.Eric Fogel (13:26):We, we did, we ran the, the show out of, yeah. Out of MTV Animation in Midtown Manhattan. Wow. You know, set up shop there. I wrote, and I wrote an and show around that show with a, I had a, a writing partner at that time. And yeah, we wrote all the episodes and it was, it was wonderful because it was like, it's not like now, like, it was like, they were hands off, like creatively. They were like, yeah, great. It's great. Just do it. Do it. Do what you want. Do what you want.Michael Jamin (13:57):Interesting. That's so interesting. Wow. And then, and then at what point was this? Is there, what point did you make a leap to LA? Or, or am I missing something in between?Eric Fogel (14:05):Yeah, so I, you know, I stuck it out. So after the head, I did Celebrity Death Match.Michael Jamin (14:10):Right. That was outta New York.Eric Fogel (14:11):And then, you know, I continued working at small studios in New York. MTV animation closed, like shortly after nine 11, they shuttered. And, you know, business in New York kind of started to dry up after nine 11.Michael Jamin (14:27):There wasn't, there was never even a lot of business in New York. But I didn't even, you know,Eric Fogel (14:30):You No, but there was, yeah, there was, you know, m there was M T V and then there was some small commercial studios there. And I continued working at some of those smaller studios. You know, and we, all our family was there, so Right. We were sort of resisting the, the, the big move to, to la And then finally in 2008 when Glen Martin happened, and we made the move.Michael Jamin (14:54):Right. With your whole family. Yes. And then you flew back to tra that was the tragic part. If you had only stayed in New York, , your flight would've been soEric Fogel (15:02):Much. Yeah. I was like, honey, here's, here's our house kids. There's, there's your rooms. I gotta go. You guys figure it out.Michael Jamin (15:11):Enjoy the sunshine.Eric Fogel (15:13):My, my wife's still, she, you know, she, she's still pissed at me. We, no, we love each other, but No, it was, it was a tough move. We didn't know anybody here in la. Right. You know, it was a big, it was a big, big adjustment. And yeah, it was bit a shock.Michael Jamin (15:29):What does she think of it now? Is she happy you're here or No,Eric Fogel (15:31):I think, yeah, we've, we've made our peace with it. You know, we still miss our family. Our families are still all back east. Yeah. but we, we feel like it was a good thing for our family, you know, for our kids.Michael Jamin (15:44):Oh, you think so? You think they're, they're probably getting ready for college now. Your kids?Eric Fogel (15:48):Oh, they're almost done.Michael Jamin (15:50):They're almost done withEric Fogel (15:50):Cops. Well, one is, yeah. One our oldest is out. He's already graduated. And our, we have twin girls and they're graduating this this year.Michael Jamin (15:57):Oh God. We'll talk about that one. I know. Wonder what that's gonna happen. What happened there? Okay, so then, and then, alright. We did Glen Martin. And the thing about that is, so my partner and I were siber, we write these episodes. We come into your office and say, this is, this is the crazy that the craziest job you ever No, probably not. Cuz we would give you an assignment, like, this is the, what does this character look like in your head? Then you'd sketch a design and then we'd maybe give you notes or not. And then you'd run off. Then you'd fly to Toronto and they started a animated this thing. And you had to oversee every time there was a problem, we'd yell at you . And, and then you'd have to fixEric Fogel (16:33):It. Then I go yell at them and you'dMichael Jamin (16:35):Yell at them. And there was, yeah. There was always problems. It's always you know, because it's a, it's such a long process to, it took, you know, nine months to animate that show.Eric Fogel (16:43):That that show. I mean, there will never be another show like that. Right.Michael Jamin (16:49):Why do you feel that way?Eric Fogel (16:50):It was, I mean, just the concept was super ambitious, right? Yeah. You got, you got a family, you know, traveling from, from town to town every episode. Yeah. So every single episode you have to build a brand new world for this family to play in. Yeah. Right. That's a huge amount to build. And you have to build it all from scratchMichael Jamin (17:16):There. And there was a lot, we also did a lot of CGI on. We, not a lot. Some, you know, not,Eric Fogel (17:21):Not a lot.Michael Jamin (17:22):The mouses, the mouses, and also sometimes the backgrounds. Right. We would doEric Fogel (17:26):We would do some green screen. We'd do green screen. But, but a lot of those, I mean, most of those sets were, were Yeah. Physical, practical, physical models.Michael Jamin (17:36):I have all, I still have my dolls, just so you know. They're all here.Eric Fogel (17:40):Oh, hey, wait, IMichael Jamin (17:41):Got one. You have more. I remember when you had, you had your dolls. I was like, how do I get a hand? How do I get my hand on someone? Focals Dolls Eric Fogel (17:48):There.Michael Jamin (17:49):How Steal your dog. Which one's that? What's, oh, wait, but is that, was that from Glen? What was he, what was that?Eric Fogel (17:54):That hok? Honk Hawks The Clown. The Killer Clown. That'sMichael Jamin (17:57):Oh, we see What episode was that?Eric Fogel (17:59):I don't know. Sunshine. Fun, fun, fun. Bill Hawks.Michael Jamin (18:02):The Killer Clown did. There's so much about that show. I don't even remember.Eric Fogel (18:04):Remember who did The Voice?Michael Jamin (18:07):Who?Eric Fogel (18:08):Ty Burrell.Michael Jamin (18:09):That was Ty. Dude. We can you imagine We directed some amazing, amazing, remember we did, we directed Brian Cranston. Yep. When he was coming off break, he was doing BreakingEric Fogel (18:19):Bad. Still doing it. Yeah. Yeah.Michael Jamin (18:21):And he loved it. He's like, this is great.Eric Fogel (18:24):. He was amazing. We almost, we almost had a spinoffMichael Jamin (18:28):With him. Yes. Hi. That's him over here. Yeah. That'sEric Fogel (18:32):Drake Stone.Michael Jamin (18:34):That was a bummer. That didn't happen.Eric Fogel (18:36):Yep.Michael Jamin (18:36):Yep. Oh, well,Eric Fogel (18:38):But the cat, yeah. I, I mean we should talk about some of the other day players on that show because I meanMichael Jamin (18:45):Yeah, we, I mean it was amazing. The cat, we Every,Eric Fogel (18:48):Every day. Mel Brooks.Michael Jamin (18:50):Mel Brooks. Right.Eric Fogel (18:51):Billy Idol.Michael Jamin (18:53):Billy Idol. I don't remember Billy Idol.Eric Fogel (18:55):. He did a, he did the Christmas episode and he sang a song. He sang aMichael Jamin (18:59):Oh, right. Maybe it wasn't there. That I remember we had friend Drescher. Yeah. Remember were you there thatEric Fogel (19:04):Day? Yep.Michael Jamin (19:05):And we couldn't get her Remember? So, so Erica, we direct together, we'd whispered each other and it's not quite right. How did we get her to do, you know? And then I remember we finally walked up to her cuz she wasn't, the character wasn't quite white. And I was said, listen, can you do the nanny? She's like, oh sure. And then the then she started basically doing the nanny.Eric Fogel (19:23):You want the nanny,Michael Jamin (19:25):You want the nanny. You kind of, youEric Fogel (19:26):Want it, youMichael Jamin (19:27):Don't wanna ask. You wanna, you don't really wanna ask. You wanna get them there. Yeah. You know, I don't wanna insult her, but she was like, delight French. She was so sweet.Eric Fogel (19:35):Alison Jenny, she was great. She an Alexander.Michael Jamin (19:38):Yep.Eric Fogel (19:39):George Decay.Michael Jamin (19:40):Decay.Eric Fogel (19:42):My God. Fergie.Michael Jamin (19:44):Yep. Yep.Eric Fogel (19:47):I meanMichael Jamin (19:47):So much. Mc Hammer, we remember we had Mc HammerEric Fogel (19:50):Pen. GilletteMichael Jamin (19:51):Pen Gillette. I forgot. She's the what? A Oh my God.Eric Fogel (19:54):Was Jean Simmons.Michael Jamin (19:57):. Jean Simmons. Yeah. I remember that. . That was a day. And then, okay, so then once, once Glen Martin went down. Yeah. What happened to you then?Eric Fogel (20:08):? I don't know. What happened. So, you know, it was, that was a sort of a tricky time because I, I, I had to kind of reinvent myself. Did.Michael Jamin (20:20):Right.Eric Fogel (20:20):I was here in town. We did that show. That show was ama you know, it was an amazing experience, but nobody fucking saw it.Michael Jamin (20:29):Right,Eric Fogel (20:29):Right.Michael Jamin (20:30):And no one understood what you did on it either, because you create, you, you, you kind of invented a, you were a necessary incredibly important cog. But who, how do you describe, you know, how do you describe it to people? I, cause I'm even asking you, well, you were, you were one of the executive producers, but I'm almost like, well, what was your ion job? I mean, what, that was your job title, but it'd be, it'd be hard for me to describe what you did. Cause you did so much.Eric Fogel (20:53):Yeah. I mean, I guess on that show I was, I was more of a directing showrunner.Michael Jamin (20:58):Is that what you would call it?Eric Fogel (20:59):If you Yeah. Because, you know, I feel like there are some categories, right, with show like showrunners. So there are writing showrunners, which I consider like you and cber were like the writing showrunners. And I was on that show. More of a, the directing maybeMichael Jamin (21:14):Actually May in King of the Hill. I think they would call it a supervising director. Is that what you wereEric Fogel (21:18):Maybe. I mean, I don'tMichael Jamin (21:21):Supervise all the directors,Eric Fogel (21:22):Basically. It's different. Yeah. I guess there's, they're different credits.Michael Jamin (21:26):Yeah. I re Yeah, it was hard. It was a hard, there was so much for you to oversee. It was crazy.Eric Fogel (21:34):Yeah. And it's, I mean, and, and I love that. Like, that's, for me, that's what I do. It's soup to nuts, just mm-hmm. every, every piece of the production, I just, I I like to have a hand in holiday.Michael Jamin (21:50):Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not gonna spam you and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljamin.com/watchlist.Michael Jamin (22:14):So how did you reinvent yourself? Like what does that mean really?Eric Fogel (22:17):So I was here in town and after Glenn Martin, you know, there were, we had a, there were a couple things, but a couple things fell through. We were gonna do, there was another show mm-hmm. that I, I was developing with to, and it was this was weird. But we, this we, we developed this show alongside BoJack. Right. So it was like Scoop was working on, on BoJack. And then we had this other project and we, we actually sold this other project to a network. We had like, like an a, an agree, like an accepted offer. And it looked like it was going forward until the head of the studio just decided, eh, didn't wanna do animation.Michael Jamin (23:01):Yeah.Eric Fogel (23:02):That happened. So that, that got killed. And so I had to find some, some work. I ended up directing a show at Nickelodeon and it was a CG show. Mm-Hmm. . So I wanted to, it was, it was more of a kids show. Right. And it was, you know, I wanted to have the experience of, of directing cg. Okay. So I did that for a few years and it's, you know, that, and then it, you, you sort of, there you, there's stepping stones andMichael Jamin (23:31):That's just a big learning curve though.Eric Fogel (23:34):There's, there is a learning curve for sure. And it was important to me to, to have,Michael Jamin (23:39):Because you didn't learn, you didn't study that in college. What did you know about it?Eric Fogel (23:41):They didn't have, they didn't have computer animation there. Right. So you just have to, the best way to, to learn is to just be immersed in it. Right. Just on the Jobb training. So I, I did, I got that experience and that, that experience led me to, to Dreamworks.Michael Jamin (24:00):Right. And how, and you've been at Dreamworks for six years. And what do you do, what are you doing at Dreamworks? Basically do, are you, do you have a studio deal with Dreamworks? Is that what it'sMichael Jamin (24:08):Overall deal or something?Eric Fogel (24:09):They, I'm under contract. So right now it's kind of show to show.Michael Jamin (24:15):Alright. So you have a contract and they, they put you on whatever show they have going.Eric Fogel (24:19):Yeah, but they also were nice enough to keep me around. So they sort of put me on an overall deal. Cuz there was like a gap between shows. So that, that was very nice of them. Yeah. Keep me,Michael Jamin (24:31):They don't wanna lose you.Eric Fogel (24:32):I guess. They like me enough to keep me.Michael Jamin (24:34):It's so interesting cause I just had one of my previous guys, I may, I dunno if you know 'em, you probably don't. But John Abel and Glen Glen, they do all the kung They're the writers, the kung fu pander writers. They do a lot of dreamwork stuff.Eric Fogel (24:45):Yeah. Guys.Michael Jamin (24:46):Oh, you do, do you work with them?Eric Fogel (24:48):I haven't, but I'm familiar with them.Michael Jamin (24:50):So what exactly are you doing at Dreamworks then? We, as from jumping from show to show?Eric Fogel (24:55):Yeah. So they hired me initially, this is now almost six years to the day I started doing a show called Archibald's, next Big Thing. Mm-Hmm. , which was created by Mr. Tony Hale.Michael Jamin (25:10):Oh, he created, I know he's in it. I didn't know he created it.Eric Fogel (25:12):Created and voiced and was an, was an exec producer.Michael Jamin (25:18):And, and it's What network is that? Nickelodeon.Eric Fogel (25:21):That was so we started on Netflix. Okay. So we produced here at Dreamworks, we premiered on Netflix season one. And then season two we were on PeacockMichael Jamin (25:34):And Oh, is that, is there, is there a season three in the works or what?Eric Fogel (25:37):No, no. So the thing to know about animation these days is they don't order a a lot of episodes. It's, you know, the, it's, they've, especially on these streaming platforms.Michael Jamin (25:48):Oh, well that's the way it is for a live actually. Yeah. So what are you doing, se like 13 or something?Eric Fogel (25:53):We did two. So for Archibald we did two seasons and it was it was like 50. It ended up being like 50 half hours or fif 50. It's actually a hundred, a hundred episode. There are 11 minute episodes. So we did 111 minute episodes.Michael Jamin (26:08):That's actually, and are you, what are you, are you running the show? Are you running it? AreEric Fogel (26:11):You So I so that on that show, I was, I was exec producing, I was a writer and I was, I was basically doing a little of everything. Same, same thing. Directing, writing, overseeing every aspect of it.Michael Jamin (26:25):But it's not like every writer, there's a writing staff on that show. Right.Eric Fogel (26:29):We, we had, we had a, a staff and we had a couple head writers who, and they, those guys were great. I love those guys. They had never run, run a show before.Michael Jamin (26:39):Uhhuh .Eric Fogel (26:40):So I felt like I could be helpful there, you know, just in the writer's room and, and just, it just sort of organically evolved to where, you know, I didn't expect to be so involved in, in the writing process on that show. It just, it just turned out like, it just was a natural,Michael Jamin (26:57):That's the whole thing. You have a very unusual career path in career because cuz you do so many things.Eric Fogel (27:04):Yeah. I mean, I don't, there's no rules for this. I'm just making thisMichael Jamin (27:07):Up. Yeah. There's no rule. So, I mean, it's quite impressive because like, if I, I don't know what, what would, what, how would you advise? You must have kids come into you, Hey, how do I, how do I get to do what you do? Like what do you tell them?Eric Fogel (27:23):I mean you gotta have, you know, there's, there are a couple of key ingredients, right? You, you gotta have the passion,Michael Jamin (27:31):Right.Eric Fogel (27:32):For it, for the craft. You have to have the ability mm-hmm. have to have the skills. Michael Jamin (27:39):But you didn't have the ability when you started. Right.Eric Fogel (27:42):I had some ability. SomeMichael Jamin (27:44):Ability.Eric Fogel (27:44):And I kinda, yeah. I mean a lot of it is you have to immerse yourself and you have to just make things and you have to learn as you make things. You can't, you know, you can watch YouTube videos all day long, but you gotta like just get in it. And now it's one, you know, we have, the technology has changed so much. It's made it so much easier. Mm-Hmm. to make things. NowMichael Jamin (28:08):With those like those animation program, I mean, do you do anything like that on the side for yourself? Like what? Or, or, I mean, you know, at home for anyone? IEric Fogel (28:17):Don't have time for that. No. I these days. Yeah. I mean, I, I'm, you know, this, this job keeps, keeps me. ButMichael Jamin (28:24):Let's say you had a side project that you just wanted to get off the ground. Yeah. You just pitched the idea.Eric Fogel (28:29):I could, yeah. I mean, I have put things together and I've made, yeah. I've been able to make little animations you know, for projects, original projects that I've pitched. And I'll, I'll put together a whole presentation. I'll do all the visuals. I'll edit it and, and put together Yeah. Like little proof of concepts, right? That yeah. That stuff is, yeah. I love doingMichael Jamin (28:49):That. And that's on your own, but that's on your own time.Eric Fogel (28:51):That is on my own time. YourMichael Jamin (28:53):Own with, with some program you have.Eric Fogel (28:55):Yep.Michael Jamin (28:56):What's, what kind of program is this? What, what is it?Eric Fogel (28:58):I mean, I, you can, you can animate with Photoshop now. Oh. So that's, you know, that's, that's a thing. I, I use Sony movie Maker, which is this archaic system. I, I just, I'm really comfortable with it and I, I can use that to, to build projects and I can even animate on that thing.Michael Jamin (29:16):Are you doing any stop motion anymore?Eric Fogel (29:18):I haven't done stop motion in a long time.Michael Jamin (29:20):Because why the market part?Eric Fogel (29:24):You know, it's, it's just the, the right project hasn't really surfaced. And you know, I've, I've, I've pitched Project stop motion is a hard one to sell. People are afraid of it.Michael Jamin (29:36):Is it the look that's the, that's the criticism I get. They go that, here's the thing. Every, so I've been, I post a lot on social media and people will say, oh, I used to watch Glen Martin. And the, the phrase that comes back is that show is a fever dream. I was like, what's a fever dream? But everyone describes it as a fever dream. And what thatEric Fogel (29:55):Mean? Like, creepy. IMichael Jamin (29:56):Think it means like, like you were, they were in like, it felt like they were in an opium den, den era.Eric Fogel (30:03):. What it felt like for me.Michael Jamin (30:05):What's that?Eric Fogel (30:06):It's what it felt like for me Felt likeMichael Jamin (30:07):To, I mean, but it's like I, I, I don't know. There's something about like, I always like that format. Cause I always like this old bank and resting,Eric Fogel (30:17):Right. Bank ranking and backMichael Jamin (30:18):And best. Yeah. I always thought,Eric Fogel (30:20):Yeah. I mean, some people have got, I love, I've always loved the, the look of stop motion and you know, it's, there's something super charming and not just like, endearing about the, like the handcrafted aspect aspect of it. Right. Right. It's so cool. ButMichael Jamin (30:35):Don't feel that way. I guessEric Fogel (30:36):It's al it's always been the kind of like the redheaded stepchild of animation though, you know? Yeah. Always on. Always on the, on the fringes. And now, you know, it's hard enough to sell a show, any show. Right. Uhhuh . But it's in ama in the, in the animation industry, it feels like they're, they're only looking for, for CG animation these days. And there's just,Michael Jamin (30:56):Is that right? I mean, what, explain the different types of animation, because obviously there's, there's like, yeah. CG, like Shrek or somethingEric Fogel (31:03):Mm-Hmm.Michael Jamin (31:03): and then go on there actually different levels in terms of, you know, expense. What, how does that work?Eric Fogel (31:11):I mean, there, you know, there, so there there's like traditional hand drawn animation. But even that is all done mostly in computer these days. So there, there's no more like, hand painted cells. Right. But the actual movement, a lot of that stuff can still be done, done by hand.Michael Jamin (31:29):Uhhuh,Eric Fogel (31:29):. And then, you know, you got stop motion, you got cg and there, there are worlds in between where, you know, stylistically they, they're, they're doing a lot of thing, you know, design wise, they're kind of blending the, all the techniques.Michael Jamin (31:44):But it must be in terms of like, when they tell you what the budget of the show is, that greatly determines how good it's gonna look in the, how the, you know, the animation.Eric Fogel (31:52):Right. It can, you know, so right now I'm working on Megamind, the, the sequel to the, to the 2010 film Megamind. Right. And that's gonna air later this year. And I can't say a lot about it cuz they haven't announced a lot about it. Right. But the quality the quality of the animation, the technology has improved so much. Mm-Hmm. that even, even on a, a smaller tier budget, you can still, the quality of the animations really it's really improved.Michael Jamin (32:31):Right. So, so when you sell a show or when they bring you on a show, are you asking these questions or it's like, ah, someone else, you know, in terms of like, how much money do we get to spend on?Eric Fogel (32:42):Well they, yeah. They tell me and then I have to figure out how to make the show.Michael Jamin (32:47):Right. They tell you. Right. And so where will you cut corners or something.Eric Fogel (32:52):Yeah. So, so that's where it gets challenging. And, and you have to become very, you know, creative and, and and problem solving to, to be able to deliver. Right. The show the show you want and the show that they want with within these, you know, what, what can sometimes be a very small sandbox.Michael Jamin (33:10):Yeah.Eric Fogel (33:10):You know,Michael Jamin (33:11):And then so what, so what are you, you know, what are your ambitions or future ambitions or, you know, what, what excites you coming up or whatEric Fogel (33:20):You know, I would, I'd love to expand the Sandbox and be able to make a, make a leap into directing a feature would be really exciting. Oh really? Yeah.Michael Jamin (33:31):At at Dreamworks or, or any place really.Eric Fogel (33:34):Yeah. I mean I love it here. So I I would for sure love to direct a feature here. Right. But that, that would, you know, that would be a, a dream to, to be able to do that someday and, and to be able to, you know, spend three years, you know, focusing on, on like 90 minutes of content as opposed to, you know, hundreds of minutes of, of content to be able to like microfocus on that.Michael Jamin (34:00):It's so interesting cuz for me it's kind of other way around. Like, I, I, you know, I have to, I don't know. Cuz you get to every, every week you get, all right, here's something new. I have to live with something. But you're saying you, because you really wanna make the qual, you really want to spend time to make sure every frame is right.Eric Fogel (34:17):I would love, yeah, that would be, that would be a dream. Because in TV animation, you know, it's, it's like there's always this, this schedule. You're a slave to the schedule.Michael Jamin (34:29):Right.Eric Fogel (34:29):And you, you know. And soMichael Jamin (34:31):Are you, are you in the Glendale campus of Dreamwork? Is that where you are? Yeah. Are you there right now? Yeah, this is, this is really your,Eric Fogel (34:38):This is my office.Michael Jamin (34:39):This is your real office over at Dreamworks. People fa Okay. So you're okay. I don't even know if they with Covid if you're working from home or not.Eric Fogel (34:47):I still, yeah, I'm here a couple days a week.Michael Jamin (34:50):Uhhuh Eric Fogel (34:50):These days.Michael Jamin (34:52):And, and cuz this is your show. So you, well, are you working with writers? You know, how are you, how, how involved are you right now with Theri? Is there a writer's room or whatEric Fogel (35:00):Where, so the writing is, is wrapped on this show, but we were really fortunate because we got the two guys Brent Simons and Alan Schoolcraft, who wrote the original Megamind mm-hmm. were brought, were brought in as, as eps to, to basically help Showrun and, and run the writer's room. So having those guys was, was a gift, you know, cuz they, they kind of, they invented Megamind. So,Michael Jamin (35:30):And this is all on the Dreamworks campus? The writer's?Eric Fogel (35:32):Yeah. We did the writing here. A lot of the, a lot of the, the create a lot of art on this show is done not in Toronto. It's a lot of it's done in Vancouver.Michael Jamin (35:42):Oh, are you, are you ma are you making the trip up there? DoEric Fogel (35:46):You have to? I've been up there. I've been up there a couple of times. But we are, luckily, yeah, now that we've got, you know, zoom, it's, you know, I can do a lot of this right here. A lot of the work I can do right here.Michael Jamin (35:58):See, that's so wait, so, so they are, these subcontract, subcontracting out a lot of the animation at Dreamworks. I I kind of, it was under the impression they did it all themselves.Eric Fogel (36:07):They have always had partner studios, even like on the early features they, they were partnering with, with studios. So there's always been this sort of hybrid model on this particular show. Almost all of the, the, the art, the art side of it is, is outsourced on, on this show. Michael Jamin (36:29):Interesting. And then, and so they're actually, okay, so the animation houses are there. I mean, basically if you're an, so if you're an animator, it's interesting, there's different levels of animation, animators. This is all, and I've worked, I've worked in animation for many years. I still don't understand how it works. But but like, I remember like when we worked I worked at it wasn't Bento Box, it was whoever was doing King the Hill, Fort Bento. But Oh,Eric Fogel (36:56):I know who you're talking about.Michael Jamin (36:57):Yeah. I was, I'm forgetting, I'm blanking now. But they, the animators would've to come take tests. You would apply for a job of animator. Yeah. They'd give you a test, draw this frame or whatever, you know, is that how it still works there? Maybe stickEric Fogel (37:11):Computer. Yeah, I mean there's always, you know, it's like anything else, right? You have to audition, right. Or things. And yeah, there are, there are definitely, there's a big kinda leap in terms of skill levelsMichael Jamin (37:26):OfEric Fogel (37:26):Artists. Right. Because so much of art is like subjective.Michael Jamin (37:31):Yeah. It's so, it's so interesting. That's this career. But, and what about, I don't know, live action? Any interest getting back into doing more or? No,Eric Fogel (37:40):I would love to do some, some live action at some point. I, I've got like a horror movie that I would love to try to do one day. And you know, I, I'm, I'm such a huge like, horror sci-fi nut.Michael Jamin (37:55):Right. Are you, and are you pitching other shows as well? Or, or, you know, is how does it work in Dreamworks? So like, we have an idea, we have to show you're hired Fogal. I mean, is that what it is? Basically?Eric Fogel (38:06):They have, yeah. I mean they have a, an in-house development process. And when you're, when you're here, they, you know, there's like a, you have, there's a first look deal. So you, you, if you have an idea, you're sort of obligated to first.Michael Jamin (38:21):Right.Eric Fogel (38:23):And you know, the, so the industry's a little different right now cuz there's, they're not, you know, there aren't, there aren't a lot of shows being sold or bought right now , because it'sMichael Jamin (38:35):No kidding. Is that and is that the way, I didn't know if that's the way it is for animation as well.Eric Fogel (38:40):It is. So, you know, I'm very, very happy to be working on Megamind right now. .Michael Jamin (38:46):Yeah, right.Eric Fogel (38:47):This will keep me employed, you know, for the next year or so. But it's like, you know, it's like anything else. We, we work job to job and there's never any guarantee Nope. That you're gonna get hired again. You just, you know, it's all kind of on good faith.Michael Jamin (39:02):Are you working with the actors too? Directing actors as well?Eric Fogel (39:05):I'm directing all the voice actors on this show.Michael Jamin (39:08):You're the only director. Yeah. And, and then you're also supervising the animation, the, theEric Fogel (39:14):All of it. Yeah, allMichael Jamin (39:15):Of that. Yep. Good for you, man. Carved out quite a little career for yourself.Eric Fogel (39:20):It's fun.Michael Jamin (39:21):Yeah,Eric Fogel (39:21):It's fun. Keeps me busy. But I, I do love it. I do.Michael Jamin (39:25):Do you have any other advice for anybody to, you know, what's, you know, trying to break inEric Fogel (39:31):Other, I mean,Michael Jamin (39:32):Make more,Eric Fogel (39:33):You know, it's, you have to, I, it's a long time ago someone told me like, the recipe for, for a successful whatever show movie, whatever, you know, you find that, that thing that, that you love. You put, you put your, all your heart into that thing. And then, you know, you take what everyone else loves and, and it's kind of like where these two things come together that, that's kind of like your sweet spot, right? That's, that's your hit, that's your success. And so you gotta, you know, you gotta like focus in on what that thing is and, and put everything you have into it.Michael Jamin (40:08):I'm surprised they're not talking about bringing celebrity death mat back. That's gotta be next.Eric Fogel (40:13):There have been a few conversations over the years and there, there have been a couple of attempts to bring it back and we, we did. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's not dead, but ,Michael Jamin (40:27):Do they reach out to you or are you actively trying to sell that?Eric Fogel (40:30):I have. So I guess it's Viacom or Yeah, m t v. They, they own the rights to the show, but we, we have an agreement to, you know, if, if they want to bring it back, I'm, I'm attached to it. Right. And we've had, we've had some attempts and for whatever, well we, we did, we did get close. And then yes the studio that had made an offer, they went away. Michael Jamin (41:00):They went awayEric Fogel (41:01):As, as these things do. I'll, I'll tell you offline more about it, .Michael Jamin (41:05):Alright. Like, when we put the animation, the, the ama the animation studio that made Glen Martin, we put 'em outta business .Eric Fogel (41:12):They, they didn't stay in business long after that. . And it's Yeah. Funny because they, I, I don't know if they, at the time I, I'm not sure if they realized how, what, what a unique opportunity that show was for them.Michael Jamin (41:26):What do you mean by that?Eric Fogel (41:28):The, you know, I, again, like these shows, these stop,Michael Jamin (41:32):Like they, how many stop motion series have there been? Right, right. You know, they're few and far between. Right. That was the Yeah, that's another thing. There's only, they're one of the few people that actually could do it. And I don't, I don't even know what they were doing beforehand. It's Right. So when they went out of business, like there was like, what else are you gonna do? You know, they wanted be like, people aren't lining up. Yeah. Stop for stop motion shows. Right? There's only a handful. Yeah. Yeah. That's the, yeah. Anyway. Is there any way, is there, do you wanna promote anything? Do you want people to follow you anywhere? Is there anything we can do to help you help grow your brand? Eric Fogel. Violent . You can find me. I'm on you can find me on Twitter. Death Match Guy, I think is my, my oh really?(42:19):Twitter handle. I'm verified there. What? Oh. But not on Instagram, just Twitter. I do a little Instagram. I'm not a huge social media person. Yeah. Well, we'll get you there for some weird reason. Yeah. Cause you're, cuz we're the same age. Anyway. All right, dude, I wanna thank you so much. Yeah. I, you've exposed me. I've learned something. Learned something about you and your craft. Yeah, because I, I even remember when we got hired, they said, yeah, we got this guy on, on Glen Martin. We have this guy Eric Fogel. I was like, what does he do? No one can explain it because we do everything. He's the guy. He's the glue, basically. That's what he he's the glue. Yeah. That's, that's it. Yeah. I'm the glue. Yeah. All right, man. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for, for joining me e. Excellent. that's it everyone. More good stuff next week. Go check out what Eric Fogel's up to. And he's a great guy. Thank you again so much for doing this, man. Don't go anywhere. All right, everyone, until next week.Phil Hudson (43:18):This has been an episode of Screenwriters. Need to Hear This with Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson. If you'd like to support this podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review and sharing this podcast with someone who needs to hear today's subject. For free daily screenwriting tips, follow Michael on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at @MichaelJaminWriter. You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at @PhilAHudson. This episode was produced by Phil Hudson and edited by Dallas Crane. Until max time, keep riding.

In the second episode of our focus on climate fiction and speculative fiction (part of our 'genre' theme), University of Surrey researchers Frances Hallam and Edwin Gilson participate in a roundtable discussion led by Technecast's Felix Clutson. Frances Hallam (they/them) is an AHRC-funded PhD researcher at the University of Surrey. Their doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Aquafuturism', explores ocean and sea creature imaginaries in 21st century speculative fiction that figure decolonial and eco-queer storytelling in the Atlantic. Edwin Gilson is a third-year PhD student at the University of Surrey, and his research relates to the Anthropocene through the lens of contemporary Californian climate fiction, with a particular focus on the tension between the local and the planetary. Technecast: This episode is presented by Felix Clutson. The Technecast is funded by the Techne AHRC-DTP, and edited by Polly Hember, Julien Clin, Felix Clutson and Edwin Gilson. Contact: technecaster@gmail.com / @technecast / @pollyhember / @ClinJulien Royalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.com Image generously supplied by Alex Berger.

Podcast: The Lunar Society (LS 30 · TOP 5% )Episode: Austin Vernon - Energy Superabundance, Starship Missiles, & Finding AlphaRelease date: 2022-09-08Austin Vernon is an engineer working on a new method for carbon capture, and he has one of the most interesting blogs on the internet, where he writes about engineering, software, economics, and investing.We discuss how energy superabundance will change the world, how Starship can be turned into a kinetic weapon, why nuclear is overrated, blockchains, batteries, flying cars, finding alpha, & much more!Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.Subscribe to find out about future episodes!Follow Austin on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Please share if you enjoyed this episode! Helps out a ton!Timestamps(0:00:00) - Intro(0:01:53) - Starship as a Weapon(0:19:24) - Software Productivity(0:41:40) - Car Manufacturing(0:57:39) - Carbon Capture(1:16:53) - Energy Superabundance(1:25:09) - Storage for Cheap Energy(1:31:25) - Travel in Future(1:33:27) - Future Cities(1:39:58) - Flying Cars(1:43:26) - Carbon Shortage(1:48:03) - Nuclear(2:12:44) - Solar(2:14:44) - Alpha & Efficient Markets(2:22:51) - ConclusionTranscriptIntroDwarkesh Patel (00:00:00):Okay! Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Austin Vernon who writes about engineering, software, economics, and investing on the internet, though not that much else is known about him. So Austin, do you want to give us a bit of info about your background? I know that the only thing the internet knows about you is this one little JPEG that you had to upload with your recent paper. But what about an identity reveal or I guess a little bit of a background reveal? Just to the extent that you're comfortable sharing.Austin Vernon (00:00:29):My degree is in chemical engineering and I've had a lifelong love for engineering as well as things like the Toyota Production System. I've also worked as a chemical engineer in a large processing facility where I've done a lot of petroleum engineering. I taught myself how to write software and now I'm working on more research and the early commercialization of CO2 electrolysis.Dwarkesh Patel (00:00:59):Okay yeah. I'm really interested in talking about all those things. The first question I have is from Alex Berger, who's the co-CEO of Open Philanthropy. When I asked on Twitter what I should ask you, he suggested that I should ask “Why so shady?” Famously you have kind of an anonymous personality, pseudonymous thing going on the internet. What's up with that?Austin Vernon (00:01:25):Yeah. I think he posted a tweet that said “I don't know who this guy is or if he's credible at all, but his stuff sure is interesting”. That really made me laugh. I thought that was hilarious. Fame just doesn't seem necessary, I think I'm fine with my ideas being well known and communicating, but I have less desire to be personally famous.Starship as a WeaponDwarkesh Patel (00:01:52):Gotcha, gotcha. I wanted to start off with a sexy topic, let's talk about using Starship as a kinetic weapon. I thought that was one of the more amusing posts you wrote. Do you want to talk more about how this would be possible?Austin Vernon (00:02:08):Well, I think the main thing with Starship is that you're taking a technology and you're making it about 100 times cheaper for cargo and 1000 times cheaper for people. When things like that happen that drastically, you're just looking at huge changes and it's really hard to anticipate what some of those can be when the change is that drastic. I think there's a lot of moon-based, Mars-based stuff that doesn't really catch the general public's eye. They also have trouble imagining some of the point-to-point travel that could be possible. But when you start talking about it as a weapon, then I think it lets people know they should be paying attention to this technology. And we certainly do not want to be second or third getting it. We should make sure that we're going to be first.Dwarkesh Patel (00:03:05):Yeah. I think you mentioned this in the post, but as recently as the '90s, the cost of sending one kilogram to space was around $20,000. More recently, SpaceX has brought it to $2,000. Lots of interesting questions pop up when you ask, “What will be possible once we get it down to $200 per kilogram to send into orbit?” One of them could be about how we might manufacture these weapons that are not conventional ballistics. Do you want to talk about why this might be an advancement over conventional ballistic weapons?Austin Vernon (00:03:37):Well, regular conventional ballistic weapons are extremely expensive. This is more like a bomb truck. But usually we think of B52 as the bomb truck and this could be even cheaper than the B52, delivering just mass on target. When you think about how expensive it is to fly a B52 from Barksdale in Louisiana all the way across the world.. you can do it from south Texas or Florida with the Starship and get more emissions per day and the fuel ends up being. When you go orbital, it takes a lot to get to orbit. But then once you're in orbit, your fuel consumption's pretty good. So over long distances, it has a lot of advantage. That's why the point-to-point works for longer distances.Austin Vernon (00:04:27):There's really a sweet spot with these weapons where you want it to be pretty accurate, but you also want it to be cheap. You're seeing that problem with Russia right now as they have some fancy parade style weapons that are really expensive, like multi-billion dollar cruise missiles, but they're missing that $5,000 guided artillery shell or that $20,000 JDM that you can just pit massive. Or the multiple launch rocket system, guided rockets. They're really short on all those because I think they had just had a limited amount of chips they could get from the US into Russia to make these advanced weapons.Austin Vernon (00:05:07):But yeah, so the Starship gives you just a platform to deliver. You could put JDMs in a shroud, or you could just have the iron unguided kinetic projectiles, and it just becomes impossible for a ship to launch missiles to intercept yours if your cost is so low, you can just overwhelm them.Dwarkesh Patel (00:05:29):Okay. There are a few terms there that neither I nor the audience might know. So what is JDM? What is shroud? And why are chips a bottleneck here? Why can't it just be any micro-controller?Austin Vernon (00:05:42):So JDM is Joint Direct Attack Munition. So what we did is we took all our Vietnam surplus bonds and we put this little fin-kit on it and it costs like $20,000, which is cheap for a weapon because the actual bond costs, I don't know, $3,000. And then it turns it into a guided weapon that, before you were probably lucky to get within 500 meters of a target, now you can get it in with two meters. So the number of missions you have to do with your planes and all that goes down by orders of magnitude. So it's an absolutely huge advantage in logistics and in just how much firepower you can put on a target. And we didn't even have to make new bombs, we just put these kits on all our old bombs.Austin Vernon (00:06:33):Let's see.. Yeah the chips are a problem. There's this organization called RUSI. I think they're in the UK, but they've been tearing down all these Russian weapons they found in Ukraine and they all have American chips in them. So technically, they're not supposed to be able to get these chips. And yet, Russia can't make a lot of its own chips. And especially not the specialized kinds you might want for guided weapons. So they've been somehow smuggling in chips from Americans to make their advanced weaponsDwarkesh Patel (00:07:03):What is special about these? As far as I'm aware, the trade with China is still going on and we get a lot of our chips manufactured from Taiwan or China. So why can't they do the same?Austin Vernon (00:07:14):It's the whole integration. It's not just the specific chip, but the board. They're more like PLCs where you almost have wired-in programming and they come with this ability to do the guidance and all that stuff. It all kind of has to work together. I think that's the way I understand it. I don't know. Maybe I don't have a really good answer for that one, but they're hard to replicate is what matters.Dwarkesh Patel (00:07:43):Okay that's interesting. Yeah, I guess that has a lot of interesting downstream effects, because for example, India buys a lot of its weapons from Russia. So if Russia doesn't have access to these, then other countries that buy from Russia won't have access to these either.Dwarkesh Patel (00:07:58):You had an interesting speculation in the post where you suggested that you could just keep these kinetic weapons in orbit, in a sort of Damocles state really, almost literally. That sounds like an incredibly scary and risky scenario where you could have orbital decay and you could have these kinetic weapons falling from the sky and destroying cities. Do you think this is what it will look like or could look like in 10 to 20 years?Austin Vernon (00:08:26):Well, yeah, so the advantage of having weapons on orbit is you can hit targets faster. So if you're launching the rocket from Florida, you're looking at maybe 30 minutes to get there and the target can move away in that time. Whereas if you're on orbit, you can have them spaced out to where you're hitting within a few minutes. So that's the advantage there.Austin Vernon (00:08:46):You really have to have a two stage system I think for most, because if you have a really aerodynamic rod that's going to give you really good performance in the low atmosphere, it'll end up going too fast and just burn up before it gets there. Tungsten's maybe the only thing that you could have that could go all the way through which is why I like the original concept of using these big tungsten rods the size of a telephone pole. But tungsten's pretty expensive. And the rod concept kind of limits what you can do.Austin Vernon (00:09:28):So a lot of these weapons will have, that's what I was talking about with the shroud, something that actually slows you down in the upper atmosphere. And then once you're at the velocity where you're not just going to melt, then you open it up and let it go. So if you actually had it fall from the sky, some may make it to the ground, but a lot would burn up. So a lot of the stuff that makes it to the ground is actually pretty light. It's stuff that can float and has a large surface area. Yeah, that's the whole thing with Starship. Or not Starship, but Starlink. All those satellites are meant to completely fall apart on de-orbit.Dwarkesh Patel (00:10:09):I see. One of the implications of that is that these may be less powerful than we might fear, because since kinetic energy is mass times velocity squared and there's an upper bound on the velocity (velocity being the component that grows the kinetic energy faster), then it suggests that you can upper bound the power these things will have. You know what I mean?Austin Vernon (00:10:32):Yeah, so even the tungsten rods. Sometimes people, they're not very good at physics, so they don't do the math. They think it's going to be a nuclear weapon, but it's really not. I think even the tungsten rod is like 10 tons of T&T or something. It's a big bomb, but it's not a super weapon.Austin Vernon (00:10:54):So I think I said in the post, it's about using advanced missiles where they're almost more defensive weapons so I can keep you from pitting your ship somewhere. Yeah I could try to bombard your cities, but I can't take ground with it. I can't even police sea lanes with it really. I'd still have to use regular ships if I had this air cover to go enforce the rules of the sea and stuff like that.Dwarkesh Patel (00:11:23):Yeah. You speculated in the post, I think, that you could load this up with shrapnel and then it could explode next to an incoming missile or an incoming aircraft. Could these get that accurate? Because that was surprising speculation to me.Austin Vernon (00:11:43):I think for ships, it's pretty... I was watching videos of how fast a ship can turn and stuff. If you're going to do an initial target on a ship to try to kill their radars, you'd want to do it above the ceiling of their missiles. So it's like, how much are they going to move between your release where you stop steering and that? The answer's maybe 1000 feet. So that's pretty simple because you just shrapnel the area.Austin Vernon (00:12:12):Targeting aircraft, you would be steering all the way in. I'd say it's doable, but it'd be pretty hard. You'd actually maybe want to even go slower than you would with the ship attack. You'd need a specialized package to attack the aircraft, but if you have enough synthetic aperture radar and stuff like that, you could see these aircraft using satellites and then guide the bomb in the whole way. You could even load heat seeking missiles into a package that unfurls right next to them and launch conventional missiles too, probably. It'd be pretty hard to do some of this stuff, but they're just the things you might be able to do if you put some effort into it.Dwarkesh Patel (00:12:57):Yeah. The reason I find this kind of speculation really interesting is because when you look at the modern weaponry that's used in conflicts, it just seems directly descendant from something you would've seen in World War II or something. If you think about how much warfare changed between 1900 and 1940, it's like, yeah, they're not even the same class of weapons anymore. So it's interesting to think about possibilities like these where the entire category of weapons has changed.Austin Vernon (00:13:33):You're right and that's because our physical technology hasn't changed that much. So it really has just made more sense to put better electronics in the same tanks. We haven't learned enough about tanks to build a new physical tank that's way better, so we just keep upgrading our existing tanks with better electronics. They're much more powerful, they're more accurate. A lot of times, they have longer range weapons and better sensors. So the tank looks the same, but it maybe has several times more killing power. But the Ukraine war right now, they're using a lot of 40, 50 year old weapons so that especially looks like that.Dwarkesh Patel (00:14:20):Yeah. Which kind of worries you if you think about the stockpiles our own military has. I'm not well educated on the topic, but I imagine that we don't have the newest of the new thing. We probably have maintained versions of decades old technology.Austin Vernon (00:14:35):We spend so much, we've got relatively... This kind of gets into debate about how ready our military is. For certain situations, it's more ready than others. I'd say in general, most people talking about it have the incentive to downplay our capabilities because they want more defense spending. There's lots of reasons. So I think we're probably more capable than what you might see from some editorial in The Hill or whatever. Us just sending a few weapons over to Ukraine and seeing how successful they've been at using them, I think, shows a little bit of that.Austin Vernon (00:15:18):There's so much uncertainty when it comes to fighting, especially when you're talking about a naval engagement, where we don't just don't have that many ships in general… you can have some bad luck. So I think you always want to be a little bit wary. You don't want to get overconfident.Dwarkesh Patel (00:15:37):Yeah. And if the offensive tech we sent to Ukraine is potentially better than the defensive tech, it's very possible that even a ballistic missile that China or Russia could launch would sink a battleship and then kill the 2,000 or 1,000 whatever soldiers that are on board. Or I guess, I don't know, you think this opens up avenues for defensive tech as well?Austin Vernon (00:16:03):Yeah––generally the consensus is that defensive technology has improved much more recently than offensive technology. This whole strategy China has is something they call anti-access/area denial, A2/AD. That's basically just how missiles have gotten better because the sensors on missiles have gotten better. So they can keep our ships from getting close to them but they can't really challenge us in Hawaii or something. And it really goes both ways, I think people forget that. So yeah, it's hard for us to get close to China, but Taiwan has a lot of missiles with these new sensors as well. So I think it's probably tougher for China to do it close to Taiwan than most people would say.Dwarkesh Patel (00:16:55):Oh, interesting. Yeah, can you talk more about that? Because every time I read about this, people are saying that if China wanted to, they could knock out Taiwan's defenses in a short amount of time and take it over. Yeah, so can you talk about why that's not possible?Austin Vernon (00:17:10):Well, it might be, but I think it's a guess of the uncertainty [inaudible 00:17:14]. Taiwan has actually one of the largest defense budgets in the world and they've recently been upping it. I think they spend, I don't know, $25 billion a year and they added an extra $5 billion. And they've been buying a lot of anti-ship missiles, a lot of air defense missiles.. Stuff that Ukraine could only dream of. I think Ukraine's military budget was $2 billion and they have a professional army. And then the other thing is Taiwan's an island, whereas Russia could just roll over the land border into Ukraine.Austin Vernon (00:17:44):There's just been very few successful amphibious landings in history. The most recent ones were all the Americans in World War II and Korea. So the challenge there is just... It's kind of on China to execute perfectly and do that. So if they had perfect execution, then possibly it would be feasible. But if their air defenses on their ships aren't quite as good as we think they could possibly be, then they could also end up with half their fleet underwater within 10 hours.Dwarkesh Patel (00:18:20):Interesting. And how has your view of Taiwan's defensive capabilities changed... How has the Ukraine conflict updated your opinion on what might happen?Austin Vernon (00:18:29):I didn't really know how much about it. And then I started looking at Wikipedia and stuff and all this stuff they're doing. Taiwan just has a lot of modern platforms like F16s with our anti-ship missiles. They actually have a lot of their own. They have indigenous fighter bombers, indigenous anti-ship missiles because they're worried we might not always sell them to them.Austin Vernon (00:18:54):They've even recently gotten these long range cruise missiles that could possibly target leadership in Beijing. So I think that makes it uncomfortable for the Chinese leadership. If you attack them, you're going to have to go live in a bunker. But again, I'm not a full-time military analyst or something, so there's a lot of uncertainty around what I'm saying. It's not a given that China's just going to roll over them.Software ProductivityDwarkesh Patel (00:19:22):Okay. That's comforting to hear. Let's talk about an area where I have a little bit of a point of contact. I thought your blog post about software and the inability of it to increase productivity numbers, I thought that was super fascinating. So before I ask you questions about it, do you want to lay out the thesis there?Austin Vernon (00:19:43):Yeah. So if there's one post I kind of felt like I caught lightning in a bottle on, it's that one. Everything I wanted to put in, it just fit together perfectly, which is usually not the case.Austin Vernon (00:19:55):I think the idea is that the world's so complex and we really underestimate that complexity. If you're going to digitize processes and automate them and stuff, you have to capture all that complexity basically at the bit level, and that's extremely difficult. And then you also have diminishing returns where the easily automatable stuff goes first and then it's increasing corner cases to get to the end, so you just have to go through more and more code basically. We don't see runaway productivity growth from software because we're fighting all this increasing complexity.Dwarkesh Patel (00:20:39):Yeah. Have you heard of the waterbed theory of complexity by the way?Austin Vernon (00:20:42):I don't think so.Dwarkesh Patel (00:20:44):Okay. It's something that comes up in compiler design: the idea is that there's a fixed amount of complexity in a system. If you try to reduce it, what you'll end up doing is just you'll end up migrating the complexity elsewhere. I think an example that's used of this is when they try to program languages that are not type safe, something like Python. You can say, “oh, it's a less complex language”, but really, you've added complexity when, I don't know, two different types of numbers are interacting like a float and an int. As your program grows, that complexity exponentially grows along with all the things that could go wrong when you're making two things interact in a way that you were expecting not to. So yeah, the idea is you can just choose where to have your complexity, but you can't get rid of that complexity.Austin Vernon (00:21:38):I think that's kind of an interesting thing when you start pairing it with management theory... when you add up all the factors, the most complex thing you're doing is high volume car manufacturing. And so we got a lot of innovations and organization from car manufacturers like the assembly line. Then you had Sloan at GM basically creating the way the modern corporation is run, then you have the Toyota Production System.Austin Vernon (00:22:11):But arguably now, creating software is actually the most complex thing we do. So there's all these kinds of squishy concepts that underlie things like the Toyota Production System that softwares had to learn and reimagine and adopt and you see that with Agile where, “oh, we can't have long release times. We need to be releasing every day,” which means we're limiting inventory there.Austin Vernon (00:22:42):There's a whole thing especially that's showing up in software that existed in carbon manufacturing where you're talking about reducing communication. So Jeff Bezos kind of now famously said, "I want to reduce communication," which is counterintuitive to a lot of people. This is age-old in car manufacturing where Toyota has these cards that go between workstations and they tell you what to do. So people normally think of them as limiting inventory, but it also tells the worker exactly what they're supposed to be doing at what pace, at what time. The assembly line is like that too. You just know what to do because you're standing there and there's a part here and it needs to go on there, and it comes by at the pace you're supposed to work at.Austin Vernon (00:23:29):It's so extreme that there's this famous paper, by List, Syverson and Levitt. They went to a car factory and studied how defects propagated in cars and stuff. Once a car factory gets up and running, it doesn't matter what workers you put in there, if workers are sick or you get new workers, the defect rate is the same. So all the knowledge is built into the manufacturing line.Austin Vernon (00:23:59):There's these concepts around idiot-proofing and everything that are very similar to what you'll see. You had Uncle Bob on here. So Uncle Bob says only put one input into a function and stuff like that because you'll mix them up otherwise. The Japanese call it poka-yoke. You make it where you can't mess it up. And that's another way to reduce communication, and then software, of course you have APIs.Austin Vernon (00:24:28):So I'm really interested in this overall concept of reducing communication, and reducing how much cooperation and everything we need to run the economy.Dwarkesh Patel (00:24:41):Right. Right. Speaking of the Toyota Production System, one thing they do to reduce that defect rate is if there's a problem, all the workers in that chain are forced to go to the place where the defect problem is and fix it before doing anything else. The idea there is that this will give them context to understand what the problem was and how to make sure it doesn't happen again. It also prevents a build up of inventory in a way that keeps making these defects happen or just keeps accumulating inventory before the place that can fix the defects is able to take care of them.Austin Vernon (00:25:17):Right. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.Dwarkesh Patel (00:25:19):Yeah. But I think one interesting thing about software and complexity is that software is a place where complexity is the highest in our world right now but software gives you the choice to interface with the complexity you want to interface with. I guess that's just part of specialization in general, but you could say for example that a machine learning model is really complex, but ideally, you get to a place where that's the only kind of complexity you have to deal with. You're not having to deal with the complexity of “How is this program compiled? How are the libraries that I'm using? How are they built?” You can fine tune and work on the complexity you need to work on.Dwarkesh Patel (00:26:05):It's similar to app development. Byrne Hobart has this blog post about Stripe as solid state. The basic idea is that Stripe hides all the complexity of the financial system: it charges a higher fee, but you can just treat it as an abstraction of a tithe you have to pay, and it'll just take care of that entire process so you can focus on your comparative advantage.Austin Vernon (00:26:29):It's really actually very similar in car manufacturing and the Toyota Production System if you really get into it. It's very much the same conceptual framework. There's this whole idea in Toyota Production System, everyone works at the same pace, which you kind of talked about. But also, your work content is the same. There's no room for not standardizing a way you're going to do things. So everyone gets together and they're like, “All right, we're going to do this certain part. We're going to put it together this certain way at this little micro station. And it's going to be the same way every time.” That's part of how they're reducing the defect rates. If your assembly process is longer than what your time allotment is to stay in touch with the rest of the process, then you just keep breaking it down into smaller pieces. So through this, each person only has to know a very small part of it.Austin Vernon (00:27:33):The overall engineering team has all sorts of strategies and all sorts of tools to help them break up all these processes into very small parts and make it all hold together. It's still very, very hard, but it's kind of a lot of the same ideas because you're taking away the complexity of making a $30,000 car or 30,000 part car where everyone's just focusing on their one little part and they don't care what someone else is doing.Dwarkesh Patel (00:28:06):Yeah. But the interesting thing is that it seems like you need one person who knows how everything fits together. Because from what I remember, one of the tenets of the Toyota Production System was you need to have a global view. So, in that book, was it the machine or the other one, the Toyota Production System book? But anyways, they were talking about examples where people would try to optimize for local efficiencies. I think they especially pointed to Ford and GM for trying to do this where they would try to make machines run all the time. And locally, you could say that, “oh this machine or process is super efficient. It's always outputting stuff.” But it ignores how that added inventory or that process had a bad consequence for the whole system.Dwarkesh Patel (00:28:50):And so it's interesting if you look at a company like Tesla that's able to do this really well. Tesla is run like a monarchy and this one guy has this total global view of how the entire process is supposed to run and where you have these inefficiencies.. You had some great examples of this in the blog post. I think one of the examples is this guy (the author) goes to this factory and he asks, "Is this an efficient factory?" And the guy's like, "Yeah, this is totally efficient. There's nothing we can do, adopting the Toyota way, to make this more efficient."Dwarkesh Patel (00:29:22):And so then he's like, "Okay, let me look." And he finds that they're treating steel in some way, and the main process does only take a couple of seconds, but some local manager decided that it would be more efficient to ship their parts out, to get the next stage of the process done somewhere else. So this is locally cheaper, but the result is that it takes weeks to get these parts shipped out and get them back. Which means that the actual time that the parts spend getting processed is 0.1% of the time, making the whole process super inefficient. So I don't know, it seems like the implication is you need a very monarchical structure, with one person who has a total view, in order to run such a system. Or am I getting that wrong?Austin Vernon (00:30:12):Not necessarily. I mean, you do have to make sure you're not optimizing locally, but I think it's the same. You have that same constraint in software, but I think a lot of times people are just running over it because processing has been getting so much cheaper. People are expensive, so if you could save development time, it just ends up the trade offs are different when you're talking about the tyranny of physical items and stuff like that, the constraints get a little more severe. But I think you have the same overall. You still have to fight local optimization, but the level you have to is probably different with physical goods.Austin Vernon (00:30:55):I was thinking about the smart grid situation from a software perspective, and there's this problem where, okay, I'm putting my solar farm here and it's impacting somewhere far away, and that's then creating these really high upgrade costs, that cost two or three times more than my solar farm. Well, the obvious thing would be, if you're doing software, is like you're going to break all these up into smaller sections, and then you wouldn't be impacting each other and all that, and you could work and focus on your own little thing.Austin Vernon (00:31:29):But the problem with that is if you're going to disconnect these areas of the grid, the equipment to do that is extremely expensive. It's not like I'm just going to hit a new tab and open a new file and start writing a new function. And not only that, but you still have to actually coordinate how this equipment is going to operate. So if you just let the grid flow as it does, everyone knows what's going to happen because they could just calculate the physics. If you start adding in all these checkpoints where humans are doing stuff, then you have to actually interface with the humans, and the amount of things that can happen really starts going up. So it's actually a really bad idea to try to cart all this stuff off, just because of the reality of the physical laws and the equipment you need and everything like that.Dwarkesh Patel (00:32:22):Okay. Interesting. And then I think you have a similar Coasean argument in your software post about why vertically integrating software is beneficial. Do you want to explain that thesis?Austin Vernon (00:32:34):Yeah. I think it actually gets to what we're talking about here, where it allows you to avoid the local optimization. Because a lot of times you're trying to build a software MVP, and you're tying together a few services… they don't do quite what you need, so if you try to scale that, it would just break. But if you're going to take a really complex process, like car manufacturing or retail distribution, or the home buying process or something, you really have to vertically integrate it to be able to create a decent end-to-end experience and avoid that local optimization.Austin Vernon (00:33:20):And it's just very hard otherwise, because you just can't coordinate effectively if you have 10 different vendors trying to do all the same thing. You end up in just constant vendor meetings, where you're trying to decide what the specs are or something instead of giving someone the authority, or giving a team the authority to just start building stuff. Then if you look at these companies, they have to implement these somewhat decentralized processes when they get too complex, but at least they have control over how they're interfacing with each other. Walmart, as the vendors, control their own stock. They don't tell the vendor, "We need X parts." It's just like, it's on you to make sure your shelf is stocked.Dwarkesh Patel (00:34:07):Yeah. Yeah. So what was really interesting to me about this part of the post was, I don't know, I guess I had heard of this vision of we're software setting, where everybody will have a software as a service company, and they'll all be interfacing with each other in some sort of cycle where they're all just calling each other's APIs. And yeah, basically everybody and their mother would have a SAAS company. The implication here was, from your argument, that given the necessity of integrating all those complexity vertically in a coherent way, then the winners in software should end up being a few big companies, right? They compete with each other, but still...Austin Vernon (00:34:49):I think that's especially true when you're talking about combining bits and apps. Maybe less true for pure software. The physical world is just so much more complex, and so the constraints it creates are pretty extreme, compared to like... you could maybe get away with more of everyone and their mom having an API in a pure software world.Dwarkesh Patel (00:35:14):Right. Yeah. I guess, you might think that even in the physical world, given that people really need to focus on their comparative advantage, they would just try to outsource the software parts to these APIs. But is there any scenario where the learning curve for people who are not in the firm can be fast enough that they can keep up with the complexity? Because there's huge gains for specialization and competition that go away if this is the world we're forced to live in. And then I guess we have a lot of counter examples, or I guess we have a lot of examples of what you're talking about. Like Apple is the biggest market cap in the world, right? And famously they're super vertically integrated. And yeah, obviously their thing is combining hardware and software. But yeah, is there any world in which it can keep that kind of benefit, but have it be within multiple firms?Austin Vernon (00:36:10):This is a post I've got on my list I want to write. The blockchain application, which excites me personally the most, is reimagining enterprise software. Because the things you're talking about, like hard typing and APIs are just basically built into some of these protocols. So I think it just really has a lot of exciting implications for how much you can decentralize software development. But the thing is, you can still do that within the firm. So I think I mentioned this, if the government's going to place all these rules on the edge of the firm, it makes transactions with other firms expensive. So a few internal transactions can be cheaper, because they're avoiding the government reporting and taxes and all that kind of stuff. So I think you'd have to think about how these technologies can reduce transaction costs overall and decentralize that, but also what are the costs between firms?Dwarkesh Patel (00:37:22):Yeah, it's really interesting if the costs are logistic, or if they're based on the knowledge that is housed, as you were talking about, within a factory or something. Because if it is just logistical and stuff, like you had to report any outside transactions, then it does imply that those technology blockchain could help. But if it is just that you need to be in the same office, and if you're not, then you're going to have a hard time keeping up with what the new requirements for the API are, then maybe it's that, yeah, maybe the inevitability is that you'll have these big firms that are able to vertically integrate.Austin Vernon (00:37:59):Yeah, for these big firms to survive, they have to be somewhat decentralized within them. So I think you have... you're going to the same place as just how are we viewing it, what's our perception? So even if it's a giant corporation, it's going to have very independent business units as opposed to something like a 1950s corporation.Dwarkesh Patel (00:38:29):Yeah. Byrne Hobart, by the way, has this really interesting post that you might enjoy reading while you're writing that post. It's type safe communications, and it's about that Bezos thing, about his strict style for how to communicate and how little to communicate. There's many examples in Amazon protocols where you have to... the only way you can put in this report, is in this place you had to give a number. You can't just say, "This is very likely," you had to say like, "We project X percent increase," or whatever. So it has to be a percent. And there's many other cases where they're strict about what type definition you can have in written reports or something. It has kind of the same consequence that type strict languages have, which is that you can keep track of what the value is through the entire chain of the flow of control.Austin Vernon (00:39:22):You've got to keep work content standardized.Dwarkesh Patel (00:39:26):So we've been hinting at the Coasean analysis to this. I think we just talked about it indirectly, but for the people who might not know, Coase has this paper called The Theory of Firms, and he's trying to explain why we have firms at all. Why not just have everybody compete in the open market for employment, for anything? Why do we have jobs? Why not just have... you can just hire a secretary by the day or something.Dwarkesh Patel (00:39:51):And the conclusion he comes to is that by having a firm you're reducing the transaction cost. So people will have the same knowledge about what needs to get done, obviously you're reducing the transaction cost of contracting, finding labor, blah, blah, blah. And so the conclusion it comes to is the more the transaction costs are reduced within people in a firm, as compared to the transaction cost between different firms, the bigger firms will get. So I guess that's why the implication of your argument was that there should be bigger tech firms, right?Austin Vernon (00:40:27):Yes, yes, definitely. Because they can basically decrease the transaction costs faster within, and then even at the limit, if you have large transaction costs outside the firm, between other firms that are artificially imposed, then it will make firms bigger.Dwarkesh Patel (00:40:45):What does the world look like in that scenario? So would it just be these Japanese companies, these huge conglomerates who are just... you rise through the ranks, from the age of 20 until you die? Is that what software will turn into?Austin Vernon (00:40:59):It could be. I mean, I think it will be lots of very large companies, unless there's some kind of change in inner firm transaction costs. And again, that could possibly come from blockchain like technology, but you probably also need better regulation to make that cheaper, and then you would have smaller firms. But again, in the end, it doesn't really matter. You'd be working in your little unit of the big bank of corporate, or whatever. So I don't know what that would look like on a personal level.Car ManufacturingDwarkesh Patel (00:41:40):Yeah. Okay. So speaking of these Japanese companies, let's talk about car manufacturing and everything involved there. Yeah, so we kind of hinted at a few elements of the Toyota way and production earlier, but do you want to give a brief overview of what that is, so we can compare it to potentially other systems?Austin Vernon (00:42:02):I think all these kinds of lean Toyota process systems, they do have a lot of similarities, where mostly you want to even-out your production, so you're producing very consistently, and you want to break it into small steps and you want to limit the amount of inventory you have in your system. When you do this, it makes it easy to see how the process is running and limit defects. And the ultimate is you're really trying to reduce defects, because they're very expensive. It's a little bit hard to summarize. I think that's my best shot at it there, quickly off the top of my head.Dwarkesh Patel (00:42:49):Yeah. The interesting thing about the Toyota system, so at least when the machine was released, is they talk about... that book was released I think the nineties, and they went to the history of Toyota, and one of the interesting things they talked about was there was a brief time where the company ran... I think, was this after World War II? But anyways, the company ran into some troubles. They needed to layoff people to not go bankrupt. They had much more debt on books than they had assets. So yeah, they wanted to layoff people, but obviously the people were not happy about this, so there were violent protests about this. And in fact I think the US written constitution gave strong protections to labor that they hadn't had before, which gave labor an even stronger hand here.Dwarkesh Patel (00:43:42):So anyway, Toyota came to this agreement with the unions that they'd be allowed to do this one time layoff to get the company on the right track, but afterwards they could never lay somebody off. Which would mean that a person who works at Toyota works there from the time they graduate college or high school till they die. Right? I don't know, that's super intense in a culture. I mean, in software, where you have the average tenure in a company's one year, the difference is so much.Dwarkesh Patel (00:44:13):And there's so many potential benefits here, I guess a lot of drawbacks too. But one is, obviously if you're talking in a time scale of 50 years, rather than one year, the incentives are more aligned between the company and the person. Because anything you could do in one year is not going to have a huge impact on your stock options in that amount of time. But if this company's your retirement plan, then you have a much stronger incentive to make sure that things at this company run well, which means you're probably optimizing for the company's long term cash flow yourself. And also, there's obviously benefits to having that knowledge built up in the firm from people who have been there for a long time. But yeah, that was an interesting difference. One of the interesting differences, at least.Austin Vernon (00:45:00):I mean, I think there's diminishing returns to how long your tenure's going to be. Maybe one year's too short, but there's a certain extent to where, if you grow faster than your role at the company, then it's time to switch. It's going to depend on the person, but maybe five years is a good number. And so if you're not getting promoted within the firm, then your human capital's being wasted, because you could go somewhere else and have more responsibility and perform better for them. Another interesting thing about that story, is almost all lean turnarounds, where they're like, we're going to implement something like Toyota production system, they come with no layoff promises. Because if you're going to increase productivity, that's when everyone's like, "Oh gosh, I'm going to get laid off." So instead you have to increase output and take more market share, is what you do.Dwarkesh Patel (00:46:00):It's kind of like burning your bridges, right? So this is the only way.Austin Vernon (00:46:05):The process really requires complete buy-in, because a lot of your ideas for how you're going to standardize work content come from your line workers, because that's what they're doing every day. So if you don't have their buy-in, then it's going to fail. So that's why it's really necessary to have those kinds of clauses.Dwarkesh Patel (00:46:22):Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I think it was in your post where you said, if somebody makes their process more efficient, and therefore they're getting more work allotted to them, then obviously they're going to stop doing that. Right? Which means that, I don't know, do you ought to give more downtime to your best workers or something or the people who are most creative in your company?Austin Vernon (00:46:48):I was just going to say, if you're a worker at a plant, then a lot of times for that level of employee, actually small rewards work pretty well. A lot of people on drilling rigs used to give the guys that met certain targets $100 Walmart gift cards. So sometimes small, it's a reward, new ideas, stuff like that works.Austin Vernon (00:47:15):But because the whole system has to grow together, if you just improve one part of the process, it may not help you. You have to be improving all the right processes so normally it's much more collaborative. There's some engineer that's looking at it and like, "All right, this is where we're struggling," or "We have our defects here." And then you go get together with that supervisor and the workers in that area, then you all figure out what improvements could be together. Because usually the people already know. This is like, you see a problem at the top, and you're just now realizing it. Then you go talk to the people doing the work, and they're like, "Oh yeah, I tried to tell you about that two weeks ago, man." And then you figure out a better process from there.Dwarkesh Patel (00:47:58):Based on your recommendation, and Steven Malina's recommendation, I recently read The Goal. And after reading the book, I'm much more understanding of the value that consultants bring to companies, potentially. Because before you could think, “What does a 21 year old, who just graduated college, know about manufacturing? What are they going to tell this plant that they didn't already know? How could they possibly be adding value?” And afterwards, it occurred to me that there's so many abstract concepts that are necessary to understand in order to be able to increase your throughput. So now I guess I can see how somebody who's generically smart but doesn't have that much industry knowledge might be able to contribute to a plan and value consultants could be bringing.Austin Vernon (00:48:43):I think this applies to consultants or young engineers. A lot of times you put young engineers just right in the thick of it, working in production or process right on the line, where you're talking to the workers the most. And there's several advantages to that. One, the engineer learns faster, because they're actually seeing the real process, and the other is there's easy opportunities for them to still have a positive impact on the business, because there's $100 bills laying on the ground just from going up and talking to your workers and learning about stuff and figuring out problems they might be having and finding out things like that that could help you lower cost. I think there's a lot of consultants that... I don't know how the industry goes, but I would guess there's... I know Accenture has 600,000 employees. I don't know if that many, but it's just a large number, and a lot are doing more basic tasks and there are some people that are doing the more high level stuff, but it's probably a lot less.Dwarkesh Patel (00:49:51):Yeah. Yeah. There was a quote from one of those books that said, "At Toyota we don't consider you an engineer unless you need to wash your hands before you can have lunch." Yeah. Okay. So in your blog post about car manufacturing, you talk about Tesla. But what was really interesting is that in a footnote, I think you mentioned that you bought Tesla stocks in 2014, which also might be interesting to talk about again when we go to the market and alpha part. But anyways. Okay. And then you talk about Tesla using something called metal manufacturing. So first of all, how did you know in 2014 that Tesla was headed here? And what is metal manufacturing and how does it differ from the Toyota production system?Austin Vernon (00:50:42):Yeah. So yeah, I just was goofing around and made that up. Someone actually emailed me and they were like, "Hey, what is this metal manufacturing? I want to learn more about this." It's like, "Well, sorry, I just kind of made that up, because I thought it sounded funny." But yeah, I think it's really the idea that there's this guy, Dimming, and he found a lot of the same ideas that Toyota ended up implementing, and Toyota respected his ideas a lot. America never really got fully on board with this in manufacturing. Of course it's software people that are coming and implementing this and manufacturing now which is like the real American way of doing things.Austin Vernon (00:51:32):Because when you look at these manufacturing processes, the best place to save money and optimize is before you ever build the process or the plant. It's very early on. So I think if there's a criticism of Toyota, it's that they're optimizing too late and they're not creative enough in their production technology and stuff. They're very conservative, and that's why they have hydrogen cars and not battery cars, even though they came out with the Prius, which was the first large sales hybrid.Austin Vernon (00:52:12):So yeah, I think what Tesla's doing with really just making Dimming's ideas our own and really just Americanizing it with like, "Oh, well, we want to cast this, because that would be easier." Well, we can't, because we don't have an alloy. "We'll invent the alloy." I love it. It's great. Mostly, I love Tesla because they do such... I agree with their engineering principles. So I didn't know that the company would come to be so valuable. It's just, I was just always reading their stock reports and stuff so I was like, "Well, at least I need to buy some stock so that I have a justification for spending all this time reading their 10 Ks."Dwarkesh Patel (00:52:53):I want to get a little bit more in detail about the exact difference here. So lean production, I guess, is they're able to produce their cars without defects and with matching demand or whatever. But what is it about their system that prevents them from making the kinds of innovations that Tesla is able to make?Austin Vernon (00:53:16):It's just too incremental. It's so hard to get these processes working. So the faster you change things, it becomes very, very difficult to change the whole system. So one of the advantages Tesla has is, well, if you're making electric cars, you have just a lot less parts. So that makes it easier. And once you start doing the really hard work of basically digitizing stuff, like they don't have speed limit dials, you start just removing parts from the thing and you can actually then start increasing your rate of change even faster.Austin Vernon (00:53:55):It makes it harder to get behind if you have these old dinosaur processes. But I think there's a YouTube channel called The Limiting Factor, and he actually went into the detail of numbers on what it costs for Tesla to do their giga-casting, which saves tons of parts and deletes zillions of thousands of robots from their process. If you already have an existing stamping line and all that, where you're just changing the dyes based on your model, then it doesn't make sense to switch to the casting. But if you're building new factories, like Tesla is, well, then it makes sense to do the casting and you can build new factories very cheaply and comparatively and much easier. So there's a little bit of... they just have lots of technical data, I guess you could say, in a software sense.Dwarkesh Patel (00:54:47):Yeah. That's super interesting. The analogy is actually quite... it's like, Microsoft has probably tens of thousands of software engineers who are just basically servicing its technical debt and making sure that the old systems run properly, whereas a new company like Tesla doesn't have to deal with that. The thing that's super interesting about Tesla is like, Tesla's market cap is way over a trillion, right? And then Toyota's is 300 billion. And Tesla is such a new company. The fact that you have this Toyota, which is legendary for its production system, and this company that's less than two decades old is worth many times more, it's kind of funny.Austin Vernon (00:55:32):Yeah. I would say that, in that measure, I don't like market cap. You need to use enterprise value. These old car companies have so much debt, that if you look at enterprise value, it's not so jarring. Literally, I don't know, I can't remember what GM's worth, like 40 billion or something, and then they have $120 billion in debt. So their enterprise value is five times more than their market cap.Dwarkesh Patel (00:56:02):What is enterprise value?Austin Vernon (00:56:03):Enterprise value is basically what is the value of the actual company before you have any claims on it. It's the market cap plus your debt. But basically, if you're the equity holder and the company gets sold, you have to pay the debt first. So you only get the value of what's left over after the debt. So that's why market cap is... when Tesla has very little debt and a lot of market cap, and then these other guys have a lot of debt with less market cap, it skews the comparison.Dwarkesh Patel (00:56:34):Yeah, and one of the interesting things, it's similar to your post on software, is that it seems like one of the interesting themes across your work is automating processes often leads to decreased eventual throughput, because you're probably adding capacity in a place that you're deciding excess capacity, and you're also making the money part of your operation less efficient by have it interface with this automated part. It sounds like there's a similar story there with car manufacturing, right?Austin Vernon (00:57:08):Yeah. I think if we tie it back into what we were talking about earlier, automation promotes local optimization and premature optimization. So a lot of times it's better to figure out, instead of automating a process to make a really hard to make part, you should just figure out how to make that part easy to make. Then after you do that, then it may not even make sense to automate it anymore. Or get rid of it all together, then you just delete all those robots.Austin's Carbon Capture ProjectDwarkesh Patel (00:57:37):Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay. So let's talk about the project that you're working on right now, the CO2 electrolysis. Do you want to explain what this is, and what your current approach is? What is going on here?Austin Vernon (00:57:55):Yeah, so I think just overall, electrofuels right now are super underrated, because you're about to get hopefully some very cheap electricity from solar, or it could be, maybe, some land. If we get really lucky, possibly some nuclear, geothermal. It'll just make sense to create liquid fuels, or natural gas, or something just from electricity and air, essentially.Austin Vernon (00:58:25):There's a whole spectrum of ways to do this, so O2 electrolysis is one of those. Basically, you take water, electricity, and CO2, and a catalyst. And then, you make more complex molecules, like carbon monoxide, or formic acid, or ethylene, or ethanol, or methane or methine. Those are all options. But it's important to point out that, right now, I think if you added up all the CO2 electrolyzers in the world, you'd be measuring their output and kilograms per day. We make millions of tons per day off of the products I just mentioned. So there's a massive scale up if it's going to have a wider impact.Austin Vernon (00:59:15):So there's some debate. I think the debate for the whole electrofuels sector is: How much are you going to do in the electrolyzer? One company whose approach I really like is Terraform Industries. They want to make methane, which is the main natural gas. But they're just making hydrogen in their electrolyzer, and then they capture the CO2 and then put it into a methanation reaction. So everything they're doing is already world scale, basically.Austin Vernon (00:59:47):We've had hydrogen electrolyzers power fertilizer plants, providing them with the Hydrogen that they need. Methanation happens in all ammonia plants and several other examples. It's well known, very old. Methanation is hydrogen CO2 combined to make water and methane. So their approach is more conservative, but if you do more in the electrolyzer, like I'm going to make the methane actually in the electrolyzer instead of adding this other process, you could potentially have a much simpler process that has less CapEx and scales downward better. Traditional chemical engineering heavily favors scaling. With the more Terraform processes, they're playing as absolutely ginormous factories. These can take a long time to build.Austin Vernon (01:00:42):So one of the things they're doing is: they're having to fight the complexity that creeps into chemical engineering every step of the way. Because if they don't, they'll end up with a plant that takes 10 years to build, and that's not their goal. It takes 10 years to build a new refinery, because they're so complex. So yeah, that's where I am. I'm more on the speculative edge, and it's not clear yet which products will be favorable for which approaches.Dwarkesh Patel (01:01:15):Okay, yeah. And you're building this out of your garage, correct?Austin Vernon (01:01:19):Yeah. So that's where electrolyzers... Everything with electric chemistry is a flat plate instead of a vessel, so it scales down. So I can have a pretty good idea of what my 100 square centimeter electrolyzer is going to do, if I make it quite a bit bigger. I have to worry about how my flow might interact in the larger one and make sure the mixing's good, but it's pretty straightforward because you're just making your flat plate a larger area. Whereas the scale, it is different from scaling a traditional chemical process.Dwarkesh Patel (01:01:56):I'm curious how cheap energy has to be before this is efficient. If you're turning it into methane or something like that, presumably for fuel, is the entire process energy positive? Or how cheap would energy, electricity you need to get before that's the case?Austin Vernon (01:02:18):The different products and different methods have different crossovers. So Terraform Industries, they're shooting for $10 a megawatt hour for electricity. But again, their process is simpler, a little less efficient than a lot of the other products. They also have better premiums, just worth more per ton than methane. So your crossover happens somewhere in between $10 and $20 a megawatt hour, which is... I mean, that's pretty... Right now, solar, it's maybe like $25. Maybe it's a little higher because payment prices have gone up in the last year, but I think the expectation is they'll come back down. And so, getting down to $15 where you start having crossovers for some of these products like ethanol or ethylene or methanol, it's not science fiction.Dwarkesh Patel (01:03:08):I think in Texas where I live, that's where it's at right? The cost of energy is 20 or something dollars per megawatt hour.Austin Vernon (01:03:16):Well, not this summer! But yeah, a lot of times in Texas, the wholesale prices are around $25 to $30.Dwarkesh Patel (01:03:26):Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So a lot of the actual details you said about how this works went over my head. So what is a flat plate? I guess before you answer that question, can you just generally describe the approach? What is it? What are you doing to convert CO2 into these other compounds?Austin Vernon (01:03:45):Well, yeah, it literally just looks like an electrolyzer. You have two sides and anode and a cathode and they're just smushed together like this because of the electrical resistance. If you put them far apart, it makes it... uses up a lot of energy. So you smush them together as close as you can. And then, you're basically just trading electrons back and forth. On one side, you're turning CO2 into a more complex molecule, and on the other side, you're taking apart water. And so, when you take apart the water, it balances out the equation, balances out your electrons and everything like that. I probably need to work on that elevator pitch there, huh?Dwarkesh Patel (01:04:31):I guess what the basic idea is, you need to put power in to convert CO2 into these other compounds.Austin Vernon (01:04:38):The inputs are electricity, water, and CO2, and the output is usually oxygen and whatever chemical you're trying to create is, along with some side reactions.Dwarkesh Patel (01:04:49):And then, these chemicals you mentioned, I think ethanol, methane, formic acid, are these all just fuels or what are the other uses for them?Austin Vernon (01:04:58):A lot of people are taking a hybrid approach with carbon monoxide. So this would be like Twelve Co… They've raised a lot of money to do this and 100 employees or something. You can take that carbon monoxide and make hydrogen, and then you have to send gas to make liquid fuels. So they want to make all sorts of chemicals, but one of the main volume ones would be like jet fuel.Austin Vernon (01:05:22):Let's see Formic acid is, it's the little fry of all these. It is an additive in a lot of things like preserving hay for animals and stuff like that. Then, ethanol there's people that want to... There's this company that makes ethylene, which goes into plastics that makes polyethylene, which is the most produced plastic. Or you can burn it in your car, although I think ethanol is a terrible vehicle fuel. But then you can also just make ethylene straight in the electrolyzer. So there's many paths. So which path wins is an interesting race to see.Dwarkesh Patel (01:06:13):The ability to produce jet fuel is really interesting, because in your energy superabundance paper, you talk about... You would think that even if we can electrify everything in solar and when it becomes super cheap, that's not going to have an impact on the prices to go to space for example. But I don't know. If a process like this is possible, then it's some way to in financial terms, add liquidity. And then turn, basically, this cheap solar and wind into jet fuel through this indirect process. So the price to send stuff to space or cheap plane flights or whatever––all of that goes down as well.Austin Vernon (01:06:52):It basically sets a price ceiling on the price of oil. Whatever you can produce this for is the ceiling now, which is maybe the way I think about it.Dwarkesh Patel (01:07:06):Yeah. So do you want to talk a little bit about how your background led into this project? This is your full-time thing, right? I don't know if I read about that, but where did you get this idea and how long have you been pursuing it? And what's the progress and so on.Austin Vernon (01:07:20):I've always loved chemical engineering, and I love working at the big processing plant because it's like being a kid in a candy store. If I had extra time, I'd just walk around and look at the plant, like it's so cool. But the plant where I worked at, their up time was 99.7%. So if you wanted to change anything or do anything new, it terrified everyone. That's how they earned their bonuses: run the plant a 100% uptime all the time. So that just wasn't a good fit for me. And also, so I always wanted my own chemical plant, but it's billions of dollars to build plants so that was a pretty big step. So I think this new technology of... there's a window where you might be able to build smaller plants until it optimizes to be hard to enter again.Dwarkesh Patel (01:08:21):And then, why will it become hard to enter again? What will happen?Austin Vernon (01:08:27):If someone figures out how to build a really cheap electrolyzer, and they just keep it as intellectual property, then it would be hard to rediscover that and compete with them.Dwarkesh Patel (01:08:38):And so, how long have you been working on this?Austin Vernon (01:08:42):Oh, not quite a year. But yeah, I actually got this idea to work on it from writing my blog. So when I wrote the heating fuel post, I didn't really know much about... There's another company in the space, Prometheus Fuels and I'm like, "Oh, this is an interesting idea." And then, I got talking to a guy named Brian Heligman, and he's like, "You should do this, but not what Prometheus is doing." And so, then I started looking at it and I liked it, so I've been working on it since.Dwarkesh Patel (01:09:08):Yeah. It's interesting because if energy does become as cheap as you suspect it might. If this process works, then yeah, this is a trillion dollar company probably, right? If you're going to get the patents and everything.Austin Vernon (01:09:22):I mean, maybe. With chemical plants, there's a certain limitation where your physical limitation is. There's only so many places that are good places for chemical plants. You start getting hit by transportation and all that. So, you can't just produce all th

Austin Vernon is an engineer working on a new method for carbon capture, and he has one of the most interesting blogs on the internet, where he writes about engineering, software, economics, and investing.We discuss how energy superabundance will change the world, how Starship can be turned into a kinetic weapon, why nuclear is overrated, blockchains, batteries, flying cars, finding alpha, & much more!Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.Subscribe to find out about future episodes!Follow Austin on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Please share if you enjoyed this episode! Helps out a ton!Timestamps(0:00:00) - Intro(0:01:53) - Starship as a Weapon(0:19:24) - Software Productivity(0:41:40) - Car Manufacturing(0:57:39) - Carbon Capture(1:16:53) - Energy Superabundance(1:25:09) - Storage for Cheap Energy(1:31:25) - Travel in Future(1:33:27) - Future Cities(1:39:58) - Flying Cars(1:43:26) - Carbon Shortage(1:48:03) - Nuclear(2:12:44) - Solar(2:14:44) - Alpha & Efficient Markets(2:22:51) - ConclusionTranscriptIntroDwarkesh Patel (00:00:00):Okay! Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Austin Vernon who writes about engineering, software, economics, and investing on the internet, though not that much else is known about him. So Austin, do you want to give us a bit of info about your background? I know that the only thing the internet knows about you is this one little JPEG that you had to upload with your recent paper. But what about an identity reveal or I guess a little bit of a background reveal? Just to the extent that you're comfortable sharing.Austin Vernon (00:00:29):My degree is in chemical engineering and I've had a lifelong love for engineering as well as things like the Toyota Production System. I've also worked as a chemical engineer in a large processing facility where I've done a lot of petroleum engineering. I taught myself how to write software and now I'm working on more research and the early commercialization of CO2 electrolysis.Dwarkesh Patel (00:00:59):Okay yeah. I'm really interested in talking about all those things. The first question I have is from Alex Berger, who's the co-CEO of Open Philanthropy. When I asked on Twitter what I should ask you, he suggested that I should ask “Why so shady?” Famously you have kind of an anonymous personality, pseudonymous thing going on the internet. What's up with that?Austin Vernon (00:01:25):Yeah. I think he posted a tweet that said “I don't know who this guy is or if he's credible at all, but his stuff sure is interesting”. That really made me laugh. I thought that was hilarious. Fame just doesn't seem necessary, I think I'm fine with my ideas being well known and communicating, but I have less desire to be personally famous.Starship as a WeaponDwarkesh Patel (00:01:52):Gotcha, gotcha. I wanted to start off with a sexy topic, let's talk about using Starship as a kinetic weapon. I thought that was one of the more amusing posts you wrote. Do you want to talk more about how this would be possible?Austin Vernon (00:02:08):Well, I think the main thing with Starship is that you're taking a technology and you're making it about 100 times cheaper for cargo and 1000 times cheaper for people. When things like that happen that drastically, you're just looking at huge changes and it's really hard to anticipate what some of those can be when the change is that drastic. I think there's a lot of moon-based, Mars-based stuff that doesn't really catch the general public's eye. They also have trouble imagining some of the point-to-point travel that could be possible. But when you start talking about it as a weapon, then I think it lets people know they should be paying attention to this technology. And we certainly do not want to be second or third getting it. We should make sure that we're going to be first.Dwarkesh Patel (00:03:05):Yeah. I think you mentioned this in the post, but as recently as the '90s, the cost of sending one kilogram to space was around $20,000. More recently, SpaceX has brought it to $2,000. Lots of interesting questions pop up when you ask, “What will be possible once we get it down to $200 per kilogram to send into orbit?” One of them could be about how we might manufacture these weapons that are not conventional ballistics. Do you want to talk about why this might be an advancement over conventional ballistic weapons?Austin Vernon (00:03:37):Well, regular conventional ballistic weapons are extremely expensive. This is more like a bomb truck. But usually we think of B52 as the bomb truck and this could be even cheaper than the B52, delivering just mass on target. When you think about how expensive it is to fly a B52 from Barksdale in Louisiana all the way across the world.. you can do it from south Texas or Florida with the Starship and get more emissions per day and the fuel ends up being. When you go orbital, it takes a lot to get to orbit. But then once you're in orbit, your fuel consumption's pretty good. So over long distances, it has a lot of advantage. That's why the point-to-point works for longer distances.Austin Vernon (00:04:27):There's really a sweet spot with these weapons where you want it to be pretty accurate, but you also want it to be cheap. You're seeing that problem with Russia right now as they have some fancy parade style weapons that are really expensive, like multi-billion dollar cruise missiles, but they're missing that $5,000 guided artillery shell or that $20,000 JDM that you can just pit massive. Or the multiple launch rocket system, guided rockets. They're really short on all those because I think they had just had a limited amount of chips they could get from the US into Russia to make these advanced weapons.Austin Vernon (00:05:07):But yeah, so the Starship gives you just a platform to deliver. You could put JDMs in a shroud, or you could just have the iron unguided kinetic projectiles, and it just becomes impossible for a ship to launch missiles to intercept yours if your cost is so low, you can just overwhelm them.Dwarkesh Patel (00:05:29):Okay. There are a few terms there that neither I nor the audience might know. So what is JDM? What is shroud? And why are chips a bottleneck here? Why can't it just be any micro-controller?Austin Vernon (00:05:42):So JDM is Joint Direct Attack Munition. So what we did is we took all our Vietnam surplus bonds and we put this little fin-kit on it and it costs like $20,000, which is cheap for a weapon because the actual bond costs, I don't know, $3,000. And then it turns it into a guided weapon that, before you were probably lucky to get within 500 meters of a target, now you can get it in with two meters. So the number of missions you have to do with your planes and all that goes down by orders of magnitude. So it's an absolutely huge advantage in logistics and in just how much firepower you can put on a target. And we didn't even have to make new bombs, we just put these kits on all our old bombs.Austin Vernon (00:06:33):Let's see.. Yeah the chips are a problem. There's this organization called RUSI. I think they're in the UK, but they've been tearing down all these Russian weapons they found in Ukraine and they all have American chips in them. So technically, they're not supposed to be able to get these chips. And yet, Russia can't make a lot of its own chips. And especially not the specialized kinds you might want for guided weapons. So they've been somehow smuggling in chips from Americans to make their advanced weaponsDwarkesh Patel (00:07:03):What is special about these? As far as I'm aware, the trade with China is still going on and we get a lot of our chips manufactured from Taiwan or China. So why can't they do the same?Austin Vernon (00:07:14):It's the whole integration. It's not just the specific chip, but the board. They're more like PLCs where you almost have wired-in programming and they come with this ability to do the guidance and all that stuff. It all kind of has to work together. I think that's the way I understand it. I don't know. Maybe I don't have a really good answer for that one, but they're hard to replicate is what matters.Dwarkesh Patel (00:07:43):Okay that's interesting. Yeah, I guess that has a lot of interesting downstream effects, because for example, India buys a lot of its weapons from Russia. So if Russia doesn't have access to these, then other countries that buy from Russia won't have access to these either.Dwarkesh Patel (00:07:58):You had an interesting speculation in the post where you suggested that you could just keep these kinetic weapons in orbit, in a sort of Damocles state really, almost literally. That sounds like an incredibly scary and risky scenario where you could have orbital decay and you could have these kinetic weapons falling from the sky and destroying cities. Do you think this is what it will look like or could look like in 10 to 20 years?Austin Vernon (00:08:26):Well, yeah, so the advantage of having weapons on orbit is you can hit targets faster. So if you're launching the rocket from Florida, you're looking at maybe 30 minutes to get there and the target can move away in that time. Whereas if you're on orbit, you can have them spaced out to where you're hitting within a few minutes. So that's the advantage there.Austin Vernon (00:08:46):You really have to have a two stage system I think for most, because if you have a really aerodynamic rod that's going to give you really good performance in the low atmosphere, it'll end up going too fast and just burn up before it gets there. Tungsten's maybe the only thing that you could have that could go all the way through which is why I like the original concept of using these big tungsten rods the size of a telephone pole. But tungsten's pretty expensive. And the rod concept kind of limits what you can do.Austin Vernon (00:09:28):So a lot of these weapons will have, that's what I was talking about with the shroud, something that actually slows you down in the upper atmosphere. And then once you're at the velocity where you're not just going to melt, then you open it up and let it go. So if you actually had it fall from the sky, some may make it to the ground, but a lot would burn up. So a lot of the stuff that makes it to the ground is actually pretty light. It's stuff that can float and has a large surface area. Yeah, that's the whole thing with Starship. Or not Starship, but Starlink. All those satellites are meant to completely fall apart on de-orbit.Dwarkesh Patel (00:10:09):I see. One of the implications of that is that these may be less powerful than we might fear, because since kinetic energy is mass times velocity squared and there's an upper bound on the velocity (velocity being the component that grows the kinetic energy faster), then it suggests that you can upper bound the power these things will have. You know what I mean?Austin Vernon (00:10:32):Yeah, so even the tungsten rods. Sometimes people, they're not very good at physics, so they don't do the math. They think it's going to be a nuclear weapon, but it's really not. I think even the tungsten rod is like 10 tons of T&T or something. It's a big bomb, but it's not a super weapon.Austin Vernon (00:10:54):So I think I said in the post, it's about using advanced missiles where they're almost more defensive weapons so I can keep you from pitting your ship somewhere. Yeah I could try to bombard your cities, but I can't take ground with it. I can't even police sea lanes with it really. I'd still have to use regular ships if I had this air cover to go enforce the rules of the sea and stuff like that.Dwarkesh Patel (00:11:23):Yeah. You speculated in the post, I think, that you could load this up with shrapnel and then it could explode next to an incoming missile or an incoming aircraft. Could these get that accurate? Because that was surprising speculation to me.Austin Vernon (00:11:43):I think for ships, it's pretty... I was watching videos of how fast a ship can turn and stuff. If you're going to do an initial target on a ship to try to kill their radars, you'd want to do it above the ceiling of their missiles. So it's like, how much are they going to move between your release where you stop steering and that? The answer's maybe 1000 feet. So that's pretty simple because you just shrapnel the area.Austin Vernon (00:12:12):Targeting aircraft, you would be steering all the way in. I'd say it's doable, but it'd be pretty hard. You'd actually maybe want to even go slower than you would with the ship attack. You'd need a specialized package to attack the aircraft, but if you have enough synthetic aperture radar and stuff like that, you could see these aircraft using satellites and then guide the bomb in the whole way. You could even load heat seeking missiles into a package that unfurls right next to them and launch conventional missiles too, probably. It'd be pretty hard to do some of this stuff, but they're just the things you might be able to do if you put some effort into it.Dwarkesh Patel (00:12:57):Yeah. The reason I find this kind of speculation really interesting is because when you look at the modern weaponry that's used in conflicts, it just seems directly descendant from something you would've seen in World War II or something. If you think about how much warfare changed between 1900 and 1940, it's like, yeah, they're not even the same class of weapons anymore. So it's interesting to think about possibilities like these where the entire category of weapons has changed.Austin Vernon (00:13:33):You're right and that's because our physical technology hasn't changed that much. So it really has just made more sense to put better electronics in the same tanks. We haven't learned enough about tanks to build a new physical tank that's way better, so we just keep upgrading our existing tanks with better electronics. They're much more powerful, they're more accurate. A lot of times, they have longer range weapons and better sensors. So the tank looks the same, but it maybe has several times more killing power. But the Ukraine war right now, they're using a lot of 40, 50 year old weapons so that especially looks like that.Dwarkesh Patel (00:14:20):Yeah. Which kind of worries you if you think about the stockpiles our own military has. I'm not well educated on the topic, but I imagine that we don't have the newest of the new thing. We probably have maintained versions of decades old technology.Austin Vernon (00:14:35):We spend so much, we've got relatively... This kind of gets into debate about how ready our military is. For certain situations, it's more ready than others. I'd say in general, most people talking about it have the incentive to downplay our capabilities because they want more defense spending. There's lots of reasons. So I think we're probably more capable than what you might see from some editorial in The Hill or whatever. Us just sending a few weapons over to Ukraine and seeing how successful they've been at using them, I think, shows a little bit of that.Austin Vernon (00:15:18):There's so much uncertainty when it comes to fighting, especially when you're talking about a naval engagement, where we don't just don't have that many ships in general… you can have some bad luck. So I think you always want to be a little bit wary. You don't want to get overconfident.Dwarkesh Patel (00:15:37):Yeah. And if the offensive tech we sent to Ukraine is potentially better than the defensive tech, it's very possible that even a ballistic missile that China or Russia could launch would sink a battleship and then kill the 2,000 or 1,000 whatever soldiers that are on board. Or I guess, I don't know, you think this opens up avenues for defensive tech as well?Austin Vernon (00:16:03):Yeah––generally the consensus is that defensive technology has improved much more recently than offensive technology. This whole strategy China has is something they call anti-access/area denial, A2/AD. That's basically just how missiles have gotten better because the sensors on missiles have gotten better. So they can keep our ships from getting close to them but they can't really challenge us in Hawaii or something. And it really goes both ways, I think people forget that. So yeah, it's hard for us to get close to China, but Taiwan has a lot of missiles with these new sensors as well. So I think it's probably tougher for China to do it close to Taiwan than most people would say.Dwarkesh Patel (00:16:55):Oh, interesting. Yeah, can you talk more about that? Because every time I read about this, people are saying that if China wanted to, they could knock out Taiwan's defenses in a short amount of time and take it over. Yeah, so can you talk about why that's not possible?Austin Vernon (00:17:10):Well, it might be, but I think it's a guess of the uncertainty [inaudible 00:17:14]. Taiwan has actually one of the largest defense budgets in the world and they've recently been upping it. I think they spend, I don't know, $25 billion a year and they added an extra $5 billion. And they've been buying a lot of anti-ship missiles, a lot of air defense missiles.. Stuff that Ukraine could only dream of. I think Ukraine's military budget was $2 billion and they have a professional army. And then the other thing is Taiwan's an island, whereas Russia could just roll over the land border into Ukraine.Austin Vernon (00:17:44):There's just been very few successful amphibious landings in history. The most recent ones were all the Americans in World War II and Korea. So the challenge there is just... It's kind of on China to execute perfectly and do that. So if they had perfect execution, then possibly it would be feasible. But if their air defenses on their ships aren't quite as good as we think they could possibly be, then they could also end up with half their fleet underwater within 10 hours.Dwarkesh Patel (00:18:20):Interesting. And how has your view of Taiwan's defensive capabilities changed... How has the Ukraine conflict updated your opinion on what might happen?Austin Vernon (00:18:29):I didn't really know how much about it. And then I started looking at Wikipedia and stuff and all this stuff they're doing. Taiwan just has a lot of modern platforms like F16s with our anti-ship missiles. They actually have a lot of their own. They have indigenous fighter bombers, indigenous anti-ship missiles because they're worried we might not always sell them to them.Austin Vernon (00:18:54):They've even recently gotten these long range cruise missiles that could possibly target leadership in Beijing. So I think that makes it uncomfortable for the Chinese leadership. If you attack them, you're going to have to go live in a bunker. But again, I'm not a full-time military analyst or something, so there's a lot of uncertainty around what I'm saying. It's not a given that China's just going to roll over them.Software ProductivityDwarkesh Patel (00:19:22):Okay. That's comforting to hear. Let's talk about an area where I have a little bit of a point of contact. I thought your blog post about software and the inability of it to increase productivity numbers, I thought that was super fascinating. So before I ask you questions about it, do you want to lay out the thesis there?Austin Vernon (00:19:43):Yeah. So if there's one post I kind of felt like I caught lightning in a bottle on, it's that one. Everything I wanted to put in, it just fit together perfectly, which is usually not the case.Austin Vernon (00:19:55):I think the idea is that the world's so complex and we really underestimate that complexity. If you're going to digitize processes and automate them and stuff, you have to capture all that complexity basically at the bit level, and that's extremely difficult. And then you also have diminishing returns where the easily automatable stuff goes first and then it's increasing corner cases to get to the end, so you just have to go through more and more code basically. We don't see runaway productivity growth from software because we're fighting all this increasing complexity.Dwarkesh Patel (00:20:39):Yeah. Have you heard of the waterbed theory of complexity by the way?Austin Vernon (00:20:42):I don't think so.Dwarkesh Patel (00:20:44):Okay. It's something that comes up in compiler design: the idea is that there's a fixed amount of complexity in a system. If you try to reduce it, what you'll end up doing is just you'll end up migrating the complexity elsewhere. I think an example that's used of this is when they try to program languages that are not type safe, something like Python. You can say, “oh, it's a less complex language”, but really, you've added complexity when, I don't know, two different types of numbers are interacting like a float and an int. As your program grows, that complexity exponentially grows along with all the things that could go wrong when you're making two things interact in a way that you were expecting not to. So yeah, the idea is you can just choose where to have your complexity, but you can't get rid of that complexity.Austin Vernon (00:21:38):I think that's kind of an interesting thing when you start pairing it with management theory... when you add up all the factors, the most complex thing you're doing is high volume car manufacturing. And so we got a lot of innovations and organization from car manufacturers like the assembly line. Then you had Sloan at GM basically creating the way the modern corporation is run, then you have the Toyota Production System.Austin Vernon (00:22:11):But arguably now, creating software is actually the most complex thing we do. So there's all these kinds of squishy concepts that underlie things like the Toyota Production System that softwares had to learn and reimagine and adopt and you see that with Agile where, “oh, we can't have long release times. We need to be releasing every day,” which means we're limiting inventory there.Austin Vernon (00:22:42):There's a whole thing especially that's showing up in software that existed in carbon manufacturing where you're talking about reducing communication. So Jeff Bezos kind of now famously said, "I want to reduce communication," which is counterintuitive to a lot of people. This is age-old in car manufacturing where Toyota has these cards that go between workstations and they tell you what to do. So people normally think of them as limiting inventory, but it also tells the worker exactly what they're supposed to be doing at what pace, at what time. The assembly line is like that too. You just know what to do because you're standing there and there's a part here and it needs to go on there, and it comes by at the pace you're supposed to work at.Austin Vernon (00:23:29):It's so extreme that there's this famous paper, by List, Syverson and Levitt. They went to a car factory and studied how defects propagated in cars and stuff. Once a car factory gets up and running, it doesn't matter what workers you put in there, if workers are sick or you get new workers, the defect rate is the same. So all the knowledge is built into the manufacturing line.Austin Vernon (00:23:59):There's these concepts around idiot-proofing and everything that are very similar to what you'll see. You had Uncle Bob on here. So Uncle Bob says only put one input into a function and stuff like that because you'll mix them up otherwise. The Japanese call it poka-yoke. You make it where you can't mess it up. And that's another way to reduce communication, and then software, of course you have APIs.Austin Vernon (00:24:28):So I'm really interested in this overall concept of reducing communication, and reducing how much cooperation and everything we need to run the economy.Dwarkesh Patel (00:24:41):Right. Right. Speaking of the Toyota Production System, one thing they do to reduce that defect rate is if there's a problem, all the workers in that chain are forced to go to the place where the defect problem is and fix it before doing anything else. The idea there is that this will give them context to understand what the problem was and how to make sure it doesn't happen again. It also prevents a build up of inventory in a way that keeps making these defects happen or just keeps accumulating inventory before the place that can fix the defects is able to take care of them.Austin Vernon (00:25:17):Right. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.Dwarkesh Patel (00:25:19):Yeah. But I think one interesting thing about software and complexity is that software is a place where complexity is the highest in our world right now but software gives you the choice to interface with the complexity you want to interface with. I guess that's just part of specialization in general, but you could say for example that a machine learning model is really complex, but ideally, you get to a place where that's the only kind of complexity you have to deal with. You're not having to deal with the complexity of “How is this program compiled? How are the libraries that I'm using? How are they built?” You can fine tune and work on the complexity you need to work on.Dwarkesh Patel (00:26:05):It's similar to app development. Byrne Hobart has this blog post about Stripe as solid state. The basic idea is that Stripe hides all the complexity of the financial system: it charges a higher fee, but you can just treat it as an abstraction of a tithe you have to pay, and it'll just take care of that entire process so you can focus on your comparative advantage.Austin Vernon (00:26:29):It's really actually very similar in car manufacturing and the Toyota Production System if you really get into it. It's very much the same conceptual framework. There's this whole idea in Toyota Production System, everyone works at the same pace, which you kind of talked about. But also, your work content is the same. There's no room for not standardizing a way you're going to do things. So everyone gets together and they're like, “All right, we're going to do this certain part. We're going to put it together this certain way at this little micro station. And it's going to be the same way every time.” That's part of how they're reducing the defect rates. If your assembly process is longer than what your time allotment is to stay in touch with the rest of the process, then you just keep breaking it down into smaller pieces. So through this, each person only has to know a very small part of it.Austin Vernon (00:27:33):The overall engineering team has all sorts of strategies and all sorts of tools to help them break up all these processes into very small parts and make it all hold together. It's still very, very hard, but it's kind of a lot of the same ideas because you're taking away the complexity of making a $30,000 car or 30,000 part car where everyone's just focusing on their one little part and they don't care what someone else is doing.Dwarkesh Patel (00:28:06):Yeah. But the interesting thing is that it seems like you need one person who knows how everything fits together. Because from what I remember, one of the tenets of the Toyota Production System was you need to have a global view. So, in that book, was it the machine or the other one, the Toyota Production System book? But anyways, they were talking about examples where people would try to optimize for local efficiencies. I think they especially pointed to Ford and GM for trying to do this where they would try to make machines run all the time. And locally, you could say that, “oh this machine or process is super efficient. It's always outputting stuff.” But it ignores how that added inventory or that process had a bad consequence for the whole system.Dwarkesh Patel (00:28:50):And so it's interesting if you look at a company like Tesla that's able to do this really well. Tesla is run like a monarchy and this one guy has this total global view of how the entire process is supposed to run and where you have these inefficiencies.. You had some great examples of this in the blog post. I think one of the examples is this guy (the author) goes to this factory and he asks, "Is this an efficient factory?" And the guy's like, "Yeah, this is totally efficient. There's nothing we can do, adopting the Toyota way, to make this more efficient."Dwarkesh Patel (00:29:22):And so then he's like, "Okay, let me look." And he finds that they're treating steel in some way, and the main process does only take a couple of seconds, but some local manager decided that it would be more efficient to ship their parts out, to get the next stage of the process done somewhere else. So this is locally cheaper, but the result is that it takes weeks to get these parts shipped out and get them back. Which means that the actual time that the parts spend getting processed is 0.1% of the time, making the whole process super inefficient. So I don't know, it seems like the implication is you need a very monarchical structure, with one person who has a total view, in order to run such a system. Or am I getting that wrong?Austin Vernon (00:30:12):Not necessarily. I mean, you do have to make sure you're not optimizing locally, but I think it's the same. You have that same constraint in software, but I think a lot of times people are just running over it because processing has been getting so much cheaper. People are expensive, so if you could save development time, it just ends up the trade offs are different when you're talking about the tyranny of physical items and stuff like that, the constraints get a little more severe. But I think you have the same overall. You still have to fight local optimization, but the level you have to is probably different with physical goods.Austin Vernon (00:30:55):I was thinking about the smart grid situation from a software perspective, and there's this problem where, okay, I'm putting my solar farm here and it's impacting somewhere far away, and that's then creating these really high upgrade costs, that cost two or three times more than my solar farm. Well, the obvious thing would be, if you're doing software, is like you're going to break all these up into smaller sections, and then you wouldn't be impacting each other and all that, and you could work and focus on your own little thing.Austin Vernon (00:31:29):But the problem with that is if you're going to disconnect these areas of the grid, the equipment to do that is extremely expensive. It's not like I'm just going to hit a new tab and open a new file and start writing a new function. And not only that, but you still have to actually coordinate how this equipment is going to operate. So if you just let the grid flow as it does, everyone knows what's going to happen because they could just calculate the physics. If you start adding in all these checkpoints where humans are doing stuff, then you have to actually interface with the humans, and the amount of things that can happen really starts going up. So it's actually a really bad idea to try to cart all this stuff off, just because of the reality of the physical laws and the equipment you need and everything like that.Dwarkesh Patel (00:32:22):Okay. Interesting. And then I think you have a similar Coasean argument in your software post about why vertically integrating software is beneficial. Do you want to explain that thesis?Austin Vernon (00:32:34):Yeah. I think it actually gets to what we're talking about here, where it allows you to avoid the local optimization. Because a lot of times you're trying to build a software MVP, and you're tying together a few services… they don't do quite what you need, so if you try to scale that, it would just break. But if you're going to take a really complex process, like car manufacturing or retail distribution, or the home buying process or something, you really have to vertically integrate it to be able to create a decent end-to-end experience and avoid that local optimization.Austin Vernon (00:33:20):And it's just very hard otherwise, because you just can't coordinate effectively if you have 10 different vendors trying to do all the same thing. You end up in just constant vendor meetings, where you're trying to decide what the specs are or something instead of giving someone the authority, or giving a team the authority to just start building stuff. Then if you look at these companies, they have to implement these somewhat decentralized processes when they get too complex, but at least they have control over how they're interfacing with each other. Walmart, as the vendors, control their own stock. They don't tell the vendor, "We need X parts." It's just like, it's on you to make sure your shelf is stocked.Dwarkesh Patel (00:34:07):Yeah. Yeah. So what was really interesting to me about this part of the post was, I don't know, I guess I had heard of this vision of we're software setting, where everybody will have a software as a service company, and they'll all be interfacing with each other in some sort of cycle where they're all just calling each other's APIs. And yeah, basically everybody and their mother would have a SAAS company. The implication here was, from your argument, that given the necessity of integrating all those complexity vertically in a coherent way, then the winners in software should end up being a few big companies, right? They compete with each other, but still...Austin Vernon (00:34:49):I think that's especially true when you're talking about combining bits and apps. Maybe less true for pure software. The physical world is just so much more complex, and so the constraints it creates are pretty extreme, compared to like... you could maybe get away with more of everyone and their mom having an API in a pure software world.Dwarkesh Patel (00:35:14):Right. Yeah. I guess, you might think that even in the physical world, given that people really need to focus on their comparative advantage, they would just try to outsource the software parts to these APIs. But is there any scenario where the learning curve for people who are not in the firm can be fast enough that they can keep up with the complexity? Because there's huge gains for specialization and competition that go away if this is the world we're forced to live in. And then I guess we have a lot of counter examples, or I guess we have a lot of examples of what you're talking about. Like Apple is the biggest market cap in the world, right? And famously they're super vertically integrated. And yeah, obviously their thing is combining hardware and software. But yeah, is there any world in which it can keep that kind of benefit, but have it be within multiple firms?Austin Vernon (00:36:10):This is a post I've got on my list I want to write. The blockchain application, which excites me personally the most, is reimagining enterprise software. Because the things you're talking about, like hard typing and APIs are just basically built into some of these protocols. So I think it just really has a lot of exciting implications for how much you can decentralize software development. But the thing is, you can still do that within the firm. So I think I mentioned this, if the government's going to place all these rules on the edge of the firm, it makes transactions with other firms expensive. So a few internal transactions can be cheaper, because they're avoiding the government reporting and taxes and all that kind of stuff. So I think you'd have to think about how these technologies can reduce transaction costs overall and decentralize that, but also what are the costs between firms?Dwarkesh Patel (00:37:22):Yeah, it's really interesting if the costs are logistic, or if they're based on the knowledge that is housed, as you were talking about, within a factory or something. Because if it is just logistical and stuff, like you had to report any outside transactions, then it does imply that those technology blockchain could help. But if it is just that you need to be in the same office, and if you're not, then you're going to have a hard time keeping up with what the new requirements for the API are, then maybe it's that, yeah, maybe the inevitability is that you'll have these big firms that are able to vertically integrate.Austin Vernon (00:37:59):Yeah, for these big firms to survive, they have to be somewhat decentralized within them. So I think you have... you're going to the same place as just how are we viewing it, what's our perception? So even if it's a giant corporation, it's going to have very independent business units as opposed to something like a 1950s corporation.Dwarkesh Patel (00:38:29):Yeah. Byrne Hobart, by the way, has this really interesting post that you might enjoy reading while you're writing that post. It's type safe communications, and it's about that Bezos thing, about his strict style for how to communicate and how little to communicate. There's many examples in Amazon protocols where you have to... the only way you can put in this report, is in this place you had to give a number. You can't just say, "This is very likely," you had to say like, "We project X percent increase," or whatever. So it has to be a percent. And there's many other cases where they're strict about what type definition you can have in written reports or something. It has kind of the same consequence that type strict languages have, which is that you can keep track of what the value is through the entire chain of the flow of control.Austin Vernon (00:39:22):You've got to keep work content standardized.Dwarkesh Patel (00:39:26):So we've been hinting at the Coasean analysis to this. I think we just talked about it indirectly, but for the people who might not know, Coase has this paper called The Theory of Firms, and he's trying to explain why we have firms at all. Why not just have everybody compete in the open market for employment, for anything? Why do we have jobs? Why not just have... you can just hire a secretary by the day or something.Dwarkesh Patel (00:39:51):And the conclusion he comes to is that by having a firm you're reducing the transaction cost. So people will have the same knowledge about what needs to get done, obviously you're reducing the transaction cost of contracting, finding labor, blah, blah, blah. And so the conclusion it comes to is the more the transaction costs are reduced within people in a firm, as compared to the transaction cost between different firms, the bigger firms will get. So I guess that's why the implication of your argument was that there should be bigger tech firms, right?Austin Vernon (00:40:27):Yes, yes, definitely. Because they can basically decrease the transaction costs faster within, and then even at the limit, if you have large transaction costs outside the firm, between other firms that are artificially imposed, then it will make firms bigger.Dwarkesh Patel (00:40:45):What does the world look like in that scenario? So would it just be these Japanese companies, these huge conglomerates who are just... you rise through the ranks, from the age of 20 until you die? Is that what software will turn into?Austin Vernon (00:40:59):It could be. I mean, I think it will be lots of very large companies, unless there's some kind of change in inner firm transaction costs. And again, that could possibly come from blockchain like technology, but you probably also need better regulation to make that cheaper, and then you would have smaller firms. But again, in the end, it doesn't really matter. You'd be working in your little unit of the big bank of corporate, or whatever. So I don't know what that would look like on a personal level.Car ManufacturingDwarkesh Patel (00:41:40):Yeah. Okay. So speaking of these Japanese companies, let's talk about car manufacturing and everything involved there. Yeah, so we kind of hinted at a few elements of the Toyota way and production earlier, but do you want to give a brief overview of what that is, so we can compare it to potentially other systems?Austin Vernon (00:42:02):I think all these kinds of lean Toyota process systems, they do have a lot of similarities, where mostly you want to even-out your production, so you're producing very consistently, and you want to break it into small steps and you want to limit the amount of inventory you have in your system. When you do this, it makes it easy to see how the process is running and limit defects. And the ultimate is you're really trying to reduce defects, because they're very expensive. It's a little bit hard to summarize. I think that's my best shot at it there, quickly off the top of my head.Dwarkesh Patel (00:42:49):Yeah. The interesting thing about the Toyota system, so at least when the machine was released, is they talk about... that book was released I think the nineties, and they went to the history of Toyota, and one of the interesting things they talked about was there was a brief time where the company ran... I think, was this after World War II? But anyways, the company ran into some troubles. They needed to layoff people to not go bankrupt. They had much more debt on books than they had assets. So yeah, they wanted to layoff people, but obviously the people were not happy about this, so there were violent protests about this. And in fact I think the US written constitution gave strong protections to labor that they hadn't had before, which gave labor an even stronger hand here.Dwarkesh Patel (00:43:42):So anyway, Toyota came to this agreement with the unions that they'd be allowed to do this one time layoff to get the company on the right track, but afterwards they could never lay somebody off. Which would mean that a person who works at Toyota works there from the time they graduate college or high school till they die. Right? I don't know, that's super intense in a culture. I mean, in software, where you have the average tenure in a company's one year, the difference is so much.Dwarkesh Patel (00:44:13):And there's so many potential benefits here, I guess a lot of drawbacks too. But one is, obviously if you're talking in a time scale of 50 years, rather than one year, the incentives are more aligned between the company and the person. Because anything you could do in one year is not going to have a huge impact on your stock options in that amount of time. But if this company's your retirement plan, then you have a much stronger incentive to make sure that things at this company run well, which means you're probably optimizing for the company's long term cash flow yourself. And also, there's obviously benefits to having that knowledge built up in the firm from people who have been there for a long time. But yeah, that was an interesting difference. One of the interesting differences, at least.Austin Vernon (00:45:00):I mean, I think there's diminishing returns to how long your tenure's going to be. Maybe one year's too short, but there's a certain extent to where, if you grow faster than your role at the company, then it's time to switch. It's going to depend on the person, but maybe five years is a good number. And so if you're not getting promoted within the firm, then your human capital's being wasted, because you could go somewhere else and have more responsibility and perform better for them. Another interesting thing about that story, is almost all lean turnarounds, where they're like, we're going to implement something like Toyota production system, they come with no layoff promises. Because if you're going to increase productivity, that's when everyone's like, "Oh gosh, I'm going to get laid off." So instead you have to increase output and take more market share, is what you do.Dwarkesh Patel (00:46:00):It's kind of like burning your bridges, right? So this is the only way.Austin Vernon (00:46:05):The process really requires complete buy-in, because a lot of your ideas for how you're going to standardize work content come from your line workers, because that's what they're doing every day. So if you don't have their buy-in, then it's going to fail. So that's why it's really necessary to have those kinds of clauses.Dwarkesh Patel (00:46:22):Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I think it was in your post where you said, if somebody makes their process more efficient, and therefore they're getting more work allotted to them, then obviously they're going to stop doing that. Right? Which means that, I don't know, do you ought to give more downtime to your best workers or something or the people who are most creative in your company?Austin Vernon (00:46:48):I was just going to say, if you're a worker at a plant, then a lot of times for that level of employee, actually small rewards work pretty well. A lot of people on drilling rigs used to give the guys that met certain targets $100 Walmart gift cards. So sometimes small, it's a reward, new ideas, stuff like that works.Austin Vernon (00:47:15):But because the whole system has to grow together, if you just improve one part of the process, it may not help you. You have to be improving all the right processes so normally it's much more collaborative. There's some engineer that's looking at it and like, "All right, this is where we're struggling," or "We have our defects here." And then you go get together with that supervisor and the workers in that area, then you all figure out what improvements could be together. Because usually the people already know. This is like, you see a problem at the top, and you're just now realizing it. Then you go talk to the people doing the work, and they're like, "Oh yeah, I tried to tell you about that two weeks ago, man." And then you figure out a better process from there.Dwarkesh Patel (00:47:58):Based on your recommendation, and Steven Malina's recommendation, I recently read The Goal. And after reading the book, I'm much more understanding of the value that consultants bring to companies, potentially. Because before you could think, “What does a 21 year old, who just graduated college, know about manufacturing? What are they going to tell this plant that they didn't already know? How could they possibly be adding value?” And afterwards, it occurred to me that there's so many abstract concepts that are necessary to understand in order to be able to increase your throughput. So now I guess I can see how somebody who's generically smart but doesn't have that much industry knowledge might be able to contribute to a plan and value consultants could be bringing.Austin Vernon (00:48:43):I think this applies to consultants or young engineers. A lot of times you put young engineers just right in the thick of it, working in production or process right on the line, where you're talking to the workers the most. And there's several advantages to that. One, the engineer learns faster, because they're actually seeing the real process, and the other is there's easy opportunities for them to still have a positive impact on the business, because there's $100 bills laying on the ground just from going up and talking to your workers and learning about stuff and figuring out problems they might be having and finding out things like that that could help you lower cost. I think there's a lot of consultants that... I don't know how the industry goes, but I would guess there's... I know Accenture has 600,000 employees. I don't know if that many, but it's just a large number, and a lot are doing more basic tasks and there are some people that are doing the more high level stuff, but it's probably a lot less.Dwarkesh Patel (00:49:51):Yeah. Yeah. There was a quote from one of those books that said, "At Toyota we don't consider you an engineer unless you need to wash your hands before you can have lunch." Yeah. Okay. So in your blog post about car manufacturing, you talk about Tesla. But what was really interesting is that in a footnote, I think you mentioned that you bought Tesla stocks in 2014, which also might be interesting to talk about again when we go to the market and alpha part. But anyways. Okay. And then you talk about Tesla using something called metal manufacturing. So first of all, how did you know in 2014 that Tesla was headed here? And what is metal manufacturing and how does it differ from the Toyota production system?Austin Vernon (00:50:42):Yeah. So yeah, I just was goofing around and made that up. Someone actually emailed me and they were like, "Hey, what is this metal manufacturing? I want to learn more about this." It's like, "Well, sorry, I just kind of made that up, because I thought it sounded funny." But yeah, I think it's really the idea that there's this guy, Dimming, and he found a lot of the same ideas that Toyota ended up implementing, and Toyota respected his ideas a lot. America never really got fully on board with this in manufacturing. Of course it's software people that are coming and implementing this and manufacturing now which is like the real American way of doing things.Austin Vernon (00:51:32):Because when you look at these manufacturing processes, the best place to save money and optimize is before you ever build the process or the plant. It's very early on. So I think if there's a criticism of Toyota, it's that they're optimizing too late and they're not creative enough in their production technology and stuff. They're very conservative, and that's why they have hydrogen cars and not battery cars, even though they came out with the Prius, which was the first large sales hybrid.Austin Vernon (00:52:12):So yeah, I think what Tesla's doing with really just making Dimming's ideas our own and really just Americanizing it with like, "Oh, well, we want to cast this, because that would be easier." Well, we can't, because we don't have an alloy. "We'll invent the alloy." I love it. It's great. Mostly, I love Tesla because they do such... I agree with their engineering principles. So I didn't know that the company would come to be so valuable. It's just, I was just always reading their stock reports and stuff so I was like, "Well, at least I need to buy some stock so that I have a justification for spending all this time reading their 10 Ks."Dwarkesh Patel (00:52:53):I want to get a little bit more in detail about the exact difference here. So lean production, I guess, is they're able to produce their cars without defects and with matching demand or whatever. But what is it about their system that prevents them from making the kinds of innovations that Tesla is able to make?Austin Vernon (00:53:16):It's just too incremental. It's so hard to get these processes working. So the faster you change things, it becomes very, very difficult to change the whole system. So one of the advantages Tesla has is, well, if you're making electric cars, you have just a lot less parts. So that makes it easier. And once you start doing the really hard work of basically digitizing stuff, like they don't have speed limit dials, you start just removing parts from the thing and you can actually then start increasing your rate of change even faster.Austin Vernon (00:53:55):It makes it harder to get behind if you have these old dinosaur processes. But I think there's a YouTube channel called The Limiting Factor, and he actually went into the detail of numbers on what it costs for Tesla to do their giga-casting, which saves tons of parts and deletes zillions of thousands of robots from their process. If you already have an existing stamping line and all that, where you're just changing the dyes based on your model, then it doesn't make sense to switch to the casting. But if you're building new factories, like Tesla is, well, then it makes sense to do the casting and you can build new factories very cheaply and comparatively and much easier. So there's a little bit of... they just have lots of technical data, I guess you could say, in a software sense.Dwarkesh Patel (00:54:47):Yeah. That's super interesting. The analogy is actually quite... it's like, Microsoft has probably tens of thousands of software engineers who are just basically servicing its technical debt and making sure that the old systems run properly, whereas a new company like Tesla doesn't have to deal with that. The thing that's super interesting about Tesla is like, Tesla's market cap is way over a trillion, right? And then Toyota's is 300 billion. And Tesla is such a new company. The fact that you have this Toyota, which is legendary for its production system, and this company that's less than two decades old is worth many times more, it's kind of funny.Austin Vernon (00:55:32):Yeah. I would say that, in that measure, I don't like market cap. You need to use enterprise value. These old car companies have so much debt, that if you look at enterprise value, it's not so jarring. Literally, I don't know, I can't remember what GM's worth, like 40 billion or something, and then they have $120 billion in debt. So their enterprise value is five times more than their market cap.Dwarkesh Patel (00:56:02):What is enterprise value?Austin Vernon (00:56:03):Enterprise value is basically what is the value of the actual company before you have any claims on it. It's the market cap plus your debt. But basically, if you're the equity holder and the company gets sold, you have to pay the debt first. So you only get the value of what's left over after the debt. So that's why market cap is... when Tesla has very little debt and a lot of market cap, and then these other guys have a lot of debt with less market cap, it skews the comparison.Dwarkesh Patel (00:56:34):Yeah, and one of the interesting things, it's similar to your post on software, is that it seems like one of the interesting themes across your work is automating processes often leads to decreased eventual throughput, because you're probably adding capacity in a place that you're deciding excess capacity, and you're also making the money part of your operation less efficient by have it interface with this automated part. It sounds like there's a similar story there with car manufacturing, right?Austin Vernon (00:57:08):Yeah. I think if we tie it back into what we were talking about earlier, automation promotes local optimization and premature optimization. So a lot of times it's better to figure out, instead of automating a process to make a really hard to make part, you should just figure out how to make that part easy to make. Then after you do that, then it may not even make sense to automate it anymore. Or get rid of it all together, then you just delete all those robots.Austin's Carbon Capture ProjectDwarkesh Patel (00:57:37):Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay. So let's talk about the project that you're working on right now, the CO2 electrolysis. Do you want to explain what this is, and what your current approach is? What is going on here?Austin Vernon (00:57:55):Yeah, so I think just overall, electrofuels right now are super underrated, because you're about to get hopefully some very cheap electricity from solar, or it could be, maybe, some land. If we get really lucky, possibly some nuclear, geothermal. It'll just make sense to create liquid fuels, or natural gas, or something just from electricity and air, essentially.Austin Vernon (00:58:25):There's a whole spectrum of ways to do this, so O2 electrolysis is one of those. Basically, you take water, electricity, and CO2, and a catalyst. And then, you make more complex molecules, like carbon monoxide, or formic acid, or ethylene, or ethanol, or methane or methine. Those are all options. But it's important to point out that, right now, I think if you added up all the CO2 electrolyzers in the world, you'd be measuring their output and kilograms per day. We make millions of tons per day off of the products I just mentioned. So there's a massive scale up if it's going to have a wider impact.Austin Vernon (00:59:15):So there's some debate. I think the debate for the whole electrofuels sector is: How much are you going to do in the electrolyzer? One company whose approach I really like is Terraform Industries. They want to make methane, which is the main natural gas. But they're just making hydrogen in their electrolyzer, and then they capture the CO2 and then put it into a methanation reaction. So everything they're doing is already world scale, basically.Austin Vernon (00:59:47):We've had hydrogen electrolyzers power fertilizer plants, providing them with the Hydrogen that they need. Methanation happens in all ammonia plants and several other examples. It's well known, very old. Methanation is hydrogen CO2 combined to make water and methane. So their approach is more conservative, but if you do more in the electrolyzer, like I'm going to make the methane actually in the electrolyzer instead of adding this other process, you could potentially have a much simpler process that has less CapEx and scales downward better. Traditional chemical engineering heavily favors scaling. With the more Terraform processes, they're playing as absolutely ginormous factories. These can take a long time to build.Austin Vernon (01:00:42):So one of the things they're doing is: they're having to fight the complexity that creeps into chemical engineering every step of the way. Because if they don't, they'll end up with a plant that takes 10 years to build, and that's not their goal. It takes 10 years to build a new refinery, because they're so complex. So yeah, that's where I am. I'm more on the speculative edge, and it's not clear yet which products will be favorable for which approaches.Dwarkesh Patel (01:01:15):Okay, yeah. And you're building this out of your garage, correct?Austin Vernon (01:01:19):Yeah. So that's where electrolyzers... Everything with electric chemistry is a flat plate instead of a vessel, so it scales down. So I can have a pretty good idea of what my 100 square centimeter electrolyzer is going to do, if I make it quite a bit bigger. I have to worry about how my flow might interact in the larger one and make sure the mixing's good, but it's pretty straightforward because you're just making your flat plate a larger area. Whereas the scale, it is different from scaling a traditional chemical process.Dwarkesh Patel (01:01:56):I'm curious how cheap energy has to be before this is efficient. If you're turning it into methane or something like that, presumably for fuel, is the entire process energy positive? Or how cheap would energy, electricity you need to get before that's the case?Austin Vernon (01:02:18):The different products and different methods have different crossovers. So Terraform Industries, they're shooting for $10 a megawatt hour for electricity. But again, their process is simpler, a little less efficient than a lot of the other products. They also have better premiums, just worth more per ton than methane. So your crossover happens somewhere in between $10 and $20 a megawatt hour, which is... I mean, that's pretty... Right now, solar, it's maybe like $25. Maybe it's a little higher because payment prices have gone up in the last year, but I think the expectation is they'll come back down. And so, getting down to $15 where you start having crossovers for some of these products like ethanol or ethylene or methanol, it's not science fiction.Dwarkesh Patel (01:03:08):I think in Texas where I live, that's where it's at right? The cost of energy is 20 or something dollars per megawatt hour.Austin Vernon (01:03:16):Well, not this summer! But yeah, a lot of times in Texas, the wholesale prices are around $25 to $30.Dwarkesh Patel (01:03:26):Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So a lot of the actual details you said about how this works went over my head. So what is a flat plate? I guess before you answer that question, can you just generally describe the approach? What is it? What are you doing to convert CO2 into these other compounds?Austin Vernon (01:03:45):Well, yeah, it literally just looks like an electrolyzer. You have two sides and anode and a cathode and they're just smushed together like this because of the electrical resistance. If you put them far apart, it makes it... uses up a lot of energy. So you smush them together as close as you can. And then, you're basically just trading electrons back and forth. On one side, you're turning CO2 into a more complex molecule, and on the other side, you're taking apart water. And so, when you take apart the water, it balances out the equation, balances out your electrons and everything like that. I probably need to work on that elevator pitch there, huh?Dwarkesh Patel (01:04:31):I guess what the basic idea is, you need to put power in to convert CO2 into these other compounds.Austin Vernon (01:04:38):The inputs are electricity, water, and CO2, and the output is usually oxygen and whatever chemical you're trying to create is, along with some side reactions.Dwarkesh Patel (01:04:49):And then, these chemicals you mentioned, I think ethanol, methane, formic acid, are these all just fuels or what are the other uses for them?Austin Vernon (01:04:58):A lot of people are taking a hybrid approach with carbon monoxide. So this would be like Twelve Co… They've raised a lot of money to do this and 100 employees or something. You can take that carbon monoxide and make hydrogen, and then you have to send gas to make liquid fuels. So they want to make all sorts of chemicals, but one of the main volume ones would be like jet fuel.Austin Vernon (01:05:22):Let's see Formic acid is, it's the little fry of all these. It is an additive in a lot of things like preserving hay for animals and stuff like that. Then, ethanol there's people that want to... There's this company that makes ethylene, which goes into plastics that makes polyethylene, which is the most produced plastic. Or you can burn it in your car, although I think ethanol is a terrible vehicle fuel. But then you can also just make ethylene straight in the electrolyzer. So there's many paths. So which path wins is an interesting race to see.Dwarkesh Patel (01:06:13):The ability to produce jet fuel is really interesting, because in your energy superabundance paper, you talk about... You would think that even if we can electrify everything in solar and when it becomes super cheap, that's not going to have an impact on the prices to go to space for example. But I don't know. If a process like this is possible, then it's some way to in financial terms, add liquidity. And then turn, basically, this cheap solar and wind into jet fuel through this indirect process. So the price to send stuff to space or cheap plane flights or whatever––all of that goes down as well.Austin Vernon (01:06:52):It basically sets a price ceiling on the price of oil. Whatever you can produce this for is the ceiling now, which is maybe the way I think about it.Dwarkesh Patel (01:07:06):Yeah. So do you want to talk a little bit about how your background led into this project? This is your full-time thing, right? I don't know if I read about that, but where did you get this idea and how long have you been pursuing it? And what's the progress and so on.Austin Vernon (01:07:20):I've always loved chemical engineering, and I love working at the big processing plant because it's like being a kid in a candy store. If I had extra time, I'd just walk around and look at the plant, like it's so cool. But the plant where I worked at, their up time was 99.7%. So if you wanted to change anything or do anything new, it terrified everyone. That's how they earned their bonuses: run the plant a 100% uptime all the time. So that just wasn't a good fit for me. And also, so I always wanted my own chemical plant, but it's billions of dollars to build plants so that was a pretty big step. So I think this new technology of... there's a window where you might be able to build smaller plants until it optimizes to be hard to enter again.Dwarkesh Patel (01:08:21):And then, why will it become hard to enter again? What will happen?Austin Vernon (01:08:27):If someone figures out how to build a really cheap electrolyzer, and they just keep it as intellectual property, then it would be hard to rediscover that and compete with them.Dwarkesh Patel (01:08:38):And so, how long have you been working on this?Austin Vernon (01:08:42):Oh, not quite a year. But yeah, I actually got this idea to work on it from writing my blog. So when I wrote the heating fuel post, I didn't really know much about... There's another company in the space, Prometheus Fuels and I'm like, "Oh, this is an interesting idea." And then, I got talking to a guy named Brian Heligman, and he's like, "You should do this, but not what Prometheus is doing." And so, then I started looking at it and I liked it, so I've been working on it since.Dwarkesh Patel (01:09:08):Yeah. It's interesting because if energy does become as cheap as you suspect it might. If this process works, then yeah, this is a trillion dollar company probably, right? If you're going to get the patents and everything.Austin Vernon (01:09:22):I mean, maybe. With chemical plants, there's a certain limitation where your physical limitation is. There's only so many places that are good places for chemical plants. You start getting hit by transportation and all that. So, you can't just produce all the chemical for the entire world in Texas and transport it all around. It wouldn't work. So you're talking about a full, globe-spanning thing. At that point, if y

On this episode of The Nomadic Outdoorsman Dan talks to his brother in law Alex Berger about his passion for getting a line wet all year long. Alex shares stories, tips and gear recommendations for people wanting to get into the sport. Alex grew up fishing in the great state of Wisconsin. He is a catcher of all fish but a master of none. Alex likes to fish everything from bluegills and sunfish to walleye and cats. He spends most of his free time on his boat or working on his boat. Alex has been sharing his passion for fishing with his wife Stephanie and they spend their weekends chasing spawning fish on open water or drilling holes through the ice to catch them in sub zero temperatures. Dan and Alex have the ultimate bs session about the fishing opportunities that America's Dairyland has to offer.   Shop Bull Elk Beard Oil Online Use code NOMADIC for 20% off at checkout   Connect with Dan Mathews and The Nomadic Outdoorsman On TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook Shop Dan's Podcast Gear and Hunting Gear   Connect with Alex Berger On Facebook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of The Nomadic Outdoorsman Dan talks to his brother in law Alex Berger about his passion for getting a line wet all year long. Alex shares stories, tips and gear recommendations for people wanting to get into the sport.Alex grew up fishing in the great state of Wisconsin. He is a catcher of all fish but a master of none. Alex likes to fish everything from bluegills and sunfish to walleye and cats. He spends most of his free time on his boat or working on his boat. Alex has been sharing his passion for fishing with his wife Stephanie and they spend their weekends chasing spawning fish on open water or drilling holes through the ice to catch them in sub zero temperatures. Dan and Alex have the ultimate bs session about the fishing opportunities that America's Dairyland has to offer.

On this episode of The Nomadic Outdoorsman Dan talks to his brother in law Alex Berger about his passion for getting a line wet all year long. Alex shares stories, tips and gear recommendations for people wanting to get into the sport.Alex grew up fishing in the great state of Wisconsin. He is a catcher of all fish but a master of none. Alex likes to fish everything from bluegills and sunfish to walleye and cats. He spends most of his free time on his boat or working on his boat. Alex has been sharing his passion for fishing with his wife Stephanie and they spend their weekends chasing spawning fish on open water or drilling holes through the ice to catch them in sub zero temperatures. Dan and Alex have the ultimate bs session about the fishing opportunities that America's Dairyland has to offer. Shop Bull Elk Beard OilOnline Use code NOMADIC for 20% off at checkout Connect with Dan Mathews and The Nomadic OutdoorsmanOn TikTok, Instagram, and FacebookShop Dan's Podcast Gear and Hunting Gear Connect with Alex BergerOn Facebook

115 milliards de dollars, c'est la somme colossale que s'apprêtent à investir les plateformes de streaming vidéo dans leurs futurs séries et films. Entre Netflix, Disney +, Amazon Prime et AppleTV+ qui sortira vainqueur de la bataille du streaming ? Est-ce une bonne nouvelle pour les producteurs ? Entretien avec Alex Berger, le producteur du bureau des légendes. Au-delà, face à ce rouleau compresseur venu des Etats-Unis, quelle stratégie pour protéger la création et les diffuseurs français ? Débats ! #Streaming #LBDL #Challenges #AppleTVPlus #PrimeVideo #Netflix #CanalPlus #DisneyPlus #Salto #Apple #AmazonPrime Les coups de cœur : Monsieur X : Bracelet à maillons noir sidéral pour Apple Watch https://apple.co/3pbhjAA Gilles : Water Rower https://bit.ly/3BSnoqY Stéphane : Get back the Beatles sur Disney+ https://bit.ly/35nCwQO Olivier : De mémoire vive de Philippe Dewost https://amzn.to/3hiaxVg Les chapitres de l'émission : 00:00:00 – Intro 00:14:21 – Podcast, les raisons d'un succès 00:29:38 – Le buzzomètre 00:36:36 – Génération Do it yourself 01:04:42 – La guerre des plateformes 01:18:42 – L'affaire Joe Rogan 01:27:14 – Coups de cœur Rendez-vous chaque vendredi sur YouTube pour découvrir une nouvelle émission :

115 milliards de dollars, c'est la somme colossale que s'apprêtent à investir les plateformes de streaming vidéo dans leurs futurs séries et films. Entre Netflix, Disney +, Amazon Prime et AppleTV+ qui sortira vainqueur de la bataille du streaming ? Est-ce une bonne nouvelle pour les producteurs ? Entretien avec Alex Berger, le producteur du bureau des légendes. Au-delà, face à ce rouleau compresseur venu des Etats-Unis, quelle stratégie pour protéger la création et les diffuseurs français ? Débats ! #Streaming #LBDL #Challenges #AppleTVPlus #PrimeVideo #Netflix #CanalPlus #DisneyPlus #Salto #Apple #AmazonPrime Les coups de cœur : Monsieur X : Bracelet à maillons noir sidéral pour Apple Watch https://apple.co/3pbhjAA Gilles : Water Rower https://bit.ly/3BSnoqY Stéphane : Get back the Beatles sur Disney+ https://bit.ly/35nCwQO Olivier : De mémoire vive de Philippe Dewost https://amzn.to/3hiaxVg Les chapitres de l'émission : 00:00:00 – Intro 00:14:21 – Podcast, les raisons d'un succès 00:29:38 – Le buzzomètre 00:36:36 – Génération Do it yourself 01:04:42 – La guerre des plateformes 01:18:42 – L'affaire Joe Rogan 01:27:14 – Coups de cœur Rendez-vous chaque vendredi sur YouTube pour découvrir une nouvelle émission :

Heute geht es um Partnerhoroskope. Du erfährst, was ein Partnerhoroskop ist und wie du das Partnerhoroskop für dich, dein Kind, in der Liebe und im Business einsetzen kannst: ✨ Was ein Partnerhoroskop ist ✨ Wie du ein Partnerhoroskop nutzen kannst ✨ Wie ein Partnerhoroskop dich auch im Business weiterbringt ✨ Wie du ein Partnerhoroskop für […]

Endlich gibt's auch in Österreich einen regelmäßigen Podcast für Volleyball, Beachvolleyball und Snowvolleyball. Im Volleyball Austria Podcast lässt Florian Stangl die Protagonist*innen des rotweißroten Volleyballsports zur Wort kommen. Interessante Einblicke garantiert! Für die Premiere des neuen Volleyball Austria Podcast haben wir uns einen besonderen Gast ausgesucht. Freut Euch auf einen der prominentesten Österreichischen Hallenvolleyballer der Gegenwart. Alex Berger, 33 Jahre alt, ist der vielleicht prominenteste Österreichische Hallenvolleyballer der Gegenwart. Mit Perugia stand er im Champions League Finale. Nach Frankreich, Italien, der Türkei ist Polen aktuell seine vierte Auslandsstation. Seid gespannt, was der 2-fache Familienvater aus Oberösterreich zu erzählen hat. Infos zu Alex Berger: https://volleybox.net/de/alexander-berger-p47/clubs Viel Spaß P.S.:Wir freuen uns über Euer Feedback. Auf Social Media (FB/IG) oder per Email an social@volleynet.at

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Economic policy in poor countries, published by John G. Halstead on the effective altruism forum. When funding policy advocacy in the rich world, Open Philanthropy Project aims to only fund projects that at least meet the '100x bar', which means that the things they fund need to increase incomes for average Americans by $100 for every $1 spent to get as much benefit as giving $1 to GiveDirectly recipients in Africa. The reason for this is that (1) there is roughly a 100:1 ratio between the consumption of Americans to GiveDirectly cash transfer recipients, and (2) the returns of money to welfare are logarithmic. A logarithmic utility function implies that $1 for someone with 100x less consumption is worth 100x as much. Since GiveWell's top charities are 10x better than GiveDirectly, the standard set by GiveWell's top charities is a '1,000x bar'. Since 2015, Open Phil has made roughly 300 grants totalling almost $200 million in their near-termist, human-centric focus areas of criminal justice reform, immigration policy, land use reform, macroeconomic stabilisation policy, and scientific research. In 'GiveWell's Top Charities Are (Increasingly) Hard to Beat', Alex Berger argues that much of Open Phil's US policy work probably passes the 100x bar, but relatively little passes the 1,000x bar. The reason that Open Phil's policy work is able to meet the 100x bar is that it is leveraged. Although trying to change planning law in California has a low chance of success, the economic payoffs are so large that the expected value of these grants is high. So, even though it is a lot harder to increase welfare in the US, because the policy work has so much leverage, the expected benefits are high enough to 100x the $ benefits. This raises the question: if all of this true, wouldn't advocating for improved economic policy in poor countries be much better than GiveWell's top charities? If policy in the US has high expected benefits because it is leveraged, then policy in Kenya must also have high expected benefits because it is leveraged. We should expect many projects improving economic policy in Kenya to produce 100x the welfare benefits of GiveDirectly, and we should expect a handful to produce 1,000x the welfare benefits of GiveDirectly. This is an argument for funding work to improve economic policy in the world's poorest countries. Lant Pritchett has been arguing for this position for at least 7 years without any published response from the EA community. Hauke Hillebrandt and I summarise his arguments here. My former colleagues from Founders Pledge, Stephen Clare and Aidan Goth, discuss the arguments in more depth here. Updated addendum: At present, according to GiveWell, the best way to improve the economic outcomes of very poor people is to deworm them. This is on the basis of one very controversial RCT conducted in 2004. I don't think this is a tenable position. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Heute geht es um das Thema Schulsystem: Was da nicht funktioniert, wie du es schaffen kannst, dein Kind trotz des überholten deutschen Schulsystems zu stärken und zu fördern und warum ADHS oft mit dem Rückläufigen Merkur zusammenhängt und was du tun kannst. Dafür habe ich mir die Expertin Alex Berger eingeladen. Denn als Mama, Pädagogin, Lehrerin und Astrologin hat sie jede Menge wertvolle Tipps für dich.

durée : 00:43:40 - Le Temps du débat - par : François Saltiel, Rémi Baille - Ce jeudi se tient la cérémonie d'ouverture du festival Séries Mania édition 2021. La série, qui semble de plus en plus s'implanter dans nos pratiques culturelles, ne représente-t-elle pas une menace pour une industrie du cinéma qui peine, elle, à se relever depuis la crise sanitaire ? - réalisation : Louise André - invités : Jean Labadie Producteur et distributeur de films; Alex Berger producteur executif du Bureau des Légendes; Pauline Escande-Gauquié sémiologue, maîtresse de conférences à l'université Paris-Sorbonne-CELSA

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With advertising on the edge of another significant period of disruption, we take a no-nonsense discussion about what this means moving forward. To deep dive into the topic of identity, the death of third-party cookies, and explore what comes next Adform's Co-Founder and host Jakob Bak is joined by special guests, Jess Simpson, SVP, Verified Tech & Identity at Publicis Media, Tom Kershaw, CTO at Magnite and Chairman of the Board for PreBid.org, and Joanna Burton, Chief Strategy Officer at ID5. With a holistic look at the future of identity, the conversation touches on what this means for advertisers, agencies, and publishers moving forward as well as the role of technology vendors in smoothing the transition. Navigate the episode: 03:05 for Joanna Burton 12:45 for Tom Kershaw 20:50 for Jess Simpson Want to Learn More? To continue exploring this topic, don't miss Adform's latest thought leadership on the topic. Want to discuss how Adform's expertise on topics like this can help solve your business needs? We have dedicated identity specialists eager to take a conversation with you. The Effortless Modern Marketing Podcast is produced by Adform. This episode was produced by Alex Berger. Post Production by Niels Poulsen of JAM Audio Post Production. Our Host was Adform's Jakob Bak. About Today's Guests: Jess Simpson, SVP, Verified Tech & Identity Publicis Media In her current role, Jess Simpson leads Publicis Media's Verified and Identity Consulting and Solutions teams, where she works across all regions, agencies and solutions to bring identity strategy and capabilities to Publicis Groupe's media clients in a privacy-first context. Tom Kershaw, Chief Technology Officer Magnite Inc. As Chief Technology Officer, Tom is responsible for the oversight of all aspects of product development, platform strategy and operations, and product design, as well as oversight of Magnite's engineering capabilities. Prior to the merger with Telaria, Tom held the same position at Rubicon Project. Joanna Burton, Chief Strategy Officer ID5 Joanna Burton is Chief Strategy Officer of ID5, the shared identity infrastructure, with a remit to help drive revenue, strengthen partnerships with premium publishers and accelerate the company's international expansion. She joins from SpotX, part of RTL Group, where as VP European Strategy she helped grow the business across Europe and into new areas such as Connected TV.

Plusieurs nouveautés et couvertue des Francouvertes - On reçoit Anis Azzoung du groupe Sylvie ! Emma Beko, L’impératrice (nouveauté), The Pirouettes, Rone (nouveautés), Géraldine (nouveauté), Sylvie, Whitney K, Alex Berger, Canailles et Overwerk.

Plusieurs nouveautés et couvertue des Francouvertes - On reçoit Anis Azzoung du groupe Sylvie ! Emma Beko, L'impératrice (nouveauté), The Pirouettes, Rone (nouveautés), Géraldine (nouveauté), Sylvie, Whitney K, Alex Berger, Canailles et Overwerk.

Oftentimes people find themselves dwelling on the past and regretting their decisions. In fact, some might say that it is only natural as human beings for us to constantly think about our greatest mistakes as it aids our ability to respond to the same situation correctly in the future. However, now that humanity has mostly escaped the cycle of immediate gratification, we need to start learning and, more importantly, moving on from the past. In today's episode I speak with Alex Berger, a longtime soccer player and fellow gap semester/year student. We talk about our experiences (both the negative and the positive) with the game of soccer, how they've shaped us as well as our goals, and why we need to let go of our regrets in order to view our futures clearly. Please go check out Alex's podcast, The Goodberger Podcast, on Spotify, and as always, if you have any questions about today's episode or have a story you would like to share please reach out to me on my Instagram: @simonbwang. If you're not on social media, click here and fill out the email form to send me a message.

After initiating Beth with a short quiz to see how well she understands the minds of her colleagues, the co-hosts look back at their predictions for 2020. (Who said Bernie Sanders would be the Democratic nominee for President?) They fearlessly promulgate new predictions for 2021. (Who believes the new Ambassador to the U.N. will be Time’s Person Of The Year in 2021?) During the episode they are joined intermittently by Tom McGrath, Bill Granzo, Janine Grohar, Richard Tobin, Alex Berger, Joanna Zeiger, Nicole Wanzer-Serrano, Richard Young, Eloise Maxwell, and Nikki Brake-Sillà.RecommendationsBeth recommended Bridgerton on Netflix.Jim recommends The Abstainer.John recommends reaching out to an old friend.Peggy recommends Belgravia on Epix. Shelly recommends The Intellectual Devotional.Follow us on InstagramFollow us on TwitterFollow us on Facebook

Alex Berger est un concepteur, producteur et entrepreneur dans le domaine des médias. Il est le producteur du Bureau des légendes en étroite collaboration avec Eric Rochant. Alex a importé  des EU dès le début des 2010's une méthodologie et une organisation uniques d'écriture et de production de fictions sérielles, pour faire exister les séries françaises au coeur d'un paysage mondial hyper compétitif qui a vu de nombreuses plateformes émerger. Comment concilier force de la narration et génie de l'écriture, création, animation et engagement autour d'une marque émotionnelle, et production de plusieurs saisons par an? Nouveaux métiers à importer, nouvelles façons de faire, nouvelle normes à organiser, marché à réguler et au dessus de tout créativité et sens artistique à maintenir sans compromis, Alex réussit tout cela. Sa série phare s'exporte partout en Europe et s'adate désormais dans les couloirs de la Paramount, où les couloirs de la CIA se remplissent de légendes. Alex merci pour ce génie qui est le tien. Un hybride d'invention, de réinvention,  de stratégie, d'arches narratives et d'organisation. Take care, stay safe et longue vie !

(sorry for the small annoying parasite sounds in the first 20min of the interview, they go away!)Euro Pudding is a podcast by SEAN.It's created and hosted by Pierre Puget and co-produced and co-hosted  by Philipp Scherzer.Write to us at info@europudding.com with questions, remarks, feedback, etc.Find us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.Our sponsors are C21 and Paper to Film.To learn more about the Serial Eyes programme.Musics by Rafaël Leloup.Visual by Katharina Bobeth.THE EPISODEINTROPierre and Philipp tell more about who they really are, then talk about this Variety article about European facing the coronavirus crisis: https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/coronavirus-europe-tv-schedulers-bbc-rai-france-televisions-1234583298/THE MAIN TOPIC - 12'34''Our guest Alex Berger is the producer of Le Bureau des Légendes, a spy series for Canal+. Here is a trailer with English subtitles.The NY Times article ranking the series: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/arts/television/best-international-tv-shows.htmlThe infamous "Rapport Berger", in English:  https://www.cnc.fr/documents/71205/1057363/Alex+Berger+Report+on+new+organisation+for+scripted+drama+series+in+France.pdf/7e67e78a-325d-6abf-596f-d2dc588363ba

Österreichs Top-Volleyballer Alex Berger spielt und lebt derzeit in Piacenza, Italien. Beim Gespräch erzählt er zuerst unter anderem über den COVID-19 Ausbruch, wie die Situation in Italien im Moment aussieht & wie sich sein Team über Video-Trainings fit hält. Danach spricht er über seine Karriere, wie er über Beachvolleyball zum Volleyball gekommen ist & wie ein Vertrag vor seinen Augen zerrissen wurde. Seid's ned deppat - bleibt's z'haus und hört's euch das an!

Suite et fin de l’épisode avec Alex Berger. On s’attarde dans cette deuxième partie sur les process de production du bureau des légendes et l’exigence d’écriture nécessaire afin de comprendre ce qui fait la réussite d’une des séries françaises les plus chères de l’histoire.  On parle ensuite du futur: est-ce que les nouveaux usages sur les plateformes modifient les façons d’écrire et de produire, l’arrivée très attendue de Quibi, les raisons des echecs des initiatives Blackpills et Studio Plus, et surtout de comment les marques seront vraisemblablement les medias de demain. Alex nous partage pour finir quelques suggestions de lecture et des conseils pour tous ceux qui veulent se lancer dans un projet media.

Dans cet épisode, j’ai l’immense plaisir de m’entretenir avec Alex Berger. Un homme de médias, entrepreneur, conseiller de Pierre Lescure, et surtout producteur, entre autres de l’émission culte Rapido et plus récemment de la série le Bureau des Légendes. Pour Alex, savoir raconter des histoires est ce qui nous distingue en tant qu’êtres humains. Et il nous en raconte une incroyable : la sienne. Les débuts à Télé Monte Carlo, ses premières productions en France pour TF1 et Canal+ puis la BBC avec notamment Antoine de Caunes, la stratégie pour hisser Canal + dans le top 100 Vanity Fair ou encore le récit du rachat incroyable de Universal par Vivendi qu’il a initié.  Enfin il nous explique comment, pour le Bureau des Légendes, il a importé et adapté les techniques de production américaines industrielles en plaçant un showrunner au centre de la création. On discute des hasards de la vie qu’il faut transformer en opportunités, et de la nécessité de réinventer des processus pour réussir dans le monde mouvant des médias et des technologies.     Ceci est le premier épisode puisque l'entretien sera découpé en 2 parties. 

In this episode, I cover "The Pay It Forward Approach to Relationships". Sub-sections include: Be Sincere Be Helpful Feedback: Be Honest But Kind Compete with Yourself, not Your Colleagues Deliver Value and Don’t Keep Score // In this podcast, Alex Berger, the Author of Practical Curiosity, shares a read-through of the book. Each podcast episode corresponds to an individual section in Practical Curiosity.  Enjoying the podcast? Consider supporting the author by purchasing a copy of Practical Curiosity via your book outlet of choice in either print or ebook format.  http://practicalcuriosity.com/ebook or reach out via twitter with feedback or questions: @AlexBerger About the book: Like Dim Sum for the curious mind Practical Curiosity delivers a collection of easily consumable insights into what it means to be a well rounded, curious and passionate individual. From carefully crafted professional advice to altering how you engage with your peers, Practical Curiosity is passionate, and unlike any other inspirational book you’ve read. Alex Berger combines a series of grounded thought exercises with comical and insightful life advice drawn from first-hand experiences and tailored directly to explaining many of the key challenges that arise in the lives of driven individuals. This is the perfect read for polymaths with a thirst for knowledge or if you’ve been attracted by the ideal of being a renaissance man or woman and often struggle with the complexities that result from being a highly driven generalist. In Practical Curiosity, you will gain new ways of exploring and relating to key parts of a life well lived. At the same time, you will gain tools and strategies for explaining topics you’ve long struggled to communicate with friends, loved ones, and colleagues.

Industrial Hemp and CBD Infused Products are a huge opportunity while being a grey and confusing market. Can you ship CBD products across State lines? Are there States you shouldn’t ship to? When and how will regulations be rolled out for CBD infused products? Our guest Alex Berger from Emerge Law Group helps clear things up!

With special guest, Alex Berger calling in from Denmark, Dan and Ed engage in a lively discussion of critical issues that must be addressed to enhance public education and free it from standardization and data-focused testing. This unscripted exchange ranges from preparing students to delve into the root causes of current events, to changes in the way we teach. Throughout the conversations, the major focus is on what we must do to prepare students for their future, not our past.

Lingo Pictures creative director Jason Stephens, Mediapro Studios senior development executive Mariano Balsega, and The Oligarchs Productions president Alex Berger wrap up the Series Mania Forum in Lille, discussing official competition selection Lambs of God, the rise of Spanish-language drama and impact of Article 13.

In this episode, I cover two sections. These are "Skepticism and the Scientific Method" and "Thinking Ahead or Jumping In". In this podcast, Alex Berger, the Author of Practical Curiosity, shares a read-through of the book. Each podcast episode corresponds to an individual section in Practical Curiosity.  Enjoying the podcast? Consider supporting the author by purchasing a copy of Practical Curiosity via your book outlet of choice in either print or ebook format.  http://practicalcuriosity.com/ebook or reach out via twitter with feedback or questions: @AlexBerger About the book: Like Dim Sum for the curious mind Practical Curiosity delivers a collection of easily consumable insights into what it means to be a well rounded, curious and passionate individual. From carefully crafted professional advice to altering how you engage with your peers, Practical Curiosity is passionate, and unlike any other inspirational book you’ve read. Alex Berger combines a series of grounded thought exercises with comical and insightful life advice drawn from first-hand experiences and tailored directly to explaining many of the key challenges that arise in the lives of driven individuals. This is the perfect read for polymaths with a thirst for knowledge or if you’ve been attracted by the ideal of being a renaissance man or woman and often struggle with the complexities that result from being a highly driven generalist. In Practical Curiosity, you will gain new ways of exploring and relating to key parts of a life well lived. At the same time, you will gain tools and strategies for explaining topics you’ve long struggled to communicate with friends, loved ones, and colleagues.

In this episode, I cover two sections. These are "Internalization of Self-Confidence" and "Success Can Be Lethal". In this podcast, Alex Berger, the Author of Practical Curiosity, shares a read-through of the book. Each podcast episode corresponds to an individual section in Practical Curiosity.  Enjoying the podcast? Consider supporting the author by purchasing a copy of Practical Curiosity via your book outlet of choice in either print or ebook format.  http://practicalcuriosity.com/ebook or reach out via twitter with feedback or questions: @AlexBerger About the book: Like Dim Sum for the curious mind Practical Curiosity delivers a collection of easily consumable insights into what it means to be a well rounded, curious and passionate individual. From carefully crafted professional advice to altering how you engage with your peers, Practical Curiosity is passionate, and unlike any other inspirational book you’ve read. Alex Berger combines a series of grounded thought exercises with comical and insightful life advice drawn from first-hand experiences and tailored directly to explaining many of the key challenges that arise in the lives of driven individuals. This is the perfect read for polymaths with a thirst for knowledge or if you’ve been attracted by the ideal of being a renaissance man or woman and often struggle with the complexities that result from being a highly driven generalist. In Practical Curiosity, you will gain new ways of exploring and relating to key parts of a life well lived. At the same time, you will gain tools and strategies for explaining topics you’ve long struggled to communicate with friends, loved ones, and colleagues.

In this episode, I cover two sections. These are "Embracing Intelligence", "The Temptation to Self-Sabotage". In this podcast, Alex Berger, the Author of Practical Curiosity, shares a read-through of the book. Each podcast episode corresponds to an individual section in Practical Curiosity.  Enjoying the podcast? Consider supporting the author by purchasing a copy of Practical Curiosity via your book outlet of choice in either print or ebook format.  http://practicalcuriosity.com/ebook or reach out via twitter with feedback or questions: @AlexBerger About the book: Like Dim Sum for the curious mind Practical Curiosity delivers a collection of easily consumable insights into what it means to be a well rounded, curious and passionate individual. From carefully crafted professional advice to altering how you engage with your peers, Practical Curiosity is passionate, and unlike any other inspirational book you’ve read. Alex Berger combines a series of grounded thought exercises with comical and insightful life advice drawn from first-hand experiences and tailored directly to explaining many of the key challenges that arise in the lives of driven individuals. This is the perfect read for polymaths with a thirst for knowledge or if you’ve been attracted by the ideal of being a renaissance man or woman and often struggle with the complexities that result from being a highly driven generalist. In Practical Curiosity, you will gain new ways of exploring and relating to key parts of a life well lived. At the same time, you will gain tools and strategies for explaining topics you’ve long struggled to communicate with friends, loved ones, and colleagues.

In this episode, I cover three sections. These are "Accept Failure", "The Emotional Quotient" and "Imposter Syndrome". In this podcast, Alex Berger, the Author of Practical Curiosity, shares a read-through of the book. Each podcast episode corresponds to an individual section in Practical Curiosity.  Enjoying the podcast? Consider supporting the author by purchasing a copy of Practical Curiosity via your book outlet of choice in either print or ebook format.  http://practicalcuriosity.com/ebook or reach out via twitter with feedback or questions: @AlexBerger About the book: Like Dim Sum for the curious mind Practical Curiosity delivers a collection of easily consumable insights into what it means to be a well rounded, curious and passionate individual. From carefully crafted professional advice to altering how you engage with your peers, Practical Curiosity is passionate, and unlike any other inspirational book you’ve read. Alex Berger combines a series of grounded thought exercises with comical and insightful life advice drawn from first-hand experiences and tailored directly to explaining many of the key challenges that arise in the lives of driven individuals. This is the perfect read for polymaths with a thirst for knowledge or if you’ve been attracted by the ideal of being a renaissance man or woman and often struggle with the complexities that result from being a highly driven generalist. In Practical Curiosity, you will gain new ways of exploring and relating to key parts of a life well lived. At the same time, you will gain tools and strategies for explaining topics you’ve long struggled to communicate with friends, loved ones, and colleagues.

Digital Nomad Mastery Interview about Virtual Wayfarer with Alex Berger http://www.VirtualWayfarer.com/ Thank you for watching our video. GET EMAIL UPDATES on our website: http://www.DaddyBlogger.com LIKE us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/daddyblogger SUBSCRIBE to us on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/tokyoricky OLLOW us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tokyoricky

Un milliard ! C’est la somme que investit Apple dans la production de séries télé pour alimenter son futur service de streaming vidéo. Sera-t-il comparable à Netflix ? La pomme va-t-elle créer la surprise avec une offre gratuite? Pourquoi une telle appétence pour les séries chez les GAFA ? Débats en compagnie d’Alex Berger, producteur de la (très réussie) série française, Le bureau des légendes ! Les coups de coeur : - Alex : Equi https://equiglobal.com - Damien : Le bureau des légendes www.mycanal.fr - Monsieur X : Sky Force Reloaded https://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/sky-force-reloaded/id976116090?mt=8 Asphalt 9 https://itunes.apple.com/ph/app/asphalt-9-legends/id805603214?mt=8 - Stéphane : Stuff online https://stuffmagazine.fr - Alex Berger : Le bonheur par Florence Servan-Schreiber www.florenceservanschreiber.com - Olivier Frigara : ExpressVPN https://www.expressvpn.com/fr

Un milliard ! C’est la somme que investit Apple dans la production de séries télé pour alimenter son futur service de streaming vidéo. Sera-t-il comparable à Netflix ? La pomme va-t-elle créer la surprise avec une offre gratuite? Pourquoi une telle appétence pour les séries chez les GAFA ? Débats en compagnie d’Alex Berger, producteur de la (très réussie) série française, Le bureau des légendes ! Les coups de coeur : - Alex : Equi https://equiglobal.com - Damien : Le bureau des légendes www.mycanal.fr - Monsieur X : Sky Force Reloaded https://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/sky-force-reloaded/id976116090?mt=8 Asphalt 9 https://itunes.apple.com/ph/app/asphalt-9-legends/id805603214?mt=8 - Stéphane : Stuff online https://stuffmagazine.fr - Alex Berger : Le bonheur par Florence Servan-Schreiber www.florenceservanschreiber.com - Olivier Frigara : ExpressVPN https://www.expressvpn.com/fr

In this episode of Hash It Out join me as I talk to Alex Berger, co-founder and brewer for Magic Number. Magic Number is a craft cannabis infused beverage company based in Bend, OR. In this episode we discuss their origin story, product offering, sourcing and processing practices, and the cannabis industry’s effect on adjacent industries. Additionally, we delve into the following topics: • Edibles as a consumption method, their benefits, and the difference in effect vs. smoking or vaping cannabis • Micro vs. Macro dosing with cannabis edibles • The future potential of cannabis in a society where people seem to always be looking for a way to alter their state of mind – whether that be caffeine and exercise or other more illicit substances – cannabis can be a healthy alternative that helps address stress, anxiety and depression • Taking healthcare into our own hands with increasing accessibility of cannabis and how this is poised to revolutionize health care in America • What business owners and consumers can be doing to influence the growth of the cannabis industry in a positive direction (spoiler: it starts with normalization and de-vilinization) • The mindset shift normalization of cannabis is effecting – as we start to question this cultural zeitgeist, we become more likely to question what other misinformation our government has perpetuated – what else do we need to question? • Normalization is being shouldered at the retail level as the consumer facing arm of the industry, but how can producers and processors begin to lighten the load? Have questions? Come see us at Terpene Station in Eugene on Friday, June 8th for a Magic Number happy hour!

Alex Berger, Co-Executive Producer for the hit NBC Drama, Blindspot, joins Jim, Peg and John to talk about his successful series, writing for Warner Brothers and life in LA. This fortnight’s podcast offers an in-depth look at the television and film industry from the perspective of a long-time Hollywood insider. The conversation hits on Hollywood career trajectories, the writer’s room, the democratization of content, changing audience expectations and some of the biggest names on big and little screens.

In this episode, I run through a series of short pieces of advice on ways to shape and facilitate success across your relationships, career and personal interactions. This includes touching on concepts like luck, shaping your social network, and treating yourself fairly. In this podcast, Alex Berger, the Author of Practical Curiosity, shares a read-through of the book. Each podcast episode corresponds to an individual section in Practical Curiosity.  Enjoying the podcast? Consider supporting the author by purchasing a copy of Practical Curiosity via your book outlet of choice in either print or ebook format.  http://practicalcuriosity.com/ebook or reach out via twitter with feedback or questions: @AlexBerger About the book: Like Dim Sum for the curious mind Practical Curiosity delivers a collection of easily consumable insights into what it means to be a well rounded, curious and passionate individual. From carefully crafted professional advice to altering how you engage with your peers, Practical Curiosity is passionate, and unlike any other inspirational book you’ve read. Alex Berger combines a series of grounded thought exercises with comical and insightful life advice drawn from first-hand experiences and tailored directly to explaining many of the key challenges that arise in the lives of driven individuals. This is the perfect read for polymaths with a thirst for knowledge or if you’ve been attracted by the ideal of being a renaissance man or woman and often struggle with the complexities that result from being a highly driven generalist. In Practical Curiosity, you will gain new ways of exploring and relating to key parts of a life well lived. At the same time, you will gain tools and strategies for explaining topics you’ve long struggled to communicate with friends, loved ones, and colleagues.

We live in a time where generalists - previously hailed as Renaissance Men and Women, are led to believe they're unfocused. That their sweeping curiosity and widespread interests are a lack of focus, passion, and are a fundamental failing guaranteed to undermine success. This episode debunks these myths and explores what we get wrong about generalists, paths to success, and some of the misconceptions that plague how we view generalists as a culture.  In this podcast, Alex Berger, the Author of Practical Curiosity, shares a read-through of the book. Each podcast episode corresponds to an individual section in Practical Curiosity.  Enjoying the podcast? Consider supporting the author by purchasing a copy of Practical Curiosity via your book outlet of choice in either print or ebook format.  http://practicalcuriosity.com/ebook or reach out via twitter with feedback or questions: @AlexBerger About the book: Like Dim Sum for the curious mind Practical Curiosity delivers a collection of easily consumable insights into what it means to be a well rounded, curious and passionate individual. From carefully crafted professional advice to altering how you engage with your peers, Practical Curiosity is passionate, and unlike any other inspirational book you’ve read. Alex Berger combines a series of grounded thought exercises with comical and insightful life advice drawn from first-hand experiences and tailored directly to explaining many of the key challenges that arise in the lives of driven individuals. This is the perfect read for polymaths with a thirst for knowledge or if you’ve been attracted by the ideal of being a renaissance man or woman and often struggle with the complexities that result from being a highly driven generalist. In Practical Curiosity, you will gain new ways of exploring and relating to key parts of a life well lived. At the same time, you will gain tools and strategies for explaining topics you’ve long struggled to communicate with friends, loved ones, and colleagues.

The Divine Phytoplankton Experiment is a thought experiment and exercise that serves to help explore the traits, attributes and mysteries which we commonly attribute to the divine. It offers a tool for exploring elements of religion and explores the core question that spans science and religion: What came before the Universe?  In this podcast, Alex Berger, the Author of Practical Curiosity, shares a read-through of the book. Each podcast episode corresponds to an individual section in Practical Curiosity.  Enjoying the podcast? Consider supporting the author by purchasing a copy of Practical Curiosity via your book outlet of choice in either print or ebook format.  http://practicalcuriosity.com/ebook or reach out via twitter with feedback or questions: @AlexBerger About the book: Like Dim Sum for the curious mind Practical Curiosity delivers a collection of easily consumable insights into what it means to be a well rounded, curious and passionate individual. From carefully crafted professional advice to altering how you engage with your peers, Practical Curiosity is passionate, and unlike any other inspirational book you’ve read. Alex Berger combines a series of grounded thought exercises with comical and insightful life advice drawn from first-hand experiences and tailored directly to explaining many of the key challenges that arise in the lives of driven individuals. This is the perfect read for polymaths with a thirst for knowledge or if you’ve been attracted by the ideal of being a renaissance man or woman and often struggle with the complexities that result from being a highly driven generalist. In Practical Curiosity, you will gain new ways of exploring and relating to key parts of a life well lived. At the same time, you will gain tools and strategies for explaining topics you’ve long struggled to communicate with friends, loved ones, and colleagues.

The Toilet Paper Exercise is a somewhat unorthodox thought exercise that serves as a powerful (and some would say comical) illustration of how important it is to take a critical approach to things you likely take for granted. This exercise has far-reaching implications for all aspects of your life, from general business and life satisfaction to your romantic relationships and can serve as a powerful lens when you're traveling.  In this podcast, Alex Berger, the Author of Practical Curiosity, shares a read-through of the book. Each podcast episode corresponds to an individual section in Practical Curiosity.  Enjoying the podcast? Consider supporting the author by purchasing a copy of Practical Curiosity via your book outlet of choice in either print or ebook format.  http://practicalcuriosity.com/ebook or reach out via twitter with feedback or questions: @AlexBerger About the book: Like Dim Sum for the curious mind Practical Curiosity delivers a collection of easily consumable insights into what it means to be a well rounded, curious and passionate individual. From carefully crafted professional advice to altering how you engage with your peers, Practical Curiosity is passionate, and unlike any other inspirational book you’ve read. Alex Berger combines a series of grounded thought exercises with comical and insightful life advice drawn from first-hand experiences and tailored directly to explaining many of the key challenges that arise in the lives of driven individuals. This is the perfect read for polymaths with a thirst for knowledge or if you’ve been attracted by the ideal of being a renaissance man or woman and often struggle with the complexities that result from being a highly driven generalist. In Practical Curiosity, you will gain new ways of exploring and relating to key parts of a life well lived. At the same time, you will gain tools and strategies for explaining topics you’ve long struggled to communicate with friends, loved ones, and colleagues.

The Ant and the Universe is a thought exercise that explores our role in the universe, comfort with the unknown, and provides a tool for reflecting on our own mortality. In this podcast, Alex Berger, the Author of Practical Curiosity, shares a read-through of the book. Each podcast episode corresponds to an individual section in Practical Curiosity.  Enjoying the podcast? Consider supporting the author by purchasing a copy of Practical Curiosity via your book outlet of choice in either print or ebook format.  http://practicalcuriosity.com/ebook or reach out via twitter with feedback or questions: @AlexBerger About the book: Like Dim Sum for the curious mind Practical Curiosity delivers a collection of easily consumable insights into what it means to be a well rounded, curious and passionate individual. From carefully crafted professional advice to altering how you engage with your peers, Practical Curiosity is passionate, and unlike any other inspirational book you’ve read. Alex Berger combines a series of grounded thought exercises with comical and insightful life advice drawn from first-hand experiences and tailored directly to explaining many of the key challenges that arise in the lives of driven individuals. This is the perfect read for polymaths with a thirst for knowledge or if you’ve been attracted by the ideal of being a renaissance man or woman and often struggle with the complexities that result from being a highly driven generalist. In Practical Curiosity, you will gain new ways of exploring and relating to key parts of a life well lived. At the same time, you will gain tools and strategies for explaining topics you’ve long struggled to communicate with friends, loved ones, and colleagues.

The Dark Room and the Open Door is a thought exercise that explores comfort with the unknown and provides a tool for reflecting on and exploring our own level of comfort with uncertainty.  In this podcast, Alex Berger, the Author of Practical Curiosity, shares a read-through of the book. Each podcast episode corresponds to an individual section in Practical Curiosity.  Enjoying the podcast? Consider supporting the author by purchasing a copy of Practical Curiosity via your book outlet of choice in either print or ebook format.  http://practicalcuriosity.com/ebook or reach out via twitter with feedback or questions: @AlexBerger About the book: Like Dim Sum for the curious mind Practical Curiosity delivers a collection of easily consumable insights into what it means to be a well rounded, curious and passionate individual. From carefully crafted professional advice to altering how you engage with your peers, Practical Curiosity is passionate, and unlike any other inspirational book you’ve read. Alex Berger combines a series of grounded thought exercises with comical and insightful life advice drawn from first-hand experiences and tailored directly to explaining many of the key challenges that arise in the lives of driven individuals. This is the perfect read for polymaths with a thirst for knowledge or if you’ve been attracted by the ideal of being a renaissance man or woman and often struggle with the complexities that result from being a highly driven generalist. In Practical Curiosity, you will gain new ways of exploring and relating to key parts of a life well lived. At the same time, you will gain tools and strategies for explaining topics you’ve long struggled to communicate with friends, loved ones, and colleagues.

In this podcast, Alex Berger, the Author of Practical Curiosity, shares a read-through of the book. Each podcast episode corresponds to an individual section in Practical Curiosity.  Enjoying the podcast? Consider supporting the author by purchasing a copy of Practical Curiosity via your book outlet of choice in either print or ebook format.  http://practicalcuriosity.com/ebook or reach out via twitter with feedback or questions: @AlexBerger About the book: Like Dim Sum for the curious mind Practical Curiosity delivers a collection of easily consumable insights into what it means to be a well rounded, curious and passionate individual. From carefully crafted professional advice to altering how you engage with your peers, Practical Curiosity is passionate, and unlike any other inspirational book you’ve read. Alex Berger combines a series of grounded thought exercises with comical and insightful life advice drawn from first-hand experiences and tailored directly to explaining many of the key challenges that arise in the lives of driven individuals. This is the perfect read for polymaths with a thirst for knowledge or if you’ve been attracted by the ideal of being a renaissance man or woman and often struggle with the complexities that result from being a highly driven generalist. In Practical Curiosity, you will gain new ways of exploring and relating to key parts of a life well lived. At the same time, you will gain tools and strategies for explaining topics you’ve long struggled to communicate with friends, loved ones, and colleagues.

Didn’t get enough Halloween spookiness? Tune in for a quick, scary and possibly true tale of ghoulish grammar. A few exciting highlights include: -Reminder of who I am and my background! - Update on my blog! - A quick gruesome tale on grammar Take Action Now! Copywriting for Podcasters? Yep! Grab my Amazon Best Selling Book now Check out the transcript here: Hiya! Welcome to Copy That Pops! I’m LaptopLaura, your hostess with the mostest. If you are new to the show, a quick background on me is that I’m a tall Math & Psychology teacher turned serial entrepreneur. These days I’m a podcast launch and best-selling book launch strategist. I help elite entrepreneurs and business create and launch powerful podcasts (a biiiig influencer client to be announced soon!) as well as best-selling books! In fact, a student in my free Facebook Group and course is going live TODAY as I record this! His name is Alex Berger and his book is called: Practical Curiosity: The Guide to Life, Love & Travel As I record this (on Monday Nov 6th 2017)  it is #1 in his first category and #4 and #7 in his other two...those numbers are dropping (in a great way) so by the end of the day I expect #1 in all three categories in the US as well as in other countries! Let’s see if Alex can beat my best success story to date, Akbar Sheikh who hit #1 in 6 countries! Go Alex! If you want to grab his book no matter when you listen to this, head to copythatpops.com/alex And if you want to pop into the free Best-Selling Author Posse on FB, head to copythatpops.com/facebook. It will redirect you to the Facebook group. Can’t wait to meet you in there! ---- Okay, so the topic of today’s podcast is a Quick Grammar Tip...and I have a very treacherous story to tell you … it’s a bit gruesome, so hold on to your hats! ... But first, a quick shout out to another tool made ONLY to benefit YOU! I’ve been taking my blog very seriously again -- only fitting since I’m a nerd for writing! -- so I want to invite you to head to CopyThatPops.com/blog and check it out if you have not yet. Some recent articles to help you include: - How Long Will It Take to Write My Book? — How much should I write every day? - How to Write a Book: 5 Crystal Clear Steps to Show Off Your Expertise WITHOUT Giving Up Halfway Through - How to Format a Book for Amazon Book Publishing: Kindle Format, CreateSpace, and More - Book Cover Design Tips: How to make a book cover even if you’re not a designer Some titles may change slightly over time because I am really playing with the keywords for long-term SEO (search engine optimization) growth! That’s the topic of next week’s podcast and you do NOT want to miss it...a special presentation from Andy Steven of High Voltage SEO. That episode boasts detailed specifics of what you can do to optimize your website and an amazing Aussie accent. So, look out for episode 099 coming next Tuesday! And if any of those articles call your name, head over to CopyThatPops.com/blog -- so many people are telling me the blogs are more like legit books or mini courses and super helpful. I hope you find the same! --- Well then, back to our Quick Grammar Tip and that Halloween-like story… As this episode goes live on Tuesday the 7th, I am flying from San Diego to NYC to see friends old and new including my friend since 7th grade Laura Eidlitz who has a PhD in Psychology, Victor Adefuye (who was on this podcast way back in episode 23...it’s a very popular one called Managing Psychology, Emotion, & Ego for Success with Victor Adefuye. And you can find it at CopyThatPops.com/023), and Jess Lindgren who is both the creator of GalFriday612 and the Executive Assistant to the one and only Pat Flynn. It is with this last friend Jess, that this episode today is partly inspired. Last month she was in town for several events -- she lives in Minnesota right now -- and we got together for bagels and coffee in downtown San Diego before the Pat Flynn mastermind meeting. As we talked, we realized we are both nerds for great writing and made jokes about poor grammar use as only nerd would. But no laughing matter is my story… It takes place back in the year 1885. This was long before cell phones, computers, and -- crap wait -- typewriters were around but not widely used...okay, so …Back in 1885 there lived a very peculiar family of 3 generations in an isolated farm house. What made them especially odd was they never spoke aloud to each other and would only scribble handwritten notes. They lived such a routine life that not much communication was really needed and they got along well enough. The other thing was that the son in the family, Lurch, he was an adult but had a child-like mind and took everything very literally but without question. His mother Bertha didn’t mind that one bit because it kept things working smoothly without conflict. Well, one dark and stormy night, Bertha was in the kitchen toiling over pots and pans to prepare supper. She saw Lurch walk by and motioned for him to come hither. She quickly scribbled a note with just four words on it and nodded her head toward the stairs. Lurch looked at the note bewildered but without question, turned and walked up the steps to where his Grandmother lay resting. Bertha, consumed in cooking and distracted by the wind and rain outside didn’t hear the screaming of her mother. A few minutes later Lurch returned with blood around his mouth and streaked across his chest, holding bits of body parts from his slain grandmother. Bertha screamed in shock, disgust, and fury. “What have you done!?” she shouted uncharacteristically breaking her usual silence. Lurch, confused, pulled out the slip of paper and held it out, “Time to eat Grandma” it read… But, it was missing a comma after the word eat! Bertha learned the hard way that very night just how important punctuation is. Good grammar saves lives. --- Well, with this gruesome and sad but most likely true story, I want to commend you for listening to this podcast and searching for more insight on improving your writing. It’s more important than you may think. See you next week when we’ll find more ways to write copy that pops (and is found by search engines!)...    Read More: Shownotes for 098: Quick Gruesome Grammar Tip Story

Great conversation with Sr. Brand Strategist Alex Berger who brings the story of a band from New England who have created a loyal fan following that would make most brands jealous. Get full access to The Strategy Inside Everything at specific.substack.com/subscribe

Dan and I have striven to learn about the insights of graduates of American K-12 schools and American universities who have gone on to study in other countries.  Our guest for this Podcast graduated from Prescott High School and the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University. He did his graduate work in Denmark at the University of Copenhagen. He has lived in Denmark for six and a half years. Alex is a millennial driven by curiosity who is a well-known travel blogger and who has immersed himself in over fifty countries. He is a renowned photographer and videographer. Most important, he is an acute observer of others and the effects of quality education. His book, Practical Curiosity (http://practicalcuriosity.com), will be available from November 2017.

This week we’re thrilled to report that our constant quest for quality beer has been fulfilled! Though we still have to pay the annoying 400% import tax, we’ve started getting beer deliveries from Wishbeer. A few clicks on our phone and a motorscooter shows up an hour later with a dozen quality craft beers for us, chilled and ready to drink! And we also found a brand new place called Bottles of Beer just a few stops up the SkyTrain from us. We’re sure it’ll be packed before long, but for now it’s our hidden watering hole! But we’re not just about the beer. We’ve two travel stories to share on today’s program, one about our ongoing life in Thailand and another from Austria: 1. Clean BTS, Bathrooms, and Butts Music credit: Upbeat Forever by Kevin MacLeod Last week’s show might have left you with the impression that Bangkok is a dirty city. Worse, that Bangkokians or Thais in general are dirty people. That is categorically not true, and we owe it to set the record straight. The truth is that “cleanliness” is a big part of “Thainess”, and the evidence of that comes in odd ways. 2. Austrian Sauna Confessionals Music credit: Everything Hurts, I Wanna Dance by Sounds Like An Earful We’re not known for having prudish friends, and Alex is no exception. However, cultural norms around nudity are just that: cultural. People who travel frequently -- especially travel writers like Alex Berger -- find themselves in uncharted territory a lot when it comes to acting like a local. And when the clothes come off, it becomes even more awkward. Even when you’re deep in a culture that’s very OK with nudity, the exact question of when you disrobe remains. It’s not like this is the stuff they put in guidebooks, right? And that’s the show! As promised, it’s vacation week (Happy Songkran!)  for us and we’re heading to the mountains of northern Thailand for a much-needed getaway. But it looks like a bunch of new people have discovered our show. Or perhaps old listeners have re-discovered now that we’ve settled on a format they like. Whatever the case, welcome to all the new people (and thanks for sticking around to all the legacy listeners!) We didn’t want to skip a week, so call this one a bonus! If you’re new to the show -- or maybe you’ve come back after a hiatus -- let us know. You can drop us a comment on the show notes on our  Just get in touch! (http://shevo.wtf/) Special thanks to  Chris from Sounds Like An Earful  (http://incompetech.com/) for the songs used in this episode. Funding for this podcast and all the great content we produce is made possible by listeners just like you. Visit ShEvo.wtf/postcards to pledge your support, and get a hand written postcard each month as we travel abroad. Additional funding provided by TravelSmith. Inspiring people to go places they've never been, and keeping us looking smart and well-outfitted on our journey. And if you want to travel the world… it’s cheaper than you think! Visit  Housesitting (http://shevo.wtf/)  link to find out exactly how we afford to travel the world in style.

Full Show Script [cough medicine] EVO: Copenhagen, like many metropolitan cities, isn’t very car-friendly. The city grew organically, with lots of tiny streets, wide-gapped cobblestones, and an extreme aversion to anything resembling a grid pattern. And with a car registration of tax of up to 180% -- yes, that’s 1.8x the value of the car as a tax -- keeps car ownership at pretty low levels. SHE: Instead, the preferred mode of transportation in Copenhagen is the bicycle. Every day, tens of thousands of people use their bikes to commute to work, take the kids to school, shop for groceries, or go out on the town. Even when it’s cold (which is now). Even when it’s wet (which is always). And even when it’s windy. (Which is…) [Uphill] SHE: That’s our buddy Alex Berger from Phoenix. He came over here about 3.5 years ago to get his Master’s degree -- and never left. He likes it that much! (He's got a great travel blog, too!) EVO: Before we left on this grand adventure, I too was a bike commuter, though the toughest weather condition I had to deal with was heat. To test my abilities on the other end of the thermometer, we borrowed the bikes from the couple we’re house sitting for and took a trip to the beach. It was just a couple of kilometers away from the house, and it would give Tego, their dog, a chance to do more than just walk. Getting ready to leave was -- and is -- a challenge in and of itself when you’re this close to the Arctic circle. [getting ready] SHE: Evo edited that audio down significantly. In real time, it took us 13 minutes to put on the necessary clothes just to leave the house. Living in the desert-southwest for 20 years has left us ill-prepared for life in the high latitudes. EVO: But once we and the dog were ready, it was a relative uneventful -- that means it makes for boring audio -- bike ride to the beach. Except for the little incident with the cat. [Tego finds a cat] SHE Wow. that sounded awful. But he wasn’t hurt, choking or anything like that. He was just really, REALLY excited about the prospect of tangling with that cat. The leash is attached to a full-body harness, not the collar around his neck, so he was perfectly safe. Evo, on the other hand, nearly took a header over the handlebars. But both boys made it, and we continued on our journey. [to the beach] EVO: That was heavily edited, because as pretty as it was, it made for crappy audio. We did record a video, however, if you’d like to see the beach. It’s a little stark, but something that anyone, even me, can appreciate. [beauty in all things] SHE: Yeah, it would have been nice if you’d adopted that attitude at the museum earlier in the week. I know I certainly would have had a more enjoyable time. [museum] EVO: I’m tempted to make an “in my defense” argument, but that audio’s pretty damning, and I’m the one that edited it. [I don’t get art] SHE: Clearly. EVO. But hey, I made it up to you in the end. SHE: How? EVO: Chocolate, remember? SHE: Oh. Ha! And such fancy chocolate at that. [chocolate] SHE: And I think I need a little more, because it’s been a rough week, and it ended pretty terribly. EVO:True enough, Lover. So I’ll take it from here. You can read Sheila’s posts from this week if you want the details on her medical issues and the passing of her grandfather. One last thing: I need your help solving a mystery on our Patreon page. Common sense and empirical evidence from other Patreon creators says that the cheapest pledge level -- $1 -- should have the highest number of supporters. But our distribution graph looks way WAY different. Maybe it’s because it’s only been up little more than a week. Or maybe our fans can’t be pinned in by standard deviation models. If so, that’s pretty cool, actually. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Statisticians! Anyhow… you can find links to our Patreon page all over our site. Seriously. Go look. You...