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Speaker 1: As media. Hey everybody, Robert here, it's the Christmas two parter,

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Speaker 1: and every year we try to use our holiday episodes

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Speaker 1: to do something good. This year, we're asking you to

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Speaker 1: support the mutual aid project that James Stout over at

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Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here, has been a part of for

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Speaker 1: nearly six months in a remote part of the US

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Speaker 1: Mexico border near Yacoomba, California. While you're hopefully warm and dry,

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Speaker 1: the border patrol is detaining thousands of migrants, including children

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Speaker 1: and the elderly, in the desert without food, water, or

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Speaker 1: shelter when overnight temperatures drop below freezing. Volunteers provide hot meals,

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Speaker 1: blankets and toys for children. They build shelters even though

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Speaker 1: the Border Patrol destroys them, and keep rebuilding them so

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Speaker 1: that people have a place to sleep out in the

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Speaker 1: freezing wind. Everyone there, including James, has spent a lot

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Speaker 1: of their own money supporting this effort, and you can

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Speaker 1: hear more about the efforts of volunteers over on It

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Speaker 1: Could Happen Here, But your support would mean the world

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Speaker 1: to James and the other people trying to help migrants

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Speaker 1: over at the border. Of course, those migrants themselves. You

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Speaker 1: can donate to this effort at GoFundMe. If you just

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Speaker 1: type Yakumba Jacumba Migrant Camps go fund me, Yakumba Migrant

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Speaker 1: Camps go fund me, you'll get it. Or you can

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Speaker 1: use the link TinyURL dot com slash border agfm that'll

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Speaker 1: take you right to the fundraiser. So thank you. Ah

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Speaker 1: what a happy Yule Tie Mary Xmas to all of

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Speaker 1: you listeners out there in radio land. It's not radio land.

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Speaker 1: Radio is a dead medium. It's a podcast Behind the

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Speaker 1: Bastards where normally we talk about the very worst people

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Speaker 1: in all of history, but once a year, one glorious

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Speaker 1: day or week out of the year, instead of talking

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Speaker 1: about the worst people in all of history, we talk

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Speaker 1: about some of the best people in all of history.

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Speaker 1: And today, as our guest on this This Yule Tide episode,

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Speaker 1: our only returning Christmas episode, guest Margaret Killjoy, who talks

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Speaker 1: about cool people who did cool stuff for a living

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Speaker 1: in a podcast with that name.

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Speaker 2: Hey, you only cover Santa Claus, right, Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: We're we're getting into the We're getting into the big

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Speaker 1: Man himself. Okay, now, Magpie, how do you feel about Christmas?

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Speaker 1: You Christmas person.

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Speaker 2: I am. Now this is a recent transition. I decided

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Speaker 2: that it makes sense that everyone wants together to celebrate

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Speaker 2: the darkest time of the year. Yeah, and that whatever

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Speaker 2: holiday people attached to it, as long as the core

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Speaker 2: of it is get together with people that you care

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Speaker 2: about as the dark set, the dark is here and

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Speaker 2: the cold is coming. You know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I think that's a I tend to be

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Speaker 1: more or less in agreement. I enjoy celebrating the holiday

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Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with the guy we're talking

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Speaker 1: about today, but it is. It is. Yeah, Santa Claus

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Speaker 1: Are we've all gone through in the period from the

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Speaker 1: early two thousands to today, this really interesting moment, especially

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Speaker 1: those of us. This is kind of less of a

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Speaker 1: case for people who have been radicals that entire time,

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Speaker 1: but those of us who started from a more centrist, moderate,

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Speaker 1: you know, liberal kind of background, this period of like, wow,

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Speaker 1: you know, the internet is going to be this incredible

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Speaker 1: tool for democracy and spreading knowledge. The tech industry they're

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Speaker 1: they're like this progressive force in a lot of ways

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Speaker 1: in society. There's a bunch of things that are going

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Speaker 1: to be made better by connecting people all over the

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Speaker 1: world to oh, not only does all this technology not

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Speaker 1: work the way that we thought it, and not only

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Speaker 1: is it a lot more toxic, does they have more

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Speaker 1: negative consequences for people's mental health, for the health of societies,

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Speaker 1: But it increases the arsenal of authoritarians. And most of

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Speaker 1: the people who are running the tech industry now want

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Speaker 1: that right, are fundamentally on the side of authoritarians. There's

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Speaker 1: this kind of movement. The New York Times just did

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Speaker 1: an article on it, because that kind of the mainstream

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Speaker 1: is starting to be aware of some to an extent

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Speaker 1: of which it kind of came out of some of

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Speaker 1: the effective altruism stuff. That's that's the effective accelerationists, right

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Speaker 1: e ff slash acc is kind of how toll be

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Speaker 1: written a lot in the ideas like we need to

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Speaker 1: accelerate without thinking of the consequences, you know, AI effective AI,

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Speaker 1: you know, and push it in every aspect of society,

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Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter who it hurts, it doesn't matter

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Speaker 1: what the consequences are, because fundamentally this is what human

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Speaker 1: beings need. And these people are also getting into eugenics.

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Speaker 1: A lot of these are the folks around Elon Musk.

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Speaker 1: It's deeply reactionary in many ways, but it came out

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Speaker 1: of and a lot of some of the people who

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Speaker 1: are involved in it are folks who came out of

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Speaker 1: in the early two thousands, the late nineties. You would

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Speaker 1: have thought a lot differently of them, right, You would

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Speaker 1: have thought that these people were, if not on the

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Speaker 1: side of angels, then broadly speaking, part of a positive

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Speaker 1: trend in our culture. And today. The hero we're talking

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Speaker 1: about is a guy who's a personal hero of mine.

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Speaker 1: He was a dude who was to an extent on

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Speaker 1: this side. But yeah, yeah, he was a dude who

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Speaker 1: was to an extent on you know, we don't know

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Speaker 1: because because of when he died, fundamentally where he would

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Speaker 1: have ended up now, I don't think he would be

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Speaker 1: in league with any of those guys. He's a guy

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Speaker 1: a fundamentally view as a hero. And his name was

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Speaker 1: Aaron Schwartz.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so excited.

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Speaker 1: Yeah spelled Swartz. Aaron Hillel Schwartz was born on November eighth,

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, in Highland Parks, Chicago. He was the

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Speaker 1: eldest of three brothers and in general enjoyed about his

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Speaker 1: privileged not bringing as you can have and still do

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Speaker 1: something useful with your life, right, He's not born like

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Speaker 1: into crazy money, because those people don't tend to do much.

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Speaker 2: Right. There's not an emerald mine in the picture.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he's not an emerald miner. But his dad like

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Speaker 1: founds a software firm. I don't think they're like hundreds

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Speaker 1: of millions of job but I'm sure they have a

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Speaker 1: million or more, you know, in assets. You know, most

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Speaker 1: of the time that that he's around, they're doing very well. Right,

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Speaker 1: And because his dad's the founder of a software firm,

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Speaker 1: his dad's a huge nerd, clearly a very smart guy.

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Speaker 1: And so from a very early age there are computers

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Speaker 1: in the Schwartz house and eventually Aaron and all of

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Speaker 1: his brothers he has two younger brothers, will have computers

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Speaker 1: as kids in the early I mean in the late eighties,

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Speaker 1: early nineties.

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Speaker 2: That's very rare, right, I grew up My dad was

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Speaker 2: a very early adopter.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.

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Speaker 2: So we had computers in the eighties, and like they were,

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Speaker 2: they cost like all of my dad's money, you know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I was born late enough in the eighties.

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Speaker 1: We certainly if we had a computer in the late ages,

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Speaker 1: I don't think we did, but in the early nineties

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Speaker 1: we had like we had one of the ones that

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Speaker 1: like was pre floppy discs, whatever those giant ones were,

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Speaker 1: and like, you know, all it has you just get

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Speaker 1: green text on a little screen. Like we had one

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Speaker 1: of those for a while.

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Speaker 2: I would say it's probably pre hard to sorry, never mind,

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Speaker 2: I don't need to my Yeah, we had all the

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Speaker 2: Like my dad referred to it as a compact luggable.

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Speaker 2: It's the size of a briefcase and it has a

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Speaker 2: little green screen.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: It does have a hard drive. It has that. It

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Speaker 2: has an A in a B drive, but not a

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Speaker 2: C drive, you know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, ancient technology. Yeah, like not only does your phone

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Speaker 1: have more computing power than I don't know may have

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Speaker 1: existed in the country at that point. I don't fully

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Speaker 1: know the answer to that, but like like fucking your

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Speaker 1: refrigerators have more power than.

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Speaker 2: Those machines did, right, Yeah, but I learned Q basic

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Speaker 2: on it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So Aaron, by the time he's like three's he's

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Speaker 1: using a computer, you know. And and by the time

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Speaker 1: he's three or four, you know, he's he's starting to

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Speaker 1: like understand how to actually like make stuff on it,

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Speaker 1: Like from a very young age six or seven, when

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Speaker 1: their home is wired for internet access. Again, you're talking

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Speaker 1: like ninety two. They're among the very first people to

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Speaker 1: have home internet access. That is extremely uncommon in the

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Speaker 1: early nineties. If you followed our stories of tech billionaires

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Speaker 1: guys like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, or you've done

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Speaker 1: your own reading on Steve Jobs. We haven't covered yet.

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Speaker 1: We will one of these days. I definitely do consider

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Speaker 1: him a bastard, although I have kind of more admiration

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Speaker 1: for him as a in terms of just his capabilities

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Speaker 1: than those other guys. He is a terrible person, don't

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Speaker 1: get me wrong, right, but.

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Speaker 2: In a world of mosques, he stands out like he

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Speaker 2: did some stuff, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. If you are familiar with those guys, you'll recognize

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Speaker 1: that Aaron has a pretty similar upbringing. They all do

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Speaker 1: come from that kind of background. They're kind of upper

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Speaker 1: middle class, but they're not super rich, right, But they

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Speaker 1: are a lot have a lot more money than most people.

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Speaker 1: They have parents who, if their parents are not tech

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Speaker 1: nerds themselves, understand the value of computers and get their

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Speaker 1: kids access to those at a very early age. Right.

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Speaker 1: All of these things, he has the same background as

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Speaker 1: most of our big tech founders do today. Right, broadly speaking,

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Speaker 1: you know, he's gonna wind up being a very different person,

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Speaker 1: but he does come from kind of the same starting position.

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Speaker 1: One of the real differences with him. All of these

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Speaker 1: guys get kind of framed as and I think probably

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Speaker 1: believe of themselves as child geniuses. None of them were.

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Speaker 1: They're all smart, don't get me wrong. Jeff Bezos, smart guy,

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Speaker 1: Bill Gates, smart guy, Steve Jobs, smart guy. None of

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Speaker 1: them are are geniuses, right, Steve Wozniak, I think, you know,

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Speaker 1: very fair to call that man a technical genius, like

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Speaker 1: one once in a generation brain. None of these guys

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Speaker 1: are technical geniuses. They're pretty smart. They're pretty smart, and

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Speaker 1: they have enough insight to understand where things are going

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Speaker 1: to go to take advantage of people who are geniuses.

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Speaker 1: Aaron is a legitimate child genius. There is there is

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Speaker 1: no argument with that statement that I have ever seen.

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Speaker 1: He is, like, for an idea of how intelligent he

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Speaker 1: he is, he teaches himself to read and his parents

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Speaker 1: don't realize has done it. His mom realizes it when

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Speaker 1: they have a sign on the fridge that's like cliped

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Speaker 1: out of the newspaper that's like there's you know, a

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Speaker 1: free family entertainment you know thing nearby, and he he

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Speaker 1: asked his mom, hey, mom, what is and he like

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Speaker 1: reads the thing out and she's like, what are you

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Speaker 1: talking about? And he points the fridge and she realizes

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Speaker 1: that he's reading it. At age three, she has no

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Speaker 1: idea that he's he's learned her This is how she

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Speaker 1: learns that he knows how to read. Yes, he's reading

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Speaker 1: novels by the time he's in kindergarten, and likewise, around

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Speaker 1: the same time he teaches himself to read. A little

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Speaker 1: bit later, he teaches himself to code. You know, just

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Speaker 1: a phenomenal mind by again, have never heard any sort

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Speaker 1: of debate on this question. Yeah, so obviously with the

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Speaker 1: resources they have. Realizing how fucking smart their kid is,

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Speaker 1: his parents decide to send him to a private school

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Speaker 1: for gifted children, which he attends through middle school. He

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Speaker 1: teaches himself to program pretty early on. His first project

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Speaker 1: is a Sudoku like puzzle game. At one point, just

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Speaker 1: as like a thing for fun, he builds and programs

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Speaker 1: an ATM machine like out of cardboard, and like, I

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Speaker 1: don't know what he uses for the computer but he

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Speaker 1: gets access to some computer bits he like makes an

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Speaker 1: ATM machine.

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Speaker 2: Hell yeah.

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Speaker 1: And he realized early on that with code, he can

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Speaker 1: make things that not only do adults not understand, but

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Speaker 1: like seem like magic to most of the adults around

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Speaker 1: not his dad. His dad knows how to code, obviously,

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Speaker 1: but to most adults. And a side consequence of this

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Speaker 1: is that from his early days, you know he's not

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Speaker 1: I'm sure you and I, like, I was a precocious kid.

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Speaker 1: I started reading by the time I wasn't first grade.

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Speaker 1: I was reading novels. You know, I was reading adult

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Speaker 1: novels when I was in third grade. I read faster

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Speaker 1: and got onto that stuff faster than most people. But

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Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing. All of the adults around

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Speaker 1: me my family are big readers. I saw them reading

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Speaker 1: big books and bigger books than me. So like I

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Speaker 1: was doing a thing, I'm like, oh, I'm doing a

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Speaker 1: thing that's kind of like the adults, but they are

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Speaker 1: still doing that thing, and they're doing it better. Aaron

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Speaker 1: is doing a thing adults can't comprehend. Most adults can't

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Speaker 1: comprehend coding, especially not on a level he is at.

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Speaker 1: And you know that gives him a healthy respect for

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Speaker 1: his own intellect, and sometimes it gives him kind of

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Speaker 1: an unhealthy respect for his own end. And his younger

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Speaker 1: brother has said, like he was kind of a brat, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was smarter than most people. He knew he was

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Speaker 1: smarter than most of the adults around, and he could

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Speaker 1: be a snotty rat about it, right, Like, that's pretty

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Speaker 1: inevitable when you've got a kid who's this smart, they're

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Speaker 1: going to go through that. It seems to have been

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Speaker 1: a phase for him. This is not, like, I don't

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Speaker 1: think a lifelong thing for him. Most people say he

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Speaker 1: was a very down to earth guy most of his life,

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Speaker 1: but he has his brat period. I think that's kind

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Speaker 1: of inevitable when you're this smart. His parents were part

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Speaker 1: of a reform synagogue, but when he was pretty young,

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Speaker 1: their dad moved them to a HBBAD synagogue, which is

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Speaker 1: a kind of Orthodox synagogue. Fairly early on, but they're

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Speaker 1: not you know, Aaron doesn't find himself compelled by organized religion,

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Speaker 1: and when he's pretty young he tells his parents I

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Speaker 1: don't believe in God, and they let him drop out. Right.

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Speaker 1: They don't seem to have fought him on this right,

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Speaker 1: not longer. Not long after that, when after he finishes

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Speaker 1: the eighth grade, he's like, hey, I don't want to

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Speaker 1: keep going to high school. I want to drop out.

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Speaker 1: So he drops out of the ninth grade, and his

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Speaker 1: dad lets him do this because he's like, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: actually I hated high school too. I got bullied. Aaron

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Speaker 1: gets bullied. He's he's mostly thin, but he's kind of

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Speaker 1: like pudgy around the middle. He has some body image issues,

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Speaker 1: and he's like, he's too smart. Any kid who's that smart,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of get bullied. Right. He's a little bitty

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Speaker 1: and he's weird. He's going to get bullied, you know.

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Speaker 1: It's also inevitable. And he's like, I don't want to

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Speaker 1: keep going to high school. I don't think I need this.

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Speaker 1: So his dad he gets to drop out and he

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Speaker 1: starts taking college courses at a nearby college. And Aaron

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Speaker 1: is as good as his word. He is the kind

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Speaker 1: of autodidact who has a he's got a wide ranging

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Speaker 1: series of interests, and he's good at teaching himself things,

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Speaker 1: and unlike a lot of tech wunderkins, he's not just

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Speaker 1: obsessed with code. That's kind of his first love. But

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Speaker 1: it's honestly, it's right up there with books. He would

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Speaker 1: he would read kind of as a young adult, upwards

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Speaker 1: of one hundred books a year, and he very quickly

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Speaker 1: gets interested in novels by guys like George Saunders, David

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Speaker 1: Foster Wallace. These are kind of like some of his

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Speaker 1: favorites where he comes up short. He's good at teaching

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Speaker 1: himself anything he's interested in. One of the problems he's

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Speaker 1: going to have that's kind of a lifelong thing for him,

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Speaker 1: is he can't focus on anything that's not really his

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Speaker 1: top obsession at the moment. Right. He doesn't have generally

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Speaker 1: to kind of long term stay interested in a specific thing.

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Speaker 1: He doesn't have a lot of discipline, right, And that

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Speaker 1: lack of discipline is kind of married with a basic

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Speaker 1: lack of social skills. That again, very much what you'd

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Speaker 1: expect from a kid whose parents let him drop out

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Speaker 1: of school to raise himself on the internet. One of

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Speaker 1: his childhood friends told an interviewer he needed a couple

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Speaker 1: of years to be stuffed in a locker to get

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Speaker 1: his social stuff together. And I think his friends being

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Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, a facetious there, but I

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Speaker 1: think the point is that it's not that being bullied

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Speaker 1: is good, but the friction. Experiencing friction and having to

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Speaker 1: work through it with your peers is good. That is necessary. Right,

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Speaker 1: You don't need to get beaten the shit out of you,

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Speaker 1: but you do need friction. You need to You need

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Speaker 1: to be in situations where like, well I don't like

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Speaker 1: the people here, but we have to accomplish a thing together.

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Speaker 1: That's necessary. You know, I'm optimal health.

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Speaker 2: I think I'm very glad I went to public school.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, same here, you know.

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Speaker 2: Like even though yeah, like middle school was a hell

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Speaker 2: nightmare that I mostly disassociated the entire time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I didn't like. But I think it's broadly speaking,

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Speaker 1: there's there's things you get out of that that are necessary,

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Speaker 1: and Aaron's not going to get some of that stuff.

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Speaker 1: This is something that his family's kind of remarked on sense,

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Speaker 1: So I'm not like, I'm not making this judgment on them.

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Speaker 1: This is like based on stuff as family members of sex.

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Speaker 2: Right, he did not have.

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Speaker 1: You know, he has a voracious appetite for knowledge when

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Speaker 1: he doesn't have as an appetite for like actual food. Right,

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Speaker 1: he is a famously picky eater. He preferred white and

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Speaker 1: I think yellow foods and kind of he hated He's

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Speaker 1: the opposite of Steve Jobs. He hated fruit. He like

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Speaker 1: wouldn't eat fruit basically, and he pretty much didn't eat

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Speaker 1: vegetables other than fried potatoes because basically one hundred percent

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Speaker 1: of people will eat fried potatoes, right, Yeah, no, there's

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Speaker 1: no Yeah, yeah, I don't know that I've ever met

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Speaker 1: anyone who won't eat French fries. Yea, so for health

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Speaker 1: reasons obviously, but like, I don't know any all the

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Speaker 1: picky eaters. I note, like fries tend to be a

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Speaker 1: thing there. I don't know. I'm sure there are people

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Speaker 1: who don't, but that is like weird how many people

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Speaker 1: are like, yeah, but I'll eat fries.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Like fried carbohydrates are tasty and were most people

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Speaker 2: are hardwired to understand that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's the like you the I don't know,

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Speaker 1: this is a tangent, but like when when Europeans realized

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Speaker 1: there were potatoes and what you could do with them,

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Speaker 1: there was the sudden like, oh my god, this is

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Speaker 1: what we've been saying. This is the real gold of

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Speaker 1: El Dorado is fucking potatoes.

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Speaker 2: Totally. Yeah, it's hard it's still hard to imagine Europe

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Speaker 2: without corn, tomatoes or potatoes.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like it's it is, it is, Yeah, turnips and

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Speaker 1: I don't know, drinking yourself into an early grave. So

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Speaker 1: Aarin obviously he benefits from having a dad who's technically inclined.

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Speaker 1: The two talked regularly about what the Internet was likely

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Speaker 1: to mean for the future. His dad later said, we

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Speaker 1: were going online when the web was really in its infancy,

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Speaker 1: before there were graphical browsers, and very quickly we both

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Speaker 1: realized that this was something that was going to change everything.

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Speaker 1: A number of people came to that realization, and many

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Speaker 1: of them went on to monetize the Internet in ways

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Speaker 1: that have contributed to a great deal of harm. Aaron's

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Speaker 1: interests from the beginning had a lot less to do

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Speaker 1: with money and a lot to do with the sharing

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Speaker 1: of information. In nineteen ninety nine, at age twelve, he

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Speaker 1: created the Info Network, a user generated encyclopedia. Wikipedia didn't

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Speaker 1: launch until two years later, a fact that always seemed

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Speaker 1: to so again when he's twelve, he creates Wikipedia right like,

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Speaker 1: with the same basic idea. It doesn't take off Wikipedia does,

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Speaker 1: and that fact kind of you get the feeling it

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Speaker 1: kind of peeves him a little bit, he would later

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Speaker 1: tell an interviewer. It was basically Wikipedia, except long before

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Speaker 1: Wikipedia had launched. But I was in middle school at

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Speaker 1: the time, so my site didn't make it into the

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Speaker 1: New York Times. And that's kind of and he's probably right, right, yeah, Now,

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Speaker 1: totally Wipedia got the early you know interest And that's why.

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Speaker 2: I says something that was in the air I guess,

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Speaker 2: you know, yeah, which is.

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Speaker 1: Nothing against the wikipedi. I don't. I'm not saying the

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Speaker 1: Wikipedia people ripped Erin's ripped off a twelve year old,

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Speaker 1: but it shows you. It shows you not just how

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Speaker 1: smart he is, but like where his mind is going

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Speaker 1: in terms of what people can get out of the

376
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Speaker 1: Internet and should get out of the Internet. Right, And

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Speaker 1: you know, Wikipedia, not that there aren't some critiques of it,

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Speaker 1: but like one of the very best things the Internet's

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Speaker 1: ever produced, one of the most important and useful things

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Speaker 1: the Internet's ever.

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Speaker 2: Made, and one of the only artifacts from this time,

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Speaker 2: the time when the Internet was going to make us

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Speaker 2: more free instead of less free.

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Speaker 1: Yes, and one of the only ones that has not,

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Speaker 1: I don't think in any meaningful sense, because like Google

386
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Speaker 1: is was at one point, a pretty wonderful tool and

387
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Speaker 1: has been deeply corrupted and polluted. I don't feel like

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Speaker 1: Wikipedia has I'm very pro Wikipedia. Again, there's issues with it,

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Speaker 1: you know, that's a separate topic, but pretty wonderful contribution.

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Speaker 1: So anyway, you know, the fact this errands Wikipedia does

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Speaker 1: not take off, but it does earn him a significant

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Speaker 1: degree of early recognition. He became a finalist for the

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Speaker 1: rs Digital Prize, which recognized young people who built valuable

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Speaker 1: non commercial websites. He wins a thousand bucks for this,

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Speaker 1: and he wins a trip to MIT, where for the

396
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Speaker 1: first time he meets some of the genius coders and

397
00:19:03,240 --> 00:19:06,920
Speaker 1: engineers he admired in person. Now, Aaron had already started

398
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Speaker 1: communicating online with some of the luminaries in his field,

399
00:19:09,960 --> 00:19:13,480
Speaker 1: but meeting guys like Philip Greenspun, who developed one of

400
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Speaker 1: the very first photo sharing sites and is kind of

401
00:19:15,760 --> 00:19:18,320
Speaker 1: he's a pioneer in the concept of how digital communities

402
00:19:18,320 --> 00:19:20,840
Speaker 1: are going to work. He's he's a guy who is thinking,

403
00:19:20,960 --> 00:19:23,520
Speaker 1: lays a lot of the groundwork for what becomes social media.

404
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Speaker 1: You know, Aaron has his first conversations with this guy

405
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Speaker 1: about the open source movement, which is popular among the

406
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Speaker 1: nerds who are still the center of gravity in online technology,

407
00:19:34,480 --> 00:19:38,120
Speaker 1: and he becomes entranced. He decides he wants to join

408
00:19:38,320 --> 00:19:42,400
Speaker 1: the World Wide Web Consortium today it's the main international

409
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Speaker 1: standards organization for the Internet, and he has turned down

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Speaker 1: for joining because he's thirteen years old, Right, you know,

411
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Speaker 1: they're like, well, we don't we don't let you know,

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Speaker 1: this is like, yeah, we don't let their dan the

413
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Speaker 1: yarrel's in. I don't think they're trying to be shitty,

414
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Speaker 1: they're just yeah, it's a sensible rule for a kid

415
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Speaker 1: who's not Aaron. Aaron refuses to take no for an answer,

416
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Speaker 1: and I'm going to quote from a write up in

417
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Speaker 1: The New Yorker here. Undaunted, he read through the rules

418
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Speaker 1: of the Consortium and found that every member was allowed

419
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Speaker 1: to send a delegate. He looked through the lists to

420
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Speaker 1: find somebody who hadn't sent a delegate, and he found one,

421
00:20:13,800 --> 00:20:16,920
Speaker 1: the HTML Writer's Guild. He emailed the group and asked

422
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Speaker 1: if he could participate in a W three C work

423
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Speaker 1: group as its delegate, and it had no objection. So

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Speaker 1: he kind of finds a sideways way in. Right, he

425
00:20:25,160 --> 00:20:27,040
Speaker 1: hears there's a rule against this. He finds a way

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Speaker 1: around it. You know, this is going to be a

427
00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:32,280
Speaker 1: pattern in his life. This willingness, first off, an unwillingness

428
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Speaker 1: to take no for an answer he doesn't think there's

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Speaker 1: a good reason for it, and second an unwillingness to

430
00:20:38,359 --> 00:20:40,640
Speaker 1: listen to rules that he thinks are stupid. Right, that's

431
00:20:40,720 --> 00:20:44,240
Speaker 1: going to characterize a lot of his future. Another thing

432
00:20:44,320 --> 00:20:46,439
Speaker 1: that's going to characterize his life from this point forward

433
00:20:46,560 --> 00:20:49,680
Speaker 1: is an understanding that unpleasant aspects of life, specifically the

434
00:20:49,760 --> 00:20:52,159
Speaker 1: bureaucracies that we all have to engage in to some

435
00:20:52,320 --> 00:20:56,000
Speaker 1: extent to survive, can be avoided. Right, And this is

436
00:20:56,040 --> 00:20:58,399
Speaker 1: the thing that has positive and negative outcomes for him. Right.

437
00:20:58,520 --> 00:21:01,159
Speaker 1: His dad's going to later trace the attitude back to

438
00:21:01,240 --> 00:21:03,440
Speaker 1: his upbringing and the decision he made to let Aaron

439
00:21:03,520 --> 00:21:06,720
Speaker 1: drop out of school. Quote, this is his father. He

440
00:21:06,800 --> 00:21:08,840
Speaker 1: also never learned to do anything that he didn't want

441
00:21:08,880 --> 00:21:11,080
Speaker 1: to do. College is very important that you're forced to

442
00:21:11,119 --> 00:21:13,200
Speaker 1: study stuff you're not interested in. But he hated the

443
00:21:13,200 --> 00:21:15,960
Speaker 1: bureaucracy of it, the dumb rules, the pointless assignments. He

444
00:21:16,080 --> 00:21:18,640
Speaker 1: just rejected that. It was like getting him to eat vegetables.

445
00:21:19,760 --> 00:21:24,480
Speaker 2: I wonder how much this is like father self blaming,

446
00:21:24,960 --> 00:21:27,840
Speaker 2: not to spoil anyone who has that. I only know

447
00:21:27,920 --> 00:21:30,200
Speaker 2: the like Cliff Snows. Yeah, of this man's story, I

448
00:21:30,680 --> 00:21:32,680
Speaker 2: think it makes it based on his life.

449
00:21:32,960 --> 00:21:36,040
Speaker 1: I think he's probably kind of accurately describing his son. Right.

450
00:21:36,119 --> 00:21:36,320
Speaker 2: Yeah.

451
00:21:36,320 --> 00:21:38,960
Speaker 1: This isn't a big track because Aaron accomplishes, spoiler a

452
00:21:39,080 --> 00:21:42,480
Speaker 1: lot of shit in the time that he's around. But

453
00:21:42,560 --> 00:21:44,359
Speaker 1: I think this is fair. He does not. He is

454
00:21:44,440 --> 00:21:47,080
Speaker 1: someone who's who's rarely going to stick with a project

455
00:21:47,119 --> 00:21:49,159
Speaker 1: for very long. And I think it is because and

456
00:21:49,240 --> 00:21:51,800
Speaker 1: he's also someone who he kind of freezes up when

457
00:21:51,800 --> 00:21:53,080
Speaker 1: he is sort of confronted with a lot of the

458
00:21:53,160 --> 00:21:56,520
Speaker 1: realities bureaucracy because he just doesn't have to. He's most

459
00:21:56,560 --> 00:21:58,680
Speaker 1: of his life able to get away from it, right. Yeah,

460
00:21:59,000 --> 00:22:03,879
Speaker 1: And again there's a lot of value in understanding. I

461
00:22:04,000 --> 00:22:05,840
Speaker 1: run into this with some of my friends who kind

462
00:22:05,840 --> 00:22:07,679
Speaker 1: of were more on the anarchist punk side of thing.

463
00:22:07,760 --> 00:22:09,720
Speaker 1: When when you have to deal with the legal system

464
00:22:09,840 --> 00:22:11,720
Speaker 1: and stuff, because I've had a lot more dealings with

465
00:22:11,800 --> 00:22:14,440
Speaker 1: it where it's like there's just ways that you have

466
00:22:14,600 --> 00:22:16,200
Speaker 1: to approach it to deal with it. It's the same

467
00:22:16,240 --> 00:22:19,119
Speaker 1: thing with talking to when when my close friends or

468
00:22:19,200 --> 00:22:22,800
Speaker 1: whatever have an issue with like a company they need

469
00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:25,000
Speaker 1: to get like a refund or something. I know how

470
00:22:25,080 --> 00:22:28,280
Speaker 1: to talk to representatives and shit to make things happen, right,

471
00:22:28,359 --> 00:22:30,080
Speaker 1: I just I have learned that shit over the years.

472
00:22:30,119 --> 00:22:30,600
Speaker 1: It's a skill.

473
00:22:30,600 --> 00:22:32,800
Speaker 2: Well, it's like when cops are messing with you and

474
00:22:32,920 --> 00:22:35,159
Speaker 2: you have to like you have to shut the fuck up,

475
00:22:35,280 --> 00:22:37,040
Speaker 2: but you have to do it politely and respectfully.

476
00:22:37,720 --> 00:22:37,920
Speaker 1: Yeah.

477
00:22:38,280 --> 00:22:42,159
Speaker 2: You know, like there are ways to navigate every system

478
00:22:42,240 --> 00:22:45,080
Speaker 2: of power, and often the smartest thing to do is

479
00:22:45,160 --> 00:22:48,080
Speaker 2: to navigate it rather than just fight every aspect of

480
00:22:48,160 --> 00:22:48,840
Speaker 2: it every turn.

481
00:22:49,440 --> 00:22:51,680
Speaker 1: Yeah. There's this moment during early on in the protests

482
00:22:51,680 --> 00:22:53,920
Speaker 1: in Portland where you know, we were filming some people

483
00:22:53,960 --> 00:22:56,720
Speaker 1: getting arrested and the police said that they were going

484
00:22:56,760 --> 00:22:59,000
Speaker 1: to arrest me and my media partner. There were a

485
00:22:59,040 --> 00:23:01,320
Speaker 1: couple of protesters behind us and they're like, you're all

486
00:23:01,680 --> 00:23:04,400
Speaker 1: under arrest and I was like, what are we under

487
00:23:04,440 --> 00:23:06,440
Speaker 1: arrest for? And he said for curfew violation because the

488
00:23:06,480 --> 00:23:08,200
Speaker 1: mayor had put it a curfew, and so I was like, well,

489
00:23:08,600 --> 00:23:12,680
Speaker 1: the mayor's curfew exempts media. We're you know, press with

490
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:15,880
Speaker 1: badges and stuff on, and you know there's other people

491
00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:17,399
Speaker 1: who's trying to argue with the cops, and I just

492
00:23:17,560 --> 00:23:19,159
Speaker 1: you know, yelling at them, and I just kind of

493
00:23:19,240 --> 00:23:21,560
Speaker 1: keep engaging him in conversation. He's like, I don't care,

494
00:23:21,560 --> 00:23:23,040
Speaker 1: I'm go to arrest you. And finally what I say

495
00:23:23,119 --> 00:23:25,560
Speaker 1: is like the mayor has said that we're exempt. Are

496
00:23:25,600 --> 00:23:28,359
Speaker 1: you countermanding the mayor's orders? And he's a switch flipped

497
00:23:28,359 --> 00:23:30,600
Speaker 1: in his head. Yeah, And not only did my partner

498
00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:32,520
Speaker 1: and I not get arrested, but like the protesters behind

499
00:23:32,600 --> 00:23:36,000
Speaker 1: us did not because it was just like, yeah, you

500
00:23:36,119 --> 00:23:38,520
Speaker 1: had to you have to. Like, it's just this understanding

501
00:23:38,640 --> 00:23:41,320
Speaker 1: of how bureaucracy and the people who make up bureaucracy

502
00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:42,119
Speaker 1: like function.

503
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:42,560
Speaker 2: Right, totally.

504
00:23:42,680 --> 00:23:46,080
Speaker 1: Aaron's not going to have a lot of that understanding, right,

505
00:23:47,160 --> 00:23:48,879
Speaker 1: he builds he does build a lot more of it

506
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:50,960
Speaker 1: later in his life, but it's he starts out with

507
00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:53,199
Speaker 1: less of it than I think even a normal person does,

508
00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:55,720
Speaker 1: because he's just he's smart enough to get around it

509
00:23:55,800 --> 00:23:56,320
Speaker 1: for so long.

510
00:23:56,400 --> 00:23:59,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's also engaging in the adult world because

511
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:02,639
Speaker 2: a lot of his intelligence levels are at adult levels.

512
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:05,560
Speaker 2: But maybe his like social and other understandings are.

513
00:24:05,680 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: Exactly yes, and the adults around him are all and

514
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:11,560
Speaker 1: Cory Doctro, who's a friend of his from a very

515
00:24:11,600 --> 00:24:14,120
Speaker 1: young age. We'll talk about this because Erin is small,

516
00:24:14,160 --> 00:24:15,920
Speaker 1: and as we'll talk about, he's kind of sickly. The

517
00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:18,400
Speaker 1: adults around him that he's quickly living in the world

518
00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:20,719
Speaker 1: with are very protective of him, and I do think

519
00:24:20,760 --> 00:24:22,280
Speaker 1: they're able to kind of shield him from a lot

520
00:24:22,320 --> 00:24:24,639
Speaker 1: of these sort of realities of dealing with the system,

521
00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:27,680
Speaker 1: you know, so he doesn't build up some of those

522
00:24:27,720 --> 00:24:30,520
Speaker 1: skills as early as he maybe otherwise would have. Yeah,

523
00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:34,399
Speaker 1: so you know, a lot of positive stuff happening for

524
00:24:34,480 --> 00:24:37,000
Speaker 1: him in his early adolescence. A less positive thing that

525
00:24:37,080 --> 00:24:39,639
Speaker 1: happens during this time is that when he's twelve, so

526
00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 1: kind of the same year he makes his Wikipedia thing,

527
00:24:42,760 --> 00:24:46,840
Speaker 1: he's diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. This may help to exchange

528
00:24:47,160 --> 00:24:50,320
Speaker 1: to explain some of his pickiness as an eater. Obviously,

529
00:24:50,400 --> 00:24:53,919
Speaker 1: it's never a pleasant condition to deal with. Aaron seems

530
00:24:53,960 --> 00:24:58,119
Speaker 1: to have particularly struggled. He would often lose days or

531
00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:01,239
Speaker 1: entire weeks to abdominal pain intense it would leave him

532
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:03,879
Speaker 1: curled up on the floor. So he's always got this

533
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:05,879
Speaker 1: regular thing in his life where like sometimes he just

534
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:08,600
Speaker 1: won't be able to work because he's got he's in

535
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:12,080
Speaker 1: so much pain. You know, this is a regular thing

536
00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:15,600
Speaker 1: he struggles with. That said, when he's able to work,

537
00:25:15,760 --> 00:25:18,640
Speaker 1: he's so much smarter than most people that he still

538
00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:21,600
Speaker 1: accomplishes much more than people who are not dealing with

539
00:25:21,680 --> 00:25:24,560
Speaker 1: this kind of physical stuff, right well accomplish. In August

540
00:25:24,640 --> 00:25:28,040
Speaker 1: of two thousand, Aaron finds himself on an email discussion

541
00:25:28,119 --> 00:25:30,680
Speaker 1: thread for a group of programmers who are designing something

542
00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:35,200
Speaker 1: called RSSI, which stands for Real Simple Syndication. It is

543
00:25:35,240 --> 00:25:38,360
Speaker 1: a web feed that lets users build their own news aggregators,

544
00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:41,000
Speaker 1: like pushing content from various sites into a single feed.

545
00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:45,840
Speaker 1: And it's also it's one of the backroun like foundational

546
00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:49,199
Speaker 1: technologies of the Internet. Every website you go to basically

547
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:53,399
Speaker 1: uses RSS to push, you know, and collect and stuff

548
00:25:53,440 --> 00:25:56,080
Speaker 1: the things that they're publishing on a regular basis. You know,

549
00:25:56,560 --> 00:26:00,639
Speaker 1: this is one of the most significant develop lipments in

550
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:04,800
Speaker 1: the early Internet, right if you're thinking about like the

551
00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 1: invention of like electricity, it's almost like a power transformer,

552
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:09,879
Speaker 1: I think might be a good way to describe it.

553
00:26:09,960 --> 00:26:15,200
Speaker 1: It is absolutely foundational to how the Internet is used. Yeah, yeah,

554
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:18,320
Speaker 1: so Aaron is going to be, and there's a whole

555
00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:21,000
Speaker 1: team of people. All of the others of him are

556
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:22,920
Speaker 1: adults who are working on this, but he's going to

557
00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:25,440
Speaker 1: be one of them, right, So he gets into this group,

558
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:28,560
Speaker 1: and again it's just kind of the nerds that find

559
00:26:28,640 --> 00:26:32,399
Speaker 1: themselves are working on this. They're all handling different parts

560
00:26:32,520 --> 00:26:36,480
Speaker 1: of the project. And Aaron quickly becomes involved. And I

561
00:26:36,520 --> 00:26:39,480
Speaker 1: think everyone who was there agrees he contributed. It's not

562
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:41,359
Speaker 1: like he did not invent RSS, right, A lot of

563
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:46,080
Speaker 1: people did, but his contributions were substantial to this thing

564
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:50,160
Speaker 1: that is a fundamental undergirding of how the Internet functions today.

565
00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:50,520
Speaker 2: Right.

566
00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:53,720
Speaker 1: And while this is happening, while he's working on this project,

567
00:26:53,920 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 1: aspects of an ideology start to take shape in him

568
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:00,320
Speaker 1: based on his interactions with these other people who are

569
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:03,240
Speaker 1: both coders and also hackers, right, because at this period

570
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:04,800
Speaker 1: in the Internet, they're pretty much the same thing.

571
00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:05,040
Speaker 2: Right.

572
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:07,600
Speaker 1: All the people who are building these are also hackers,

573
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:10,160
Speaker 1: you know. And I'm going to quote from an article

574
00:27:10,200 --> 00:27:13,719
Speaker 1: in the New Republic. This ethos carried its own ideology,

575
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:17,160
Speaker 1: the ideology of free flowing information, or open access, as

576
00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:20,160
Speaker 1: it became known. A self taught computer savant rarely felt

577
00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:21,840
Speaker 1: more helpless than when he was cut off from the

578
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:24,800
Speaker 1: websites and books he used to navigate the world. Without them,

579
00:27:24,840 --> 00:27:27,359
Speaker 1: he couldn't learn what he needed to earn a living,

580
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:31,120
Speaker 1: much less invent some disruptive technology. I'd skipped college, says

581
00:27:31,200 --> 00:27:34,680
Speaker 1: Kevin Burton, who first met Schwartz through the RSS group.

582
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:37,639
Speaker 1: The fact that I couldn't access materials available to college

583
00:27:37,640 --> 00:27:40,159
Speaker 1: students was why open access was always important to me.

584
00:27:41,040 --> 00:27:43,159
Speaker 1: So Aaron is an not a what did act? So

585
00:27:43,200 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: are a lot of these guys, and he goes from

586
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:47,159
Speaker 1: just kind of like this is just how it I

587
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:50,199
Speaker 1: am and how I learned to thinking about this more

588
00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:52,720
Speaker 1: long ideological lines. Right, this is not just a thing

589
00:27:52,800 --> 00:27:54,679
Speaker 1: for me, but this is a thing for other people. Right.

590
00:27:54,760 --> 00:27:58,119
Speaker 1: This is fundamental to allowing human beings to progress. Is

591
00:27:58,200 --> 00:28:00,879
Speaker 1: making sure that information is accessible. I know, yeah, as

592
00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:05,119
Speaker 1: much as possible. If you go through enough recollections of

593
00:28:05,240 --> 00:28:07,800
Speaker 1: Erin during this period, people who were in this working

594
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: group with him will note that he was again, he

595
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:11,720
Speaker 1: could be a little bit of a brat, right. His

596
00:28:11,880 --> 00:28:14,000
Speaker 1: questions are always good, but he could be kind of haughty.

597
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:15,920
Speaker 1: He could be kind of aggressive sometimes, and how he

598
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:18,440
Speaker 1: asked them, you know, he has a lot of this attitude.

599
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:20,120
Speaker 1: He doesn't understand where you're doing something. He's like, why

600
00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:21,560
Speaker 1: are we doing this? Does this doesn't seem like the

601
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:24,119
Speaker 1: best thing to do? What about doing this? This is

602
00:28:24,160 --> 00:28:26,440
Speaker 1: coming from a mix of genuine curiosity and he's he's

603
00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:28,280
Speaker 1: he could be a little bit of snotty, right like

604
00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:31,680
Speaker 1: he's he's a kid, you know, yeah, yeah, And he

605
00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:33,879
Speaker 1: also he also this is you know, not entirely a

606
00:28:33,920 --> 00:28:36,440
Speaker 1: negative thing. He fundamentally he doesn't have kind of a

607
00:28:36,480 --> 00:28:40,800
Speaker 1: baseline level of respect based on people having greater experience, right,

608
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:43,160
Speaker 1: because he doesn't have this assumption that that means they

609
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:45,360
Speaker 1: know more than him, and often they don't, you know,

610
00:28:45,560 --> 00:28:50,000
Speaker 1: right anyway, you know who does know more than all

611
00:28:50,120 --> 00:28:50,440
Speaker 1: of us?

612
00:28:52,280 --> 00:28:55,320
Speaker 2: The concept of potatoes the.

613
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:58,360
Speaker 1: Potato, I mean, yes, the potatoes are are wise indeed,

614
00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:01,920
Speaker 1: but the sponsors of this pod cast no more than anything.

615
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:04,440
Speaker 1: So listen to them and do whatever they tell you.

616
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:08,240
Speaker 2: Let them sprout in your mind like a potato in

617
00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:09,240
Speaker 2: a dark drawer.

618
00:29:09,680 --> 00:29:19,520
Speaker 1: Or very true or literally don't and we're back. So

619
00:29:19,880 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: you know again, Aaron still a kid, And obviously while

620
00:29:22,920 --> 00:29:24,720
Speaker 1: he could be kind of a little maybe a little

621
00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 1: embrace of sometimes that doesn't turn anyone off from working

622
00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: with him, and in fact, his collaborators who know him

623
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:32,440
Speaker 1: only from his kind of not quite an honest but

624
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: they don't know who he is, right, responses are are

625
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:40,080
Speaker 1: only put out because they do in person meetings regularly

626
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:42,320
Speaker 1: for members of this group, and he doesn't make any

627
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 1: of the in person meetings. And yeah, and so I'm

628
00:29:47,280 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 1: asking like, hey, man, like why don't you ever show

629
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 1: up whenever we meet in person? He's like, well, i'd

630
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:54,280
Speaker 1: have to ask my parents because I'm fourteen. And then

631
00:29:54,320 --> 00:29:57,400
Speaker 1: they're like, oh shit. I had a version that happened

632
00:29:57,400 --> 00:29:59,760
Speaker 1: with Garrison when we started like working with them, right,

633
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:02,800
Speaker 1: like one of our mutual friends, like we had been

634
00:30:02,840 --> 00:30:05,560
Speaker 1: hanging out with them, you know, after a horrible riot

635
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:08,080
Speaker 1: where all nearly got arrested, and like the next day,

636
00:30:08,680 --> 00:30:10,040
Speaker 1: our friend texts me and is like, do you know

637
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 1: that they're seventeen? I was like no, in fact I

638
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:13,240
Speaker 1: did not.

639
00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:18,280
Speaker 2: Oh shit, that's how you learned. Yeah, yeah, I used

640
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:20,280
Speaker 2: to hitchhike with my friend who had a note from

641
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:22,960
Speaker 2: their from her parents being like, yes, I know what

642
00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:24,840
Speaker 2: my daughter is doing. It's fine.

643
00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:27,640
Speaker 1: At this point, you know, they start he starts being

644
00:30:27,680 --> 00:30:29,840
Speaker 1: able to show up in person more often. These people,

645
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:32,360
Speaker 1: I think Corey doctro is on this list recognize like

646
00:30:32,440 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: real life and they're all blown away by like how

647
00:30:34,120 --> 00:30:37,160
Speaker 1: smart this kid, how young? And again they have this

648
00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:39,720
Speaker 1: kind of it's this mix of this feeling like we

649
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:43,720
Speaker 1: need to protect this kid and also this kid is

650
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:47,120
Speaker 1: the fucking future, right yeah, and so he is kind

651
00:30:47,120 --> 00:30:50,480
Speaker 1: of immediately ushered in and adopted almost by some of

652
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:54,680
Speaker 1: the most luminous names in technology, right he. But he

653
00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 1: meets and becomes to some extent a little bit of

654
00:30:56,840 --> 00:31:00,440
Speaker 1: a protege of a guy named Tim berners Lee. Berners

655
00:31:00,520 --> 00:31:03,160
Speaker 1: Lee is an MIT professor. He invented the world Wide Web.

656
00:31:03,560 --> 00:31:04,920
Speaker 1: This is not one of those things when people say

657
00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:06,920
Speaker 1: so and so invented this and it's like bullshit. It's like,

658
00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:09,440
Speaker 1: well they invented no, no, he The world Wide Web

659
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 1: is Tim berners Lee's invention. He created this, right, He,

660
00:31:15,120 --> 00:31:17,800
Speaker 1: in a very literal sense, created this starting in nineteen

661
00:31:17,840 --> 00:31:20,520
Speaker 1: eighty nine, he sketches out he's working for CERN at

662
00:31:20,560 --> 00:31:23,760
Speaker 1: this point. And here one of the things that CERN,

663
00:31:23,840 --> 00:31:26,880
Speaker 1: which is a big research institute. All these colleges, universities,

664
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:31,040
Speaker 1: they all have things that are versions of like what

665
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:34,480
Speaker 1: the Internet is going to be. These electronic communications networks

666
00:31:34,520 --> 00:31:36,800
Speaker 1: that allow them to communicate on campus, allow them to

667
00:31:36,840 --> 00:31:40,640
Speaker 1: communicate with each other and to some extent with other organizations,

668
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:43,440
Speaker 1: but none of them are built around the same standard,

669
00:31:43,560 --> 00:31:47,560
Speaker 1: so letting everything call is a huge fucking mess. And

670
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:51,680
Speaker 1: berners Lee is like, we need a standard solution for

671
00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:55,200
Speaker 1: how electronic communication is going to work, and he sketches

672
00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:59,360
Speaker 1: out he designs the world Wide Web. That's literally the

673
00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 1: thing that he makes, Like, he comes up with a

674
00:32:02,080 --> 00:32:04,640
Speaker 1: plan for it's going to be a global web of

675
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:07,600
Speaker 1: individual pages, each of which has their own address. They're

676
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:10,720
Speaker 1: all coded in HTML, and because they're on the same standard,

677
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:14,080
Speaker 1: all of these websites and whatnot can communicate with each other.

678
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 1: This is the foundation of everything that makes the modern

679
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:20,160
Speaker 1: Internet possible. And when berners Lee creates this, he has

680
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:25,800
Speaker 1: this choice, which is that's a patentable idea, right he

681
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:28,520
Speaker 1: could have been the man with the patent for the Internet.

682
00:32:30,720 --> 00:32:34,800
Speaker 1: He makes a key decision he chooses not to. He decides,

683
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:37,040
Speaker 1: I am not going to have a patent on this,

684
00:32:37,280 --> 00:32:44,680
Speaker 1: so anybody can do this because because he's definitely a

685
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 1: cool dude, right as far as I'm aware of and

686
00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:50,720
Speaker 1: as a because he makes this fundamental decision, he's kind

687
00:32:50,760 --> 00:32:52,960
Speaker 1: of viewed as a saint within the open source movement

688
00:32:53,040 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, right.

689
00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:57,880
Speaker 2: Like not surprising, but it's also a household name.

690
00:32:58,240 --> 00:33:01,520
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, he's also not a and he's not worth

691
00:33:02,200 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: more money than anyone else in the world could never

692
00:33:04,560 --> 00:33:05,800
Speaker 1: conceive of being worth it.

693
00:33:05,920 --> 00:33:10,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, fortunately there's that like thing where money of

694
00:33:10,080 --> 00:33:12,040
Speaker 2: only buys happiness up to like seventy K year and

695
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:12,840
Speaker 2: then it just level alone.

696
00:33:12,880 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, so like I'm sure it's up to one hundred

697
00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:15,680
Speaker 1: K year and whatever now.

698
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:17,600
Speaker 2: But yeah, oh yeah, that makes sense. That was like

699
00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:18,480
Speaker 2: ten years ago.

700
00:33:19,280 --> 00:33:23,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, berners Lee, you know he choose anyway, he meets

701
00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:26,560
Speaker 1: erin early on and is so impressed he basically endorses

702
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 1: him as his heir. Right, this is the kid who's

703
00:33:29,800 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 1: going to like take the Internet into the future, Like

704
00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:35,200
Speaker 1: this is the future of all this stuff that we're

705
00:33:35,240 --> 00:33:38,200
Speaker 1: working on. This this really kind of utopian idea of

706
00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 1: what connecting the world is going to result in. Right, Yeah,

707
00:33:42,440 --> 00:33:45,440
Speaker 1: So this guy, he's so impressed by Aaron he basically

708
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:48,959
Speaker 1: like endorses him as like this is my successor. Right,

709
00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:52,080
Speaker 1: this is going to be the guy who takes the

710
00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:55,720
Speaker 1: Internet into whatever it becomes in the future. That elevates

711
00:33:55,920 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 1: Erin immediately. It kind of int like, immediately he's in

712
00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:02,480
Speaker 1: the inner circle of people who are inventing the Internet,

713
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:05,840
Speaker 1: which is definitely happening at this period of time, and

714
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 1: Erin gets kind of suddenly thrown into the tech conference

715
00:34:08,520 --> 00:34:10,600
Speaker 1: circuit where he is kind of an object of marvel

716
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:13,360
Speaker 1: among the mostly much older men who had helped to

717
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:16,880
Speaker 1: build the foundations of the Internet. There's videos of this

718
00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:20,080
Speaker 1: time of him, you know, speaking at conferences and stuff,

719
00:34:20,160 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 1: and they tend to show Aaron who is absurdly small,

720
00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:26,400
Speaker 1: almost especially next to these grown men, giving pretty thoughtful

721
00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:30,640
Speaker 1: and complex answers while men decades his seniors sit next

722
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:34,239
Speaker 1: to him on stage. At age fifteen, he sends an

723
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:37,800
Speaker 1: email to a guy named Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is a

724
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:41,040
Speaker 1: legal scholar who is an early prominent activist for what

725
00:34:41,200 --> 00:34:43,960
Speaker 1: we call the open Internet, and Lessig is in the

726
00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 1: process of inventing something called the creative commons at this point. Right,

727
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:51,480
Speaker 1: Lessig is the creator of the creative comments, which basically

728
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:54,320
Speaker 1: gives creators. You and I've both used creative comments, right, So,

729
00:34:54,760 --> 00:34:57,920
Speaker 1: most people who make things that are cool. Yeah, And

730
00:34:58,200 --> 00:35:00,720
Speaker 1: it allows creators of all kinds of meat the ability

731
00:35:00,800 --> 00:35:03,640
Speaker 1: to copyright their work in ways that allow for adaptation

732
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:08,359
Speaker 1: and distribution much more easily without involving a publisher or whatever. Right.

733
00:35:08,400 --> 00:35:10,360
Speaker 1: You don't have to have that, like, you have this

734
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 1: kind of ready made kit for figuring out the rights

735
00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:17,200
Speaker 1: status of your work and setting that up. So Aaron

736
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:19,160
Speaker 1: sends this guy an email, and I'm going to quote

737
00:35:19,160 --> 00:35:21,399
Speaker 1: from an article in Rolling Stone for what happens next.

738
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:24,279
Speaker 1: Lawrence Lessig, now a professor at Harvard, gave Schwartz his

739
00:35:24,400 --> 00:35:26,919
Speaker 1: first job, flying him out to San Francisco to write

740
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:29,640
Speaker 1: code for Creative Comments, a nonprofit that allows users to

741
00:35:29,680 --> 00:35:32,640
Speaker 1: copyright the material in less restrictive ways. When the site

742
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:35,319
Speaker 1: celebrated its launch on December sixteenth, two thousand and two,

743
00:35:35,520 --> 00:35:37,839
Speaker 1: Schwartz was invited to speak to the crowd of six hundred,

744
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:42,040
Speaker 1: which included Internet luminaries like cred Neumark, the founder of Craigslist.

745
00:35:42,280 --> 00:35:44,479
Speaker 1: So Aaron gets up. This is Lessig talking. So Aeron

746
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:46,239
Speaker 1: gets up. He's not even big enough to stand over

747
00:35:46,320 --> 00:35:48,719
Speaker 1: the podium, and he explains what the architecture of the

748
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:50,800
Speaker 1: site is, and the audience is just amazed that this

749
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 1: was a fifteen year old kid, So he is. He

750
00:35:54,320 --> 00:35:57,120
Speaker 1: helps to create creative comments. It's less ex idea. He

751
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,000
Speaker 1: does the coding for it, right, So he is fifteen

752
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:04,320
Speaker 1: teen two of the things that are fundamental underpinnings of

753
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:06,719
Speaker 1: the Internet. To this day, he's had a significant hand

754
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:11,839
Speaker 1: in making RSS and creative comments fifteen years old. Now,

755
00:36:12,080 --> 00:36:14,080
Speaker 1: it is worth noting that Lessig is at this point

756
00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:17,360
Speaker 1: in time, like a lot of us was, not, like

757
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:19,239
Speaker 1: a lot of people were at this period of time,

758
00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:22,040
Speaker 1: one of the wild eyed optimists of the Internet. Right,

759
00:36:22,120 --> 00:36:24,640
Speaker 1: he is actually not someone who feels it's inevitable that

760
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:27,040
Speaker 1: the Internet will lead us into a golden age of freedom.

761
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:29,800
Speaker 1: As a legal scholar, he is well aware of the

762
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:32,600
Speaker 1: weapons available to the enemy, and he knows that they

763
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:35,880
Speaker 1: are terrible in nature and inexhaustible nearly in quantity.

764
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 2: Which makes sense to create something like creative commons because

765
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:41,799
Speaker 2: it's an attempt to keep the Internet on a decent track.

766
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:45,399
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, And he's kind of critically and again he'll

767
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:47,359
Speaker 1: have an influence on Aaron, but he is not one

768
00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 1: of these people. And like a lot of the people

769
00:36:49,040 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: that Aaron is close to that are making stuff with him,

770
00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:54,400
Speaker 1: He's not one of these people who views the Internet

771
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:56,279
Speaker 1: as like this is all fundamentally got to work out

772
00:36:56,280 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: for us. He sees the dangers because he understands the

773
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:02,120
Speaker 1: fucking law. Lawrence had gotten famous in hacker circles for

774
00:37:02,160 --> 00:37:04,520
Speaker 1: a book he wrote nineteen ninety nine called Code and

775
00:37:04,680 --> 00:37:07,480
Speaker 1: Other Laws of Cyberspace, And again he is a kind

776
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:11,239
Speaker 1: of definitely a visionary. His book argues that programmers are

777
00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:13,840
Speaker 1: going to have more influence than laws on the development

778
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:16,320
Speaker 1: of the Internet. And to explain kind of where his

779
00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:19,240
Speaker 1: thinking is going and why it is relevant to us today,

780
00:37:19,480 --> 00:37:21,960
Speaker 1: I want to read an extended quote from Noah Scheiber

781
00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 1: writing for The New Republic, because it describes an extremely

782
00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:29,080
Speaker 1: important moment in our early conceptions of the Internet. Quote.

783
00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:31,800
Speaker 1: The law could tell you who to associate with and

784
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:34,200
Speaker 1: who not to, but you could always ignore it. If,

785
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:36,560
Speaker 1: on the other hand, a programmer decided it should be

786
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:39,120
Speaker 1: impossible to connect with a certain type of website, the

787
00:37:39,160 --> 00:37:42,160
Speaker 1: average person had no way around it. The programmer was god.

788
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:46,440
Speaker 1: Suffice it to say, audiences were intrigued. In the late nineties,

789
00:37:46,520 --> 00:37:48,520
Speaker 1: Lessig taught a class about the Internet that was open

790
00:37:48,600 --> 00:37:51,840
Speaker 1: to both Harvard law students and MIT engineers. Early in

791
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:54,480
Speaker 1: the term, he asked, how do you know if something

792
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:57,439
Speaker 1: you're doing is wrong. The lawyer said that an action

793
00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 1: was wrong if it was against the law. The hackers said,

794
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:02,680
Speaker 1: it was only wrong if you failed to accomplish it.

795
00:38:03,200 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 1: It was the most fundamental statement of the hacker ethos,

796
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:09,040
Speaker 1: and it seemed, and it teemed with idealism. If it

797
00:38:09,080 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: were possible to increase human welfare through engineering, through delivering

798
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:15,680
Speaker 1: more social interaction or knowledge or happiness to more people

799
00:38:15,960 --> 00:38:18,200
Speaker 1: than it would be a moral not to. There was

800
00:38:18,239 --> 00:38:21,359
Speaker 1: only one hitch, which Lesseig dutifully explained, but which often

801
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:24,840
Speaker 1: went unheeded. The law would not be standing by idly.

802
00:38:25,280 --> 00:38:27,520
Speaker 1: The belief had always been that lawyers can say what

803
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:30,000
Speaker 1: they want and will always have the technology to route

804
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:32,759
Speaker 1: around it, says Been Adida, a programmer who worked with

805
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:36,480
Speaker 1: Lessigan Schwartz. To the hackers, the law was at best anachronistic,

806
00:38:36,560 --> 00:38:39,920
Speaker 1: at worst arbitrary, even cruel. Lesseg was one of the

807
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:42,560
Speaker 1: first folks to say, you know the power that code

808
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 1: has over the way people interact online, You would be

809
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:48,000
Speaker 1: foolish to think the law is not going to regulate it.

810
00:38:48,200 --> 00:38:52,160
Speaker 1: Adida recalls kind of a key key moment there.

811
00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:54,520
Speaker 2: No, yeah, no, I'm just slept like thinking about it.

812
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:56,759
Speaker 2: I'm like, I mean, what it's like, i mean, it's

813
00:38:56,760 --> 00:39:00,440
Speaker 2: all the movie Hackers, right, yeah, yeah, like I mean

814
00:39:00,520 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 2: obviously doesn't come from the movie Hackers. The movie Hackers

815
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:06,000
Speaker 2: as attempted a representing something. It was like a thing

816
00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:07,480
Speaker 2: where like hackers sort of at the time or a

817
00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:08,880
Speaker 2: little bit like what the fuck? And then Hackers, like

818
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:10,360
Speaker 2: a couple of years later, I was like, that rules,

819
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:13,680
Speaker 2: that's our fucking legacy, you know. Yeah, but like this

820
00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:17,880
Speaker 2: idea that and also this idea that like something is

821
00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:21,680
Speaker 2: only wrong if you fail to do it right a

822
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:25,600
Speaker 2: sketchy you know. And it's like it's interesting and you

823
00:39:25,719 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 2: can see how it was often or often intended as

824
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:33,920
Speaker 2: a force for freedom twenty years ago and is now

825
00:39:34,120 --> 00:39:37,319
Speaker 2: that same concept is just.

826
00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:41,319
Speaker 1: Like deeply, let's see what else, right, Yeah. A lot

827
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:43,799
Speaker 1: of people who were hackers, or at least who came

828
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:46,000
Speaker 1: out of the movement that came out of descended from that,

829
00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:48,919
Speaker 1: are now into this like dark enlightenment reactionary shit. They're

830
00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:53,680
Speaker 1: talking race like, yeah, the there's a fork that is

831
00:39:53,760 --> 00:39:56,440
Speaker 1: going to occur in this community, and a lot of

832
00:39:56,520 --> 00:39:59,480
Speaker 1: the people in it and what we're talking about, and

833
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:01,680
Speaker 1: you know who we're talking about now. Aaron is certainly

834
00:40:01,760 --> 00:40:04,600
Speaker 1: on the side of the light side of that fork, absolutely,

835
00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:07,319
Speaker 1: And the fork again, as a spoiler, you could if

836
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:11,359
Speaker 1: you wanted to split the fork at his death when

837
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:11,880
Speaker 1: it occurs.

838
00:40:12,560 --> 00:40:13,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense.

839
00:40:13,840 --> 00:40:18,799
Speaker 1: Honestly, you would not be wrong to necessarily when you.

840
00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:24,960
Speaker 2: Say indie media leads to Twitter, leads to Elon Musk Twitter,

841
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:26,000
Speaker 2: you know, like.

842
00:40:26,560 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, exactly. At age seventeen, Aaron is accepted to

843
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:36,760
Speaker 1: Stanford for obvious reasons. Not hard to see how that happens.

844
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:39,800
Speaker 1: Aaron is obviously brilliant. Anyone with eyes can see that

845
00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:42,080
Speaker 1: he's going to change the world, and Stanford wants some

846
00:40:42,200 --> 00:40:44,759
Speaker 1: of his shine for themselves, right. That is what they do,

847
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:47,880
Speaker 1: that is how they make their bread. But as soon

848
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:50,239
Speaker 1: as Aaron arrives at the elite West Coast school, he

849
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:53,120
Speaker 1: sees it for the sham that it was. He writes

850
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:55,399
Speaker 1: at the time that Stanford is quote an idyllic little

851
00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:57,680
Speaker 1: school in California, where the sun is always shining, and

852
00:40:57,760 --> 00:40:59,680
Speaker 1: the grass is always green, and the kids are always

853
00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:03,520
Speaker 1: out a tan. After three days at Stanford, Aaron decides

854
00:41:03,600 --> 00:41:05,719
Speaker 1: to attend a party, he kind of forces himself to go.

855
00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:08,360
Speaker 1: An article in The New Republic makes it seem like

856
00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:11,799
Speaker 1: this was kind of an anthropological experiment by Aaron, more

857
00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:13,520
Speaker 1: of that than an attempt to enjoy himself.

858
00:41:13,680 --> 00:41:13,919
Speaker 2: Quote.

859
00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:17,400
Speaker 1: He merely wanted to document the mating rituals of the teenager,

860
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:20,960
Speaker 1: a species that alternatively mystified and horrified him. In my

861
00:41:21,080 --> 00:41:24,320
Speaker 1: culture of vaguely technical people, people converse by sharing information

862
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:28,000
Speaker 1: through mutually beneficial discussion and debate, he wrote on his blog.

863
00:41:28,200 --> 00:41:31,120
Speaker 1: But the teenager system is altogether different and wholly alien

864
00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:34,640
Speaker 1: to them. He is frustrated by more than just a

865
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 1: lack of social skills. Aaron is angry that Stanford required

866
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:40,960
Speaker 1: ID cards with RFID transmitters, which can be used to

867
00:41:41,040 --> 00:41:44,920
Speaker 1: track students. He hates the library because of how it's organized.

868
00:41:44,960 --> 00:41:47,560
Speaker 1: He thinks it's an efficient and I'm sure he's right

869
00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:50,319
Speaker 1: about that. And he was disgusted by the hygiene levels

870
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:53,360
Speaker 1: at the shared student facilities like the laundromat. As a

871
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:56,359
Speaker 1: consequence of this disillusionment, he spends most of his time

872
00:41:56,440 --> 00:42:00,160
Speaker 1: in college hanging out with adults, particularly Lawrence Lessig and

873
00:42:00,320 --> 00:42:03,719
Speaker 1: friend of the Pod Corey, doctor Rowe Lessig is again

874
00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 1: the guy who funded Creative Commons, and Corey is an

875
00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:10,879
Speaker 1: activist and a wildly prolific author, very good author. They were,

876
00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:14,040
Speaker 1: in short, good influences. But one also has to assume

877
00:42:14,120 --> 00:42:16,359
Speaker 1: any seventeen year old who's hanging out with these guys

878
00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:18,440
Speaker 1: and out their fellow teenagers, they're not going to get

879
00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:18,879
Speaker 1: better at.

880
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 2: Fitting in, right, Like, yeah, that's fair.

881
00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:23,600
Speaker 1: Not that that's the most important thing, but you know,

882
00:42:23,719 --> 00:42:25,959
Speaker 1: that's just a thing that's happening to him, right, And again,

883
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:28,200
Speaker 1: given some of the shit Stanford grads have recently been

884
00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:31,399
Speaker 1: responsible for might have been for the best, like those

885
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:36,000
Speaker 1: guy's worse influence and not his fellow Stanford students. So

886
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:39,440
Speaker 1: this is not without stress though, right, The fact that

887
00:42:39,560 --> 00:42:42,759
Speaker 1: he is adopted by, welcomed in by all of these

888
00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:47,520
Speaker 1: very accomplished adults is not a thing devoid of stress

889
00:42:47,560 --> 00:42:50,280
Speaker 1: for him. Right. The sheer odd confidence guys like Tim Berners,

890
00:42:50,320 --> 00:42:53,600
Speaker 1: Lee and Lessig have for Schwartz is at that's a

891
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:55,640
Speaker 1: lot to put on the shoulders of a seventeen Yeah, right,

892
00:42:55,680 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 1: being told you're the future of the Internet, You're going

893
00:42:57,560 --> 00:43:00,760
Speaker 1: to be critical in this thing that is we believe

894
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:03,719
Speaker 1: necessary for the development of the human race. To be

895
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:07,560
Speaker 1: told that before you're even seventeen, that's a lot to

896
00:43:07,719 --> 00:43:12,359
Speaker 1: have on your shoulders. Right. Aaron has absolutely shown an

897
00:43:12,360 --> 00:43:14,680
Speaker 1: appetite for this work, but that doesn't mean there's not

898
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:18,480
Speaker 1: a burden there, right. Lisa Rain, one of Lesseg's aides,

899
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:21,600
Speaker 1: later told New Republic, with his intellect, we wanted to

900
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:23,920
Speaker 1: harness it for good instead of evil. I was worried

901
00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 1: that Microsoft would get a hold of him, which, again,

902
00:43:26,160 --> 00:43:30,479
Speaker 1: for these adults, not an unreasonable thing to be concerned about.

903
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 2: Right.

904
00:43:32,160 --> 00:43:35,160
Speaker 1: So, I think, you know, all of this is based

905
00:43:35,239 --> 00:43:37,520
Speaker 1: in a pretty wonderful amount of confidence that even love

906
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:40,440
Speaker 1: these guys had for Erin. Doctor Oh again has made

907
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:42,680
Speaker 1: the statement that a couple of times because, in part

908
00:43:42,719 --> 00:43:45,239
Speaker 1: because Erin is so small, so vulnerable, you have this

909
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:49,360
Speaker 1: instinctivety to protect him, and this married with this intense

910
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 1: faith in him. I think this led to a situation

911
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:55,440
Speaker 1: where Erin felt a lot of personal responsibility for the

912
00:43:55,760 --> 00:43:58,359
Speaker 1: future of the Internet and people at a young age,

913
00:43:58,400 --> 00:44:00,640
Speaker 1: and that's going to be difficult for him. That's going

914
00:44:00,680 --> 00:44:02,840
Speaker 1: to be an added stress in his life. It is

915
00:44:02,960 --> 00:44:05,040
Speaker 1: also worth noting here that Aaron is one of the

916
00:44:05,120 --> 00:44:09,040
Speaker 1: most prolific bloggers of his generation. His need to create

917
00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:11,360
Speaker 1: pros and work his thoughts and feelings out through the

918
00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:13,640
Speaker 1: written word is as strong, if not stronger, than his

919
00:44:13,800 --> 00:44:16,120
Speaker 1: desire to code, and in fact, there will be a

920
00:44:16,160 --> 00:44:18,080
Speaker 1: point in his life when he's like, I don't I

921
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 1: think I'm done with coding. I want to become an author.

922
00:44:21,200 --> 00:44:23,800
Speaker 1: I would rather be like a middling author than a

923
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:25,800
Speaker 1: great coder. Like that's the thing he expresses at a

924
00:44:25,840 --> 00:44:26,600
Speaker 1: point that's real.

925
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:31,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, did he write much fiction or anything like that?

926
00:44:31,160 --> 00:44:31,799
Speaker 2: I guess we'll talk.

927
00:44:31,719 --> 00:44:33,960
Speaker 1: About He had a novel that he kind of repeatedly

928
00:44:34,080 --> 00:44:35,719
Speaker 1: worked on that he never I don't think he ever

929
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:38,439
Speaker 1: quite finished it. There's a book of his essays that's out.

930
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:42,560
Speaker 1: He's got this is again. You know, he's still a teenager.

931
00:44:42,600 --> 00:44:44,120
Speaker 1: As smart as he is, He's working a lot of

932
00:44:44,120 --> 00:44:45,640
Speaker 1: shit out. And one of those things is he has

933
00:44:45,719 --> 00:44:48,640
Speaker 1: this deep desire for privacy. All of his friends will

934
00:44:48,640 --> 00:44:50,279
Speaker 1: say he had a lot of issues sometimes with his

935
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:52,320
Speaker 1: friends knowing each other because he hated the idea that

936
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:54,560
Speaker 1: people would be talking about him, even if it was positive,

937
00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:56,719
Speaker 1: when he wasn't there, Like, he just really had a

938
00:44:56,800 --> 00:45:00,719
Speaker 1: gut revulsion of that This was kind of ward in

939
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:02,880
Speaker 1: him with his need to publish every single thing that

940
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:05,080
Speaker 1: he thought on the Internet under his name. Right, this

941
00:45:05,239 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 1: is a complicated thing for this kid to deal with. Yeah,

942
00:45:07,920 --> 00:45:10,879
Speaker 1: and I'm going to quote from Rolling Stone again here.

943
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:13,399
Speaker 1: On his blog, he had told this story about having

944
00:45:13,440 --> 00:45:15,880
Speaker 1: a crush on this girl and stalking her. Lessig recalls,

945
00:45:16,120 --> 00:45:18,279
Speaker 1: not in a gross way, it was cute. Anyway. He

946
00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:20,400
Speaker 1: came to a reception at the law school whe Lessig

947
00:45:20,520 --> 00:45:22,840
Speaker 1: was a professor, and I recount this during a conversation.

948
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:25,000
Speaker 1: He takes me aside and he goes, why would you

949
00:45:25,120 --> 00:45:26,839
Speaker 1: do that? I said, what do you mean? He said,

950
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:30,120
Speaker 1: tell the secret? I said secret? You blogged it? He said, yeah,

951
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:32,239
Speaker 1: well I blogged it, meaning I blogged it for the

952
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:34,200
Speaker 1: people who read my blog. I didn't blog it so

953
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:37,040
Speaker 1: the whole world would know. And he is he's dealing

954
00:45:37,120 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 1: with an early version of what we're all going to

955
00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:41,200
Speaker 1: deal with as the Internet goes from this thing that

956
00:45:41,320 --> 00:45:43,200
Speaker 1: only a few weirdos are on, do this thing that

957
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:45,960
Speaker 1: everyone is on by default, where he's like, you know,

958
00:45:46,080 --> 00:45:48,440
Speaker 1: Lesseg's like, well you published this, right, why can't I

959
00:45:48,560 --> 00:45:50,080
Speaker 1: talk about this? And he's like, well, I published it

960
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:51,799
Speaker 1: for the Internet, now for the real world.

961
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:54,520
Speaker 2: I'm very glad that I was an adult before social

962
00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:55,680
Speaker 2: media and live journal on show.

963
00:45:55,760 --> 00:46:02,839
Speaker 1: Absolutely Jesus, speaking of Jesus, buy some products. Jesus will

964
00:46:02,840 --> 00:46:03,240
Speaker 1: be happy.

965
00:46:03,640 --> 00:46:11,480
Speaker 2: Jesus, We're back.

966
00:46:12,080 --> 00:46:15,400
Speaker 1: So Aaron decides to leave Stanford. He's there like a

967
00:46:15,520 --> 00:46:18,960
Speaker 1: year and he decides to bounce, and that next summer

968
00:46:19,040 --> 00:46:22,040
Speaker 1: he gets approached by what's called why Combinator, and why

969
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:24,560
Speaker 1: Combinator is an incubator for tech founders.

970
00:46:24,640 --> 00:46:24,799
Speaker 2: Right.

971
00:46:25,640 --> 00:46:28,120
Speaker 1: He had by this point come up with his own

972
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:31,759
Speaker 1: idea for a startup called infogami. This was a kind

973
00:46:31,800 --> 00:46:35,759
Speaker 1: of early social media application, but instead of centralizing users

974
00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:38,200
Speaker 1: on a one controlled hub, it would allow users to

975
00:46:38,320 --> 00:46:40,960
Speaker 1: make their own websites. Right. So, instead of you can

976
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:43,160
Speaker 1: create your own account on this site and share stuff

977
00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:44,680
Speaker 1: like you do on Instagram or whatever on the site,

978
00:46:44,800 --> 00:46:47,359
Speaker 1: you create your own website and it's your website. I'm

979
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:49,279
Speaker 1: just creating a centralized set of tools for you to

980
00:46:49,320 --> 00:46:50,360
Speaker 1: build your own websites.

981
00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:50,560
Speaker 2: Right.

982
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:54,239
Speaker 1: Schwartz's instincts here show how different he is from a

983
00:46:54,280 --> 00:46:56,480
Speaker 1: lot of the other tech genius types coming because they're

984
00:46:56,480 --> 00:46:58,640
Speaker 1: all thinking, how can I create a walled garden and

985
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:01,560
Speaker 1: trap people there. That is not at all what he's

986
00:47:01,600 --> 00:47:03,440
Speaker 1: thinking now, more of.

987
00:47:03,440 --> 00:47:05,839
Speaker 2: A massimone guy than a Twitter guy.

988
00:47:06,760 --> 00:47:09,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, definitely, at least ideologically. Now, that's not how

989
00:47:09,960 --> 00:47:12,000
Speaker 1: this project's going to end up, because you know, he

990
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:15,080
Speaker 1: moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and he starts working on this

991
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:19,160
Speaker 1: project with pretty feverish intensity. While he's doing this, he's

992
00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:21,440
Speaker 1: going to intermittently struggle with his illness. You know, this

993
00:47:21,560 --> 00:47:25,399
Speaker 1: physical pain increasingly brings about bouts of depression that would

994
00:47:25,480 --> 00:47:29,040
Speaker 1: render him unfunctional for weeks at a time. Still, on

995
00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:31,320
Speaker 1: the day's Aaron could work again. He's able to accomplish

996
00:47:31,400 --> 00:47:34,279
Speaker 1: so much work that it all kind of shakes out

997
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:37,800
Speaker 1: well in the long run. And eventually why Combinator pairs

998
00:47:37,880 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: him with two other founders, para dudes named Steve Huffman

999
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:46,280
Speaker 1: and Alexis o'hanian, who were working on their own product Reddit,

1000
00:47:46,640 --> 00:47:50,880
Speaker 1: Serena Williams's husband, That's right, yes, Serena Williams's husband. So

1001
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:55,319
Speaker 1: they are basically a lot of Aaron's ideas for Infogomi

1002
00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:57,840
Speaker 1: get folded into Reddit, and you know, Reddit kind of

1003
00:47:57,920 --> 00:48:00,520
Speaker 1: has started to exist, but it doesn't work it boogie,

1004
00:48:00,560 --> 00:48:04,360
Speaker 1: it's unstable. It can't be adopted on any meaningful scale

1005
00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:07,600
Speaker 1: because it's like, it's not good yet. Aaron comes in

1006
00:48:07,719 --> 00:48:09,680
Speaker 1: and he fixes all of the code, right, and so

1007
00:48:09,800 --> 00:48:12,880
Speaker 1: he becomes one of the founders of Reddit, which is,

1008
00:48:13,440 --> 00:48:16,239
Speaker 1: of all of the big modern social media sites, the

1009
00:48:16,360 --> 00:48:19,520
Speaker 1: closest to the old Internet. It still exists on the

1010
00:48:19,560 --> 00:48:19,920
Speaker 1: new one.

1011
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:22,879
Speaker 2: And it's funny because reddithead this reputation of like being

1012
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:26,360
Speaker 2: the incubator of bad ideas, but compared to everything that

1013
00:48:26,480 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 2: came after, Reddit's a little haven of like like when

1014
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:32,200
Speaker 2: I want to look up a review of a product,

1015
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:34,279
Speaker 2: I type thing and then read it, you know.

1016
00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:37,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if I have a problem, a technical issue

1017
00:48:37,640 --> 00:48:39,640
Speaker 1: I need to fix something, like, I will find the

1018
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:42,279
Speaker 1: answer on Reddit before I find it on Google these days, right,

1019
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:44,080
Speaker 1: I mean, I use Google, but I type the question

1020
00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:48,320
Speaker 1: and Reddit on it exactly find useful shit like it is.

1021
00:48:48,719 --> 00:48:51,360
Speaker 1: It is, for all of its flaws, still one of

1022
00:48:51,440 --> 00:48:53,920
Speaker 1: the best things on the Internet. Yeah, so at this

1023
00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:56,719
Speaker 1: point he is he is helping to invent Reddit, He

1024
00:48:56,800 --> 00:48:59,319
Speaker 1: has helped to invent RSS, He has helped to invent

1025
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:03,120
Speaker 1: the creative commons. Right, nineteen year old kid, you know,

1026
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:05,200
Speaker 1: kind of verging on I think twenty. At this point,

1027
00:49:06,560 --> 00:49:10,560
Speaker 1: his contributions are undeniable. But for the other folks at Reddit,

1028
00:49:10,840 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 1: his co founders, he is becomes increasingly frustrating to work

1029
00:49:14,040 --> 00:49:16,839
Speaker 1: with because while when he's working he gets a lot done,

1030
00:49:17,080 --> 00:49:19,360
Speaker 1: I think in total he gets as much done as anyone.

1031
00:49:19,680 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 1: He has this habit of dropping out of contact for

1032
00:49:22,719 --> 00:49:24,640
Speaker 1: days or even like a week or so at a time,

1033
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:26,440
Speaker 1: and like hiding in his apartment. And when he does it,

1034
00:49:26,520 --> 00:49:30,080
Speaker 1: he's just reading books NonStop generally, or he's in too

1035
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:33,160
Speaker 1: much pain to do much, but he doesn't. He's not

1036
00:49:33,239 --> 00:49:35,600
Speaker 1: good at communicating with the team about this stuff.

1037
00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:36,600
Speaker 2: So, like, you know, that's it.

1038
00:49:36,760 --> 00:49:39,120
Speaker 1: I don't think the Reddit guys are wrong, Like, yeah,

1039
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:41,080
Speaker 1: it was kind of a frustration that he would just

1040
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 1: get a drop out and that we wouldn't know why. Right.

1041
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:46,960
Speaker 1: This is about the time he gets kind of disillusioned

1042
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:48,879
Speaker 1: with coding. In a two thousand and six blog post,

1043
00:49:48,920 --> 00:49:53,320
Speaker 1: he describes writing as his desired purpose in life. The

1044
00:49:53,400 --> 00:49:55,800
Speaker 1: good news for Aaron is that later that year, Conde

1045
00:49:55,960 --> 00:49:59,400
Speaker 1: Nast bought Reddit for twelve million dollars, and Aaron receives

1046
00:49:59,480 --> 00:50:01,759
Speaker 1: an even chunk of the payout. We don't know how

1047
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:04,360
Speaker 1: much he gets. He seems not to have told anyone

1048
00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:07,360
Speaker 1: specifically about it. Probably somewhere a million or north of

1049
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 1: a million, right. Yeah, it's enough money, especially back then,

1050
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:12,560
Speaker 1: that he does not have to work. You know, he

1051
00:50:12,600 --> 00:50:14,799
Speaker 1: would eventually have to make more money. Right. You can't

1052
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:17,359
Speaker 1: live generally, probably off your whole life, for your whole life,

1053
00:50:17,400 --> 00:50:20,719
Speaker 1: off a million dollars if you're young. Right, But that's

1054
00:50:20,840 --> 00:50:22,959
Speaker 1: enough money that he doesn't have to worry about money

1055
00:50:23,080 --> 00:50:25,759
Speaker 1: for quite a while, right. And it's also you know,

1056
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:28,279
Speaker 1: I found this interesting New Yorker article that is kind

1057
00:50:28,320 --> 00:50:30,200
Speaker 1: of a more a bit of a more critical take

1058
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:32,360
Speaker 1: on Aaron and his legacy than some of the others

1059
00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:34,400
Speaker 1: that talks spends a lot of time talking about how

1060
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:36,640
Speaker 1: much he loves money, which I don't think is fair.

1061
00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:39,759
Speaker 1: It does quote him talking about, you know, making some

1062
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:41,920
Speaker 1: kind of bratty statements about like, oh, you know, I

1063
00:50:42,040 --> 00:50:44,160
Speaker 1: lose that much money in my couch cushions or whatever,

1064
00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:47,040
Speaker 1: and talk about how cool it is to have like money,

1065
00:50:47,080 --> 00:50:48,680
Speaker 1: and it kind of makes the claim that like, oh, yeah,

1066
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:51,680
Speaker 1: Aaron loved money, which is not borne out by the

1067
00:50:51,760 --> 00:50:53,600
Speaker 1: rest of his life. I think he just has a

1068
00:50:53,719 --> 00:50:56,239
Speaker 1: reaction that any nineteen or twenty year old when they

1069
00:50:56,239 --> 00:50:58,919
Speaker 1: suddenly have a million dollars, which is like, fuck, that's dope.

1070
00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:00,680
Speaker 1: I don't have to do a thing I don't want

1071
00:51:00,719 --> 00:51:03,360
Speaker 1: to do anymore sick, which I don't think is I

1072
00:51:03,560 --> 00:51:05,600
Speaker 1: don't think that's element evidence of him being shallow. Who

1073
00:51:05,600 --> 00:51:06,960
Speaker 1: wouldn't feel that way? Right?

1074
00:51:07,040 --> 00:51:09,920
Speaker 2: Also, like, when you live in capitalism, you're presented as

1075
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:12,560
Speaker 2: if it is a video game with a point system,

1076
00:51:12,680 --> 00:51:15,040
Speaker 2: and the measurement of the point system is money. And

1077
00:51:15,120 --> 00:51:18,400
Speaker 2: if you are a kid and you believe that that

1078
00:51:18,640 --> 00:51:22,080
Speaker 2: makes sense, you got told that, you know. But yet

1079
00:51:22,160 --> 00:51:25,160
Speaker 2: he also was doing all of this work to specifically

1080
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:27,319
Speaker 2: under like the fact that his hero is the person

1081
00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:31,720
Speaker 2: who didn't he didn't lock shit up, you know, like yeah, yeah.

1082
00:51:32,080 --> 00:51:34,160
Speaker 1: His life past this point is not going to be

1083
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:37,239
Speaker 1: defined by him seeking out money. Yeah right, Like that's

1084
00:51:37,719 --> 00:51:40,080
Speaker 1: ultimately what I'll make the decision based on. Yeah, Like,

1085
00:51:40,160 --> 00:51:43,680
Speaker 1: I'm sure he was fucking thrilled. Who wouldn't be, right, right, Like,

1086
00:51:43,880 --> 00:51:46,680
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter how much you hate capitalism. It's great

1087
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:48,239
Speaker 1: to have enough money that you don't have to worry

1088
00:51:48,239 --> 00:51:53,040
Speaker 1: about money anymore. Yeah, totally, my parents knees. Yeah yeah, yeah,

1089
00:51:53,520 --> 00:51:56,279
Speaker 1: so Kande asked, buys it. They move shit over to

1090
00:51:56,360 --> 00:51:58,920
Speaker 1: like San Francisco, which thinks where their offices are. He

1091
00:51:59,040 --> 00:52:01,960
Speaker 1: stays on for a while, right, they make him move

1092
00:52:02,040 --> 00:52:04,880
Speaker 1: back West to work out of the office, which he hates.

1093
00:52:05,040 --> 00:52:07,880
Speaker 1: He hates working, he hates the corporate environment. He justlkes

1094
00:52:07,920 --> 00:52:12,480
Speaker 1: San Francisco. You know, it's not his place. It's not

1095
00:52:12,680 --> 00:52:14,600
Speaker 1: his kind of lifestyle.

1096
00:52:14,760 --> 00:52:14,880
Speaker 2: Right.

1097
00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:17,640
Speaker 1: He has a lot of issues adapting to this, not

1098
00:52:17,800 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 1: surprising based on the guy we've known so far. He

1099
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:23,959
Speaker 1: meets a woman while he's in San Francisco. She becomes

1100
00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:27,520
Speaker 1: his girlfriend, a journalist named Quinn Norton. We will talk

1101
00:52:27,560 --> 00:52:31,080
Speaker 1: about Quinn Norton later. Controversial figure to say the least.

1102
00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:35,800
Speaker 1: She is a journalist who works with hackers. That's a

1103
00:52:35,840 --> 00:52:38,400
Speaker 1: lot of for reporting. She's also an anarchist. That's how

1104
00:52:38,480 --> 00:52:41,080
Speaker 1: she described. I don't know more about the tendency she

1105
00:52:41,160 --> 00:52:45,319
Speaker 1: subscribes to, but that's how she self describes. And by

1106
00:52:45,400 --> 00:52:47,920
Speaker 1: this point, according to Quinn, who is very close with him,

1107
00:52:47,920 --> 00:52:51,680
Speaker 1: at this period, he's growing dissolutioned with his work on Reddit. Quote.

1108
00:52:51,760 --> 00:52:53,560
Speaker 1: He wasn't sure if he had done a good thing.

1109
00:52:53,719 --> 00:52:56,000
Speaker 1: He began to see it as a way people wasted time.

1110
00:52:56,560 --> 00:52:59,480
Speaker 1: So he's got some issues with creating this thing that's

1111
00:52:59,480 --> 00:53:01,480
Speaker 1: one of the first kind of Web two point zero

1112
00:53:01,880 --> 00:53:05,600
Speaker 1: sort of foundations. This is also kind of going back

1113
00:53:05,640 --> 00:53:07,160
Speaker 1: and forth on This is part of what it's going

1114
00:53:07,239 --> 00:53:09,400
Speaker 1: to become. Another common pattern with Aaron, which is that

1115
00:53:09,520 --> 00:53:12,799
Speaker 1: he seems to regularly find himself racked with doubt over

1116
00:53:12,840 --> 00:53:15,759
Speaker 1: whether or not he'd accomplished anything of value in his life. Right.

1117
00:53:16,080 --> 00:53:17,680
Speaker 1: This is a regular thing for him where he's like,

1118
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:20,040
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever made anything. I think some

1119
00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:22,320
Speaker 1: of that's just because everything he makes is part of

1120
00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:24,040
Speaker 1: a team, right, And he's not going to be one

1121
00:53:24,040 --> 00:53:27,160
Speaker 1: of these guys like fucking Zucker. And that's true of

1122
00:53:27,239 --> 00:53:29,239
Speaker 1: all of these guys, by the way, all of these

1123
00:53:29,440 --> 00:53:32,120
Speaker 1: tech luminaries, none of them make anything on The closest

1124
00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:35,920
Speaker 1: you get is maybe Wosniak, right, who did legitimately sit

1125
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:38,719
Speaker 1: down at a cobble together a personal computer. Right, But

1126
00:53:38,960 --> 00:53:42,239
Speaker 1: like none of these founders make anything on their own,

1127
00:53:42,480 --> 00:53:45,040
Speaker 1: you know, like that just simply doesn't happen, right, And

1128
00:53:45,280 --> 00:53:47,680
Speaker 1: like Aaron understands that. I think he feels kind of

1129
00:53:47,719 --> 00:53:50,400
Speaker 1: insecure about it. But like Aaron is everyone who was

1130
00:53:50,440 --> 00:53:51,960
Speaker 1: a part of these projects is like, yeah, he was

1131
00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:53,440
Speaker 1: a big part of them, he'd right, but.

1132
00:53:53,520 --> 00:53:57,399
Speaker 3: He didn't invent replace a web like his particular like right, yeah,

1133
00:53:57,640 --> 00:54:00,959
Speaker 3: Lessig is a guy who, yeah, just invented the world

1134
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:03,880
Speaker 3: Wide Web, right, Yeah, you know Aaron seems to have

1135
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:06,560
Speaker 3: kind of I don't think it's a constant thing for him,

1136
00:54:06,600 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 3: because he also has these periods like he can be

1137
00:54:08,680 --> 00:54:09,280
Speaker 3: a little braggy.

1138
00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:11,360
Speaker 1: I don't think in an unhealthy way, because he's accomplished

1139
00:54:11,360 --> 00:54:13,839
Speaker 1: a lot. I think it's just when he's sick, when

1140
00:54:13,920 --> 00:54:16,040
Speaker 1: he's hurting, when he's dealing with bouts of depression. This

1141
00:54:16,160 --> 00:54:17,600
Speaker 1: is a thing that comes up with him a lot,

1142
00:54:17,760 --> 00:54:20,279
Speaker 1: like I don't think I've ever made anything about you, right,

1143
00:54:21,200 --> 00:54:25,600
Speaker 1: it's irrational. That doesn't stop that, I mean, everyone from happening, right,

1144
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:29,160
Speaker 1: right exactly, And maybe that can help you if you

1145
00:54:29,280 --> 00:54:31,680
Speaker 1: deal with imposter syndem knowing that, like yeah, this guy

1146
00:54:31,719 --> 00:54:36,840
Speaker 1: who literally no one can deny his contributions to science

1147
00:54:36,920 --> 00:54:41,239
Speaker 1: and technology felt that way too. So yeah, again, he's

1148
00:54:41,239 --> 00:54:44,360
Speaker 1: struggling increasingly during this period, and the fact that he

1149
00:54:44,560 --> 00:54:46,359
Speaker 1: has to work at this office, he's in a place

1150
00:54:46,400 --> 00:54:48,480
Speaker 1: he doesn't really want to be, contributes to that, and

1151
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:51,240
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from Rolling Stone again. That Christmas,

1152
00:54:51,320 --> 00:54:54,320
Speaker 1: two months after he'd started working in Redditt San Francisco office,

1153
00:54:54,680 --> 00:54:57,360
Speaker 1: Schwartz took a trip to Berlin to attend the Chaos

1154
00:54:57,480 --> 00:55:00,719
Speaker 1: Communication Congress, one of the most popular HA conventions in

1155
00:55:00,760 --> 00:55:02,960
Speaker 1: the world. On his way back home, he stopped in

1156
00:55:03,000 --> 00:55:06,120
Speaker 1: Cambridge for a visit when his lifelong stomach troubles asserted themselves,

1157
00:55:06,360 --> 00:55:09,760
Speaker 1: leaving him writing in pain for several days. On January eighteenth,

1158
00:55:09,760 --> 00:55:11,360
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, he wrote a post on his

1159
00:55:11,440 --> 00:55:14,840
Speaker 1: blog titled A Moment Before Dying, which began there is

1160
00:55:14,880 --> 00:55:18,160
Speaker 1: a moment immediately before life becomes no longer worth living,

1161
00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:20,359
Speaker 1: when the world appears to slow down and all its

1162
00:55:20,440 --> 00:55:24,800
Speaker 1: myriad details suddenly become brightly, achingly apparent. Written as a

1163
00:55:24,840 --> 00:55:27,360
Speaker 1: short story in the third person, the post described a

1164
00:55:27,440 --> 00:55:30,960
Speaker 1: young man Erin, who had decided to kill himself for Erin,

1165
00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:34,160
Speaker 1: and this is him writing. That moment came after exactly

1166
00:55:34,239 --> 00:55:37,240
Speaker 1: one week of pain, seven days of searing, tormenting agony

1167
00:55:37,320 --> 00:55:40,239
Speaker 1: that poured forth from his belly. The post alarmed his

1168
00:55:40,280 --> 00:55:42,239
Speaker 1: Reddit partners. It was the first they had heard from

1169
00:55:42,280 --> 00:55:45,480
Speaker 1: him in weeks, and it appeared to be a suicide note. Ohanian,

1170
00:55:45,719 --> 00:55:48,440
Speaker 1: one of the original founders, called the local police department

1171
00:55:48,480 --> 00:55:51,520
Speaker 1: and officers were dispatched to the apartment. Just before they arrived,

1172
00:55:51,719 --> 00:55:54,160
Speaker 1: Schwartz snuck out this onto the street, and in the

1173
00:55:54,200 --> 00:55:57,000
Speaker 1: wake of the incident, went to links to downplay at severity,

1174
00:55:57,280 --> 00:55:59,799
Speaker 1: changing the original post from Erin to Alyx as if

1175
00:55:59,840 --> 00:56:02,400
Speaker 1: to make clear that suicide was not something the actual

1176
00:56:02,560 --> 00:56:07,000
Speaker 1: Erin would ever seriously consider. So that's, you know, shows

1177
00:56:07,040 --> 00:56:09,600
Speaker 1: you where his head is. That's worrying, right. I'm not

1178
00:56:09,680 --> 00:56:12,640
Speaker 1: surprised and was concerned by this. I mean, chronic illness

1179
00:56:12,719 --> 00:56:18,959
Speaker 1: is an It's a real motherfucker yeeah. Now, this plus

1180
00:56:19,040 --> 00:56:20,480
Speaker 1: the fact that he had not been showing up to

1181
00:56:20,560 --> 00:56:22,920
Speaker 1: work for long periods of time, is going to be

1182
00:56:23,000 --> 00:56:26,880
Speaker 1: what precipitates a pretty rapid resignation from Reddit, and in

1183
00:56:27,000 --> 00:56:30,040
Speaker 1: short order, Erin is a free agent again. His next

1184
00:56:30,239 --> 00:56:34,640
Speaker 1: project would be his most ambitious, The Open Library. Along

1185
00:56:34,680 --> 00:56:39,759
Speaker 1: with Brewster Kahl, Alexis Rosi, a, Nan Chappotu, and Rebecca Malamood,

1186
00:56:40,120 --> 00:56:43,920
Speaker 1: Aaron embarked on a project to collect online digital copies

1187
00:56:44,080 --> 00:56:47,560
Speaker 1: of every book imaginable. The idea is every book will

1188
00:56:47,560 --> 00:56:49,719
Speaker 1: have a page to the extent that's possible. The ones

1189
00:56:49,760 --> 00:56:51,320
Speaker 1: that are open source, that are old enough will have

1190
00:56:51,440 --> 00:56:53,480
Speaker 1: full scans of the book that you can like search

1191
00:56:53,640 --> 00:56:56,080
Speaker 1: and read. The books that we don't have access to

1192
00:56:56,200 --> 00:56:58,759
Speaker 1: will at least have, you know, ideally we'll get a

1193
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:00,839
Speaker 1: copy or that people could check out online or something,

1194
00:57:00,880 --> 00:57:02,279
Speaker 1: but we'll at least have a page for it that

1195
00:57:02,360 --> 00:57:04,160
Speaker 1: explains who wrote it, what it is, what's in it.

1196
00:57:05,440 --> 00:57:07,600
Speaker 1: And the online library is still around today. It's one

1197
00:57:07,600 --> 00:57:10,680
Speaker 1: of the most significant storehouses of knowledge in the history

1198
00:57:10,719 --> 00:57:14,360
Speaker 1: of the human race. Right, Aaron is foundational in creating

1199
00:57:14,440 --> 00:57:16,760
Speaker 1: the open library. He's one of the people who helps

1200
00:57:16,800 --> 00:57:20,280
Speaker 1: to found it. He's only on that, I think for

1201
00:57:20,400 --> 00:57:23,400
Speaker 1: like a year, maybe a little less, and you know,

1202
00:57:23,520 --> 00:57:26,760
Speaker 1: he contributes significantly, and then he finds himself drawn in

1203
00:57:26,760 --> 00:57:29,520
Speaker 1: another direction and kind of bounces. Some of this is

1204
00:57:29,560 --> 00:57:32,520
Speaker 1: because he gets frustrated with the refusal of big libraries

1205
00:57:32,560 --> 00:57:35,280
Speaker 1: to share their catalogs. But as call, who's one of

1206
00:57:35,320 --> 00:57:38,480
Speaker 1: the founders, later told Rolling Stone, Aaron floated, that's how

1207
00:57:38,520 --> 00:57:40,600
Speaker 1: he worked, and you had to accept it. He didn't

1208
00:57:40,640 --> 00:57:42,720
Speaker 1: ask to get paid much. He really thought of himself

1209
00:57:42,720 --> 00:57:44,960
Speaker 1: as a volunteer for the world, and that is what

1210
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:48,000
Speaker 1: he does. He'll come into these projects, he'll help with

1211
00:57:48,120 --> 00:57:50,880
Speaker 1: the founding vision, he'll help make them work, and then

1212
00:57:50,880 --> 00:57:53,240
Speaker 1: he's going to bounce you know, yea and move on

1213
00:57:53,320 --> 00:57:55,240
Speaker 1: to the next thing. That's just who he is. That's

1214
00:57:55,280 --> 00:57:58,080
Speaker 1: how his brain works, that's how he's functional, right, And

1215
00:57:59,120 --> 00:58:01,440
Speaker 1: you know calls atude is like, yeah, you know, it

1216
00:58:01,440 --> 00:58:03,040
Speaker 1: would have been nice to have him around for longer,

1217
00:58:03,080 --> 00:58:04,960
Speaker 1: but he did. He did his bit, and he moved on.

1218
00:58:05,080 --> 00:58:07,200
Speaker 1: And that's just Aaron. You just have to understand that.

1219
00:58:07,520 --> 00:58:12,560
Speaker 2: Well, you know that is.

1220
00:58:14,080 --> 00:58:19,880
Speaker 1: Longer, but yeah, he did his bit. So if you're

1221
00:58:19,920 --> 00:58:22,320
Speaker 1: keeping track, Aaron Schwartz, who is now at the start

1222
00:58:22,360 --> 00:58:24,240
Speaker 1: of his twenties, I think he's just now able to

1223
00:58:24,400 --> 00:58:27,720
Speaker 1: drink legally, has played a key role in developing RSS,

1224
00:58:27,960 --> 00:58:31,120
Speaker 1: in the creation of creative commons, in the creation of Reddit,

1225
00:58:31,240 --> 00:58:34,560
Speaker 1: and in the creation of the Open Library. Now, what's

1226
00:58:34,600 --> 00:58:36,680
Speaker 1: most amazing to me about this guy is that at

1227
00:58:36,760 --> 00:58:39,080
Speaker 1: this point he could have picked a lucrative job for

1228
00:58:39,200 --> 00:58:42,400
Speaker 1: himself literally anywhere in the tech industry. There is nowhere

1229
00:58:42,440 --> 00:58:44,920
Speaker 1: that would not have that wouldn't have paid so much.

1230
00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:48,360
Speaker 1: It hurt to get this guy right. He does not

1231
00:58:48,640 --> 00:58:51,800
Speaker 1: have any interest in that his heart continually pulls him

1232
00:58:51,840 --> 00:58:54,600
Speaker 1: towards projects that serve a social good and make knowledge

1233
00:58:54,680 --> 00:58:58,520
Speaker 1: accessible to as many people as possible. That's not specifically

1234
00:58:58,600 --> 00:59:00,920
Speaker 1: his goal his entire career, but that's he is right now.

1235
00:59:01,920 --> 00:59:04,560
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, Aarin attends a retreat by

1236
00:59:04,600 --> 00:59:10,400
Speaker 1: the EIFL, the Electronic Information for Libraries. It's a nonprofit

1237
00:59:10,520 --> 00:59:13,880
Speaker 1: that seeks to increase access to knowledge in developing economies

1238
00:59:13,920 --> 00:59:16,360
Speaker 1: around the world. The event, which is held at a

1239
00:59:16,520 --> 00:59:19,680
Speaker 1: former monastery in Italy, seems to have had a somewhat

1240
00:59:19,720 --> 00:59:23,320
Speaker 1: evangelical air to it. Erin is perhaps overtaken by the

1241
00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:25,600
Speaker 1: sense of techno optimism in the air, and it's not

1242
00:59:25,680 --> 00:59:28,120
Speaker 1: hard to see why. This was the tail end of

1243
00:59:28,120 --> 00:59:31,120
Speaker 1: the Bush years, this long period of neo con dominance

1244
00:59:31,160 --> 00:59:34,720
Speaker 1: that is eroding in the face of Barack Obama's presidential campaign,

1245
00:59:34,720 --> 00:59:37,040
Speaker 1: which is the most optimistic thing Americans had seen in

1246
00:59:37,120 --> 00:59:40,520
Speaker 1: politics in a generation. At least. Late in the event,

1247
00:59:40,840 --> 00:59:43,560
Speaker 1: Erin and an unknown number of co writers put together

1248
00:59:43,640 --> 00:59:48,240
Speaker 1: a document known as the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto. A

1249
00:59:48,360 --> 00:59:50,840
Speaker 1: number of people contribute, it is unclear how many. It

1250
00:59:50,920 --> 00:59:53,480
Speaker 1: is unclear who they are. Erin's is the only name

1251
00:59:53,520 --> 00:59:56,160
Speaker 1: that winds up on the thing right, and it includes

1252
00:59:56,240 --> 00:59:59,880
Speaker 1: some pretty spicy lines. This is how it opens. Information

1253
01:00:00,160 --> 01:00:02,120
Speaker 1: is power, but like all power, there are those who

1254
01:00:02,160 --> 01:00:04,680
Speaker 1: want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire as

1255
01:00:04,760 --> 01:00:07,920
Speaker 1: scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries and books and

1256
01:00:08,000 --> 01:00:11,120
Speaker 1: journals is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a

1257
01:00:11,200 --> 01:00:14,360
Speaker 1: handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring

1258
01:00:14,360 --> 01:00:16,680
Speaker 1: the most famous results of the sciences, you'll need to

1259
01:00:16,720 --> 01:00:21,400
Speaker 1: send enormous amounts to publishers like read Elviser, and the

1260
01:00:21,560 --> 01:00:23,520
Speaker 1: document points out one of the things that's happening here

1261
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:26,720
Speaker 1: is a lot of these publishers. The information in them

1262
01:00:27,240 --> 01:00:29,480
Speaker 1: is maybe in a lot of cases open source. It's

1263
01:00:29,520 --> 01:00:32,240
Speaker 1: publicly funded studies. But unless you're able to get to

1264
01:00:32,360 --> 01:00:34,280
Speaker 1: one of the libraries that has it, you have to

1265
01:00:34,520 --> 01:00:37,080
Speaker 1: pay to get access to the documents that it's You

1266
01:00:37,120 --> 01:00:39,360
Speaker 1: have to pay his service like jstore to get access

1267
01:00:39,440 --> 01:00:42,480
Speaker 1: to it. And Aaron's like, that's fucking bullshit. You know,

1268
01:00:43,160 --> 01:00:46,360
Speaker 1: like this is our information, and you know, obviously the

1269
01:00:46,440 --> 01:00:49,680
Speaker 1: other stuff I think should be shared too. The document

1270
01:00:49,760 --> 01:00:53,040
Speaker 1: points out that open access, if successful, would only ensure

1271
01:00:53,160 --> 01:00:56,720
Speaker 1: ongoing access for future publications, while the total of published

1272
01:00:56,720 --> 01:00:58,680
Speaker 1: work up to the point that open access becomes a

1273
01:00:58,720 --> 01:01:02,000
Speaker 1: thing would remain locked up. The document decries this as

1274
01:01:02,040 --> 01:01:04,720
Speaker 1: too high a price to pay, and then asks rhetorically,

1275
01:01:05,120 --> 01:01:10,320
Speaker 1: what can we do about this? Quote those with access

1276
01:01:10,360 --> 01:01:13,560
Speaker 1: to these resources, students, librarian, scientists, you have been given

1277
01:01:13,560 --> 01:01:16,040
Speaker 1: a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of

1278
01:01:16,120 --> 01:01:18,000
Speaker 1: knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out.

1279
01:01:18,280 --> 01:01:21,120
Speaker 1: But you need not. Indeed, morally you cannot keep this

1280
01:01:21,240 --> 01:01:23,560
Speaker 1: privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it

1281
01:01:23,640 --> 01:01:26,600
Speaker 1: with the world, and you have trading passwords with colleagues,

1282
01:01:26,680 --> 01:01:30,760
Speaker 1: filling download requests for friends. So he is basically saying

1283
01:01:31,280 --> 01:01:33,680
Speaker 1: what people are already doing, have access to the stuff

1284
01:01:33,720 --> 01:01:35,600
Speaker 1: to their buddies, we need to do for the world.

1285
01:01:35,760 --> 01:01:37,840
Speaker 1: We need to do this to give access, particularly to

1286
01:01:37,960 --> 01:01:40,560
Speaker 1: people in the global South. You do not have the

1287
01:01:40,680 --> 01:01:43,720
Speaker 1: infrastructural access to this stuff in the same way that

1288
01:01:43,800 --> 01:01:45,720
Speaker 1: people can kind of wangle their way into getting it

1289
01:01:46,480 --> 01:01:50,840
Speaker 1: in the United States. In Europe. This is controversial among

1290
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:53,320
Speaker 1: his colleagues at this conference. These are all people who

1291
01:01:53,360 --> 01:01:55,560
Speaker 1: believe in open access, but they are people who work

1292
01:01:55,600 --> 01:01:59,480
Speaker 1: within the system for legal nonprofit organizations. Aaron is saying

1293
01:01:59,520 --> 01:02:02,200
Speaker 1: some hackers here right what he is saying could be

1294
01:02:02,320 --> 01:02:04,800
Speaker 1: read as an incitement to illegal activity, which.

1295
01:02:04,680 --> 01:02:06,640
Speaker 2: Is good positive.

1296
01:02:07,280 --> 01:02:11,479
Speaker 1: I totally agree, yeah, that this is controversial among people

1297
01:02:11,480 --> 01:02:13,880
Speaker 1: who are like, we are working within the system and

1298
01:02:13,960 --> 01:02:17,280
Speaker 1: this we see this as potentially kind of dangerous right now,

1299
01:02:17,880 --> 01:02:19,720
Speaker 1: the fact that this is controversial among them, it's not

1300
01:02:20,360 --> 01:02:22,479
Speaker 1: wildly different in tone from a lot of hacker pros

1301
01:02:22,520 --> 01:02:24,480
Speaker 1: that has come out in the nineties and early two thousands.

1302
01:02:24,560 --> 01:02:27,240
Speaker 1: And you know, eventually, whatever hubbub there is from this

1303
01:02:27,360 --> 01:02:29,280
Speaker 1: kind of passes and life goes on for a while,

1304
01:02:29,360 --> 01:02:31,440
Speaker 1: and that's where we're going to end for part one

1305
01:02:31,720 --> 01:02:33,960
Speaker 1: of this episode. Magpie, how are you feeling?

1306
01:02:34,440 --> 01:02:37,160
Speaker 2: I feel great because I know that only positive things

1307
01:02:37,200 --> 01:02:42,200
Speaker 2: are coming in the future. And yep, I really the

1308
01:02:42,520 --> 01:02:44,680
Speaker 2: main thing that I know about is this open access

1309
01:02:44,680 --> 01:02:48,439
Speaker 2: stuff about arn Schwartz, and I as someone who also

1310
01:02:49,800 --> 01:02:52,760
Speaker 2: has never I've never had institutional access to this knowledge,

1311
01:02:53,440 --> 01:02:57,120
Speaker 2: and I do a lot of history research and things

1312
01:02:57,240 --> 01:03:01,400
Speaker 2: like that, so I've always been very appreciative of I

1313
01:03:01,440 --> 01:03:05,520
Speaker 2: don't know how to phrase this carefully. I like open access,

1314
01:03:05,840 --> 01:03:09,640
Speaker 2: That's what I'll say. And I think that it's an important,

1315
01:03:10,680 --> 01:03:13,320
Speaker 2: important thing like that. It is just actually true, and

1316
01:03:13,440 --> 01:03:15,280
Speaker 2: especially talking about it in terms of like how it

1317
01:03:15,360 --> 01:03:18,160
Speaker 2: impacts people in the global South, like where you can't like,

1318
01:03:19,040 --> 01:03:21,120
Speaker 2: you know, I don't go to a fancy college, but

1319
01:03:21,200 --> 01:03:23,000
Speaker 2: I know some people go to fancy colleges, and so

1320
01:03:23,080 --> 01:03:25,160
Speaker 2: I just am like, hey, what do you think about

1321
01:03:25,200 --> 01:03:26,280
Speaker 2: this one thing? You know?

1322
01:03:26,880 --> 01:03:31,200
Speaker 1: Yep. So well, that's the podcast. We'll be back next

1323
01:03:31,280 --> 01:03:32,480
Speaker 1: week for the conclusion.

1324
01:03:32,600 --> 01:03:34,520
Speaker 2: Oh about Santa Claus.

1325
01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:38,120
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, thanks for listening. We's done zo bye.

1326
01:03:44,120 --> 01:03:46,800
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is the production of cool Zone Media.

1327
01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:49,800
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

1328
01:03:49,880 --> 01:03:53,840
Speaker 1: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1329
01:03:53,920 --> 01:03:56,280
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.