Speaker 1: Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camry.
Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: Stuff What Stop Coming? Hello again everyone, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and I'm an
Speaker 1: editor here at how Stuff work dot com, say named
Speaker 1: crush from me and as always a senior writer Jonathan Strick.
Speaker 1: Hey there. So, yeah, there's been some interesting news about
Speaker 1: some tech personalities lately as of the time we're recording
Speaker 1: this towards the end of November, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked to a lot about people who have very
Speaker 1: strong personalities, people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and um,
Speaker 1: you know, very very powerful personalities there. Uh. They may
Speaker 1: be friendly, they may be you know, have thorny anger,
Speaker 1: management problems or whatever. But for the most part, you know,
Speaker 1: you can see a pretty good picture of the person involved. Um,
Speaker 1: and then there are other people who you go, wait what, Yeah,
Speaker 1: We've had a pretty big one of those towards the
Speaker 1: end of there's a spectrum of of normal, right right,
Speaker 1: there's some people who are further out on the edges
Speaker 1: of that spectrum. I would say people like Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: and Bill Gates are a little further out on that
Speaker 1: spectrum than others because they are very They were both
Speaker 1: very driven. Of course Steve Jobs unfortunately passed away, but
Speaker 1: both very driven individuals who were passionate about their interests
Speaker 1: and UM, and both reportedly had times when they were
Speaker 1: not the most pleasant of people to be around. So
Speaker 1: so yeah, you've got that whole spectrum thing. Well that
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk today about some people who kind
Speaker 1: of fall outside that spectrum to the point where you'd say,
Speaker 1: all right, either this person has something seriously wrong going
Speaker 1: on with them, or perhaps the things that are being
Speaker 1: reported about this person are putting them in a really
Speaker 1: bad light. But in any way, they are clearly they're
Speaker 1: they're in a situation that is not normal, and they
Speaker 1: themselves may not be what we would call normal. UM.
Speaker 1: And the first one we wanted to talk about was
Speaker 1: the one who was in the news recently is John McAfee.
Speaker 1: And McAfee is a guy who's he's been known as
Speaker 1: being an eccentric for uh for more than a decade UM.
Speaker 1: But McAfee he was born in England and raised in Virginia.
Speaker 1: He went to Roanoke College and got a degree in mathematics.
Speaker 1: From that college, UH, he spent time as a programmer
Speaker 1: for NASA's Institute for Space Studies. He worked for a
Speaker 1: couple of big companies. He worked for Univac, he worked
Speaker 1: for Xerox. UH nineteen seventy eight, he joined the Computer
Speaker 1: Sciences Corporation, and then he started working for Lockheed. And
Speaker 1: while he was working for Lockheed, that's when he started
Speaker 1: to develop the software that he has really become known for.
Speaker 1: In fact, it shares his name, the McAfee anti virus software.
Speaker 1: While at LOCKEED he was he became very interested in
Speaker 1: this idea of detecting and removing computer viruses because they
Speaker 1: were just really starting to blossom at that time. We're
Speaker 1: talking about UM the late eighties, and you know, this
Speaker 1: is before we really get into the eras of web.
Speaker 1: The Web doesn't really exist yet, actually doesn't exist yet
Speaker 1: in the in the eighties UM, and very few companies
Speaker 1: have access to some of the other Internet UM functionalities
Speaker 1: like file transfer protocols or email, although they do exist
Speaker 1: at this time. But he was he could see that
Speaker 1: there was this rise in computer viruses and that because
Speaker 1: computers followed directions, there are ways of creating directions that
Speaker 1: make your computer do things that you don't necessarily want
Speaker 1: it to do, whether that's completely filling up a hard
Speaker 1: drive with meaningless information and breaking it, or installing some
Speaker 1: sort of of of uh trojan program that protects a
Speaker 1: nasty piece of malware from being detected. He was very
Speaker 1: much dedicated to creating software that would that would find
Speaker 1: that and remove it. Now, UM, it's interesting to note
Speaker 1: a little bit about his his background and UM I
Speaker 1: read not too long ago a piece from released by
Speaker 1: Wired called John McAfee's Last Stand by Joshua Davis. They
Speaker 1: also have a an e book available on Amazon that
Speaker 1: you can purchase. I think it's nine cents and I
Speaker 1: think it's a I want to say it's thirteen chapter
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, yeah, it's it's not a long
Speaker 1: long book, but it's you know, more than an article. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because apparently this from Wired was there for like six months. Yea. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, he he had been um, you know, as
Speaker 1: he was working for uh, you know, companies like omex
Speaker 1: Um in the early nineteen eighties. I mean he was
Speaker 1: a pretty heavy drug user. Apparently I used cocaine, coeludes. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he he had been a pretty heavy drinker
Speaker 1: before that, even in his college days. It looks like
Speaker 1: um and apparently got to a point where he decided,
Speaker 1: you know, that was it, he wasn't going to do
Speaker 1: this anymore. And he really straightened up, um cleaned up.
Speaker 1: And this was you know, this was before he really
Speaker 1: got the idea to go in and do this himself,
Speaker 1: to launch his own company. Um so. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's not that I necessarily want to uh smear mud
Speaker 1: on John McAfee so much as I think it provides
Speaker 1: some context for for the kinds of things that happened
Speaker 1: later on in his life. Sure, and uh he made
Speaker 1: some interesting decisions with that software that he created. One
Speaker 1: of those was that he decided upon the shareware distribution model,
Speaker 1: which ended up being a very effective way for him
Speaker 1: to get that software out there on the market. Um So.
Speaker 1: In eighties seven he formed McAfee Associates, which was essentially
Speaker 1: in charge of creating this MacAfee antivirus software. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't that much longer. I mean, it was just in
Speaker 1: ninety four when he resigned from the company, and a
Speaker 1: couple of years later he sold his his stake uh
Speaker 1: in the company entirely and just completely got away from it. Um.
Speaker 1: At one point I hear that he was valued at
Speaker 1: around a hundred million dollars. He himself stated that due
Speaker 1: to the economic depression and downturn and and all these
Speaker 1: other issues, that he was reduced too closer to four
Speaker 1: million dollars uh after that was all over, although more
Speaker 1: recently in two thousand twelve, he said that that was
Speaker 1: probably not entirely accurate. He may he may in fact
Speaker 1: have had a bit more than four million dollars UM.
Speaker 1: And this is where we start getting into some pretty
Speaker 1: strange stuff. Um. He one thing was that he was
Speaker 1: really interested in this this concept of quorum sensing, now
Speaker 1: uh quick. Quarum sensing, especially when it refers to bacteria,
Speaker 1: is a way of the bacteria have of reacting in
Speaker 1: a certain manner, and that manner is completely dependent upon
Speaker 1: how much bacteria is present at that time. So in
Speaker 1: other words, if you were to provide a stimulus to
Speaker 1: these bacteria, they would provide a response that would be
Speaker 1: based mostly upon how many other uh instances of that
Speaker 1: bacteria are present. So if there is x number or greater,
Speaker 1: it will respond one way, but if it's fewer than that,
Speaker 1: it will respond a different way, and uh my Coufee
Speaker 1: said that he was doing this in order to try
Speaker 1: and develop new anti beyodics, antibacterial treatments, things that could
Speaker 1: help humans, uh in a medicinal way. And he relocated
Speaker 1: to two Belize, just in Central America. Uh the only
Speaker 1: country in Central America, by the way, for which English
Speaker 1: is the official language, although from what I understand it
Speaker 1: is not the most prevalent language spoken there. It is however,
Speaker 1: the official one. Anyway, he moved to Belize, um created
Speaker 1: this lab in his home, you know, apparently a pretty
Speaker 1: large compound there, but he has a lab at that compound.
Speaker 1: That was from what he was saying, all about studying
Speaker 1: this stuff to try and create better medicines, mostly medicines
Speaker 1: that he was looking at. He was looking at a
Speaker 1: lot of natural elements, things that were um found out
Speaker 1: in rainforests, things like that as the key to these
Speaker 1: sort of medicines. That's what he was claiming. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: would seem that his his entrepreneurial spirit hasn't completely left
Speaker 1: because he's done this. He's also even apparently tried to
Speaker 1: come up with a a sport. Yes, when he was
Speaker 1: living out in the Southwest and this is before he
Speaker 1: moved to Belieze. Um. Apparently, Um, I was listening to
Speaker 1: a radio report from someone who had been uh you know,
Speaker 1: who had met McAfee more than once, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want you to come out here and check out
Speaker 1: this new sport, apparently, narrow trekking. You're supposed to fly,
Speaker 1: I don't know, very very close to the ground. Um.
Speaker 1: You fly very low to the ground using uh, some
Speaker 1: form of aircraft. It might even be a hang glider
Speaker 1: with a motor attached to it. But the idea is
Speaker 1: that you are flying close to the ground so that
Speaker 1: you get that real sense of speed and danger from
Speaker 1: being you know, just a very short distance away from
Speaker 1: crashing to a potential terrible injury or death. And in fact,
Speaker 1: McAfee was involved in a wrongful death lawsuit that was
Speaker 1: the result of a person dying from an arrow trekking accident. Um,
Speaker 1: So I mean this was you know, he's known as
Speaker 1: a daredevil as well as many other things, which will
Speaker 1: I guess we can kind of segue into. Now this
Speaker 1: is gonna get really weird, folks, because here here's the
Speaker 1: thing is that there are a lot of different reports.
Speaker 1: There's what McAfee has said through or we presume it's McAfee,
Speaker 1: through various blogs and Twitter account Twitter messages, things like that,
Speaker 1: there are things that he has said, there are things
Speaker 1: that people who know him have have said. There's things
Speaker 1: that journalists who have investigated this have said, and honestly
Speaker 1: we don't have the whole story. But no matter who's
Speaker 1: telling the story, it's weird. UM has known that the
Speaker 1: Polize police have visited him on more than on occasion. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're their gangs unit actually rated his house in April
Speaker 1: two twelve, the Gang Suppression Unit in Orange Walk Down Belize.
Speaker 1: They rated his home under suspicion that his laboratory was
Speaker 1: actually producing crystal meth. That that was in fact what
Speaker 1: he was interested in making and not UM medicine. And
Speaker 1: in fact there are there are journalists, they're bloggers who
Speaker 1: have said that UM that that McAfee was very active
Speaker 1: in online discussion forums that were dedicated to drug manufacturer
Speaker 1: like as an illicit drugs or or recreational drugs. UM.
Speaker 1: Although there is a woman who UM he talked into
Speaker 1: a job offer to come down and work on UH
Speaker 1: medicinal drugs as well. So that again this is their
Speaker 1: conflicting report, right, So, so they could be that these
Speaker 1: reports that he was the one who was on these
Speaker 1: recreational drug sites, maybe that wasn't him because there they
Speaker 1: were using uh uh pseudonyms, I mean handles, they weren't
Speaker 1: It wasn't just him there. But Gismoto published a report
Speaker 1: that very much seemed to indicate that he was one
Speaker 1: of the people on this recreational drug forum talking about
Speaker 1: trying to perfect a typical kind of drug that would,
Speaker 1: um well, supposed to enhance his his sexual experiences as
Speaker 1: well as give a sense of euphoria and supposedly would
Speaker 1: create a very gradual and mellow come down afterward. So uh,
Speaker 1: and he the guy who was posting under this name,
Speaker 1: posted a lot about this particular kind of drug. Um
Speaker 1: Whether or not that was John McAfee, however, is still
Speaker 1: a question. Now. One of the things that people have
Speaker 1: said is that the drugs that he was talking about
Speaker 1: often can create a sense of paranoia in someone who's
Speaker 1: using those drugs. Now, again, whether or not McFee was
Speaker 1: using those drugs is a is a question that's left open. However,
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say that paranoia is something
Speaker 1: he has felt yes, he has. He has demonstrated, UH,
Speaker 1: paranoid tendencies. Now again there's always that joke just because
Speaker 1: your paranoia doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Speaker 1: But we can't really say that, but we can definitely
Speaker 1: say that he has shown some some paranoid tendencies. One
Speaker 1: of those is trying to evade the police. Now, as
Speaker 1: of the recording of this podcast, which is at the
Speaker 1: end of November twelve, he's still on the run from
Speaker 1: police and Belize, And the reason why the police are
Speaker 1: interested in him is that someone who lived near him,
Speaker 1: Gregory Veant Fall, was found shot dead a few several
Speaker 1: meters away from UH from McAfee's property and UM. Fall
Speaker 1: and McAfee had a history of um H arguments, some
Speaker 1: some UH some disagreements, one of which was that Fall
Speaker 1: said that McAfee mcfee's dogs, when I think McFee owned
Speaker 1: like eleven dogs, but that his dogs were barking all
Speaker 1: the time and that was driving Fall crazy. And UH.
Speaker 1: One of the other issues that happened recently was that
Speaker 1: several of McAfee's dogs, I think four of them died
Speaker 1: of poisoning. So the implication here and again this is
Speaker 1: all unfolding, so we don't have the full information, but
Speaker 1: the implication is that perhaps Fall or someone that Fall knows,
Speaker 1: poisoned the dogs, and that perhaps there was an act
Speaker 1: of retribution against Fall. So when the news first broke,
Speaker 1: it sounded like McAfee was not just a person of
Speaker 1: interest but a suspect. Since then the police police have said, no,
Speaker 1: he's not a suspect. We just want to talk to
Speaker 1: him because we want to find out who killed Fall.
Speaker 1: It's possible that perhaps someone around McAfee killed Fall or McAfee,
Speaker 1: not necessarily on McAfee's command, because, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: McAfee has seemingly started to hang out with some pretty
Speaker 1: rough customers in Belize. Yep, the photography that that accompanies
Speaker 1: the Wired book includes some people with some very large guns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the stories are essentially I'm sorry, I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: guns are pretty heavily restricted in Beliefe. So the story
Speaker 1: essentially is that it sounds like McAfee has um formed
Speaker 1: relationships with several of the the drug gangs in Belize.
Speaker 1: Now it may be that he was doing this in
Speaker 1: an attempt to get hold of materials for his legitimate
Speaker 1: medical you know, research that could be the case, it
Speaker 1: would not be necessarily the wisest move a person has
Speaker 1: ever made to get involved with drug boards, but that's
Speaker 1: a possibility. Now a lot of other people are saying, no,
Speaker 1: what's happening is McAfee got involved in so he could
Speaker 1: get the ingredients need to make the recreational drugs that
Speaker 1: he was interested in, which again we don't know um so. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's possible that maybe one of these you know, gang
Speaker 1: members that he hangs out with committed the murder and
Speaker 1: it wasn't McAfee at all. So we don't know if
Speaker 1: McAfee shot Fall, or if someone McAfee knows shot him,
Speaker 1: or if it was just some random crime that seems
Speaker 1: that seems the most unrealistic of the various possibilities, but
Speaker 1: we don't know, um so. McAfee has been on the
Speaker 1: run and has been posting, or at least there have
Speaker 1: been blog posts attributed to McAfee that have posted in
Speaker 1: his absence that have made things sound even more strange,
Speaker 1: for instance, that McAfee has been using elaborate disguises to
Speaker 1: to hide in plain sight. Yes, he appeared as a
Speaker 1: German um tourist basically using profanity and just shouting at
Speaker 1: people randomly, or tried to uh disguise himself and hunch
Speaker 1: over so that he didn't appear as tall as he
Speaker 1: normally is, and uh spoken heavily accented English, trying to
Speaker 1: sell trinkets to uh he said even or this person
Speaker 1: said he even attempted to sell something to an Associated
Speaker 1: Press reporter who didn't recognize him, a wooden dolphins. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: that the reporter suddenly had an urgent call to attend to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's in the blog post McAfee, assuming it is. McAfee
Speaker 1: claimed that he nearly sold one of these trinkets before
Speaker 1: the AP reporter was called away. Now the police police
Speaker 1: have been asking him to turn himself in so that
Speaker 1: he can talk about whatever it is that happened to
Speaker 1: fall like who who could have possibly killed him, and
Speaker 1: to clear his name. McAfee, in turn, has said that,
Speaker 1: or at least according to these reports and according to
Speaker 1: people who know him who say they've talked to him,
Speaker 1: says that he doesn't want to go into police custody
Speaker 1: because he firmly believes that the police will kill him
Speaker 1: once he's in their custody. Yeah he um he even
Speaker 1: reacted to the that's the way he's on the run now.
Speaker 1: Actually was because when the when the police showed up,
Speaker 1: he thought they were coming to hassle him again. So
Speaker 1: he here, that's what he says. Anyway, so he escaped
Speaker 1: before they could catch him. He Um. So anyway, he's
Speaker 1: saying that the police are definitely going to kill him
Speaker 1: if they take him into custody. Uh. He's also at
Speaker 1: one point apparently suggested that, uh that fall falls death
Speaker 1: was really meant, was that there was a hit gone
Speaker 1: wrong that was meant to hit McAfee and instead hit Fallum.
Speaker 1: That was one of the other possibilities I heard of
Speaker 1: the couple of weeks before we record this podcast. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's these are these are definitely tendencies that we
Speaker 1: would classify as paranohite. Um. And honestly, again we don't
Speaker 1: know all the information. It maybe that perhaps McAfee is
Speaker 1: a very eccentric but otherwise mostly innocent. First and now
Speaker 1: it's true that his personal life also has some other complications.
Speaker 1: Apparently he has several people living at that compound with him,
Speaker 1: including several young women with whom he often has sexual relations,
Speaker 1: and including one who is identified over and over as
Speaker 1: a seventeen year old girlfriend. But then there are other women, uh,
Speaker 1: and and at that compound as well, and so I
Speaker 1: mean they're they're definitely. So it's kind of this weird,
Speaker 1: larger than life, odd David Lynch sort of story thing.
Speaker 1: Like if I saw this enough film, I would think
Speaker 1: the Cohen Brothers made it. Yeah, it's just it's just
Speaker 1: so weird when you think of somebody who has gone
Speaker 1: down in history as coming up with a very successful
Speaker 1: tech product. Um. You know, you you don't typically think
Speaker 1: of that. You think of somebody like Jobs or Gates
Speaker 1: or um, maybe Larry Ellison. Uh, you know some some
Speaker 1: people who they've got lots of money, they live a
Speaker 1: jet setter's lifestyle. Maybe maybe not um, but you don't
Speaker 1: really typically think of you know, when you hear something like, well,
Speaker 1: John McAfee is a person of interest in this murder case,
Speaker 1: and really that's just strange. But but you know the
Speaker 1: reason why we wanted to do this podcast was not
Speaker 1: just to talk about about McAfee, although that was you know,
Speaker 1: the main, the main focus, but also to talk about
Speaker 1: some other people in technology who have displayed odd traits. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was the second thing that came to
Speaker 1: my mind was you know, well he's not alone. I
Speaker 1: mean I was thinking specifically when I talked to Jonathan
Speaker 1: about this about a man named Hans Reiser, who also
Speaker 1: whom I read about and wired, uh several years ago, um,
Speaker 1: when he was at that point accused of murdering his wife. Um.
Speaker 1: And uh, it was just strange to me because he was,
Speaker 1: Um he's known for UM, he's not as famous as
Speaker 1: as uh John McAfee would be, but he is known
Speaker 1: for his riser f s. It's a file system for
Speaker 1: for computers to store files and apparently is extremely efficient, Um,
Speaker 1: very popular among among a certain crowd, very very popular
Speaker 1: in various Linux distributions. Yes, yes, Um. And then you know,
Speaker 1: and here again I'm going wait this, this person who's
Speaker 1: you know, famous within a certain tech community is um,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's wanted for murder. This is so strange. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He married a woman named Nina Sharonova. Uh and they
Speaker 1: met in Russia, I believe so that and that has
Speaker 1: raised questions as to you know, was that an arranged
Speaker 1: marriage kind of thing? But whether that is or not,
Speaker 1: she turned up missing and uh, eventually I know it's
Speaker 1: an odd, odd phrase, right. Uh, But she turned up
Speaker 1: missing and then her body was found, and eventually Hans
Speaker 1: rise Or was taken into custody, and uh, he was tried,
Speaker 1: he was convicted. He ended up um getting a Originally
Speaker 1: he was tried under first degree murder, but it was
Speaker 1: reduced to second degree murder in a plea deal. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that goes beyond being odd, I would say. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, certainly an example of someone who created something
Speaker 1: very influential in technology who ended up having some very
Speaker 1: severe problems. Well, he had, um, he had claimed that
Speaker 1: she had left the country and gone back to Russia,
Speaker 1: and um, you know I had there was nothing, nothing
Speaker 1: there untowards of course, UM, the police had, well they
Speaker 1: didn't have the body. They didn't know, you know, for sure,
Speaker 1: whether she was missing or or dead. And um they
Speaker 1: found his car with um, some bloodstains of hers in it,
Speaker 1: um and an inch of water on the floorboard apparently.
Speaker 1: And he was trying to explain how he you know,
Speaker 1: tried to clean out his car with water and how
Speaker 1: he was surprised to find out that card manufacturers don't
Speaker 1: put a hole in the floor so that water will
Speaker 1: drain out and all sorts of things apparently that made
Speaker 1: the jury shake their heads. And then finally he just said,
Speaker 1: you know, look, this is what happened. Um, but it's
Speaker 1: just very very thing, very very weird thing. I should say,
Speaker 1: I meant I left out a word there um to
Speaker 1: to see something like that happen, and uh, you know
Speaker 1: it's strange. If you want to hear about some more
Speaker 1: here do some more eccentric ones. These are not nearly
Speaker 1: as grim so our buddy Tesla. Oh yes, Nikola, Tesla,
Speaker 1: Internet darling Tesla. You guys love Tesla. I just have
Speaker 1: to say, whenever we talk about Tesla, we get lots
Speaker 1: of emails and messages. Yes, he's right behind Chris his
Speaker 1: picture anyway, Um Tesla. Yeah, one of those guys that
Speaker 1: everyone on the internet seems to adore. Um. Also kind
Speaker 1: of an odd fellow. Had a lot of compulsions that
Speaker 1: he would um, he would bow to all the time.
Speaker 1: One of them was an obsession with the number three.
Speaker 1: Apparently he made it a habit that before going into
Speaker 1: a building, he would walk around the block three times
Speaker 1: before entering. I've read reports that he would always have
Speaker 1: stacks of three stacks of napkins, and the napkins had
Speaker 1: to be in a number that's divisible by three, although
Speaker 1: the number has changed depending upon which sours I was reading.
Speaker 1: There was one that's at nine and one that's at eighteen. Uh.
Speaker 1: But you know, he had anything that was that had
Speaker 1: the number three, and that that was something that was
Speaker 1: very important to him. He wanted to stay in hotel
Speaker 1: rooms that are only the room number need to be
Speaker 1: divisible by three. Uh. And he lived in a hotel.
Speaker 1: He didn't, you know, have an apartment or a house
Speaker 1: or yeah. He Uh. He also was a germophoe and um,
Speaker 1: he hated the thought of anything dirty. He didn't you know,
Speaker 1: he was extremely uh obsessed with cleantliness. Not necessarily a
Speaker 1: bad thing until it goes a little too far. He
Speaker 1: apparently hated jewelry and round the objects. Grant if you're
Speaker 1: if you're creating a tesla coil, round up objects might
Speaker 1: kill you. So maybe that's why. But um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there was just these weird little things and and of
Speaker 1: course his eccentricities became more and more pronounced as he
Speaker 1: got closer to his death. He kind of had a
Speaker 1: pretty sharp decline, and part of that was probably brought
Speaker 1: on by the stress and anxiety he felt by you know,
Speaker 1: feeling like legitimately so, but feeling like he had been
Speaker 1: um cheated out of his spot in the limelight for
Speaker 1: quite some time when other other people were getting patents
Speaker 1: on inventions that he felt he was the rightful inventor
Speaker 1: of and therefore he should be the one holding the
Speaker 1: patent um. Kind of a tragic life really when you
Speaker 1: when you look at the whole story. Although he did
Speaker 1: some amazing things I mean alternating current and Tesla Coil's
Speaker 1: radio I mean again radio is one of those big
Speaker 1: ones where he originally had the patent and then the
Speaker 1: patent office famously reverse their decision on his patent and
Speaker 1: gave it to Marconi, and that was there was a
Speaker 1: big slap in the face. But he's not the only
Speaker 1: famous tech guy who had some weird personality quirks. Samuel
Speaker 1: Morse another one, Yes, Morris, this is an unpleasant one
Speaker 1: to talk about. He's known for his involvement with the telegraph.
Speaker 1: Ye patent did the telegraph. He also he also built
Speaker 1: I didn't realize this in my research, I found out
Speaker 1: he had built a marble cutting machine like to cut
Speaker 1: slabs of marble into three dimensional sculptures. He was not
Speaker 1: able to get a patent on it because there was
Speaker 1: a patent for a previous device that did essentially the
Speaker 1: same thing, but he did in at one UM. So
Speaker 1: he was paranoid as well, you know, he was, you know,
Speaker 1: like McAfee, very paranoidal. But his paranoia was was painted
Speaker 1: against very broad groups um, notably the Catholics. He was Protestant,
Speaker 1: and he believed that Catholics were going to wipe out Protestants. UM.
Speaker 1: He also apparently thought that the nation of Austria was
Speaker 1: dedicated to destroying Protestants. And he even ran for the
Speaker 1: mayor of New York City under the Nativist Party. And
Speaker 1: the Nativist Party was an anti immigration party. They didn't
Speaker 1: want any immigrants coming into the United States. Um and
Speaker 1: and his his prejudices went well beyond Catholics and and Austrians.
Speaker 1: He also uh seemed to hold several, uh pretty strong
Speaker 1: negative opinions about people who are Jewish as well as
Speaker 1: he defended, um the institution of slavery. Now you gotta
Speaker 1: remember the only Morse is active in the mid nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: so this is even before the Civil War. But he
Speaker 1: what he defended slavery, saying essentially that it was it
Speaker 1: was part of the divine plan. And so you know,
Speaker 1: he created something that ended up being instrumental in our
Speaker 1: communications network and really laid the foundation for what would
Speaker 1: become later on our our telephone network, and then even
Speaker 1: beyond that, the Internet itself. You're talking about this is
Speaker 1: like the beginning of all of that. Uh. And yet
Speaker 1: also held these these beliefs, and uh seemed to have
Speaker 1: some pretty crazy ideas. I mean, the idea that that
Speaker 1: there was this this organized conspiracy to wipe out a
Speaker 1: certain segment of the population was a little odd. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I've got one. This one's more fun or
Speaker 1: weird and less again grim or gloomy. But h and
Speaker 1: again this this was something I read on a blog
Speaker 1: post that was about people who showed odd tendencies, you know,
Speaker 1: people in technology so um. But it was about Yoshiro Nakamatsu,
Speaker 1: who was the guy who held the most patents ever,
Speaker 1: like three thousand. UM. He invented compact discs, digital or DVDs.
Speaker 1: He also did uh, digital watches, UM, lots and lots
Speaker 1: of stuff. Apparently, his little excentristy is that he writes
Speaker 1: down everything he eats, he he makes a record of it,
Speaker 1: and he has a specific goal, a very particular goal,
Speaker 1: to live to be one hundred and forty four years old.
Speaker 1: And uh, the the thing that makes up the majority
Speaker 1: of his diet is what the blog called yummy New
Speaker 1: Tree Brain food, which was a combination of seaweed, cheese, yogurt, eel, eggs, beef,
Speaker 1: and chicken liver. And also he had a very interesting
Speaker 1: way of inspiring himself to get new ideas ideas for inventions.
Speaker 1: He would submerge himself in a tub of water and
Speaker 1: then hold his breath until he could not possibly hold
Speaker 1: his breath a moment longer, to the point where he
Speaker 1: said that he was a half second away from drowning
Speaker 1: and says it was the depletion of oxygen that is
Speaker 1: integral for the act of inspiration. HM. So that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I do not recommend that. In fact, I would like
Speaker 1: to currently say, with all sincerity, don't do that. There
Speaker 1: are better ways of coming up with good ideas well.
Speaker 1: The longevity argument that he makes sort of reminds me
Speaker 1: of Ray Kurtzweil, whom we've talked about before and who
Speaker 1: believes that we are reaching the point at which the
Speaker 1: singularity is very likely to occur, the point where you know,
Speaker 1: basically people will be able to, you know what technological
Speaker 1: help become immortal essentially, and um uh. You know he
Speaker 1: has been on a very strict diet for quite some
Speaker 1: time and taking certain vitamins and things any occidants that
Speaker 1: that he hopes will preserve his physical body until the
Speaker 1: point where it can be transferred I guess to a
Speaker 1: uh cybernetic state. But you know, that's one of those
Speaker 1: things where you think of Cursewile and all these things
Speaker 1: that he's done in in terms of um uh, learning
Speaker 1: technologies and music, and you know, you hear something else.
Speaker 1: You go, wow, that's that's kind of unusual. But you
Speaker 1: know again, that's that's more of a that's sort of
Speaker 1: fun and not so not so deep. Jonathan's got an
Speaker 1: unusual look on his face. And do you find something else?
Speaker 1: I was just looking at some other things Nat has done.
Speaker 1: Apparently he has a million dollar toilet room made completely
Speaker 1: out of gold that helps him think better help, And
Speaker 1: he has a vertical moving room in his house which
Speaker 1: you must not call an elevator. Yeah. Yeah. Also a
Speaker 1: lot of his inventions are kind of those wacky inventions,
Speaker 1: like the patent stuff that he's got. Not all the
Speaker 1: patents are necessarily things that you would think of as
Speaker 1: being actually useful, so you know, it's kind of the
Speaker 1: Mr Pope Heel of Japan apparently pocket Fisherman anyway. So clearly, uh,
Speaker 1: genius can sometimes come with some some little weird quirks,
Speaker 1: sometimes quirks that can lead to pretty tragic outcomes. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll see more of the fun weird quirks than the
Speaker 1: ones that are going to create a dark news items goodness,
Speaker 1: I certainly don't want any more of those, but and
Speaker 1: that kind of wraps up our discussion here. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of other examples, and I'm sure they're They're probably
Speaker 1: giants in the technology industry out there whom I have
Speaker 1: personality issues or personality traits that we would find endlessly fascinating,
Speaker 1: but we don't know about them because they've kept them
Speaker 1: under wraps. That's my goal, keep all of my personality
Speaker 1: quirks under reps. And good luck with that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess I shouldn't posted Twitter all the time. Um, but
Speaker 1: that wraps up this discussion. And if you guys have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff. I highly
Speaker 1: recommend you get in touch with us. Send us an
Speaker 1: email or address as tech stuff at Discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter are handled.
Speaker 1: There is tech Stuff H. S. W and Chris and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon. For more
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