Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff looks dot com. Hello again, everyone, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. My name is Chris Pelette and I am
Speaker 1: an editor at how stuff works dot com. Sitting across
Speaker 1: from me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickling. He there, so,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, this is it the grand finale. The
Speaker 1: curtain sweeps down, the spotlight goes out on our beloved
Speaker 1: Chris Palette. It is his final Tech Stuff episode. This
Speaker 1: is not a joke. We may eventually be able to
Speaker 1: get him back on as a guest, but he's this
Speaker 1: is his his final episode as a host of tech
Speaker 1: Stuff and uh and he got to choose whatever topic
Speaker 1: he wanted. Unfortunately, almost all of them were ones we
Speaker 1: had already covered. Well. Actually, it surprised me that we
Speaker 1: didn't have a podcast on the person that we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about today. Yeah, we've We've mentioned him in
Speaker 1: several podcasts. Yeah, but yeah, definitely one of text more
Speaker 1: colorful characters, right, and that, of course is the wonderful
Speaker 1: wizard named was yes, Steve Stephen Gary Wozniak. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: one of the co founders of Apple. He was born
Speaker 1: in on August eleventh, and uh. He came from a
Speaker 1: family that was technologically inclined. Yes, his dad was an
Speaker 1: engineer at a little company called lockeed Martin. I feel
Speaker 1: like I've heard of that company. Yeah, and uh and
Speaker 1: yeah he um. As a as a kid, he became
Speaker 1: very interested in engineering and electronics. Did you did you
Speaker 1: hear about what his favorite book series was that kind
Speaker 1: of inspired him? No? Actually think did it was? The
Speaker 1: I looked at a lot of interviews. He's actually if
Speaker 1: you've never seen an interview with Wozniak, he's a very
Speaker 1: animated individual, well spoken, very passionate about what he does.
Speaker 1: It's clearly he truly enjoys technology, like there's no irony there.
Speaker 1: He just loves it. And though he doesn't necessarily love
Speaker 1: all the things that we do with technology or the
Speaker 1: way that companies handle technology, he's not He actually is
Speaker 1: not so not such a big fan of big companies.
Speaker 1: But we'll get into that. But no, as a kid,
Speaker 1: his favorite book series was the Tom Swift series. So
Speaker 1: Tom Swift, if you don't know, he's a young man
Speaker 1: who is a kind of an engineer who could build
Speaker 1: just about anything at his own company. He would fight
Speaker 1: evil and and solve mysteries and things of that nature.
Speaker 1: And in fact, just as a tangent, Tom Swift plays
Speaker 1: a role in a in a totally different technology has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Wozniak. Can do you do you
Speaker 1: happen to know what Tom Swift? It's actually his Tom
Speaker 1: Swift's name is lent in a way to this technology. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Taser. Oh right, Taser stands Taser's technically an acronym.
Speaker 1: It stands for Thomas A. Swift's electric rifle. You know,
Speaker 1: I think we mentioned that a long time ago when
Speaker 1: we talked about the Taser. Yeah, I think so, but yeah,
Speaker 1: he In an interview, he credited the Tom Swift books
Speaker 1: as igniting his imagination at the idea of creating things
Speaker 1: like electronics and being able to have kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: the equivalent of these adventures, and having a dad who
Speaker 1: was an engineer at lockeed Martin didn't hurt because it
Speaker 1: turned out he had a really good person to go
Speaker 1: to when those science fairs came up in elementary school.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, yeah, and uh, it certainly wouldn't have hurt
Speaker 1: his interest in technology to have a family that understood
Speaker 1: and supported those interests too. They go, oh, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: this is something I like too, so you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should uh stop clowning around, he said foolishly. I
Speaker 1: was a a Tom Swift e. Nice, he's a he's
Speaker 1: a Yeah, he had a He credited his dad and
Speaker 1: some of his teachers in elementary school as really inspiring him. Essentially,
Speaker 1: he said that, uh, you know when he started to
Speaker 1: excel at science. Uh, the teachers responded, and that just
Speaker 1: drove him to make even more accomplishments in that area.
Speaker 1: So by the time he was in sixth grade, he
Speaker 1: actually built a fairly primitive but a working computer that
Speaker 1: could play Tic Tac Toe. And you know, we all
Speaker 1: know from the documentary War Games that it's just a
Speaker 1: short hop, skip and a jump from tic tac toe
Speaker 1: to thermonuclear war. Of course, you know, shall we play
Speaker 1: a game? Thanks Whopper? Hey, nice you remembered the name
Speaker 1: and everything. Yeah, I've I've watched that documentary several times.
Speaker 1: So the old cup modems where he actually had to
Speaker 1: put the phone and I'm sure actually was probably remembers
Speaker 1: those days. Oh yeah, we'll get into the a little
Speaker 1: bit too. Well. It was has also got a bit
Speaker 1: of a mischievous streak in him. Um, a bit, a
Speaker 1: bit of a mischievous street. That was a bit of
Speaker 1: an understatement. Yeah, well do it well. At sixth grade,
Speaker 1: he also got his ham radio license. So obviously he
Speaker 1: was very much interested in electronics and technology and communication.
Speaker 1: All of these things would play a very large role
Speaker 1: in his choices further down the line. And according to
Speaker 1: Waz he said he never took any courses on building
Speaker 1: electronics or computers. He just learned how to do that
Speaker 1: all on his own, at least at least in the
Speaker 1: elementary in high school years. Once you get to college.
Speaker 1: He actually was pursuing originally, uh, when he when he
Speaker 1: first enrolled, he was pursuing a degree in electrical engineering
Speaker 1: and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that's sort of a lesson for all of us.
Speaker 1: You know, Um, sometimes programming and fiddling with electronics and
Speaker 1: those kinds of things can seem really daunting, and it
Speaker 1: feels like, you know, used are dabbling in and it
Speaker 1: feels like you need a degree in computer science or
Speaker 1: electrical engineering to do these things. You don't. You just
Speaker 1: have to have an interest and get the right right
Speaker 1: place to start. And it also helps to uh surround
Speaker 1: yourself with an other fellow enthusiasts. Yeah, and it didn't
Speaker 1: hurt that that was is categorically a genius in certain arenas,
Speaker 1: so that gave him a leg up as well. But
Speaker 1: tales details. Yeah, well, while in while in the both
Speaker 1: in high school and in college, he began to associate
Speaker 1: with other people who are really interested in electronics and technology.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh he was part of a homebrew computer club. Yes,
Speaker 1: that would be v Homebrew computer club. Yeah. Back back
Speaker 1: in the mid seventies. Um was was at the University
Speaker 1: of California at Berkeley. UM and uh he was he
Speaker 1: was interested in attending this, uh, this nearby computer club,
Speaker 1: the Homebrew Computer Club. And uh there were actually quite
Speaker 1: a you people of note who are part of this um.
Speaker 1: But they were interested in before you get into the
Speaker 1: details of that kind of thing, this group was really
Speaker 1: kind of interested in what you could do with computers because, uh,
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties seventies, we weren't talking about uh
Speaker 1: machines like the Apple too, where you had a monitor
Speaker 1: sitting on top of a computer with a keyboard and
Speaker 1: you would program stuff. I mean, we were uh, they
Speaker 1: were interested in in large part and things like the Altaire,
Speaker 1: which had no monitor. You you would read, um, the
Speaker 1: the output of this device by the blinking lights or
Speaker 1: you know in German dustprincn light as many a many
Speaker 1: many jokes have gone. But really, I mean, it wasn't
Speaker 1: It wasn't something that the average person would probably be
Speaker 1: likely in picking up, simply because there was kind of
Speaker 1: a barrier of entry. It was hard to understand for
Speaker 1: people who were sort of passing lee interested in it.
Speaker 1: And we talked about the IBM s and the machines
Speaker 1: that corporate customers would use where you had punch cards
Speaker 1: and and you know printing and large storage devices and
Speaker 1: things like that. Well yeah, I mean those were far
Speaker 1: more easy in some ways to understand because there were
Speaker 1: more ways to interact with those machines, but they were
Speaker 1: also hugely expensive and took up a lot more space
Speaker 1: than something like the Altaire. This is the kind of
Speaker 1: device that got people thinking, you know, I could have
Speaker 1: a computer in my house. I could do things with
Speaker 1: a computer. I could program this thing. This, this could
Speaker 1: be fun. What could I do with this? And that's
Speaker 1: really what this group was all about. And there were
Speaker 1: other people uh interested in this as well, like a
Speaker 1: guy named Jobs, and I believe a couple of guys
Speaker 1: named Alan and Gates to show up in the logs.
Speaker 1: And there were there were other people who interacted with
Speaker 1: all of those guys that that floated in and out
Speaker 1: of that culture out there in California around that time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is the birth of the personal computer age.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the the very early days and uh
Speaker 1: and of course Bosniac plays a very large role in that.
Speaker 1: But also uh he had other interests in in finding
Speaker 1: out how stuff works, which you know, we can appreciate, um,
Speaker 1: like the phone system. He was he was known to
Speaker 1: engage in a little phone freaking now and then. We
Speaker 1: actually have talked about phone freaking in the past. Essentially,
Speaker 1: what phone freaking was was finding out how the telephone
Speaker 1: system worked and then exploiting that knowledge by being able
Speaker 1: to to create things that would allow you to make
Speaker 1: free phone calls. UM. Usually it would involve recreating a
Speaker 1: certain kind of tone that the phone would then um
Speaker 1: not recognize the fact that you were dialing. It wouldn't
Speaker 1: register that, so it acts as if the line had
Speaker 1: not been engaged. Whereas you could actually make the call
Speaker 1: for free. So, um, there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: kits that you could do this with. There, of course,
Speaker 1: was the famous UH whistle, Yes, uh, the the Captain
Speaker 1: crunch whistle, or you could whistle into a phone and
Speaker 1: UH with this particular toy whistle that came in the
Speaker 1: Cereal and UH it would recreate the exact pitch you
Speaker 1: needed in order to UH to hack the phone system.
Speaker 1: That changed before too long and they had to start
Speaker 1: creating electronic devices that could generate. Normally it would be
Speaker 1: two tones together to be able to uh to actually
Speaker 1: hack into a phone system. Yeah. Well, um, if if
Speaker 1: you haven't done any research into into phone freaking, or
Speaker 1: listen to the podcast from Man that was a long time.
Speaker 1: It was basically that the deal was that they had
Speaker 1: the system in place so that the the phone company
Speaker 1: could do maintenance work and the phone technicians out in
Speaker 1: the field could use these certain codes. Um. In the
Speaker 1: case of one of them, it was a high E
Speaker 1: played three times and that would unlock the system. It
Speaker 1: was a very analog system them at that point. And
Speaker 1: UH you know they the phone company actually published information
Speaker 1: on this in their Bell Technical Journal, which was available
Speaker 1: at your local library, and certain people figured this out
Speaker 1: and and he whistle. This is famous because a famous
Speaker 1: phone freaker named Captain Crunch is named that because he
Speaker 1: realized that the toy whistle that you found in a
Speaker 1: box of cereal, I'll let you guess which brand. Um, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: how did how did you know? Um? You could? You
Speaker 1: could play exactly that note. That's all you needed. You
Speaker 1: all you had. All you had to do was know
Speaker 1: that the code and have that whistle. Um. And of
Speaker 1: course Bell went nuts trying to get the technical that
Speaker 1: copy of the Technical Journal back off the shelves. That
Speaker 1: this was a mistake to let that information get outside
Speaker 1: the door of Bell. Yeah, that was not a great move.
Speaker 1: We published this, you're not supposed to want to read
Speaker 1: about it. But but people who were interested in electronics,
Speaker 1: we clearly something as complex as the telephone uh system
Speaker 1: would be fascinating to them, and that included people like Wasnia. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and uh it's it's famous that he and Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: were actually building phone freaking systems for other people, um,
Speaker 1: and and trying to sell them, which they did right
Speaker 1: on a small scale, and that which kind of set
Speaker 1: the ground for for their future endeavors together. They He
Speaker 1: actually did withdraw from the University of California before completing
Speaker 1: his degree and began to work for HEWITTT. Packard and
Speaker 1: was an an engineer there. He actually worked specifically on
Speaker 1: designing calculators. Meanwhile, Jobs kind of came up with this idea. Now,
Speaker 1: but when you talk about jobs in Wosniac, they had
Speaker 1: very different roles when in those early days of Apple, right,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs was an idea guy, he was a business guy,
Speaker 1: and he was a marketing guy most more than anything else.
Speaker 1: He was a marketing genius. Yeah, I've been reading Isaacson's
Speaker 1: biography of Steve Jobs, and I'm still not quite done
Speaker 1: with it yet, but I have passed through the early
Speaker 1: stages of Apple. Will be there and uh, apparently when
Speaker 1: they were working on the Apple one, which was a
Speaker 1: very basic computer um As a matter of fact, it
Speaker 1: had the very early machines weren't really machines. They were
Speaker 1: a set of boards basically motherboards and pieces that you
Speaker 1: would assemble into a case and use it as a
Speaker 1: computer UM which sold for as Jonathan likes to point out,
Speaker 1: the sum of six d sixty six dollars and sixty
Speaker 1: six cents. Wozniak likes repeating digits. Yeah apparently, well, according
Speaker 1: to them, it had nothing to do with the symbolic
Speaker 1: nature of this in uh, in religion, it was more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was no but it's hard to imagine that it
Speaker 1: and it's an Apple computer. Yeah. Of course. They also
Speaker 1: say that Apple was chosen for other reasons than the Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's funny because because Wozniak said that he had just
Speaker 1: guessed at some point that the reason why Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: wanted to call the company Apple was that Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: had worked for a while at an orchard in either
Speaker 1: Washington or Oregon, and that that perhaps gave him the idea,
Speaker 1: which may or may not be the case, because he
Speaker 1: said the thing about Jobs was that he would come
Speaker 1: up with ideas but not necessarily explain to you how
Speaker 1: he came up with him. Yeah, yeah, that's true. We
Speaker 1: also should point out that there was this time in
Speaker 1: jobs life where he was expanding his consciousness a little bit. Yes, yes, um.
Speaker 1: Jobs attended to read college up in Oregon and did
Speaker 1: not finish there, but was was very interested in a
Speaker 1: number of things, including UH, expanding one's horizons to the
Speaker 1: use of chemical substances, which a very very diplomatic way
Speaker 1: of putting it. That's not and I don't get the
Speaker 1: sense that that is interested in that. I think he
Speaker 1: likes to expand his consciousness through technological means, which again
Speaker 1: shows that difference. Jobs was this marketer and Wasasniak was
Speaker 1: the engineer. He was the guy who was really designing
Speaker 1: the technology. And well that was that was actually exactly
Speaker 1: my point was according to the Isaacs and story, Um
Speaker 1: was wanted to give away the design for the original
Speaker 1: boards for the Apple One, and Jobs said no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we could sell this thing. We could make a company.
Speaker 1: And that intrigue was just enough to go, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's give it a try. Yeah, because before, at at
Speaker 1: the Homebrew Computer Club, Wasniac would distribute designs that he
Speaker 1: would come up with for for computer kids. He would
Speaker 1: design them on paper and then he would just distribute
Speaker 1: copies of it to the other members. And Jobs was
Speaker 1: getting to the point where he's like, you know, if
Speaker 1: we didn't give these away for free, I bet people
Speaker 1: would pay for them. And so yeah, he he convinced
Speaker 1: Wozniak to go in with him on a venture together.
Speaker 1: And this was the idea of Apple. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't easy. Um, you know, Wozniak was a
Speaker 1: little reticent to leave HP. I mean, you think about
Speaker 1: it if you were if your buddy is telling you, hey,
Speaker 1: let's go start a company. Meanwhile, you're in with a
Speaker 1: very strong technology company and you're you know, you've got
Speaker 1: a good job, it's secure, and it's like, well, they're
Speaker 1: on on the one hand, you got the allure of
Speaker 1: of you know, this opportunity to do something really cool,
Speaker 1: but hey, you know, there's not a lot of security,
Speaker 1: and it's starting your own company can be a challenge,
Speaker 1: and it can be a lot of work, and it
Speaker 1: can be scary. Yeah, and it first guaranteed right at first,
Speaker 1: he did continue to work with HP, didn't quit immediately.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of the stories about founding Apple
Speaker 1: is that they had to in order to raise the
Speaker 1: capital they needed, which was not that much by today's standards.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if you were to convert into today's dollars,
Speaker 1: they it was a fairly low investment. In fact, that
Speaker 1: was one of the things that Steve Jobs was able
Speaker 1: to to use to convince Wosnia to try. It was
Speaker 1: because the investment was not going to be prohibitively large,
Speaker 1: but it's still required that they raised some capital, and
Speaker 1: they did it by selling off stuff that they owned.
Speaker 1: And Wasniac sold off his beloved scientific calculator, Yes, which
Speaker 1: at the time was pretty hot piece of technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for around something something to the tune of around five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars at the time, which you know in the seventies.
Speaker 1: That's that's it's still a good chunk of change, right,
Speaker 1: It's it was even more so back then. And uh
Speaker 1: the interesting thing to me was that when I read
Speaker 1: an interview, a more recent interview, Wasniac really downplayed that.
Speaker 1: He said he said, uh, well, here's the thing. I'm
Speaker 1: still technically working for HP. And because I worked for HP,
Speaker 1: I could buy the next new calculator before it came
Speaker 1: out and at a lower price than I did the
Speaker 1: older calculator. So, uh so I thought, even at this
Speaker 1: company that I'm working on with jobs goes belly up,
Speaker 1: I still, um, I still have the protection of working
Speaker 1: for this other company, and I can get my calculator back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Um, which is an important part of context
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people miss. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the the Apple one did reasonably well within those circles,
Speaker 1: and they started working on the Apple too. Um jobs play,
Speaker 1: I mean, jobs played a good part in the getting
Speaker 1: it into stores, but Wazn'tiak had a lot to do
Speaker 1: with the back end of that machine, especially the the
Speaker 1: Basic language implement implementation. There you go, he was unfamiliar
Speaker 1: with Basic at first, and uh, just kind of funny.
Speaker 1: It's funny it's as good with hard but not with Basic.
Speaker 1: It's also funny that he got really uh he started
Speaker 1: to really stay the Basic version that HP uses, which
Speaker 1: is not the same as the Basic language that that
Speaker 1: Bill Gates was working on. So um, it was he
Speaker 1: was coming at it from a different approach because he
Speaker 1: was you know, I think at the time he was
Speaker 1: actually working under the assumption that was essentially the same thing.
Speaker 1: But it turned out it was two different versions of
Speaker 1: Basic to two pretty significant different versions. Also, I should
Speaker 1: point out, so so they founded Apple in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't it was just nine seventy seven when
Speaker 1: Apple two came out, So that that first Apple, we
Speaker 1: should really point out, it was more like a almost
Speaker 1: like a run of prototypes. It would they only made
Speaker 1: a small relatively small number of these because, for one thing,
Speaker 1: they didn't know how big the demand was going to be.
Speaker 1: They knew that their fellow computer enthusiasts would enjoy this
Speaker 1: kind of thing because they also shared the vision that
Speaker 1: computers would one day be an integral part of our lives.
Speaker 1: But at the time, the average person, like the average consumer,
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily have any desire or knee for a computer,
Speaker 1: at least they didn't think they did. And uh, and
Speaker 1: so it was. It was definitely not a sure thing
Speaker 1: when they were first getting started. But ninety seven Apple
Speaker 1: two comes out, and uh, I think, uh I think
Speaker 1: you could describe its success as being meteoric. Oh yeah, yeah, well, um,
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons that Wozniak says that he
Speaker 1: worked so hard on the basic um structure for the
Speaker 1: two microprocessor was was simply that he realized that basic
Speaker 1: was going to be a big help to people who
Speaker 1: were going to adopt these, and he wanted people to
Speaker 1: understand that computers could play a significant role in their
Speaker 1: personal lives. And so he said, you know, this is
Speaker 1: you know, I basically hunkered down to do this because
Speaker 1: I knew this was going to be important and that's
Speaker 1: That's something that you see when you look at that
Speaker 1: Steve Wozniak's career is that he obviously he's willing to
Speaker 1: put his his back into it and really work on
Speaker 1: something that he is very passionate about like this, um
Speaker 1: the very other you know, there were other things too.
Speaker 1: He talks about having to write the disc operating software
Speaker 1: for the the earlier machines, and he didn't This was
Speaker 1: not something that he was familiar with. Yeah, he had
Speaker 1: never really used magnetic storage like that, but he made
Speaker 1: it work because he knew it was important. Um. Not
Speaker 1: that not donet to discount other people all over the
Speaker 1: world who do this every day. But I'm saying, you know,
Speaker 1: as we're looking at Steve Wozniak, this is uh technology
Speaker 1: is is clearly part of his DNA, and it's it
Speaker 1: he he needs to to make it work. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I read about him too in the
Speaker 1: Isaacs and UM biography of Jobs was that uh um,
Speaker 1: apparently he was just really good at finding innovative solutions
Speaker 1: to the challenges that that came up while they were
Speaker 1: creating the actual machines. He his engineering expertise. It's more
Speaker 1: than just it's sort of like a virtuoso and a
Speaker 1: musical instrument. You have people who can play the instrument,
Speaker 1: but there are very few people that can that can
Speaker 1: pick it up and do something really brilliant with it
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't expect to do because they don't teach this.
Speaker 1: It's just the thing that you sort of inately have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently he is. He just got that um ability
Speaker 1: to to look at a technology and know how it
Speaker 1: works and go, well, you know what, I know this
Speaker 1: isn't work in this way just for kicks. Let's plug
Speaker 1: this in this way and see if that works. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He he had a real interesting attitude too. He said that,
Speaker 1: you know, in general, like in a broad stroke, he said,
Speaker 1: if he could build a machine that had two hundred
Speaker 1: chips in it, he would then look at that design
Speaker 1: and say, how can I build a machine that does
Speaker 1: the exact same thing this thing does, but with a
Speaker 1: hundred fifty chips? And he would do it. And then
Speaker 1: after that he'd say, okay, well, how can I build
Speaker 1: a machine that does all the things this machine does,
Speaker 1: but only with a hundred chips and just continue to
Speaker 1: Lee refined that design so that it was more and
Speaker 1: more elegant and more efficient in each iteration. That was
Speaker 1: sort of his thought process, which is, you know, that's
Speaker 1: a good thing. Well, it's funny you should mention that
Speaker 1: because there there is another story that Jobs in Bosniak
Speaker 1: were working together at Atari to develop a game machine.
Speaker 1: Now I don't think Wosniak was that, if my memory serves,
Speaker 1: it's been a few days since I've read that. Uh,
Speaker 1: if memory serves, Wosniak wasn't actually working for Atari. Um.
Speaker 1: Jobs actually kind of convinced him to work on this project.
Speaker 1: But they they were supposed to. They were trying to
Speaker 1: create this machine, and the challenge was it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, if you can do this with uh fewer
Speaker 1: chips in this time period, we'll go ahead and go
Speaker 1: with this idea. So Jobs knew that Wosniak had the
Speaker 1: the expertise to make it work, and he did that.
Speaker 1: The point of doing this was to save money because
Speaker 1: these chips were not cheap UM, So the fewer components
Speaker 1: that you could use on the circuit board, the more
Speaker 1: money you could save in doing that and make the
Speaker 1: project more cost efficient in the end. And uh, thanks
Speaker 1: to was they actually made it work. Of course, Uh,
Speaker 1: they're known for Breakout. The two of them both worked
Speaker 1: on Breakout UM, which is a classic Atari game. Um
Speaker 1: but uh yeah, I mean that that paid off both
Speaker 1: on that project and their work they did for Apple,
Speaker 1: because they would continually revise the design to make it,
Speaker 1: to make it more cost efficient and make it more effective.
Speaker 1: Because what was is one of those people that believes
Speaker 1: that UM technology should be accessible to people. Um. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, well, you might say, well, hey, Apple
Speaker 1: is known for having high priced computers. What are you
Speaker 1: talking to? High price computers and closed systems. Yes, two
Speaker 1: things that you would imagine would be antithetical to that philosophy. Well,
Speaker 1: that's true, And uh but I would argue that, um,
Speaker 1: we need to take a look at the exit of
Speaker 1: Wozniak from Apple because, um, a lot of that did
Speaker 1: not surround the Apple to the Apple two was a
Speaker 1: very affordable machine, which is why it ended up in
Speaker 1: a lot of people's homes, in a lot of schools. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in order to get there, we need to we
Speaker 1: need to to get back to like about well nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties when Apple went public, and that was of course
Speaker 1: a big event. In nineteen eighty one was a huge
Speaker 1: year for Wozniak in both triumph and tragedy. Uh In
Speaker 1: one he returned to UC Berkeley to finish out his
Speaker 1: degree in electrical engineering and computer science under an assumed name.
Speaker 1: I would also guess that he probably cruised through a
Speaker 1: lot of that. Probably, Yeah, the fact that the fact
Speaker 1: that there may have been courses that were referring to
Speaker 1: his own work might have might have done that. But
Speaker 1: also that year he um he was the X, a
Speaker 1: man who has a lot of different interests in one
Speaker 1: of those was piloting air planes. Yes, and he owned
Speaker 1: his own private airplane at this point because Apple very
Speaker 1: quickly was a huge success, you know, launched in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, and by one he had enough to have
Speaker 1: his own private plane. And he was piloting his private
Speaker 1: plane and crashed while trying to take off at the
Speaker 1: Santa Cruz sky Park. And it was a pretty serious
Speaker 1: crash and he was very badly hurt in that. In
Speaker 1: that accident, I suffered from amnesia for quite some time. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had a lot of different injuries, memory loss. It
Speaker 1: took about two years of rehabilitation for him to get
Speaker 1: back to how he was before the accident. But around
Speaker 1: that time, the Apple two was really starting to become
Speaker 1: a true success story, like a huge success story in
Speaker 1: personal computing and UH and by three, so this is
Speaker 1: just a couple of years after Apple has gone public.
Speaker 1: Three years after Apple's gone public, it was valued the
Speaker 1: company was valued at nine hundred and eighty five million
Speaker 1: billion dollars if you looked at its stock, if you
Speaker 1: were to value the company by how much stock was
Speaker 1: out there in the price that stock was trading at,
Speaker 1: so just under a billion dollars. And again the company
Speaker 1: is not even ten years old yet, so you know,
Speaker 1: Wasniak's work was really starting to pay off for the
Speaker 1: company and for Wosniac at the time. He also UH
Speaker 1: in addition to this, while he was going through his
Speaker 1: recovery period, got involved in another one of his passions,
Speaker 1: which is music. Hosted the now infamous US festivals in California,
Speaker 1: UM which were both were which were known for being huge,
Speaker 1: I mean very very large events. Think of UM things
Speaker 1: like um um, you know Lollapalooza now or Lilith Fair.
Speaker 1: I mean kind of events like that where you're trying.
Speaker 1: I know I am, but I don't go to large
Speaker 1: outdoor events like that. Or the festives. Well, yeah, but
Speaker 1: they did have a verse line of different kinds of Yes,
Speaker 1: actually they were. They were sort of in competition into
Speaker 1: some degree because Coachella had been had been out for
Speaker 1: many years, more than a decade out in California. Um,
Speaker 1: but they it was sort of a blend of technology
Speaker 1: and music, which makes me think more of south By
Speaker 1: Southwest now than than that. But at that time that's
Speaker 1: not the kind of events that we're going on. There
Speaker 1: were more i think inspired from the many years earlier
Speaker 1: Woodstock and events like that, where it was just the
Speaker 1: large outdoor music festivals. But they were also known for extravagance. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, there were some artists like uh van Halen
Speaker 1: and David Bowie who were taking home more than a
Speaker 1: million dollars in early eighty two and eighty three, the
Speaker 1: early eighties, I mean, um and, which were tremendous sums
Speaker 1: of money at that point. Um and and it's I
Speaker 1: think regarded by a lot of people now the US
Speaker 1: festivals sort of that's sort of a punchline to a joke,
Speaker 1: although I'm not sure what the setup would be, UM,
Speaker 1: But I don't know that it was completely unsuccessful. I
Speaker 1: just think that it was sort of a tribute to
Speaker 1: was his generosity and the fact that he paid people
Speaker 1: really uh, you know, generous sums of money. But I
Speaker 1: think he was just having a good time with a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Yeah, he also took this time to
Speaker 1: start getting into philanthropy. Yes, he began to really invest,
Speaker 1: specifically in the education system near his own home. He
Speaker 1: began to uh to help UH schools get computers and
Speaker 1: training on how to use the computers. He was very
Speaker 1: enthusiastic at fostering education, which is no surprise considering, you know,
Speaker 1: his father had helped him and he does credit his
Speaker 1: you know, several teachers went in his elementary school days
Speaker 1: as really being the inspiration for him to pursue his interests.
Speaker 1: So it's not a big surprise that he wanted to
Speaker 1: to kind of pay it forward and and do that
Speaker 1: on himself. So he began to do that and UH.
Speaker 1: In fact, his his contributions to technology and philanthropy led
Speaker 1: up to him receiving the award the the National Medal
Speaker 1: of Technology in nineteen five. He was awarded that by
Speaker 1: the United States President, who at the time was Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan and received that and it's the highest honor bestowed
Speaker 1: on America's inventors and innovators. Yes, the award has come
Speaker 1: up several times over the course of tech stuff. UM
Speaker 1: you know probably was as one of the people we
Speaker 1: would actually have heard of. UM. They were and Jobs
Speaker 1: were sort of rock stars in the early eighties because
Speaker 1: of the the the prominence of the Apple two UM
Speaker 1: and you know, there were there were cover stories on magazines,
Speaker 1: business magazines, UH and UH and news magazines about these guys.
Speaker 1: They were, They were sort of well known. Of course,
Speaker 1: Jobs is a little bit more outspoken. He's known as
Speaker 1: the um you know, more of the the marketing face
Speaker 1: of the company, especially UM recently, but even back then
Speaker 1: in the in the early days of the company. UM
Speaker 1: as technology went on at Apple, though, as things started
Speaker 1: to change and they started focusing on, uh, diversifying the lines,
Speaker 1: UM was, you know, was sort of not as integral
Speaker 1: to the the creation of machines like the Apple three,
Speaker 1: the Lisa, and the Macintosh like he had been with
Speaker 1: the Apple too. And I think that was partially due
Speaker 1: of course, to the to the accident and the need
Speaker 1: for his recovery. He just he just wasn't as um
Speaker 1: as UM available during that time as he would have
Speaker 1: done otherwise. Yeah, and then um in by night five,
Speaker 1: big changes were happening at Apple. Uh. The biggest was
Speaker 1: that Steve Jobs left the company and that depending on
Speaker 1: how you define it, he was either fire because he
Speaker 1: was having some really nasty conflicts with the with Apple's
Speaker 1: board of directors, or he was just marginalized to the
Speaker 1: point where he just stopped showing up to work. Um.
Speaker 1: But really, I mean essentially they kept giving him a
Speaker 1: d a smaller role over time and distancing him Steve Jobs,
Speaker 1: that is, away from the main operations of Apple. And
Speaker 1: so Steve Jobs left in night Fiveniac stuck around with
Speaker 1: Apple for a couple more years. He would not leave
Speaker 1: the company until seven. Yes, and to some degree he
Speaker 1: still holds a consulting role with the company today. Um.
Speaker 1: His and he he left the company, but Apple still
Speaker 1: I guess it's safe to say they never completely severed
Speaker 1: their relationship, although he doesn't go into work there like
Speaker 1: he used to. Um. And he's and you wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: call him an Apple evangelist either. I mean, he says
Speaker 1: in frequent interviews he will say or frequently in interviews,
Speaker 1: I should say, he will say he loves Apple, but
Speaker 1: at the same time he is not shy to criticize
Speaker 1: Apple for things that he views as as hum as
Speaker 1: a as as failures or as mistakes. He is very
Speaker 1: he is known for being very honest and very upfront
Speaker 1: and just uh, you know, giving his opinion. He's a
Speaker 1: straight shooter when it comes to that, and not in
Speaker 1: necessarily a mean way, but very matter of fact. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: actually uh. When he started to work on some other
Speaker 1: projects that one of the first was cl nine, which
Speaker 1: was a company that was known for creating the first
Speaker 1: programmable universal remote YEP. And so this again shows that
Speaker 1: wozniak interest in electronics was still very, very high. He
Speaker 1: just I think wosnia is one of those guys who
Speaker 1: really likes to find a new challenge and know once
Speaker 1: he's done that, once he's managed to to accomplish whatever
Speaker 1: that challenges, then he's ready to move on to the
Speaker 1: next one. In fact, again from listening to him talk,
Speaker 1: I would say that that's just one of those things
Speaker 1: he really values, is the idea of innovation, research and development,
Speaker 1: building new stuff and not just making constant improvements over
Speaker 1: older technology. In fact, that might have been one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why he left Apple was that he was
Speaker 1: starting to see Apple turned into this company that was
Speaker 1: more interested in releasing incremental updates to its technology rather
Speaker 1: than truly innovating and building something that's really cool. And
Speaker 1: in fact, that's that's a criticism that he has leveled
Speaker 1: recently at Apple over the last few years, saying that
Speaker 1: Apple seems to be content to release new versions of
Speaker 1: truly innovative and amazing products. You know, he loves things
Speaker 1: like the iPad and the iPhone and all that. He
Speaker 1: things those were great, But why he doesn't think is
Speaker 1: great is that Apple seems to be content to just
Speaker 1: give updates to those products rather than try and create
Speaker 1: something wholly new. Now, that may not be completely fair.
Speaker 1: There may be some things developing an Apple about which
Speaker 1: we know nothing that could blow our minds any day now,
Speaker 1: like the Apple TV that we keep on hoping will
Speaker 1: come out. But you know that that the perception that
Speaker 1: Wozniak has is that, uh, Apple's not currently really in
Speaker 1: that innovative space. In fact, recently he said that Microsoft
Speaker 1: was showing more of that sort of innovative approach. Doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean it's going to be a success for Microsoft.
Speaker 1: But he was saying that you know, Windows eight, Windows
Speaker 1: Phone ate the surface tablet, all of that was kind
Speaker 1: of pointing. It was such a radical departure from the
Speaker 1: stuff that Microsoft had been doing that it was a
Speaker 1: much more innovative approach than what Apple was currently doing. Right. Well, um,
Speaker 1: you know he uh he ended up butting heads with
Speaker 1: cl nine with Apple. Um. He was trying to contract
Speaker 1: the design firm Frog Design, uh to get the product
Speaker 1: designed for him. And Apple had brought Frog Design to
Speaker 1: California with the idea that they were going to be
Speaker 1: their designers, their product designers, and Apple said, no, you
Speaker 1: cannot do that. That was part of their their U
Speaker 1: their UM contract with them. Um. But yeah, he very
Speaker 1: much uh you know, had an idea because he knew
Speaker 1: that these guys were innovators in the way things looked
Speaker 1: and felt. Um. So it doesn't surprise me much that
Speaker 1: that was likes um the kinds of products that Apple
Speaker 1: comes out with. But uh, you know, they had a
Speaker 1: similar design sense. But Apple did not appreciate that at
Speaker 1: the time. UM. Oh, and uh, we didn't mention, but
Speaker 1: well it's probably looking at the timeline here, UM, probably
Speaker 1: should mention some of the other things that he got
Speaker 1: into of the years. Of course, he's been a speaker
Speaker 1: UM for many many years now, including dating back to that.
Speaker 1: That time he was sort of a coveted personality for
Speaker 1: UM keynotes and different kinds of addresses. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: He started several companies. C All nine was just one
Speaker 1: of them. Wheels of Zeus was one of my favorites. Yes,
Speaker 1: the acronym Wheels of Zeus is laws in in two
Speaker 1: thousand one. And that was back uh in the early
Speaker 1: days of trying to come up with uses for GPS. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The idea being that if you can have a wireless
Speaker 1: GPS UH network, then you would be able to locate stuff. Really,
Speaker 1: that was one of his ideas. He said he wanted
Speaker 1: to help people be able to locate things. Yes, all right,
Speaker 1: that was you know so yeah, and was or as
Speaker 1: in Wheels of Zeus not Wasniak. But Wheels of Zeus
Speaker 1: lasted for about five years that it closed up in
Speaker 1: two tho six. Also, U and uh he in going
Speaker 1: back a bit. No, No, it's fine. I just want
Speaker 1: to mention, you know, being a co founder of the
Speaker 1: Electronic Frontier Foundation. I mean this is huge. The Electronic
Speaker 1: Frontier Foundation or e f F is an organization that
Speaker 1: advocates for openness and freedom on the internet in the
Speaker 1: computer world. They are also known for doing things like
Speaker 1: helping provide legal assistance to hackers that are being pursued
Speaker 1: by by government officials or or you know, by law enforcement.
Speaker 1: They're known for helping out folks who might otherwise be
Speaker 1: seen as troublemakers. Um. But it's really all about promoting
Speaker 1: the freedom of information and the trying to keep as
Speaker 1: as much of the the manipulation or or or um.
Speaker 1: The just just trying to keep the government out of
Speaker 1: controlling technology in all its forms. Mainly it tends over
Speaker 1: the last several years, it tends to mostly be about
Speaker 1: the Internet, but it's it goes beyond that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they are very interested in uh, you know,
Speaker 1: privacy issues issues. Uh, not to uh, not to protect
Speaker 1: what you might call black hat hackers, um, but more
Speaker 1: to give people the opportunity to uh control their technology
Speaker 1: lives a little bit more openly and and do more
Speaker 1: with it rather than having that spoken for for them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wazniak has has really come across as someone who who
Speaker 1: wants the individual to have as much control and say
Speaker 1: in that sort of thing, and less of that should
Speaker 1: go to things like corporations and governments. So uh, you
Speaker 1: know this, it's obvious why he would want to co
Speaker 1: found an organization like BFF. And in two thousand he
Speaker 1: was induct it into the Inventor's Hall of Fame and
Speaker 1: also received the Hinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment. Yes,
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention the Hines Award, So I'm glad
Speaker 1: you did that. And it's not the Hinz Doofenschmertz Award.
Speaker 1: Curse you Bury the Lady Pass. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: this is this is a period, um, the early two
Speaker 1: thousand's where we kind of didn't hear a lot from him.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's not the kind of person that that
Speaker 1: um you read about in the society pages so much.
Speaker 1: Although until the late two thousands, well you know, making
Speaker 1: appearances on shows like Kathy Griffin in My Life on
Speaker 1: the d List. Yeah he was dating her at the time, yes, yes, Um,
Speaker 1: he's also been on the Big Bang Theory and of
Speaker 1: course Dancing with the Stars cutting a rug on a segue. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: he uh he showed. I watched some of that, and
Speaker 1: I have to admit he showed a tremendous sense of
Speaker 1: humor about being on that show. Um, and he's as
Speaker 1: a dancer. He is a really incredible programmer. Nice. Um
Speaker 1: an excellent compliment and I am neither. So I really
Speaker 1: can't talk, but I will. I will say that that,
Speaker 1: but I think he would probably agree. Um yeah, he
Speaker 1: uh yeah. He seemed to really kind of have fun
Speaker 1: with his own, you know, public persona, although he's not
Speaker 1: you know, he's not like a celebrity in the sense
Speaker 1: of jumping out and trying to attract attention. That doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to really be his his style. He's even been known,
Speaker 1: like on on launch days for Apple products to go
Speaker 1: and wait in line at an Apple store. There was
Speaker 1: one story where uh he, I remember it was it
Speaker 1: was one of the early iPhones, I want to say,
Speaker 1: where he was walking to the Apple store to go
Speaker 1: get in line, and then he got ushered into the
Speaker 1: front of the line, and he actually felt badly about
Speaker 1: it because he was like, you know, he didn't feel
Speaker 1: that he should necessarily be treated any differently than any
Speaker 1: other customer. Um And but a lot of people who
Speaker 1: were in line are like, dude, that's woznia. He can
Speaker 1: totally go in. It's okay, Yeah, I would. I would
Speaker 1: imagine that that he has enough of a following where
Speaker 1: you know, there there would be a certain amount of
Speaker 1: tolerance among the other shoppers that day. Um. He's also known,
Speaker 1: of course, over over time to be a rather uh
Speaker 1: playful prankster of sorts. He's famed, of course for many
Speaker 1: different stunts with two dollar bills. Um, I have actually
Speaker 1: tried to pass two dollar bills which are completely legal,
Speaker 1: and they and have people confused by them because you
Speaker 1: don't see them all the time, which of course lends
Speaker 1: itself to was a sort of sense of humor. Now
Speaker 1: you can buy, as he will point out, complete sheets
Speaker 1: of one dollar, two dollar, and five dollar bills from
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. You can get a
Speaker 1: sheet of an uncut sheet of bills. They're completely legal,
Speaker 1: they just haven't been cut apart. In fact, they're perforated.
Speaker 1: So he has been known to buy sheets of these,
Speaker 1: you know, separate them and have them laminated into a pad,
Speaker 1: and go in and buy stuff and peel off a
Speaker 1: series of two dollar bills, which are of course are
Speaker 1: numbered sequentially. It's very weird two dollar bills are weird
Speaker 1: to begin with, and then you add that it looks
Speaker 1: like this guy just peeled off money and handed it
Speaker 1: to me. Am I supposed to take it. Apparently he's
Speaker 1: been to Vegas and tried this stunt and had UH
Speaker 1: security people come and UH talked to him about exactly
Speaker 1: what's going. I've encountered Vegas security. I know exactly what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, And of course if it were me,
Speaker 1: I would be sweating like he he keeps doing. Really,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that that the government doesn't, you know,
Speaker 1: make these perforated bills available. Really, I bought these from
Speaker 1: some guy. What what's great is that I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had the nerve. I should also point out that while
Speaker 1: two dollar bills are unusual here in the United States,
Speaker 1: in other places there are two dollar coins. So for
Speaker 1: our friends in Canadia, Canadian yes, and our friends in Canadia,
Speaker 1: your tunis are very adorable. I like, I actually do
Speaker 1: like tunis. I like Looney's and tun yes. I agree.
Speaker 1: If you would like to send me Loony's and tunis,
Speaker 1: do so at the house. Stuff Works address, Carol Jonathan Strickland. Kids,
Speaker 1: go check your parents. No never mind, um but uh
Speaker 1: but but yeah, what you were talking about about innovation
Speaker 1: and openness and technology. He has recently, as of the
Speaker 1: time we're recording this, in late Ben photographed in front
Speaker 1: of the large uh different versions of Google androids. We
Speaker 1: have Android people, and people go it's the Apple co
Speaker 1: founder in front of the Android androids. Well, yeah, because
Speaker 1: he tries pretty much everything. Yeah, he's just a computer omnivore.
Speaker 1: He actually says that he will. You know, he loves
Speaker 1: he loves technology, and he loves gadget doesn't doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: love what corporations are doing or what governments are doing,
Speaker 1: but he loves the technology. And he specifically, I had
Speaker 1: an hour and a half of sleep last night, folks,
Speaker 1: I went and watch The Hobbit anyway, So he specifically
Speaker 1: really likes, uh, platforms that are that allow you to
Speaker 1: do lots of stuff, right, So the Android platform gives
Speaker 1: a lot of flexibility to users. It's something that can
Speaker 1: be overwhelming to someone who's not necessarily an enthusiast, but
Speaker 1: for someone who really likes hacking and getting their their
Speaker 1: hands dirty with technology, the Android platform is very attractive
Speaker 1: because it's you can make a lot of changes yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, and and Google facilitates that depending on which
Speaker 1: handset manufacturer and which carrier you're with, it or may
Speaker 1: not be very easy to do. But he also says
Speaker 1: he likes to try everything because he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: form a a prejudice against any particular platform without giving
Speaker 1: it a real fair shot, And so he goes out
Speaker 1: when a new phone comes out, he'll go out and
Speaker 1: buy it. So often, like I've seen pictures of what
Speaker 1: Wozniak was carrying on a given day, and it's usually
Speaker 1: something like five or six smartphones and then maybe a
Speaker 1: tablet and then maybe two computers. It's like, you figure
Speaker 1: it's got to be around fifty pounds of technology at least. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It It kind of reminds me of the nineties version
Speaker 1: of Gilbert where he used to have the gadget utility belt.
Speaker 1: Um you actually knew some people like that? Um yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I used to try and do that, but then my
Speaker 1: pants kept falling down. Do you looking like a fool
Speaker 1: with the pants on the ground? I was, in fact? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So currently he's working at a who fusion Io or
Speaker 1: Fusion Eosion what's fusion dash Io as a chief scientist
Speaker 1: and that's the company is a data storage and server company.
Speaker 1: So he's he's currently that's you know, his technical job
Speaker 1: title at the moment. But he does do a lot
Speaker 1: of speaking events and you know you'll still see him
Speaker 1: at things like a TED conferences and other big events
Speaker 1: where you know, they need to have someone there who
Speaker 1: who really knows the ins and outs of technology, who
Speaker 1: is truly uh an advocate for technology for the consumer,
Speaker 1: and who just you know, he's just very passionate and
Speaker 1: loves to share that with other people. That's it's a
Speaker 1: great couple of qualities to have, Like, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are really passionate about what they do,
Speaker 1: but they don't necessarily communicate that or share that with people.
Speaker 1: But Wasniac seems like, you know, you would have to
Speaker 1: tie him down for him not to to to be
Speaker 1: a brilliant over his love of tech. Yeah, it's uh
Speaker 1: from from just about all accounts I've read about about
Speaker 1: Steve Wozniak, He's he's not the kind of person who
Speaker 1: who hides his emotions very well. He's, uh, he's excited
Speaker 1: about a lot of stuff, and when he is, he
Speaker 1: you know, he shares that with you. Um, I should
Speaker 1: say that he doesn't hide his his excitement for technology
Speaker 1: very well, because he's uh, he's really gregarious when it
Speaker 1: comes to that. He may not be necessarily outspoken about
Speaker 1: his personal life as much or or want to jump
Speaker 1: into the spotlight. But if you ran into him and
Speaker 1: he had fifteen minutes to talk about some kind of
Speaker 1: technology with you, I don't think it would be much
Speaker 1: of a stretch based on Again, I've never met him,
Speaker 1: but uh, if he wanted to strike up a conversation
Speaker 1: with him about virtually any kind of technology, I don't
Speaker 1: think he would turn you down, or if he did,
Speaker 1: he would do it politely. Well, it seems like just
Speaker 1: a just a great guy. He does he does. I
Speaker 1: would be very interested to talk with him, except I
Speaker 1: would be intimidated that he discovered that I'm a complete
Speaker 1: idiot within like two minutes of chatting with me. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't take the rest of us that long.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe I'm hoping that he would just have
Speaker 1: a lot of optimism. Well that I'm teasing. That wraps
Speaker 1: up everything I have about Woznia. Do you have anything
Speaker 1: else you wanted to mention, not not really about Steve Christy.
Speaker 1: Do you have anything to say to our listeners. Yeah,
Speaker 1: actually I do. OK, UH, so you know, I'm I'm teasing. UM.
Speaker 1: I want to thank everybody, uh for the opportunity to
Speaker 1: uh to come into your well, if it was a radio,
Speaker 1: I would say living rooms and your your your computer,
Speaker 1: headphones or earbuds or whatever you happen to be listening
Speaker 1: to us on UM. You all have been very supportive
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff over the last few years. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: certainly when when Jonathan and I have um had made
Speaker 1: mistakes on the podcast or uh said things that you
Speaker 1: found uh that you wanted to share with us. Pretty
Speaker 1: much just about everybody has been really friendly about that.
Speaker 1: And and and we've opened a dialogue between tech Stuff
Speaker 1: and the listeners, and I just feel, um like everybody
Speaker 1: has been really really supportive, UM and fun to work with. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm not uh, I'm I'm leaving basically just because it's
Speaker 1: it's sort of a good time their tech stuff is
Speaker 1: going to be moving in in a different direction, UM
Speaker 1: and UH, I have other stuff that I want to
Speaker 1: do that's not in the podcast world, So you know,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of a good time for me to
Speaker 1: to uh to split off. But I'm certainly excited to
Speaker 1: see what's going to happen with tech stuff in the
Speaker 1: the days, weeks, months, years, millennia to come. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: there's still a boatload of tech that that we haven't
Speaker 1: really talked about, and uh, you know, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: fun to see what what they do with with tech
Speaker 1: stuff once I've I've moved on, and Jonathan too. I
Speaker 1: want to say thanks to you because it's been an
Speaker 1: awful lot of fun doing the podcast with you and
Speaker 1: all the other stuff that we've text stuff live and uh,
Speaker 1: the different video projects that we've that we've worked on together.
Speaker 1: It's it's been the week Oh my gosh, yes, and
Speaker 1: listener mailsh listener mail in the Infamous Collects and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's been an awful lot of fun working with
Speaker 1: you everybody. I we we tease each other about about
Speaker 1: working together, but Jonathan and I have had fun working
Speaker 1: on it. I think I'm I'm speaking for Jonathan safely
Speaker 1: in that case. And uh, the the whole the battle
Speaker 1: with Josh and Chuck, which was waged completely on the
Speaker 1: podcasts and not actually in the office, and the vigor
Speaker 1: with which our listeners actually picked up on it. We're
Speaker 1: going really they seem to think we actually do hate
Speaker 1: each other. We don't. Uh No, those guys are great too.
Speaker 1: And and you know, I really do appreciate everything that
Speaker 1: uh uh Discovery and How Stuff Works has done and
Speaker 1: uh um the listeners for for tuning in every week
Speaker 1: and sharing with us on on social media. Um, it's
Speaker 1: been an awful lot of fun. Thanks for for everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and I just have to say it has
Speaker 1: been It's been a heck of a ride, Chris. I
Speaker 1: mean we we are the the last remaining original hosts
Speaker 1: of the first batch of podcasts that How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: put out. That's true, you know, out of all the
Speaker 1: other podcasts have come out, they their hosts have changed,
Speaker 1: sometimes more than once. And we stayed the same team
Speaker 1: for over four hundred and fifty episodes, which is an
Speaker 1: incredible achievement that you have not strangled me in that time.
Speaker 1: Uh considering that over that time we spent more time
Speaker 1: together than I spent with my wife, that means that
Speaker 1: you and my wife are the two people in the
Speaker 1: world I can count on not to strangle me after
Speaker 1: prolonged exposure. And Chris has been my editor for thanks
Speaker 1: is early. Chris has been my editor for the last
Speaker 1: several years, and I've had four editors while How Stuff works,
Speaker 1: and out of all the editors, Chris by far was
Speaker 1: the easiest to work with. Not to say that the
Speaker 1: other editors were bad. They were great people too, and
Speaker 1: and continue to be great people. But but Chris would
Speaker 1: take it upon himself to do a lot of the
Speaker 1: work that normally would come back on to a writer.
Speaker 1: So I've been spoiled, and frankly, I'm scared now, but
Speaker 1: it has been a blast. It's been great. You know,
Speaker 1: Text Stuff would not be what it is without your
Speaker 1: h contribution in your voice. Uh. The fact that we
Speaker 1: both have this sort of goofy, dorky sense of humor
Speaker 1: has really brought it together. It's evident in the podcast,
Speaker 1: it's evident in the videos. I think, Uh, I think
Speaker 1: that my life would be totally different and much poorer
Speaker 1: for it if I had not gone on this this
Speaker 1: podcast adventure with you. So thank you very much. And uh, guys,
Speaker 1: that is it for the the the the initial era
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. On the next podcast, the new era
Speaker 1: will begin. So if you would like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with me and my mysterious new co host, whom
Speaker 1: you will meet very soon. You can write us at
Speaker 1: tech stuff at Discovery dot com or contact us on
Speaker 1: Twitter or Facebook. Are handled. There is tech stuff hs
Speaker 1: W and uh I'll talk to you really soon. Thanks
Speaker 1: everybody for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how staff works dot com