0:00

I can't keep this in anymore. I can't even

0:02

believe I'm saying this, to be honest. You

0:04

know you can tell me anything. I'm capital

0:07

VFD42 capital Z lowercase m

0:09

underscore lowercase p capital L reverse slash apostrophe

0:11

lowercase rs. I know how you feel.

0:14

Just between us, I'm underscore

0:16

comma dash underscore dollar sign capital G lowercase

0:19

w comma forward slash dash dash reverse slash.

0:21

No way! I am so glad we

0:23

had this conversation. I know, me too.

0:26

Turn on total privacy with end-to-end encryption.

0:28

WhatsApp. Message privately.

0:38

Have you seen the excellent TV

0:40

series Silo on Apple Plus? It's a

0:42

science fiction series. I won't describe anything

0:44

more about it, but I love it. My whole family

0:46

loves it.

0:47

And I am glad to have the writer

0:49

and creator

0:50

of the initial novel of the series,

0:53

Hugh Howey, on the podcast today.

0:56

I've known Hugh for about a decade. Amazon,

0:59

about a decade ago, flew Hugh, me,

1:01

and a bunch of other self-published writers

1:03

who were doing very well with self-publishing, flew

1:06

us out to Santa Monica. We

1:08

all had dinner. We all talked about writing

1:10

and publishing.

1:12

And the next day, Jeff Bezos

1:14

showed us all Kindle Fire. He launched a Kindle

1:16

Fire that day.

1:17

And it was a fun time. I got to know Hugh. He came on

1:19

the podcast in 2014.

1:21

Hugh has such a great story. He was initially just working

1:23

in bookstores, and he was a roofer, and he worked

1:26

on boats. He was writing

1:28

science fiction novel after science fiction novel,

1:31

and other novels as well. And

1:33

just like I found when I self-published

1:36

Choose Yourself, he found when he self-published Wool,

1:39

which eventually became the TV series Silo, he

1:42

found this is the way to go. And we describe

1:44

why in the podcast.

1:47

We talk about

1:47

writing, self-publishing,

1:50

science fiction, the TV

1:52

series Silo, and TV in general,

1:55

optimism versus pessimism, AI,

1:57

and so many other interesting things. a

2:00

very smart guy

2:02

filled with wisdom. Here's Hugh

2:04

Howie.

2:08

This isn't your average business podcast

2:11

and he's not your average host. This

2:14

is the James Altager Show.

2:25

So Hugh, I'm just curious and I was thinking

2:27

of this as I was watching Silo.

2:29

At what point when you first watched,

2:31

you probably watched many iterations

2:35

of the first show, but when did you feel,

2:37

oh, I'm in really good hands.

2:39

They're going to take care of this story. It

2:42

was actually on the set. First

2:45

of all, I visited the set where they were shooting in London.

2:47

We watched a take and I looked at

2:50

the folks around me, the

2:52

writer on set who was Eric

2:55

that day and the director and the

2:57

DP and they all looked at each other with

2:59

kind of wide eyes. And then Eric

3:01

looked at me and he was like, whoa, this is good. And

3:04

these guys have all worked on really big

3:06

stuff and I have a hard time telling from performances

3:09

and dailies and even the

3:12

final cuts without all the CGI

3:15

and the music and the sound, all that stuff adds

3:17

so much to it. But these guys could tell just

3:19

from the takes that they were getting that day that

3:22

something special was happening. And

3:24

that was the first time I thought, man, if these guys

3:27

are impressed and something nice can

3:29

come from this. I mean, it's and

3:31

I'm not going to give away any spoilers or anything, but really

3:34

right in the first few minutes, I started

3:36

wondering about this question because it was

3:39

just beautiful, just the world creation

3:42

and it's so believable and all

3:44

the characters seem so fleshed out. Yeah.

3:47

I mean, no one's just reading lines here. Everyone

3:49

gets so into it. Morton told him we

3:51

got, you know, an Oscar caliber

3:54

film director to shoot the pilot

3:56

and he read the book and he just fell in love with the story

3:58

and he and I would just geek. He was

4:00

so passionate about it. And so he

4:02

would go to every single department and

4:05

check what they were doing and say, no, these are the materials

4:07

they would use. And we need to rethink

4:09

this logo design and what kind of furniture design were

4:11

they like. He

4:13

got so into the details, as you should as a

4:15

director. And Graham Yost, the showrunner, was the

4:17

same. Like he was totally involved in all the character motivations

4:23

and what was really happening. And then

4:26

that really went down to Rebecca, who

4:29

dove into her character David and Rashida. Like

4:32

everyone was reading the books and the scripts and there's

4:34

a level of commitment and involvement that was really

4:36

exciting to watch. And

4:39

you know, if I remember, this was like an accidental

4:42

series in some sense. Like I remember

4:44

reading, you know, initially, wool, which if you

4:46

don't realize it was a collection of books. Now

4:48

it's one book, but it was really like

4:51

you made wool one. There was like wool one through

4:53

four, I think. I forget how many were in that first, quote

4:55

unquote, series, which is now a

4:58

book called Silo, which

5:00

became a TV show. But

5:02

the first wool, you intended

5:04

that as a one-off. You didn't even know there was going to

5:06

be like a series, but then everybody was writing it. I mean, it's got 37,000 reviews.

5:10

So everyone was

5:11

writing it. So he said, oh, okay, I'll just continue

5:13

this story. That's exactly what happened.

5:16

I had the idea as a novel,

5:19

but I was so busy with other books

5:21

that I had like just a handful

5:23

of people wanting sequels. And

5:25

that was all the demand I had at the time. So I was just writing more

5:28

books in that series,

5:28

but I had these other novels

5:31

I wanted to get out.

5:32

And I'd written a novel called The Plagiarist.

5:35

It kind of fell in love with this 15,000 word kind of length.

5:39

It's about a 50 page book,

5:41

which you can't mark it in

5:43

the old world, but with the Kindle and print

5:45

on demand, it doesn't matter how long something

5:47

is, you know, you can publish a haiku if you want. You

5:50

know, the challenge is getting someone to read it or pay

5:52

for it or recommend it to others.

5:54

And so I took the idea of this

5:56

novel and condensed it down

5:58

into a much shorter story. published it for 99

6:01

cents on the Kindle Store and completely forgot

6:03

about it. I went back to writing my next novel

6:06

and that was the story that I don't know how to explain

6:09

it. There's a lot of luck involved. It's like why does

6:11

one Facebook post go viral

6:13

and another one not?

6:15

Yes, there's a lot of unpredictability in that.

6:17

But would you agree? I kind of advise

6:20

people who are writing that actually

6:23

quantity is more important than quality. It

6:25

really is. I'm not saying there's any U.S.

6:28

I've read a lot of your books and it's

6:31

all high quality, but

6:33

you have to put a lot out there

6:35

because there's so much unpredictability in everything

6:38

we do and there's so much competition. But if you do

6:40

put a lot out there, something's going

6:42

to hit.

6:43

Every published work is a

6:45

lottery ticket. Sitting at home

6:47

and putting wax and polishing

6:50

your single lottery ticket to make it the most beautiful

6:52

lottery ticket possible doesn't really

6:54

increase your odds as much as

6:57

trying to get 20 lottery tickets out there. To

6:59

your point, the quality has to be good, but

7:02

I see people taking that

7:04

first book they write and rewriting it, rewriting

7:06

it, and polishing it, and promoting it,

7:09

and trying to get something to take hold

7:11

and their time will be better spent

7:12

hitting publish, forgetting about it right the next

7:14

thing. You're

7:15

going to get better. You're going to find your voice. You're

7:17

going to experiment with different genres. You'll

7:20

find a character that right now doesn't exist

7:22

because you're not giving them a chance to come to life.

7:24

I've always said that to people. The best

7:27

marketing, the best promotion is

7:30

publishing

7:30

your next story.

7:32

I want to get into the self-publishing and how you

7:34

started out because it's such this indie

7:37

almost Quentin Tarantino-ish

7:39

type of story. But I just want

7:41

to mention one of my favorite

7:43

novels by you, I think you wrote this

7:45

maybe before a wall, was Hurricane.

7:48

Yeah. It's just about this teenage

7:51

boy stuck in an arrow hurricane so he has no

7:53

access to social media and then what

7:55

happens to him. I just thought it was a very beautiful

7:57

story.

7:58

Thanks, man.

7:59

in a bookstore, right? And then

8:01

you start writing and self publishing

8:04

books. Yeah, I've kind

8:06

of worked in bookstores since college, but

8:08

after I spent a bit of a my

8:11

20s basically working on yachts and doing a

8:13

lot of sailing and serving as a captain

8:16

on big power boats. And

8:18

when I got out of that, I finally

8:20

started getting some novels finished.

8:23

And I was doing a signing for my very first novel

8:25

at a bookstore.

8:26

And the manager was looking for a part time help. And

8:28

it

8:29

seemed like a perfect gig to allow me to have

8:31

time to write and to be plugged

8:33

into the industry. But

8:36

I wasn't really thinking about making a living

8:38

at it. I was just super excited to be

8:40

writing things to the conclusion and having a handful

8:42

of eager readers. Since I worked at the

8:44

bookstore, I could like shelve my books with

8:47

the other books and

8:48

just sitting on the shelf in one bookstore. And

8:50

that was it. That's how it all started. I just

8:52

had this kind of daily routine

8:55

of writing and working in the bookstore and publishing.

8:58

And when you say publishing, you were

9:00

self publishing on Amazon. That's

9:02

actually how you and I met, was Amazon flew a bunch of self

9:04

published writers out to Santa Monica.

9:07

And we

9:08

all had dinner and then Jeff Bezos

9:10

launched the Kindle Fire. But you

9:13

were a big proponent of self publishing right

9:15

from the beginning. And what were

9:17

your initial thoughts on it? A lot of people at that

9:19

time, this is like 2012, 2011, 2013. At that

9:23

time,

9:24

there was still, I don't think it exists now, it's

9:26

still just a little bit, there was a stigma to self publishing,

9:28

kind of like vanity publishing, even though

9:30

it's not that at all.

9:32

Yeah, it's changed a lot, boy, since

9:34

you and I met. I think my

9:36

first self published book was like 2009,

9:39

maybe. The Kindle had

9:41

just come out like the year before.

9:44

KDP was really brand new. And it's

9:46

just, again, more luck. I was just starting

9:48

to publish at a time when these tools were becoming

9:50

available. My first book I picked

9:52

up by a small press. So I tried the traditional

9:55

route on a small scale. And the

9:57

tools they used to publish were tools that

9:59

were available to anybody. So

10:01

with the second book, I just decided to do it on my own

10:04

and never really look back. My initial

10:06

thoughts about self publishing were, I had no

10:09

idea, like I was asking people in forums,

10:11

what do you guys think about that? And

10:13

everyone tried to make it as a writer on these like

10:16

traditional writing forums said to be the

10:18

death of my career,

10:19

don't do it, you're an idiot, real

10:22

authors don't do this, you need a query, you need to get

10:24

an agent. My publisher, my first

10:26

book, when I wrote them asking to

10:28

buy the rights back and told them I was gonna publish

10:30

on my own, they said,

10:32

this is gonna be the end of your career, it's a huge mistake.

10:35

So every, I didn't have anyone telling me

10:37

this is a good idea, nobody.

10:38

And that's why when I started

10:41

having some success,

10:42

my publishing career was half of what I was doing, the

10:44

other half was me encouraging people

10:46

and telling them like, look, you might not

10:49

make a living at this and you have to get lucky,

10:52

but there's nothing stopping you. Like the things

10:54

that they people say can never happen, all

10:56

that's untrue.

10:58

And those things are also unlikely if

11:00

you try to go the traditional route. So

11:02

I really wanted to help

11:04

like lower that stigma and get more people

11:06

to publish rather than

11:07

frustrate themselves with all the gatekeepers

11:10

or

11:11

learning how to write a query letter and all the other like

11:13

really crazy obstacles around a publishing. Yeah,

11:16

and look, I don't wanna put

11:18

down the publishing industry, but when you say,

11:20

okay,

11:21

if someone says, oh,

11:22

mainstream publishing is the only

11:24

way to go, those people who are picking

11:26

and choosing books, they're no better

11:28

or worse than anybody. They're just readers

11:31

like everyone else. So why not let the readers decide

11:34

by

11:34

just uploading your book to Amazon? And it's not just

11:36

a Kindle book, it's a paperback, hardcover,

11:38

audio book. It could look like every other book. No one knows

11:41

the difference.

11:42

Yeah, exactly. And no one asked you,

11:44

like has anyone ever asked you, hey man, who was your

11:46

publisher? Well,

11:48

it's funny even beyond that, publishers think that

11:51

readers care about imprints and agents

11:53

and authors and people in publishing, they care

11:56

about like,

11:57

you know, who the imprints are within

11:59

publishers. And they think it's super important,

12:01

but

12:02

readers just don't know and don't care. Like, is the story

12:04

good? They care about cover art. They, I think

12:06

a lot of self published books, my early

12:08

books included,

12:10

really shoot themselves in the foot with

12:12

really bad cover art. Yeah.

12:14

So there are things like in the packaging

12:16

that are really important that publishers can help with.

12:19

But what I heard were like, here

12:21

are the things that are not possible. If you self publish,

12:24

you'll never get into bookstores, which

12:26

once we'll took off, like

12:28

it hit the New York Times list as a self published book

12:30

and Barnes and Noble was stocking it, which was

12:32

insane because this was like printed

12:34

by Amazon. And they were stocking

12:36

it simply because there were enterprising bookstore

12:39

managers who were sick of the 10th person that

12:41

day

12:42

saying, you know, do you have this book and

12:44

you don't want to just say like, goodbye on Amazon. They could buy

12:46

the

12:47

print on demand version and make a couple of bucks

12:49

or they could make no bucks, you know? So

12:52

there were all these things that were supposedly impossible.

12:54

Like,

12:55

you know, you'll never get a film deal. You'll never land

12:57

an agent. You'll never get reviewed

12:59

in a serious paper or magazine.

13:02

Like all the things you couldn't do. And

13:04

what I realized looking around is that no one had even tried

13:06

these things, that everyone had believed all

13:09

the naysayers. And so it

13:11

was a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everyone says you can't

13:13

do it, no one tries. And then of course no one does

13:15

it. I found that along the way that

13:18

agents and publishers now almost look at the self

13:21

published books as sort of that's

13:23

where they're finding their books. Like agents contacted

13:26

me after I started self publishing

13:28

because then they see what sells. Yeah,

13:30

it's the slush pile. What's funny is that

13:32

was one of the questions I asked. There's a forum

13:34

back in the day called Absolute Right. I'm not sure if they're still

13:37

around or not,

13:38

but it was a place

13:40

to go for really terrible writing advice because

13:42

everything they told me was the opposite of what happened.

13:45

And really early on I said, exactly

13:48

what you've discovered.

13:49

I was like, you know, I think eventually self publishing is

13:52

going to be a place where agents will

13:54

go to find talent because

13:56

these are people proving that they're going to work hard.

13:59

They're going to finish what they. start. They

14:01

have some publishing acumen and all these other things

14:03

and they can read samples for free. And

14:05

everyone, I actually got like so

14:08

bullied for the, for putting

14:10

that out there that and trying to defend myself.

14:13

They just like, like, you're not welcome

14:15

here anymore. Like this is too heretical. And

14:17

it was one of the best things that ever happened to me actually was

14:20

getting, you know, kind of seeing

14:23

how vehemently, passionately

14:26

wrong people could be. It really

14:28

liberated me and

14:30

allowed me to try things I think that I wouldn't have

14:32

tried otherwise, that people would have been a

14:34

little less ugly about their pronouncements.

14:37

And you know, it a lot that also allows you to get to what

14:39

we were earlier talking about, about quantity. Like you

14:41

can't, if you're publishing a book every two years with this

14:43

mainstream publisher, you're never gonna get quantity. But

14:45

if you could,

14:46

you know, write a book in a few months

14:48

and then put it out there, you can

14:50

start the next book and so on. Totally.

14:53

You know, people don't realize Fifty Shades of Grey was

14:55

originally self published. Yeah. And before

14:57

it was picked up. Yeah, it blew up.

14:59

And well, there were quite a few, like The

15:01

Martian started as serialized on Andy

15:04

Weir's blog.

15:05

You know, now I think that's why the stigma is falling. Now

15:07

it's not just you could point to one person and say,

15:10

look, here's the exception. Now,

15:12

success is happening from all kinds of places. Are people

15:14

get deals because of their blogs or their Twitter feeds

15:17

or it's

15:17

just, we're looking for entertainment. We're not looking

15:19

for people who survived a

15:22

very specific path.

15:37

So I got this package and

15:40

I opened it up. And the only thing in

15:42

it is Dove

15:45

Men Plus Care Anti-Perspirant. And

15:47

I'm like, why did I get this? The

15:49

package was handwritten to me. It wasn't like a printed

15:51

label or anything. It sounds personal.

15:54

Yeah. I thought maybe it was like somebody like maybe I

15:56

played in a chess tournament and my opponent

15:58

thought I smelled. but they were doing it anonymously

16:01

because they didn't want me to know who sent it to them. And

16:03

then finally, I'm like searching

16:05

in my emails, like who could have

16:08

done this? And I saw that you mentioned

16:10

that this is a new sponsor for the podcast, Dove

16:13

Men Plus Care Antiperspirant. But

16:16

let me just say, new

16:17

Dove Men Plus Care 72-hour

16:20

antiperspirant, 72 hours is like,

16:22

would be a personal record for me,

16:24

helps prevent underarm distractions like

16:26

sweat and odor so you can be more

16:28

present in the moment

16:30

and confident.

16:32

And it's really true. Like, again,

16:34

I'll bring up like

16:35

a chess tournament, but in a chess

16:37

tournament, you're sitting right around people who

16:39

can smell you. So you want to smell good. That

16:42

could affect how I play. So it's

16:44

really important.

16:45

And again, they did send me this

16:47

for free, but they didn't even have to because

16:49

I use Dove Men, that is my

16:52

antiperspirant of choice.

16:54

And I really do get insecure.

16:56

I want to make sure that A, my

16:59

breath is good and B, my underarms

17:02

are fine. So Dove Men

17:04

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17:07

forgettable underarms, unforgettable

17:09

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17:11

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18:16

You ran a site for a while that you were looking at the

18:18

statistics of self-publishing versus mainstream

18:21

publishing. I don't know if you still

18:22

run that site, but you had some data that

18:25

if you look at all the self-published

18:27

reviews like ranking, star rankings,

18:30

they tended to be on average higher ranked

18:32

than the books published by mainstream

18:34

publishers and similar for sales ranks. They

18:36

tended to have a higher sales rank on

18:38

average than the mainstream books.

18:42

Yeah, well, I was actually approached by someone

18:44

who's a data scientist. He was also

18:46

trying to figure out how to publish his first novel

18:49

in order to make a decision. He realized

18:51

like I did, there was really no good advice out there,

18:53

no strong data. So he created

18:55

a spider that crawled the entire

18:58

Amazon book listings. It

19:00

used each URL for recommended

19:03

books to crawl the entire

19:05

catalog. He could use data

19:08

pulled from the book listing pages to figure

19:10

out who published it, where was price, what

19:12

his ranking was, and

19:13

then pulled a bunch of authors to figure out,

19:16

okay, because

19:16

he could even pull... I had a

19:18

number one bestselling book on Amazon for a while

19:21

and I can tell him like, here's how much you have to sell in

19:23

a week to reach that ranking. And it creates

19:25

a very beautiful logarithmic curve

19:27

of sales to rank.

19:29

So he was able to figure out how much

19:32

each of these books was earning, who they were

19:34

published by, and then combine them

19:36

into cohorts. And the self-publishing

19:38

cohort was out earning any

19:40

of the major publishers.

19:43

You can really get grained there with what that means

19:46

because there's a lot more self-published books. There's

19:50

tons of ways to interpret the data.

19:52

But the one thing that we were hearing was that no one

19:54

was making a living with self-published books and we were

19:56

able to point to people. And now we know.

19:59

people on YouTube, they're people making tens of millions

20:02

of dollars a year,

20:03

reviewing toys on

20:05

YouTube and doing things that just don't sound

20:07

like they'd be profitable. And

20:10

that's because it's all happening kind of behind the scenes.

20:12

And he helped uncover that. I was just there

20:14

to host the data and help

20:16

him interpret it and try to use my

20:19

limited soapbox to give it a broader

20:21

audience.

20:22

And then, you know, after Wold became

20:24

such a big hit, one of the number one science

20:26

fiction books of all time, many people were

20:29

referring to it as,

20:30

when did the idea of...

20:31

I know initially you were

20:34

thinking of it in terms of making a movie and

20:36

really Scott approached you. What

20:38

was the story there? Like, how did the journey towards silo

20:41

the TV show begin?

20:42

I started getting... I think the first person

20:46

to reach out about the option had happened

20:48

before the book was even complete. It was

20:50

like after part three was out or something. Someone

20:52

from BBC America reached out and said, hey,

20:54

I want to option this. And that was interesting

20:57

to me because it wasn't even finished.

20:58

But once I got an agent, Kristen

21:01

Nelson,

21:01

she linked me up with her LA

21:04

co-agent, the person who does all the

21:06

book adaptations, Cassie Evashevsky,

21:08

who's

21:09

huge in book to film adaptation.

21:11

She did all the Twilight books and

21:14

big successes in that realm.

21:16

She sent it around and there was all this

21:18

hype because it hit the New York Times list as a

21:20

self published book. They're writing about it everywhere.

21:23

And it was going to go to auction. Had some

21:26

major producers interested.

21:28

And Ridley Scott and Steve Zalien came in

21:30

and said, we don't want this to go to auction. We want to preempt

21:33

it. And made a great offer with

21:35

20th Century Fox backing them.

21:37

And it's just like too good to be true. Like I

21:39

assume nothing would ever get made. And I thought, well,

21:42

if I can throw Ridley's name around, it

21:44

will help with book sales. It will help with

21:46

foreign deals. Like that's a guarantee.

21:49

And so I kind of took the guarantee rather

21:51

than take a chance with some producers who probably

21:53

had a better chance of it getting made.

21:55

Can you say what happened? Yeah, they

21:57

had it for like five years. They

22:00

had the ability to renew it as often as they wanted.

22:03

And every time they renewed it, they'd have another

22:05

director, another script written.

22:07

Each time it came up for renewal, I just kept

22:10

asking like, hey, if it's not gonna get made this year, I'd love

22:12

to have the rights back.

22:13

They didn't have to do that. They could have either paid the purchase

22:15

price, which wasn't a godly sum of money,

22:17

or they could have

22:18

optioned it indefinitely and waited until the right

22:20

time.

22:22

But to their credit, I mean, I love these

22:24

guys. I had a really good relationship with all the

22:26

people involved on those teams.

22:27

And they really felt like they wanted to see

22:30

this made too. And if they weren't

22:31

gonna do it, they were willing to let me have the rights back.

22:34

So amazing move on their part.

22:36

When the rights came back, my

22:38

team of agents and I, just had conversations.

22:41

Do we wanna go this,

22:43

the film wrote again, or do we wanna try TV?

22:45

And at the time, TV was becoming the

22:48

prestige thing it is now. And

22:50

there's more money in film, like you

22:52

can earn percentage of the back end

22:54

and all kinds of stuff if it gets big.

22:56

But I've never made decisions based

22:59

on money really,

23:00

especially at this point in my career. I didn't

23:02

have to worry about that.

23:04

So I was like, look, let's do TV. I think we'll make a better product

23:06

if it's done well.

23:08

We can expand the story instead of truncating

23:10

it. And so we took it out and Amazon,

23:13

AMC and Apple, but were

23:15

really interested. And it came down to those three parties.

23:18

And I ended up going with AMC

23:20

because Apple hadn't even had a service

23:23

out yet. I was having a sign, NDAC even

23:25

discussed this with them. It was all super secret at the time.

23:27

But they never gave up, kept

23:30

calling AMC and saying, hey, how are you

23:32

guys doing with this? Can we partner? Can

23:34

we partner?

23:35

And AMC finally asked me like, hey,

23:37

what do you think about combining forces? And I was like, let's

23:39

do it.

23:40

And that's the deal we have now. Like AMC

23:42

helped all the story development in the writer's

23:45

room and get the show going. And Apple came

23:47

in and said, we wanna create this and we want

23:49

it on our channel.

23:50

And I got kind of the best of both worlds.

23:53

So how does it work? You mentioned how

23:55

people don't make as much money in TV

23:58

as movies. And it used to be the TV. model,

24:00

everybody would make money because of syndication. So

24:03

if a show ran for five seasons, then

24:05

lesser known channels or local channels

24:08

would buy the rights in that area for the show

24:10

and air it like at 5pm forever.

24:13

And the actors would make money every time the show

24:15

aired. Would these streaming networks, that just doesn't happen

24:18

anymore. So what is the model

24:20

of TV now? I have no clue. I have

24:22

no clue either. It's so weird because they

24:24

don't share data. This is true. I think

24:26

of all the big tech streamers like

24:29

Netflix and

24:29

Amazon and Apple. We

24:32

don't know Nielsen ratings on any of this

24:34

stuff. We see their rankings

24:36

on their like what's hot, but it's all

24:39

relative. There's no objective

24:41

measure of how many people are tuning in. So

24:44

you don't get paid per view like on

24:46

YouTube or Spotify. It's a

24:49

very, kind of a one-time

24:51

fee and that's it pretty much. Different

24:54

studios are trying to do things to incentivize.

24:56

But the way it looks to me, it's the

24:58

top show runners, the people who have all-around

25:01

deals

25:01

make these mega blockbuster deals and everyone

25:04

else is just

25:05

kind of fighting for whatever they can get with each

25:08

individual deal. And that's what a lot of the

25:10

writer's strike right now is trying to

25:12

deal with because like there's so much confusion

25:14

right now, how to make a living

25:16

at this and people trying to sort that

25:18

out. The flip side is I would think there's

25:20

like thousands and thousands of shows now.

25:23

As opposed to like

25:25

when we were all kids, there were

25:28

four shows. It seems like every

25:30

writer and actor must

25:32

have a job now, but it's just not true. How

25:34

come

25:35

everybody's not acting in a... Everybody

25:37

who wants to be an actor should be able to get a job and that

25:39

doesn't seem to be the case. Are there more actors

25:42

than we all thought? Yeah, I

25:44

think so. And also, the actors who are popular

25:46

get all the roles. It's amazing. You

25:53

can shoot three films in a

25:56

year and be in two TV shows concurrently.

25:58

Some of my favorite actors are...

25:59

or getting those kinds of gigs where it's like

26:02

every time you turn around, it's like,

26:03

wait, The Mandalorian is also starring in The

26:06

Last of Us. These are like two of the hottest

26:09

shows on TV right now and it's the same actor,

26:11

both of them. And oh, and by the way, two films

26:14

in the same year. So I

26:17

think there's some of that. The people, the winners win

26:19

big and everyone else is kind of grinding.

26:21

That seems to be true

26:23

in all entertainment fields. It's true

26:25

for authors.

26:27

People used to make a living as

26:29

studio writers, but it wasn't that many people

26:31

making that living.

26:33

And I think there are more people getting a piece of the

26:35

pie now, but all of them are having

26:37

to

26:38

hustle in order to survive. And

26:40

I can't say definitively which

26:42

one is better. I would rather have more people be involved,

26:45

even if it means people are making less money. But

26:47

I do think the people at the very top,

26:49

it's crazy what CEO pay is.

26:51

And that's not an entertainment industry problem. That's

26:53

a

26:54

capitalism problem. But no one is

26:56

adding $200 million worth of value

26:58

to the company in one year.

27:00

Nobody.

27:01

It's interesting because to

27:03

some extent,

27:04

your silo stories

27:07

initially about

27:08

powerful, mysterious entities at

27:11

the top, somehow controlling things

27:13

for reasons we don't know why. And

27:15

to some extent, and this is true for a lot of dystopian

27:18

literature, that's a reflection of the lives

27:20

we live right now. And I wonder

27:22

how much you were thinking about that

27:24

while you were writing the original Wool.

27:27

When you put it like that, it sounds like I was writing about

27:30

my publishing adventures. Well,

27:33

it's true for every industry probably. There are

27:36

people at the top who are making decisions, who

27:38

are trying to make decisions about our lives. And

27:40

our job is to not let them succeed.

27:42

Right before I wrote Wool, I had

27:44

spent a couple years working as a roofer

27:47

in Virginia. And it's one

27:49

of the hardest jobs you can ever

27:51

have. Even other trades look

27:53

up at the roofers, literally, but

27:56

look up at them with just

27:57

pity almost.

27:59

I'm glad that's not me, like shoveling snow

28:02

off of a roof, working in 100 degree heat.

28:04

It's just, it's a brutal, brutal job.

28:07

And I moved from that job.

28:09

Before that, I was working on these yachts, making

28:12

like six figures, driving boats around with

28:14

zero living expenses.

28:15

And it was a transition from

28:17

a

28:18

job that's completely superfluous,

28:20

like no one needs a yacht,

28:22

to a job that is the most critical,

28:25

which is providing shelter for people. And

28:27

my pay was like a fraction.

28:30

But what I realized is my like happiness

28:32

and my feeling of self worth

28:34

was so much higher. And I think

28:36

that shift in occupations

28:39

played a huge role in

28:41

the structure of all and who the

28:44

heroes are and who the villains are, and

28:46

which is still messy and complex. But

28:48

I really found purpose

28:51

in doing a job that paid a lot less, but provided

28:53

a real service rather

28:56

than being a glorified bus driver.

28:58

And then what happened like later when there

29:00

was one point where you basically gave up everything

29:03

and

29:04

just sailed around the world for years?

29:06

I mean, gave up everything. It sounds like I gained everything.

29:08

Right. So that

29:11

could be. Boating was like

29:13

was my first passion, even before

29:15

I made it as a writer, I lived

29:18

on a boat and sailed around the Bahamas

29:20

and just enjoyed the vagabond lifestyle

29:22

and the joy of traveling with all of

29:24

your things with you to beautiful

29:27

tropical watery places. It's like

29:29

RVs, but with a better view usually. And

29:32

the whole time I was kind of working

29:34

in yachts, I was dreaming of getting my own boat

29:37

and sitting around the world one day and

29:39

the writing career just facilitated that.

29:42

So as soon as I felt

29:44

like I needed,

29:45

you know, some time to tell more stories

29:47

and fill up on

29:48

new adventures, I put the writing

29:50

on hold and went on a big sailing adventure.

29:53

Did you take time off from writing? Yeah,

29:55

I was still writing. I was publishing like

29:57

short stories. I put out a collection of.

30:00

short stories of writing some nonfiction self-help

30:02

stuff that I don't really

30:04

market or promote but the way

30:06

finders. Yeah, I forget

30:09

people so you know me every day like when's another one coming

30:11

out of that and

30:12

I can find a following even though she's doing

30:14

it to try to organize my own thoughts

30:17

on some things

30:18

and I was helping edit and apologies

30:20

you know to kind of empower other authors

30:23

and contribute to those

30:25

so I was staying busy but I

30:27

was nowhere near as prolific with

30:29

the novels as I was before I took off.

30:31

Do

30:31

you think you kind of lose youthful

30:35

exuberance and energy you know as

30:37

the decades go by?

30:38

I have not I've just put it to a different place

30:40

but now I mean before we got on I'm

30:43

working on publishing like four different things this morning

30:45

like

30:46

my writing

30:47

and publishing careers just at the same

30:49

level of like

30:51

unbelievable overdrive as it was when

30:53

wool took off

30:55

so for me it's just the

30:57

TV stuff was keeping me busy for a while I was

30:59

reading a lot of scripts and writing features

31:01

and pilots and stuff and that was fun

31:04

but now I'm like working on finishing

31:06

up the sand trilogy and

31:08

I've got some children's picture books coming out and

31:10

all kinds of weird stuff.

31:11

In the TV industry when you say you were reading scripts like

31:14

were you assisting other shows

31:16

or were you pitching shows?

31:18

Pitching shows, reading,

31:21

we had two books get go into like

31:23

production on back-to-back days in the middle

31:25

of the pandemic which is so weird

31:27

and like just yesterday I got

31:29

another hour long pilot sent

31:31

to me about based on

31:34

the plagiarist story that I mentioned

31:36

earlier

31:37

so I've got to read and give notes on that

31:39

and it's like 10 episodes and

31:41

they do 10 revisions there's a lot of reading

31:43

like every time you got to read and see what's changed

31:45

and give notes and feedback. That's good

31:48

that they're involving you in the process like often they

31:50

don't involve the original writer in the process. Yeah

31:52

I've been very lucky in that regard and I've

31:55

got a good relationship with the people in the room

31:57

and it's funny like watching the first

31:59

two episodes I see places where I

32:01

didn't, I thought the motivations

32:03

were unclear and there's like a little, not

32:06

enough tension in some decisions

32:08

and gave some notes. And the

32:11

final product that we see now has like

32:13

a couple of key moments that I think are so much

32:15

better just because I threw out a

32:17

few ideas that someone else liked and they

32:19

incorporated.

32:21

So it makes a difference.

32:36

Oh my God, I am so excited about

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36:07

I was reading one of your Facebook posts recently and you've

36:09

been like everybody been playing with chat

36:12

GPT and AI and you had this

36:14

beautiful post about us chat

36:16

GPT to create a

36:18

religion. And

36:21

I found its response

36:23

totally fascinating. Like I loved the religion

36:25

it came up with. Can you describe that? Yeah,

36:29

Harmonism I think. Because it came

36:31

up with the name and the holidays

36:34

and everything and even some

36:36

songs.

36:37

I think this is the thing that's going to surprise people about

36:39

AI.

36:40

I think

36:41

its greatest value to humanity is going

36:43

to be its wisdom.

36:44

My wife said something really clever to me the other day

36:46

because we were looking at kind of the ethics

36:49

of AI.

36:51

And she pointed out that people have a really hard

36:53

time being human. And I thought that was a great

36:56

insight. Like whether you're

36:58

a teacher, you know, guidance counselor,

37:00

a therapist, the people that you need to

37:03

be like there for you, a judge

37:06

in court, like

37:07

I need your humanity.

37:09

It's difficult for them to give that all the

37:11

time because of energy and

37:14

nutrition and hormones and exhaustion and

37:16

they're dealing with their own stuff. These AI's

37:19

are unflappable and their

37:21

mental

37:22

muscularity

37:24

shows up when they are giving

37:26

you life advice and coaching you. Like they just

37:28

never give up on you and they never get frustrated

37:31

and I

37:32

think we're going to find that they are

37:34

better at being good than we are.

37:36

And I think their smartness

37:39

will be less interesting to me than their

37:42

ethical excellence. I

37:44

wonder why that is because

37:45

if you break it down, like what chat GPT

37:48

is,

37:49

is a collection of

37:50

basically all texts ever written by humanity,

37:53

including tweets, Reddit posts,

37:55

books, articles, everything

37:58

from the beginning of time.

37:59

until 2021. And so

38:01

that includes the good, the bad, the ugly, everything

38:03

ever written.

38:04

And then of course, its responses were

38:07

kind of honed for years by

38:09

many millions of man-years of

38:12

manual labor saying that's a good response, that's not a good response.

38:14

So it sort of learned what types of response

38:16

were considered good. I wonder where

38:20

I was able to emphasize

38:22

on the wisdom as opposed to all the

38:25

crappy things that are on the internet we see all

38:27

day long. I think that's because most

38:29

things on the internet aren't good. Most people are trying to

38:31

be good. And even

38:34

the people who are like griefers

38:36

and

38:37

trolls, like most of them

38:39

want to be loved and want to have good

38:41

things in their life. And so

38:44

the bads just round out. And

38:46

even bad people understand

38:49

that most people want to be good. So like

38:51

their bias towards that is just bleeds

38:53

into everything that they write. Like

38:56

they know that they're being a troll, like they'll admit

38:58

to their bad behavior while they're doing it.

39:00

And that just gives more data

39:02

to the AI, which is like, don't

39:04

be like this. Like they're even bad people

39:06

are training the AI.

39:08

So I think the idea that it's all getting,

39:10

we take all these colors and swirl

39:13

them and we get this brown poop looking

39:15

mixture isn't how AI is actually

39:18

working. We're telling it what's good and what's

39:20

bad. And so it's sorting it out. It's creating a rainbow.

39:22

And when we ask you for wisdom, it

39:24

goes to the wisdom palette

39:26

and says, here's what's good. And I know this

39:29

because there's

39:30

this other bad stuff there. So

39:33

I don't think it, I don't think it works just like a blend.

39:35

I think it works

39:37

more discreetly than that.

39:38

And it's not just combining all of our words,

39:41

just combining all of our hopes

39:42

and dreams and ambitions and

39:45

positivity.

39:46

And you could distill that out of it in

39:48

a pure essence that you saw in that post.

39:51

My wife and I were reading that in real time as I was writing it.

39:53

We were just like, whoa, this is

39:56

the best of us right here. And

39:59

it will just keep

39:59

being the best of us as much as you

40:02

ask it to be. And I think people are going to find a

40:04

lot of solos in that.

40:05

Yeah, no, that was, that was such an interesting

40:08

concept. I really have thought about it quite a bit

40:10

since, since you wrote that post. You know,

40:12

I wanted to ask just a little about technique

40:14

because a lot of your books

40:17

involve not only intense characterization

40:19

and plot, but world building.

40:22

When you go into a book like what became

40:24

silo,

40:25

what happens first? You have a plot, a premise,

40:28

a character. Do you know the whole story

40:30

beforehand, before you write the first sentence?

40:33

Like what's, what's going on in your head?

40:36

I think a lot of things pull in the same direction

40:38

concurrently. It's like, uh, like writing

40:41

a dog sled, you know, you've got all these different

40:43

things and some are character and some are world building.

40:45

You keep pushing each like one forward

40:48

and then it pulls the other one forward.

40:50

I generally have an idea like

40:52

for silo, it was, we

40:55

believe our screens reflect

40:56

reality

40:58

and what's that doing to our psyches.

41:00

Those screens are, are biased

41:03

towards bad news, the local

41:05

news, the

41:06

social media. There's just a lot of like

41:09

the world is terrible information out there

41:11

and we're drawn to that because it's a survival

41:13

mechanism

41:14

and what is that doing to us? So that was the big question.

41:17

And then you start thinking, well, God,

41:20

maybe there's some people who

41:22

maybe can't destroy that

41:24

in humans. Maybe humans are born

41:26

to be optimistic and hope. And

41:28

what would that look like in a society where

41:31

everyone's told the outside world is terrible?

41:33

So you start thinking about

41:35

Alison and Holston and people who would be like, you

41:37

know, I don't believe this. I'm going to go see for myself.

41:40

And when I, when I try to piece together where that came from, you know,

41:42

I just

41:43

sailed into Cuba and back

41:45

in like the late nineties before it was open.

41:48

And what I found there was completely different from the

41:50

kind of, I'm

41:51

going to call it propaganda because that's basically

41:53

what it is. It's politically motivated misinformation.

41:56

And I was like, whoa, if this was wrong,

41:58

what else is wrong?

42:00

So I was kind of like Alison and wholesome in that way. I

42:02

broke out of the silo and saw something

42:05

with my own eyes.

42:06

So that was a part of it. But then while I was writing it, I

42:09

thought, well, there's a good ending and a bad ending.

42:11

Then I had just lost my dog and I was in

42:13

very, as bad as sad as I've ever been

42:15

in the middle of writing.

42:17

That colored kind of where I took

42:19

things. So

42:20

it's hard to tease out. There's like so many things

42:23

at play. But also, if I don't know the theme

42:25

and I don't know the ending of my story, it's really difficult

42:28

for me to be passionate about it. I just

42:30

got the ending of the next book in the

42:32

sand series this week

42:35

and my energy for writing and

42:37

writing it deeply and well just

42:40

goes 10X because I know exactly where

42:42

the story is ending. I know what the theme is.

42:45

I can start working that theme into every

42:47

scene. All that's super important to me.

42:49

How consciously do you think of things like,

42:52

oh, am I following the arc of a hero? Does this chapter

42:54

have a cliffhanger? How much

42:58

just hardcore technique do you think about

43:00

when you're writing?

43:01

I've studied all

43:03

the technique. I

43:06

love the hero's journey. I think it's a great framework

43:09

for understanding character.

43:11

But I think you absorb a lot of that

43:13

from all the books that you write or read over

43:15

the years in

43:16

TV shows you watch, comic books, everything.

43:18

So you get this idea of like, okay,

43:21

they need to go from a world they're comfortable

43:24

in to a new world, they need to

43:26

have resistance to that and cross the threshold

43:28

and

43:29

we get the whole reluctant warrior trope

43:31

from watching Braveheart and a million

43:33

other things.

43:36

We love Star Wars, which has the clearest probably

43:40

telling of that hero's journey.

43:42

So you absorb all those things and you're like, I don't know why

43:44

it works, but it works.

43:46

But when you dive into Joseph

43:48

Campbell and really try to understand

43:50

it all and read evolutionary psychology

43:53

and look in the history of us

43:55

as storytellers,

43:56

you can really geek out about all this stuff.

43:59

But I think he gets to where he is.

43:59

you know it all and then you can just do

44:02

it and make sure you're following

44:04

certain principles and using

44:06

those things to your advantage. For cliffhangers,

44:08

I always know when I'm writing a chapter, I'll write one line

44:10

and that's

44:12

the zinger. Even if the chapter's

44:14

too short, okay, I need to go add a

44:16

little bit to the scene ahead, but I just wrote

44:18

the perfect ending to this chapter. I've got to end

44:20

it there and

44:21

move to the next chapter.

44:23

It's funny you said about with silo,

44:26

with the screen, how it

44:29

mimics the screens. We see which have just reflect

44:31

all this bad news. And again, it's

44:33

just a metaphor because they're not seeing

44:35

news on this screen. They're seeing something else.

44:38

But

44:39

it's funny because as you were saying this,

44:41

I didn't think that when I read the book, but

44:43

I did viscerally think about this

44:45

when I was watching the two episodes that have been

44:47

released so far. So it's interesting how the visual

44:50

medium

44:51

kind of changes the way you look at a story.

44:53

It's so different. People are picking

44:56

apart like the stairs don't look the way I thought or

44:58

the clothing was not exactly what I assumed.

45:01

I find it fascinating that we get distracted

45:03

by those kinds of details when

45:05

the DNA of the story is very different from those

45:08

kinds of things. But the visual medium does so

45:10

much heavy lifting. It's incredible

45:12

how you don't need words in a lot

45:14

of scenes. You just need two characters looking at each other

45:16

in a certain way.

45:18

And it's impossible to write that

45:20

in a book as powerfully as two super

45:23

talented actors with the costume, the

45:25

makeup, the lighting, the camera

45:27

choice, what lens you're using, all those things

45:29

play this huge role. And

45:32

it's magical to watch it happen on set how so

45:34

many people are involved in just getting

45:36

that scene. We think it's like, because

45:38

we all shoot with our

45:40

phones and we grew up with camcorders and we're

45:42

like, oh, they're just basically doing this, but

45:44

it's so much more involved than that. And

45:46

when it's done well, it's spectacular really.

45:48

Particularly some of the scenes like, and

45:51

this is an easy scene to describe, this was in

45:53

the trailer, but the scene when they send the lights up,

45:55

this is so beautiful. And you get a sense

45:58

of

45:58

all the work put into it. to just that

46:01

one moment right there, you get a sense of all the work put into creating

46:03

this world. It actually seems like a pretty cool world

46:05

to live in, the silo. Right

46:08

now, so far in the series, it seems like a nonstop

46:10

party there.

46:12

Yeah, I think that's important too. Like everyone

46:15

is talking about this as a post-apocalyptic dystopian

46:17

thing, but the silo, the idea

46:19

is a utopia. But as

46:21

you peel back, like what's the purpose of that utopia,

46:24

you can get into

46:26

kind of what could be wrong with the place.

46:28

But I love watching, you know, everyone's

46:30

like the rebels are the good guys. I know that

46:33

for sure, because that's how all these stories work. And

46:35

I always kind of laugh at these

46:38

like really simple answers when people

46:40

are first starting to read the books or

46:42

they're watching the show, because the

46:44

reality is much more complex. Like

46:47

I still don't know,

46:48

I love having conversations about the story with

46:50

people who

46:51

have read it, because to

46:53

me, I still don't know where I fall in a lot

46:55

of these questions. And I like that.

46:58

Would you say you're in general an optimist

47:00

or a pessimist about society right

47:02

now? I'm an optimist, but

47:04

I'm a realist as well. Like I think it's

47:07

incredible what we've done. Like I

47:09

have a kind of

47:10

a very biological view of

47:13

everything. I just see the

47:14

earth is this incredible, like

47:17

wet ball that was in the Goldilocks

47:20

zone of a really stable star and a stable

47:22

system.

47:23

A type of mold grew on it. The diversity

47:25

of life that arose from that was incredible.

47:28

And I worry about being egocentric

47:31

and putting humanity at the center of anything, but there's

47:33

nothing more interesting to me than we discovered

47:35

in the universe than the human brain. Like

47:37

it's just fascinating

47:39

all the things we built. Like you and I are communicating

47:41

through miracles of technology. And

47:44

we pulled that all out of mud

47:46

and fashioned it together. I say we, you

47:48

and I did almost none of that work,

47:50

but we're using it. I wouldn't even know how to do

47:52

it. Exactly. If you, you

47:54

could do more than me though. Like you were a woofer,

47:56

you were a yacht captain. Not much more.

47:59

If you went.

47:59

a thousand years back in time,

48:02

what would you be able to do to prevent them from

48:04

killing you? Like how would you be useful? I

48:06

would die of a tooth infection. Like

48:08

I would be... Oh yeah, we would all die of a tooth infection, that's

48:10

for sure.

48:11

But so that's what's so bizarre. Like we

48:13

are just this... The

48:16

most interesting thing that we know of in the universe,

48:18

am I an optimist or a pessimist? Like

48:20

how did we get this far? And we

48:22

seem to be progressing in the right direction. Like we're

48:25

just lifting people out of poverty. We're

48:27

increasing all kinds of measures of

48:29

health. Like are we heading towards

48:31

this utopian singularity? I don't think so. Like

48:34

I think

48:35

the things that got us this far are going to backfire

48:37

on us in a lot of ways.

48:39

I think as soon as we develop the technology

48:42

that could end all human life,

48:44

someone's going to use it because there's just that

48:46

much diversity of people. Like

48:48

if we all had a button, you know, that woke

48:50

up with one morning and pushing it killed every human.

48:52

Like I give us a nanosecond.

48:55

As soon as people read the instructions on the button,

48:58

that's as long as we would last.

49:00

Because

49:00

there's someone out there who would just love to end

49:02

it and take everyone with them. I mean, don't you think that

49:04

technology is probably already here? Like

49:06

not even counting like nuclear power, which is

49:09

hard to make, but like

49:11

biotech is increasing so exponentially.

49:14

I mean, it's like so much faster than the speed

49:16

by which computers increased. You

49:19

can make, we've seen it. You can make in a lab

49:21

a virus that affects the entire world.

49:24

Yeah, I think we don't. I think the

49:26

natural viruses, you

49:29

couldn't wipe out all of humans with anything that

49:31

a virus could do because they either work

49:33

so slowly that we adapt or too fast

49:35

that they burn out.

49:36

But I think if we ever

49:39

like had

49:40

programmable biological viruses

49:42

where start infecting people and

49:45

hide, so no one knows it's there and wait 100 years so

49:48

that it's a generational type of virus.

49:51

And then on this date, turn the switch

49:53

off on everybody. Like it would take something that

49:55

advanced, which we don't have yet to pull

49:58

it off because I've been. in the

50:00

places in the world where nuclear holocausts

50:02

wouldn't, they would never even know it happened.

50:04

A huge meteor impact is so

50:06

unlikely because

50:08

Jupiter does such a great job of kind of scrubbing

50:10

the solar system.

50:11

So all the traditional ways

50:14

and global warming isn't gonna be enough. Like the sun's

50:16

gonna have to go nova or turns a

50:18

red giant before all life here

50:20

is extinguished.

50:21

Am I an optimist? I don't think we'll

50:23

get off this planet and go live somewhere else. I

50:25

think life on Mars is the dumbest idea I've

50:27

ever heard of. So I think our

50:30

days are limited.

50:32

But in the meantime, we've had

50:34

Ursula K. Le Guin and Shakespeare

50:36

and Picasso and like how

50:38

many priceless

50:41

works of creativity out of people that

50:43

were just trying to like

50:44

find fruit and trees for most of

50:46

our existence. Like

50:48

how can you not be optimistic about that?

50:51

Very true. And on that, Hugh, congratulations

50:54

again on silo. My

50:56

whole family, because we were having

50:58

this podcast, I said, we all have to watch these

51:00

two episodes. It was homework. Everybody's

51:03

like, oh, do we really have to watch? And I said, yes.

51:06

And they're all like, when's the next episode coming out?

51:08

So everyone's super excited.

51:11

I know this is getting great reviews and

51:13

it's like surpassing Ted

51:15

Lasso or whatever else is on Apple. I

51:17

subscribed to Apple Plus to watch silo. So I don't

51:20

even know what else is on Apple Plus. Oh man, you've

51:22

got a lot to catch up on. Well, I know I did

51:24

watch at 1.7 because I joined

51:26

earlier and then lost my subscription, but I watched one show,

51:29

Severance.

51:29

But again, congratulations. This is so amazing

51:32

to have seen this progress through

51:34

the past decade and plus your journey

51:37

and self-publishing has been so inspirational to many

51:39

people. And all your books are just

51:41

real pleasures to read. I'm glad I

51:43

knew about you and was reading you back

51:45

when. So now I can say. Oh gee, James,

51:48

I appreciate it. And this is your second

51:50

time on the podcast, after nine years. So

51:53

welcome back. And hopefully it

51:55

won't be another nine years before you come on again.

51:57

Yeah, I don't know if I have that long. So let's not wait that long.

52:00

Definitely. All right. Thanks, James.

52:02

Thanks, Ben. Cheers.

52:18

I can't keep this in anymore. I can't even

52:20

believe I'm saying this, to be honest. You

52:22

know you can tell me anything. I'm

52:25

capital VFD42 capital Z lowercase

52:27

m underscore lowercase p capital L reverse slash apostrophe

52:30

lowercase r s. I know how you feel. Just

52:32

between us, I'm underscore

52:35

comma dash underscore dollar sign capital G lowercase

52:37

w comma forward slash dash reverse slash.

52:40

No way. I am so glad we had

52:42

this conversation. I know. Me

52:44

too. Turn on total privacy with end to end encryption.

52:47

WhatsApp.

52:48

Message privately.