 Hi. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hi. Hi. Thank you. That's good. Just continue. That's fine. No need to stop. No need to stop. That is wonderful. Why are you stopping? That is depressing. Hi. Thank you for coming. Welcome to On the Verge. I'm the editor-in-chief of The Verge, Josh Dupolsky, and I really appreciate having you guys here. You picked a good night to come. This is, it's our best show ever. I know I say that every time, but this really, this time I'm telling the truth. It really is our best show. We have an incredible show tonight. LeVar Burton is here. Yes. Yes. I know what you're thinking. You're going, you mean Jordy LaForge, right? That's what you were thinking. But yeah, LeVar is here. We're going to talk about his career as an actor, as a director, talk about some apps. Alexis Ohanian is here. One of the founders of Reddit. And Tim Wu, author of The Master Switch. He's a super smart guy. It's a big show. It's a big show. It's a monstrous show, in fact, and I don't want to waste any time. We're very excited about it. I want to thank the sponsor for tonight's show, Ford. They've been an awesome partner for us. They gave us money, which is wonderful, which we use to buy things like chocolates and ties. We also put the show on with it. Anyhow, I think we should just get underway. So please welcome Nilay Patel and Ross Miller. This is great. Look at you in your beautiful pink scarf. Have you taken that off since the wedding? No. Now, you really haven't, have you? No, I've just been drinking and scarfing. Now, you may notice that Paul Miller is not here. He's been replaced with the bizarro world Ross Miller. You may notice, you may not realize that. That's true. Paul, your haircut is so powerful. Thank you. I think Ross is, I'm just going to say it because he's not on the internet. He'll never know. I think Ross is the superior Miller, frankly. I will tell him. But Paul's in Mexico right now. Nilay's wedding was pretty wild, let's just say. Actually, and also, Nilay had a wedding, so give him a round of applause. He got married to his oft-mentioned fiancée, Becky, who he can now no longer refer to as his fiancée. She is just my property. No, I do not think that's... I love you, property. I'm almost certain that's not legally accurate. It is in New York State. Oh, in New York State? That's fine, yeah. Great. Can I ask, did you give her a matching wristband? Oh, yeah. No, it's a row of diamonds. With a thinner row of spikes? His joke is so good. You don't like my matrimony humor? Well, you won't have to hear it for much longer. Anyhow, so we were in Chicago, went to Nilay's wedding, where he rode a horse down a city block. I wish I was kidding, but I'm not, of course. There are photos on the internet. You can find them pretty easily. But we've been partying a lot, but we've also had a crazy month of events and also parties. We went to E3 out on the West Coast, where we had a party. It was great. Can we show some of the shots from this? Here's me and Chris Grant, the editor of Polygon. This was a joint party with Polygon, our sister video game site. And by the way, it was an accident that we coordinated jackets there. No, it was. No, it was. Also accidental plaid from everybody. Here we are reading something. We did a raffle. Yeah, how'd it go? It went worse than, well, it went as bad as any raffle we've ever done before. I mean, we are really not good at raffles. I don't understand it. Anyhow, I'm not going to go down, but here's the outside of the building where we did it. It was very cool. It was very exciting. Here's some people posing in front of this huge screen. We called the event Polygon on the Verge, and the whole point was it was going to be POV. But we never made mention of POV anywhere. I was like, oh, what's a good name for the party? POV, that's cool. Polygon on the Verge. And then we just let it go. Yeah. We just never mentioned it. But it was great. We had special drinks. We had ice cubes that glow. They're really awesome. I still have like a few of them. Do you? Yeah. You should bring them to the office. Anyhow, but we were there for E3, which is a big video game show. I don't know if you guys are aware of E3. Maybe you've heard of it. Maybe not. Really? Nothing? I really had to... All liars. I really had to yank. I really had to pull on that applause. But we saw a bunch of stuff, not a crazy year for video games. It was a good year. It just wasn't exciting. There wasn't a lot of new console announcements. Xboxes and PlayStation, they're kind of like in their retirement phase or getting toward the end. They're creaking along. There's a farm. And the Xbox is going there. We're pointing them out to pastures. Is it going to be happy? It's going to be very happy. They're going to be bouncing. There are blue rings. They're going to a better place. But we did see some cool things. Ubisoft had a game called Watch Dogs. Which is gorgeous. Which looks insane. You can see some of it right here. The prevailing theory was that what we're seeing is next-gen graphics. This is not going to be on Xbox or PlayStation like this. Right, because the Xbox can't do this kind of graphics. Certainly not for the Wii, right? This isn't coming out for the Wii. This is a Wii U launch title. Is it? No, not a chance. The original Wii. It's definitely not. The original Wii, yes. Look at that waggle right there. I mean, you can see with the jacket animation, this is clearly next-gen stuff. I like that people didn't know if I was being serious or not on that. I was being serious. It's not funny, okay? But this was cool. We also saw the new Quantic Dreams game, Beyond Two Souls. Yeah, it's the guys that did Heavy Rain. Yeah. Ellen Page is in it. Ellen Page is in it. That game actually looks so insane that I went out and bought Heavy Rain. It's a great interactive movie. You bought Heavy Rain right before your wedding, right? Yeah, and then I played it throughout the wedding. I was like, hang on. He was like, I know we're dancing right now, but I just have to finish this chapter. And my personal favorite from E3 was The Last of Us, which is a game that is a post-apocalyptic nightmare world, zombies, and part of it takes place in Pittsburgh, which is where I'm from. You really could have just said it's Pittsburgh. It's in Pittsburgh, basically. So, no, but it looks really cool. I mean, here you can see some killing going on. And actually, killing was the theme of E3. It was one of the most, I think it was like the most violent E3 that I can remember. It's very, it's matured both technologically and creatively is the very nice way of saying it. Is that what you think it's matured? Well, in the same way Tarantino has matured from killing to massive brutal killing. But more stylish killing. Yeah, it's more stylish killing. So we actually noticed a trend at E3, something that we saw crop up. You know, all of the companies do their keynotes. They show a bunch of game demos. And we saw something that just kept appearing that we thought was a little weird, which was the neck stab. That's when you stab somebody in the neck. And they show, like repeatedly in games, we saw it. It would just be like a neck stab and then a fountain of blood. It's impressive, the particle effects of arterial spray. They're really pushing the consoles to their maximum with the neck stab. Because we put together a little video of E3. It's very short. Just a couple. Just a couple of things we saw at E3 just to kind of illustrate what was happening at the show. So take a look at this. I think you'll enjoy it. I think you'll enjoy it. That is really charming. We have come a long ways, etc. Just a little taste of what you missed if you didn't go to E3. I'm sorry. We were in rehearsal, Rick. How did we come out of that? It's upsetting. It turns out when we had the idea to do the video, we were like, that would be hilarious. But it turns out when you watch people getting stabbed in the neck repeatedly, it does actually feel a little upsetting. There's more to the couch. It's a very nice brand new way of doing it. Anyhow, let's move on, folks. Do you mind? We've got a show to do. But there were a couple other things at E3. Smart Glass. Have you guys seen this? Microsoft's version of AirPlay, essentially. Yeah, I mean, it's the thing that you use to connect the phone, the tablet. It's a little bit beyond AirPlay. It's a little bit. They do interactive stuff. There's Internet Explorer, which everyone is constantly dying for. I was going to say that. I was going to say that. Internet Explorer for the Xbox, which you've been waiting for. Microsoft has actually had a crazy month. I don't know if you guys are aware of this. They just announced Windows Phone 8 yesterday. That's what it looks like. They made smaller tiles. Get a load of those tiles. Some of them are longer, too, I think. Longer tiles. That's what you've been waiting for. Just fluctuating. But more importantly, their big announcement this month, I think, is the Surface. Have you guys seen the Surface? It's Microsoft's iPad competitor, basically. I mean, it used to be a table. It used to be a table. It's true. It's true. It was a table. It was a table, and now they've turned it into a tablet. It's actually kind of cool. It's got a kickstand. It has this smart cover that has a keyboard. Two different ones. Two different ones. I'm into it. I'll be the first to say it. How was the keyboard? Did you try it? They wouldn't let us... The keyboard, they wouldn't let us try. But we did do some hands-on stuff, but they wouldn't let us take photos while we were holding it. They would only let us take photos when someone else, like one of their guys, was holding it. But luckily, this is actually interesting. An Estonian newspaper took a picture of me holding the Surface. This is... I mean, thanks, Estonia. You accomplished what we could not, which was... You look very quizzical. You can see, look at the guy in the background. He's like, give that back to me. Lucky. He's like, okay, that's enough. Please stop holding that. Is that a cocktail app? Yeah, that's a cocktail app. After the event, I was just trying to figure out where I was going to go and get wasted, wasted drunk. But what's interesting about the Surface event is that Microsoft ended it with this commercial for the Surface, which had very hard, heavy dubstep. We have a few seconds of this commercial. Can we show it? This is what they showed when we finished with the live blog. It's really heavy, right? Very heavy stuff. But Microsoft has been doing this a lot. They have an IE ad, speaking of Internet Explorer, that has dubstep in it. And we actually have been seeing dubstep in a lot of ads. And I saw something the other day and I thought... And I feel like it was done by the same people who do the Microsoft stuff, and I thought, that's it. Dubstep in advertising has truly jumped the shark. I wanted to share this with you guys. Check out this ad. I seriously couldn't believe it. Approach phase, everything looking good. The angle has landed. I just feel... Wait, wait. I just... Is that sperm? Yeah. I mean, it was sperm. I can't avoid saying that. It did appear to be sperm fertilizing an egg. I can't be entirely sure, but... Ovaltine, man. When you think of ovaltine, do you not think of sperm fertilizing an egg? I've never been thirsty, but I am right now. I guess we're just very different people. So, yeah, dubstep in advertising maybe has passed a threshold that we don't want to pass. Okay, finally, on the news side, WWDC... Can I say that? Really? WWDC? Yeah, or WWDC. You are fired. You're fired. That works, too. That works, too. That works. That's terrible. Apple had their big developers event. iOS 6 was announced. Maps are gone. No more Google Maps. Yeah. But they built their own. They built their own. Mountain Lion, which we saw. Yeah. And, finally, MacBook. Right, the new MacBook Pro. With rednet display. Yeah, there it is right there. You reviewed it. You liked it. I did. It's really nice. It's thin. It's got a great screen, for the most part. For the most part? What is that? Well, I mean, like, if you have a website that has a lot of pictures, it's still... You mean like our website? Like our website. Yeah, our website. So that's cool. Thanks, Rust. Sorry. Anyhow, all right. We've got to get on with the news. Sorry, not on with the news. On with the show. We're done with the news. Yeah. But we have one more surprise for you guys. Paul, as we said, was in Chicago for Neely's wedding. And he filed a video diary from Chicago. And I think you can see, you can truly see a man unraveling from not being on the internet in this video. So take a look at this, and we'll be back with LeVar Burton. I'm Paul Miller. I'm in Chicago. And this is day... How many days? Like 45 of no internet? You know, I stopped counting. I stopped counting everything when I left the internet. So I don't know. But it's been a while since I've used the internet. And I've been in Chicago for about a week. I came to Chicago for Neely's wedding. And so I've just been hanging out in Chicago for a few days before the wedding. And then the wedding was like a three-day extravaganza. At first I felt a little out of place because a lot of cool things would happen. And then everybody would share them on Instagram or Facebook. But I think as the wedding progressed, some people, even like the Verge editors, started like slowing down how many pictures they were taking, how many tweets they were doing. And we all started living and loving and laughing a lot. Throughout the wedding, I felt no disadvantage dancing lines without the internet. I felt like I could pick up all the moves here on the spot. Nothing you had to look up on the internet. It was a good experience. I didn't really think a lot about the internet either way because I was just enjoying the wedding basically. So it was a blast. It was awesome. And yeah, you know, everybody was tweeting. I actually, I forgot my camera on this trip, which is kind of suck, but I got this Yashica Electro 35. So I'm learning how to shoot film. So I've been shooting a little bit of film. My big problem with film is that I forget if I'm rounded or not. I think I either have a lot of blank frames on here or a lot of double exposures. But it's a pretty cool camera. I haven't developed any films, so I don't know if I'm taking horrible pictures or not. There are definitely a few people here that know me from my work, my little internet work. Because like, you know, somebody asks you, what do you do? I said, well, I write about technology. And they're like, oh, like phones and laptops. Yeah, I was like, yeah, phones and laptops, you know. And a lot of times the conversations get in there. But it's fun for me because I get to say, yeah, I write about technology. Right now I'm living the year without the internet. And they're like, oh, well, you know. So I'm like, I'm cool right now. I'm a pretty hot commodity when it comes to conversations at social gatherings. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I think I'm getting really good at navigating cities. I've just absorbed them like sponge. When I rented my bike, they gave me this map. This map is courtesy of Rahm Emanuel. And this thing is epic. And so I can get anywhere in like, I don't even know what you call this area. Chicago is a very large place. I went to Wicker Park. I went to a camera store, a Best Buy, a wedding. I bought two shirts. You want to show you my shirts? Oh my gosh. My life is so boring. But still exciting, strangely. I don't miss the internet. I don't dream about it. I don't yearn for it. Every once in a while somebody is like, oh, there's this really funny thing happening on Twitter. I can't tell you. But I don't care. My biggest fear though is that at the end of the year, I don't want to really go back to the internet for more. Even though it's so awesome, it's such a cool thing, I like myself a lot better not on the internet. So I feel like doing a year of this is going to be like a piece of cake. This is basically really easy right now. There's tiny minor inconveniences in exchange for having a blast. A total, complete blast. Yeah. And then we actually, we were actually saying that it was like, eat, pray, Paul. He's going on kind of a vision quest. Now he's in Mexico. He may never come back, honestly. I hope he does though. So I just want to briefly. I don't need to introduce our first guest, but I'm going to. I mean, you guys know who he is. You know him as Jordy LaForge from Star Trek, Kunta Kinte from Roots, which is crazy that he's here doing this and doing stuff like that. And of course, Reading from Reading Rainbow. Please welcome the amazing LeVar Burton. Watch your step. Very careful. Thank you so much. Watch your step. So these are live human beings. Yeah, we have real people. We've convinced humans to come in here. Good job. LeVar, thank you so much for coming. You've been, now I know you've been on a whirlwind tour of New York. Yes. You've just been sightseeing. Indeed. No, you've been everywhere. You were on Late Night last night. You were at CNN today. You've been all over the place. And this is your last stop in New York? This is my last stop on the Reading Rainbow app launch press tour. And I wanted to spend it here with y'all. That is. No, seriously. I mean, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. And we're very glad that you did. So I mentioned before you came out, you have some very iconic roles in your history. Talking about the fantasy island I did. And fantasy island. I did the love boat too, you know. And of course, well of course, love boat. No one can forget the love boat. I have. No one but you can forget the love boat. But I was thinking, I feel like you've got these, the roles are so iconic and they have such a fan base around them, particularly Star Trek, that you must walk down the street and people are like, hey, Jordy. Does that drive you crazy? No. Really? No, it really doesn't. It doesn't bother you? It's not like my fans are like Gary Busey fans. You know what I mean? Does Gary Busey have fans? Yeah, he does. And they tend to put cigarettes out in his arm and stuff. Really? Yeah. But he's into that. He loves it. He loves it. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So that doesn't bother you at all. I'm going to go ahead and conduct the rest of the interview as if you were Jordy. Hold on. And before you answer, can we get some mood music on for this? You are serious? Well, this is the sound from the bridge. I know what that sound is. Josh. Actually, but actually, hold on. But you would be an engineer and so it would be a little louder. Can we bring up the sound a little bit more? And that sounds about right to me. Okay. That's fine. You can cut it. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to subject you. No, no, no. I was really getting into it. You were ready to go into Jordy right there, weren't you? I was almost in character. We were talking backstage. The whole time you were on Star Trek, the visor, you really couldn't see very well in the visor. The visor actually took away about 85% of my vision when I put it on. And there's a tremendous irony there, right? Because the visor gave you, on the show, gave you all kinds of extra abilities. You could see what the makeup of the room was. And yet, in reality, you were stumbling around. I was stumbling around. I didn't know that, by the way. And it was brought up backstage, and I was shocked to find that. Fun Star Trek facts to no one tell. So besides being an actor, you're a director. You hosted Reading Rainbow. Any Reading Rainbow watchers in the house? Nice. I don't want to make you feel old, but I grew up on Reading Rainbow. I'm lying. I'm actually quite old. I'm quite old myself. But no, Reading Rainbow was, yes. That was a huge deal. 26 years on PBS. 26? 26 years. And you won a bunch of Emmys. You won Peabody. So 26 seasons. Yeah. Do you feel the story's over? No. Or do you feel like there could be a movie in the offing? Oh, a movie. A Reading Rainbow movie, not a movie. Like a narrative film? Wow. Have you ever considered that? We could get some butterflies. Go on. Maybe a sky? That's probably pretty easy to do. Yeah. They have soundstages where they can recreate a sky, I understand, in Hollywood. I would probably want to do it all CGI though. Yeah, no, absolutely. So I want to talk, because you have an app. You have this app, and I want to talk about it. Yes, we do. Have you all heard about the Reading Rainbow app that's out in the App Store? Some. It's out right now. It's out now. It's out now. How much is it? It's a free app to download. It's free. What are you waiting for? It's free. It's free. So before we talk about that, I want to talk about your life on the internet. You've become very active on the internet. I love the internet. You're on Reddit. We have one of the co-founders of Reddit here. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, your username on Reddit is KuntaInTheHouse. Is that correct? That is absolutely true. That is true. That is true. And you're pretty active. I mean, you're fairly active on there. Yeah, a little. You're also a meme. You're aware of this? That you've been memed? I have been. Yes. Well, we had Neil deGrasse Tyson on here also. Do you know, he's an astrophysicist? Absolutely. And he's been memed heavily, and we asked him about it. I just want to kind of show you one of my favorites here. This is, if you're having hall problems, I feel bad for you, son. I've got 99 problems, but a breach ain't one. Apologies to Jay-Z. Does this weird you out? Is this strange for you? No, I love this stuff. Do you just randomly appear? Yes. You're into it. Wouldn't you? Yes, I would. Yes. I wish people did more creative memes with me. I'm going to put that out into the world. Please do more creative memes. So let's talk about the app. Okay. I actually have it here on an iPad. Let me see if I can get this up. So it has, can we get this on camera? Is it still talking to me? Yes. So check this out. It's got islands that you can fly through. And we were reading a book, You Have a Backpack, which I thought was great. I mean, Pirate Boy, one of my favorites. Who is the narrator of Pirate Boy? I don't know. You tell me. I don't know. There are 150-some-odd. It's talking. But mom, what if there are sea monsters? It's not you. No, that is Jim Meskimen, who is one of our storytellers. I read about 20% of the titles in the app. You are reading the titles as well? Oh yeah, absolutely. That seems like a lot of big time sink. I work cheap for myself. Okay. But it's a cool app. We were playing around with it. It has interactive alphabets. Yeah, it does. You can, the sea dragon here, you can touch it and it starts doing that. It is very much like a pop-up book on an iPad, though. I'm incredibly proud of what we've been able to do in terms of translating a television show into an app experience. There are a lot of challenges involved, and I think we've overcome a lot of them. Not the least of which is the fear of disappointing those who really know and are familiar with the brand. It can be dangerous to go to the well too many times with the same franchise. Just ask Paramount, where Star Trek is concerned. Oh, oh. I don't know. Star Trek has been pretty successful throughout the iteration. It has been, and they had to give it a long rest before JJ rebooted the franchise. Do you feel bummed that there's not going to be any more next generation movies? I'm tired, Josh. First Contact was on TV last night, by the way. Completely random. I had to watch it, obviously. You had to watch it. Well, I mean, it's really good. Wouldn't you stop and watch it? Whenever I'm on TV, I stop to watch. You're like, who's that guy? He is great. No, but it's no good. I miss the next generation crew. Do you keep in touch with those guys? Do you hang out? We all keep in touch, yeah. Really? This is the 25th anniversary of Next Gen coming on the air, so we are having a reunion tour of conventions. We started a couple of months ago in Calgary, and we have others coming up. There's one in Austin in a couple of months. So it's great. Patrick lives over in England now. Michael Dorn is spending his money. His wharf money. He was wharf on Next Gen. He was wharf on Deep Space. Oh, that's right. God, he had a long run. Michael Dorn's got more money than God. Really? Yeah. Can I get his contact information because I need to get some budget in here. Clearly. Yeah, I know, right? You know, we try. We're no CNN, but we're doing the best we can. So let me ask you about the Reading Rainbow app, though. It's clearly for kids. It is. Have you ever thought about adding- And those who are young at heart. Have you ever thought about adding more adult titles like Fifty Shades of Grey or Lolita would be something you might put in there. Maybe some of the Anne Rice novels. People have asked me for years about doing an adult version of Reading Rainbow, and I think we should get around to that in the fullness of time. Why not? It would be a lot of fun. Yeah. I mean, adults need to read. Let's hope. I mean, what are the goals for you with the app? What do you want to do with this app? I mean, obviously you want to encourage people to read. Yes. It's for you. It does. So in some way you're almost encouraging people to not read. Does that seem fair to the kids? Seems a little counterproductive. It does. Are we raising a generation of lazy kids who won't read? I think we're raising a generation of overindulged kids. With iPads. They all have iPads. No, no, no. I mean, this is a generation that gets rewarded for everything. If you're on a sports team, everybody gets a trophy, whether you suck or not. That's true. And it's just... And most people suck. And most... Think about sports. Yeah, yeah. You know, you see professional sports players, they're really good. Most people are not that good. You should not be getting an award if you're not really good at sports. I think that my generation of parents, in an effort to really give our children the sort of childhood that we feel we ourselves never had, have really gone way overboard in terms of indulging this upcoming generation. I just think they're a little spoiled. Yeah. I agree. We should be hitting them a lot more. Right? Spare the rod, spoil the child is my... So look, I know you're... We're going way off. LeBaron advocates beating children. You heard it here first. You heard it here first. LeBaron says hit your kids often. More, more, yeah. They just, they had it coming, frankly. They had it coming. So look, I know you're very tired. I'm not going to keep you too much longer. But I was thinking, so they rebooted the old Star Trek. I'm sorry, not to keep going back to Star Trek. No, no, no, no. But I can just tell you, I'm a little bit of a fan. I couldn't tell. But so they rebooted the original Star Trek, they put a bunch of new young actors in the roles that Shatner had and Leonard Nimoy. If they were to reboot Next Generation, which by the way seems weird to reboot the Next Generation, but if they were to reboot the Next Generation, who would you want? Is there anybody out there who you feel like would be a great new Geordi? I'm really putting you on the spot now. Gary Coleman? No, Gary Coleman's not here. No, that's not... He's not going to work. Why Gary Coleman of all... Because the cat needed a job. I felt so bad for him. I'll tell you what, I spent years watching you. I had no idea you were as funny as you are. You're like so serious on Star Trek and so much horrible shit always happens to you. You never get a chance to just cut loose on Star Trek. No, that wasn't part of Geordi's character. He always had to hold it together. Everybody was counting on him. No, it was always like everything is falling apart. Can you just whip up some new way to fix the warp core? And you always did. Sure, Captain. I'll get right on it. That is so amazing. So no actors in mind that you would want to... Let's see, who in this current crop of... Actually, I think Sam Jackson would make a hell of a Geordi. Geordi? Yeah. Don't you think? No, I don't. Come on. I mean, you have Geordi shot stuff all the time. The next generation of the next generation. Geordi LaForge, badass. Total badass. You know what? I'm going to leave it there. LeVar, thank you so much for coming. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. LeVar Burns, that was so good. Thank you very much. Thank you. I never loved him. Stick around. We got a message from our sponsor and we'll be back with Alexis Ohanian from Reddit. LeVar, thanks again so much. Absolutely. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. See you. Thank you. So, On the Verge is a show we do once a month. It's kind of a late night tech talk show. It's an incredible experience. We have a huge team that works on it. More than 30 people there the day of the shoot. We've got editors and shooters working all month long on segments and different pieces of the show. We get to have incredible guests. We have celebrities and people from the tech world who are fascinating and brilliant. And we do segments. We get a little weird. It's actually our chance to have a little bit of fun. The site is very much focused on news and features and reviews. The show is our opportunity to kind of loosen up. And it's really great. And I love doing it. Ford has been a great partner for us. Calling Paul Miller on cell. They sponsored our CES coverage, which was insane. Please say a command. Pandora. And it's great to have them back supporting the show. You can tell they really get what we're doing. Yeah. So before we bring Alexis out, while we were shooting that, we were shooting some of the behind the scenes stuff in Brooklyn, and something happened. It's not scripted. This is not planned. I just want to share this moment with you. We happened to catch it on video. Just take a look at this. And it's very odd. What the fuck? I mean, just you tell me. That happened. We were just standing there. It appears to be a flatbed with a part of a wrecked airplane on it. You know, we had Damon Lindelof on the show last month. And I feel like it was kind of a weird karmic moment. I just wanted to share that with you guys. I thought you would appreciate it. Anyhow, moving on. Our next guest, you may not know him as a human being, but you certainly know his website where you find all of your favorite memes and animated cat gifs. Please welcome one of the founders of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian. Yes, awesome. Watch your step. You're very careful. And watch your step over there. Look, you brought props. I like anybody who brings props. Carrot Top taught me well. Did you say Carrot Top taught you well? Yeah, he's a prop comic. Please leave. The record for shortest interview ever. Yeah. Now, first off, can I ask you anything? Yes, you may. It's a Reddit joke. Come on, guys. There were three Redditors. Only three Redditors in the audience. Yeah, seriously, very sad. So let's talk a little about, I want to talk about the creation, the ideation, the birth of Reddit. You co-founded it in 2005. Who are your partners? Steve Huffman. Just Steve? Yeah, me and Steve got together. We got together in an apartment about a month after we graduated from UVA and got started trying to create the front page of the internet. And a lot of fortunate things came together, and here we are today. And here you are. Can you imagine that you could you have ever thought you'd be sitting talking to me? Not in a million years. What an incredible climb. What a success story. My big concern is I know it's only downhill from here. It really is. Everything will seem boring and horrible after this, because I'm going to ruin it for you. So what was your thought when you were building Reddit? What did you want to do? In all frankness, Steve and I were friends since the first day of college when he thought I was a girl because of my name on the door. You do have a lady's name. You're aware of that, right? I do. I was actually named after a Nicaraguan boxer named Alexis Arguello, who is a dude. But at a very early age realized I needed to embrace my feminine name. So yes, I am Alexis. And you're feminine today. Oh, every day. But so most importantly, Steve and I really just wanted to perpetuate our college life. We really loved being able to eat pizza, drink beer, and work on fun projects. And we thought, let's try to do this by starting a company. And we didn't set out to do a lot of the things that Reddit has done in the way of philanthropic work or political work. I'd be lying if I said we did. We just wanted to create a place where we could find what was new and interesting online. That's really interesting. You just wanted a place to find hilarious stuff and collect it. And informative as well. Oh, come on. Cats can be instructional. That's true. They can. They can. And why do you think it's become, you call it the front page of the internet. Why do you think it has actually really become the front page of the internet? It has turned into something that is, based on what you're telling me, maybe you guys didn't even predict. But it has turned into something really big and special. How did that happen? Black magic. We made deals. Deals with Satan. Very nefarious individuals. Well, you know what? When we started Red in 2005, social media wasn't even a phrase. Facebook was still relegated to colleges. And many of the things we can't live without today didn't exist. And I think we just hit, oh goodness. Don't carry on. Are you OK? I would obviously need a drink, but it's alcoholic. So is mine. Is alcohol supposed to go into the lung? Is that right? Not a doctor. We can edit this. We're going to edit this. It's going to be seamless. Go ahead. Carry on as if nothing happened. I was busy trying to remember all my Heimlich training. Yeah, seriously. Thanks for nothing. I could have died. I could have freaking died. You just sat there. I was ready to jump in action. Sorry, so I was asking how it became what it is today. I think a lot of it was timing. And here's the thing. Not to take anything, Steve did a brilliant job actually building Reddit. By the way, we're open source, so take a look at his work. The work that went into it, there was a ton of it. But at the end of the day, we had a lot of really great timing, and we came about at a time when people were still starting, they were just now starting to realize that user generated content was a thing of value. And it turned out there were a lot of people interested in submitting links and voting on them and having discussions on the internet, far more than we'd ever experienced. And we caught things at the right time. And I think the overarching ethos, the spirit of Reddit that Steve and I knew we had to continue, was that the two of us sitting in an apartment were never going to be able to find the best stuff on the internet. We tried for the first couple weeks, because we were submitting things ourselves. And there was no way we'd be able to find it all. So we needed to be good to our users, because if our users weren't excited about submitting to Reddit and providing good content, they'd never do it. And we wouldn't have a site that was worth anything. So being good to those users, I think, is what helped Reddit continue to grow for all these years. And you've had a lot of competition. You've had competition out there. At one point, Digg kind of seemed to occupy the space that you guys occupy. And maybe, actually, when I think about Digg, it didn't seem to go as deep. And maybe that's just the way our culture is moving. But Reddit seems to go, reach deeper into both the dark heart of the internet and outwardly to things like policy. But Digg was, at one point, very much on top. And they made some pretty substantial changes. I feel like you guys saw kind of a flood of users who were looking for refuge. What did you learn from that? What did you see there? And what were your takeaways from it? We saw a significant bump after Digg version 4. It wasn't world changing. Reddit has always steadily grown. And I think what it did was it really reinforced this belief we had that we didn't need to care about our competition. We need to build the best site we could for our users. And like I said, do right by them. And the real fatal flaw to Digg 4 was taking away user submission, was taking the very last bit of that democratic platform away from the people who, like I said, added all the value. And as we moved closer towards giving users more power, I feel like they moved further away until it eventually undid them. Well, part of their thing was they felt like some users had too much power. And what do you do to combat? I mean, how are you trying to fight super users? Well, we work. I mean, there is a karma system on Reddit. And I hope many of you work hard to get lots of Reddit karma. But it really means nothing. It doesn't bias your votes. Every Redditor, all Redditors are equal. No Redditors are more equal than others. That was something in our FAQ from day zero. And we wanted to make sure that we had a system where if you wanted to come on for the very first time, and it happens every day on Reddit, submit a post, say, I'm a blank, ask me anything. You could be on the front page that evening and the next morning on the Today Show. And that literally actually happens now. Because we can let anyone who doesn't have any clout on the internet, but who's got a good story or has found some good content, get the fame, internet fame, that he or she's idea deserves. This is actually, it's in perforated my next question. So you recently banned some publications, a lot of news stories, you banned The Atlantic, some other guys, for abusing Reddit. And we run a publication, The Verge. We are occasionally on Reddit, which is wonderful. And I wanted to get some tips from you. I feel like if there's going to be a source on how not to abuse Reddit as a publication, that you're the guy to ask. So let me just have a couple questions here. How many accounts is normal for one person to have? Would you say, I'm going to give you a few ranges. Between 20 and 40? Between 40 and 60? Where do you feel is the comfort zone for one individual to have accounts? This is going to sound crazy, but one. I will say, I'll add in a has-bees there. 100? And you hit the nail on the head. It's things like this we have always paid very close attention to. It's kind of an arms race. We're always trying to keep one step ahead of the cheaters. But that's a really obvious way to be bad on Reddit, is to create lots of shill accounts and upvote your content. I'll certainly agree that everyone needs a fake account so they can say the things they may not be comfortable saying. It's really racist stuff. No, no, I'd hope not. Really nasty, sad stuff. I was thinking more like the ask-me-any things, where candor is sort of required in being honest. But the fascinating thing is we've always tried really hard to keep that kind of cheating down. And we had publications that disregarded it. And I think partly because our predecessors actually sort of encouraged it, we've had to sort of undo that mess. OK, when using multiple accounts, IP spoofing, yes or no? No, no, don't try that. Don't do that? And in general, my final question in this extremely serious line of questioning, how many Verge links should I be submitting on a daily basis? Again, I'll give you a range. 20 to 40, 40 to 60, or unlimited because it's all really great stuff? I think in the Verge's case, it should be that. Oh, really? No, God, no, please don't. You heard it here first, though. Unlimited submissions of Verge content. In a nutshell, the best secret that I tell publishers is, and I think people often forget this when they go on the internet, is just act like you would in real life. Don't act like a jerk. Don't act like you're self-promoting your own content. Don't do that because that wouldn't fly in real life, and it doesn't fly on the internet. So just make good stuff. Honestly, like Reddit, we're a new site, right? So we're growing. And when we see something on the front page of Reddit, the traffic is crazy. And it's not just that it's new traffic. I'll just get a little serious with you for a second, even though I was clearly joking. I thought this was a really serious internet. It is very serious. But it's not just that it's traffic. It's that it's a lot of new traffic. It's a lot of people who've never heard of the Verge before, and so we're actually really, I don't want to screw it up. And there are times when we're like, hey, our stuff has got a bunch of votes. Like, go check it out. Like, vote it up if you're on Reddit. And I don't want to be the kind of guy who abuses what you guys are doing, because I think what you're doing is really special and really important. And yes, I'm going to continue to use multiple accounts and spoof their IPs, but I'm going to do it in a way that is almost undetectable to me. And that's the important thing. So if you guys are the front page of the internet, and by the way, you have a lot in common with 4chan. If you're the front page, are they like the back door of the internet? Wow. I can't top that. Because I feel like there's almost a, you feel like it could go 4chan at any moment. Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing, but it would be a little bit more chaotic than what you have going on now. I mean, the moderation system that's in place, the pseudo anonymity, so unlike 4chan, your Redders have identities. They're anonymous. You have a username. It could be Alexis Ohanian, or it could be FluffyBunny26. But you still have an identity. That's me. That was, yeah. Spoiler. And so I think that has helped preserve it. And what's been really fascinating is Reddit is a platform, like Twitter, Tumblr, all these others we use. And communities form and use this platform to share links about everything from I subscribed to Redskins Reddit, because I happen to be a Die Hard Skins fan and a masochist. And that community has its own culture. It has its own ethos. It submits a certain type of links. It has its own inside jokes. And that's how they choose to use the platform. And it's those moderation tools that I think encourage that great behavior that we see bubbling up into great things like the philanthropy and the political work. I mean, are you doing this on purpose? You're segueing perfectly into my next question. I am psychic. So you are very active. You guys were very outspoken on SOPA. You are referred to as the mayor of the internet. It was a landslide election. No, but you guys laughed. But he had a chief of staff here earlier backstage. But how do you take the kind of rage and anger and disillusionment that you see on Reddit, which I feel, and I think a lot of us do, when you're watching these stupid pieces of legislation getting pushed and people who don't get the internet trying to legislate the internet. How do you take that rage and the stuff that bubbles up to the front page and turn it into something that creates real action? How do you go from Reddit to activism? You know, I am not entirely sure. We have, sorry. And it took a lot of check-ins, a ton of check-ins to get that mayorship. All over the place. On the internet. I don't know. I think if you see any of the stuff that starts out as a Reddit post and ends it with real world action, again, whether it's activism or philanthropy, there's just stuff that happens. It's some person who starts with a random idea and it starts snowballing. And what the internet does such a great job of is sort of giving us all ways to help. I use the metaphor to talk a little while back about everyone getting the chance to be their own Batman or Batwoman. We know there are lots of things screwed up that we want to try and fix. You want to create vigilantes who take to the streets at night to deal violently with criminals. Only if they're wearing this mask. Which I brought you. You brought this mask. Because I want to carry this metaphor into the real world. Because we all have our little figurative Gothams. Can we get it? Yeah. And this is not promotion for the film, although I highly recommend you all see it. Have you seen it? No. Really? Do you guys get access? No, we don't get access. You think the entertainment industry does not do me any favors. There goes my hair. Yes. This is really not comfortable, by the way. Well, it's not easy. It's not easy being Batman. Does Batman have bad sight? Is that what's going on? He's like, I think you're the Joker. Stop committing crimes. With the voice. Yeah. There you go. That is lovely. But that is nice. That is. That I'll be using the bedroom later tonight. As long as you. To protect the people in the bedroom, obviously. From Josh Dupolsky. But there is this really empowering thing. It just suddenly became a role play. It really is getting nasty in here. That's the really empowering thing, is that you can be sitting there. Just yesterday, we saw this video of this woman on a bus up in Queens, New York, being harassed by a bunch of students. And 24 hours later, after that story, that video, front page is on Reddit. She has literally $200,000 donated to her from people all over the world who simply said, this is wrong. I want to do something about it. Well, I got to get harassed. That is a lucrative new career. Make sure it's videotaped. Yeah. No, on video, obviously. Alexis, I wish we had more time. There's so much more to talk about. Well, you know what? I was a little bummed I didn't get to sit down with LeVar. But you know what? You can't disappoint a picture. And maybe it's better that I actually get to meet him. That's very mean of you to say. Alexis, thank you so much for coming. Thank you very much. You've got to come back. Thank you. You've got to come back. That was awesome. This is awesome. Oh, and I brought you a card. What is this? I'm sorry, we didn't even get to this. This is a. I'm a book publisher. This company I started. It's like a Newman's Zone for nerds called Breadpig. Our goal, our specified aim is to make the world suck less. Can we get this on camera? Can we read this on camera? And take a look. I'll give you $10 to show this. This is Saturday morning breakfast cereal. So Zach Wiener wrote this. It's a web comic, one of the most popular on the internet. We published the book for him. He gets a majority of the profits. It's published under a Creative Commons license. And our profits all get donated to DonorsChoose.org, specifically to classroom projects in math and science. Now, that's not totally benevolent. You know why? Because little kids who don't learn about math and science don't grow up into being the geeks who will read this book. So if we can make more geeks, we'll sell more books. It's just a long-term goal. I fully support that. Go buy this book. So thank you. Go buy it right now. Thank you again. Thank you again. Thank you very much. So good. We have Tim Wu coming up to talk more about activism and the internet. But Neelai went out on the street. Did somebody just scream? Very excited about that. It was Tim, actually. Neelai went out on the street and asked people if they knew what net neutrality was. And I'm sure you can imagine the results were highly entertaining. So take a look at this. We'll be right back with Tim Wu. I think about net neutrality every day, because I'm a huge nerd. And Tim Wu is my hero. But I'm here in the Flatiron District in New York to ask these people what they think about it, if they even know what it is, and most importantly, if they think anything should be done about it. What is net neutrality? What? Net neutrality. I have no idea. I have no idea. I have no idea. I don't know. So I've seen various YouTube tutorials or explanations of net neutrality. And all of them make sense once I finish watching them. But when you ask me what it is, it's fairly complicated to explain. So let me ask you a question. Who owns the internet? I want to say people own the internet. The people. The data is owned by the people that have the data on their servers. And the connections to the data is owned by the ISPs, the providers. The problem really is, this is basically impossible to explain. What can you say? Do you want to pay more for YouTube? So do you think Verizon could say, you can go to every site on the internet except for YouTube? No. I don't think they should. But if you want YouTube, you have to pay an extra $5? No, absolutely not. I think that's the point of YouTube. It wouldn't be cool, but it's business. This is awful. Nobody knows what net neutrality is. When they do find out, they don't want to talk about it because it's really political. But in the spirit of this election year, I'm going to get desperate. I'm calling Barack Obama, and I'm calling Mitt Romney. Let's see what they have to say. This is Evelyn. I'm going to help you. Hi. Where does the president stand on net neutrality? On net neutrality? Yeah, do you know what net neutrality is? No, I don't. Why don't you tell me a little bit about it? So who should have more regulatory power over the internet, the government or Verizon? Verizon. Even though Verizon sells you a product, they should be the ones who determine how that product works. That makes sense because if anything ever goes wrong, you know who to go to. Romney for president. This is Scott speaking. Hi there. I'm really interested in voting for Mitt Romney. But I have a policy question. I'm just wondering what his position on net neutrality is. On the net neutrality, let's see here. Don't recall if it's come up as a major issue on the campaign that I can recall, but I've got a source for you that can tell you. Want to call the policy hotline? Thank you for calling the Romney for President National Headquarters. Your call is in port-z. If you'd like to leave a message, please do so now. Can you send me back the fucking phone tree? We're breaking about our offices around the country. I got to say, Mitt, you can't just keep on putting me into robot town like this. You know what happens when you press zero and you call Romney Headquarters? It tells you to wait. And then it takes you to the top of the phone tree. So this has been the worst day of my life. Nobody knows what net neutrality is. Nobody cares about it. Nobody even really wants to talk about it with me, not even the president or Mitt. I thought Mitt would be on my side. So I'm going to go. I'm going to take a break, maybe have a drink, maybe throw myself in front of a bus. Goodnight, internet. It was nice knowing you. Yeah. It's good. An upsetting story, one we hope will find an end someday. But you're in luck. We have the man who coined the term net neutrality here. Please welcome Tim Wu. Walk your step. All right. Walk your step over there. I have to say, I realize now after having three guests, the most guests we've ever had on the show, by the way, that we have a lot of obstacles to getting onto the couch. Well, that's what it means to be fancy. Just you've got to put up, you've got to make the barrier to entry very high. Tim, thank you for coming. Now, Tim is the author of a book called The Master Switch. It looks like this. It's available in stores around the world. And by the way, apparently very hard to find. We had some of our people go looking for copies of this. And you might want to call Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble is my internet. It's almost like they don't want it to be sold. They don't want to hear the truth of this book. But you coined the term net neutrality. What does it mean? I mean, these people, people on the street don't know what it is, what is it? You know, I was watching that video, and I was thinking, you've got a lot of taxis in this video. And it's exactly the principle that applies when you get in a taxi cab. The taxi cab has to take you where you want to go. You know, imagine you get in the taxi cab. This actually happens in some countries. And you say, I want to go to Brooklyn. And you end up in the gift store. Yeah, yeah. That happens in this country. When I want to go home from Manhattan, I'm like, I want to go to Brooklyn. They're like, no, I don't go to Brooklyn. Well, there's that problem too. But essentially, it's the idea that the taxi is supposed to take you where you want to go. And the basic principle is the internet was built on the principle that the carriers take your data where you want it to go, and that people are allowed to communicate over the internet without interference by the people in the middle. It's a pretty profound principle. And the fact that people don't know about it is, on the street, doesn't mean it's not important. Because I think some of the most important principles are just sometimes very subtle. They operate at the subterranean level. Like E equals mz square. That's not a good example. People on the street don't need to know what that means. Yeah, no, I think it's a kind of. Does anybody need to know? I don't think it's that important. Well, we can debate about that. But a lot of these things, freedom is a kind of a thing that you can't really experience. You just experience its absence. You know when you're not free. But you don't notice when you're able to go to internet sites when you want to or say what you want to. Because you just live in life. Because you just live in. And you're just doing what you want. It's when you aren't able to do that, that suddenly you notice it. And I think that's why this is a profound principle. It was baked into the original design of the internet. It's what made the internet so revolutionary in so many ways. I mean, what made all these companies able to grow without asking somebody for permission. The companies like Google, eBay, Amazon, whatever, they just started their businesses. They didn't sort of have to say, you know, AT&T or Verizon, I've got a good idea. You want to run my service. Because they would have been like, well, you know, well, check it out. Wait for five years, 10 years, see what happens. I mean, it's a very profound thing that, as I said before, you don't notice freedom. You notice its absence. And whose job is it to ensure net neutrality? Is it the government's job? Is it Verizon's job? Is it a citizen's job? I think it's kind of everybody's. Damn it. I knew you were going to say that. But I'll tell you that in a functioning system, it's never completely possible to allocate responsibility to one entity. When you talk about something like, how do you guarantee freedom of speech? Well, you could say, well, you just have to have the government do that. But you know, the government, I work for the government. Sometimes they're lazy. Not everything gets to them. They're not all powerful. But the government does, but the government did do a lot of stuff to guarantee free speech. They do. They also try and mess with it. So they're not completely reliable. No one's totally reliable. I sound a little paranoid. Although, I'm sure you have people. But in terms of free speech, but you have to admit, the US government has done a relatively good job of saying, we need to have free speech, and we're going to push that on our citizens. We're going to say, you can't just limit what somebody has to say. Well, the courts have said that. Right. The executive branch now and then is like, maybe we don't want so much free speech. Maybe we'd like the New York Times to say that there's weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or something. You know what I mean? That's not freedom of speech. That's manipulation of the press. Well, that's true. I'll just say that the federal, the executive branch hasn't been exactly reliable. To hell with the executive branch. I agree. You know, they have their moments. But my point is. But the laws exist. Sorry. I mean, not to get off track. But we have said, not through legislation, but we've said, we've got some basic rules here that we believe in. And one of those rules is free speech. And people have fought on both sides of it. But we have kind of pushed this agenda of free speech is valuable and we need to protect it. There has not been a similar fight for the internet. Nobody has said the free internet, the open internet is important and we need to protect it. What they have said is, with things like SOPA, fuck the free internet. We want to protect. We want to make sure we have money. And you've got people who are backed by lobbyists pushing laws that will ultimately diminish the openness of the internet. You're not a SOPA fan, are you? How would that be possible? I don't know. You tell me. I like SOAP. I don't like SOPA. You're a SOAP fan. That's great. So what do we do? I mean, what's the obstacle here? How do we combat? I mean, it feels like we've got Verizon and AT&T largely controlling the pipes. There's a few other players in there, but not that many. And they are dictating in many ways what happens on the internet or what happens with the internet. You obviously have forces. You've got forces from places like Hollywood, which you talk about in your book and you've talked about elsewhere. I ran into some Hollywood forces recently that were very psyched on the idea that it's Verizon and AT&T's responsibility to block things. So that's a fairly scary concept. What are we supposed to do? How do we fix this? You need two things. You need a norm and you need a law. So first of all, it has to be a principle that internet freedom is sacred and fundamentally important to a civilized nation. It has to be understood at the level of free speech, just like we've talked about. So you equate net neutrality with free speech. Yeah, I think it's sort of the flip side of it. I mean, free speech is I can say whatever I want. Net neutrality is I get to connect with whoever I want. You know, unless there's a really strong reason not to. Free speech is an absolute. Net neutrality is an absolute. As a general rule, I get to connect with whoever I want. Well, I mean, what are those reasons? How do we pick them? How do we decide? Well, that's another story. And you know, there's obvious examples in free speech. You have principles like it might send a very serious message to assassinate the president, but that doesn't mean it should be legal. It obviously needs to be prevented. Similarly, with net neutrality, you can think of, I think, very narrow categories, but certain reasons that it might be reasonable to influence what people can connect to. But they're rare. They're sort of like interfering with terrorist efforts to sort of attack the United States or other countries. Things like this are relatively rare. Child pornography? Child pornography is probably another exception. What about pirated movies? No. I mean, because one man's pirated movie, you know, one man's pirated movie is another man's innovation. What is exactly a pirated movie is often not exactly clear. And you know, you say it as if we know what a pirated movie is, and sometimes you do. But the copyright law is so unclear that sometimes it's not legal, it's sometimes legal. And the other issue I have with pirated movies is that fundamentally, I don't think it's important to pass laws to protect an industry that is in decline. And you know, I think we go in a dangerous direction when we have an industry which is essentially in decline, and you know, has been in decline for some time, to try to use all the powers of government to try to save them. Right. This has been an issue since the 16th century, is every time an industry is dying, it says I'm threatened by piracy. Can you give us some examples? The booksellers in the 16th, I can give you a million examples. My book is full of them. Again, the master switch by Tim Wu, available in paperback, $15.95, very affordable, available in e-book form, I would imagine. Yeah, it's 10, I think it's about $9 on Amazon. $9 on Amazon, where they're taking a cut of the profits, but hopefully not too big. No, I think Amazon's good, yeah, but go ahead. But so no, so you have examples. So you've got. I have tons of examples. You know, if you look as early as in 1920s, for example, at that point, sheep music was the dominant industry for distributing music. And they said, sheet music. Oh, sheet. Sheet music. I thought you said, did anybody else think you said sheet music? I thought like the animal. I don't remember that. I've never heard of that. Sorry, go on. No, but I mean, the way you made music in the 19th century, it was actually nice, is you bought music, and then you took it home and played it. That was the recording industry in the day. They were the dominant way of distributing music. Along came the record player. And the sheet music was suffering, because people were listening to records, even when playing it yourself. So what did they say? They said, the recording industry are a bunch of pirates who are destroying American culture. They're just taking the sheet music, recording what's on it, and then selling it. Exactly. And they're like, these guys are destroying America. Because America used to be a place where people would sing and dance. And now people are listening to these crazy phonographs and player pianos. And we've lost our culture, and it's a disaster. Musicians are out of work. Everyone's out of work. You see the hair of the same thing every 20 years. I mean, that is what the entertainment industry is saying. Ari Emanuel said, you can't make Curb Your Enthusiasm in any other way than to have this big industry behind it, and if you don't have the $3 million per episode. There's a 100, maybe 500-year-old tradition of making starving artists the kind of symbol of what is really an industry that's dying, that's being replaced by different technology. Same thing happened when cable came out. People were like, cable? And I don't love cable. But when it came out as a new industry, and they said these cable guys are a bunch of pirates. All they want to do is loot Hollywood, loot TV. The same thing is said every single time. And is this you become what you despise? Because I feel like you've got the cable guys who are like, hey, we're innovators. And now they're the old guard, and you've got internet television, sort of this whole IP revolution. And the cable guys are going, we've got to do something about this. Everyone becomes what they despise. Didn't you know that? Oh, really? Sorry. Great. I'm going to become something terrible in that case. Just absolutely terrible. So obviously, very complex. A lot to talk about here. We're not going to get to all of it tonight. But how are we doing? I mean, we've got Verizon, as I was saying earlier, they've got this monopoly. How do we regulate these guys? I mean, they own the pipes. They build the pipes. There doesn't seem to be a ton of regulation. There's a fear with government regulation that you're going to end up down this rabbit hole of, it's going to be like Brazil, and nothing will ever get innovated on. I mean, how do you strike a balance? How do you do this? I think you have to have just very simple rules, net neutrality rules, that say you must allow people to connect with who they want to connect with. Exactly what I said before. They have to be regulated basically like New York taxi cabs. And I know New York taxi cabs don't always obey the rules. But the basic rule when you get in a taxi cab is it goes where you want to go, not where they want to go. And as long as they understand that position, I think it's relatively straightforward. But that is difficult because, as you pointed out, there is a growth, a return of the power of the telephone and cable monopoly. For most of the history of the United States, we had one company, AT&T, running the show. And things have a way, like the Terminator robot, of kind of going back to the way they were. And we have to be very careful to see that our phone companies, Ryzen, AT&T, Comcast, I guess their cable company, don't end up being essentially the gatekeepers of the internet. That's extremely important. So what do you say to people here? What's the best thing you can do? What is the best thing you can do to help promote? I think the best thing you can do is complain or get angry. Yes. When? No problem. We got Reddit for that. Reddit helps. You just need to be not willing to accept it when your cable company or your phone company says we're going to decide what the internet is. You have to take possession of this thing and say it is our network. I mean, some of the people on there were like, who owns the internet? People own the internet. And that's actually true. It was not designed to be owned by anyone. But phone companies. For all intents and purposes, Verizon owns the internet. Oh, that's not true at all. I can't just go get on the internet. I have to go through something. I have to go through something that somebody else owns. Look, you have to take a taxi to go to Brooklyn. It doesn't mean the taxi owns Brooklyn. But I could also buy a car. You got to go through the Brooklyn Bridge to get there. And I could drive that road as anybody can drive on. By the way, this is a metaphor that apparently people who like soap hate. But I mean, you can. But I can go buy a car and drive myself to Brooklyn. You can't drive yourself to the internet. To get to Brooklyn, you got to pass either the Brooklyn Bridge or the Manhattanville Bridge. Those guys at Williamsburg, they don't own Brooklyn. You got to go through them. If they had a policy like, oh, we're only going to let so-and-so through, that would change who could get there. But it doesn't mean they own Brooklyn. And it's very important not to confuse a gatekeeper with an owner. They're completely different people. Someone has a toll booth does not mean they own the thing. But the gatekeeper has almost as much power as the owner. They have a lot of power. And that's why since basically medieval times, there's been a series of laws designed to guard the gatekeepers. So you think violent revolution is the only way to solve this. Maybe I'm paraphrasing. All right, we have to wrap up. But you're working on a new book. Can you just tell me quickly about your new book? I'm interested basically in what technology should do next. I think we're starting to solve some of the problems of scarcity that have obsessed humanity for 500 years or so. And I think we're starting to get this question of, what do we do now? Now that we have a lot of things, enough food, enough information, what's next? That's my next book. I think Huge Party is going to be the answer. Tim, thank you so much. Great, my pleasure. Tim Wu, everyone. And again, the master switch in bookstores now. Thank you. No, no, you stay right here. Don't you go anywhere. That's our show, actually. We have no musical guest tonight. We had so much show. I want to thank LeVar Burton, Alexis Ohanian, Tim Wu, of course, and our sponsor Ford for helping us put this on, and you guys for coming out. Really appreciate it. We have some giveaways. Don't go anywhere, including some of these signed by Tim. Yes? So that's our show. Thank you so much. We'll be back next month. Thank you.
 Hi.
 Hello.
 Hello.
 Hello.
 Hello.
 Hello.
 Hi.
 Hi.
 Thank you.
 That's good.
 Just continue.
 That's fine.
 No need to stop.
 No need to stop.
 That is wonderful.
 Why are you stopping?
 That is depressing.
 Hi.
 Thank you for coming.
 Welcome to On the Verge.
 I'm the editor-in-chief of The Verge, Josh Dupolsky, and I really appreciate having
 you guys here.
 You picked a good night to come.
 This is, it's our best show ever.
 I know I say that every time, but this really, this time I'm telling the truth.
 It really is our best show.
 We have an incredible show tonight.
 LeVar Burton is here.
 Yes.
 Yes.
 I know what you're thinking.
 You're going, you mean Jordy LaForge, right?
 That's what you were thinking.
 But yeah, LeVar is here.
 We're going to talk about his career as an actor, as a director, talk about some apps.
 Alexis Ohanian is here.
 One of the founders of Reddit.
 And Tim Wu, author of The Master Switch.
 He's a super smart guy.
 It's a big show.
 It's a big show.
 It's a monstrous show, in fact, and I don't want to waste any time.
 We're very excited about it.
 I want to thank the sponsor for tonight's show, Ford.
 They've been an awesome partner for us.
 They gave us money, which is wonderful, which we use to buy things like chocolates and ties.
 We also put the show on with it.
 Anyhow, I think we should just get underway.
 So please welcome Nilay Patel and Ross Miller.
 This is great.
 Look at you in your beautiful pink scarf.
 Have you taken that off since the wedding?
 No.
 Now, you really haven't, have you?
 No, I've just been drinking and scarfing.
 Now, you may notice that Paul Miller is not here.
 He's been replaced with the bizarro world Ross Miller.
 You may notice, you may not realize that.
 That's true.
 Paul, your haircut is so powerful.
 Thank you.
 I think Ross is, I'm just going to say it because he's not on the internet.
 He'll never know.
 I think Ross is the superior Miller, frankly.
 I will tell him.
 But Paul's in Mexico right now.
 Nilay's wedding was pretty wild, let's just say.
 Actually, and also, Nilay had a wedding, so give him a round of applause.
 He got married to his oft-mentioned fiancée, Becky, who he can now no longer refer to as his fiancée.
 She is just my property.
 No, I do not think that's...
 I love you, property.
 I'm almost certain that's not legally accurate.
 It is in New York State.
 Oh, in New York State?
 That's fine, yeah.
 Great.
 Can I ask, did you give her a matching wristband?
 Oh, yeah.
 No, it's a row of diamonds.
 With a thinner row of spikes?
 His joke is so good.
 You don't like my matrimony humor?
 Well, you won't have to hear it for much longer.
 Anyhow, so we were in Chicago, went to Nilay's wedding, where he rode a horse down a city block.
 I wish I was kidding, but I'm not, of course.
 There are photos on the internet.
 You can find them pretty easily.
 But we've been partying a lot, but we've also had a crazy month of events and also parties.
 We went to E3 out on the West Coast, where we had a party.
 It was great.
 Can we show some of the shots from this?
 Here's me and Chris Grant, the editor of Polygon.
 This was a joint party with Polygon, our sister video game site.
 And by the way, it was an accident that we coordinated jackets there.
 No, it was.
 No, it was.
 Also accidental plaid from everybody.
 Here we are reading something.
 We did a raffle.
 Yeah, how'd it go?
 It went worse than, well, it went as bad as any raffle we've ever done before.
 I mean, we are really not good at raffles.
 I don't understand it.
 Anyhow, I'm not going to go down, but here's the outside of the building where we did it.
 It was very cool.
 It was very exciting.
 Here's some people posing in front of this huge screen.
 We called the event Polygon on the Verge, and the whole point was it was going to be POV.
 But we never made mention of POV anywhere.
 I was like, oh, what's a good name for the party?
 POV, that's cool.
 Polygon on the Verge.
 And then we just let it go.
 Yeah.
 We just never mentioned it.
 But it was great.
 We had special drinks.
 We had ice cubes that glow.
 They're really awesome.
 I still have like a few of them.
 Do you?
 Yeah.
 You should bring them to the office.
 Anyhow, but we were there for E3, which is a big video game show.
 I don't know if you guys are aware of E3.
 Maybe you've heard of it.
 Maybe not.
 Really?
 Nothing?
 I really had to...
 All liars.
 I really had to yank.
 I really had to pull on that applause.
 But we saw a bunch of stuff, not a crazy year for video games.
 It was a good year.
 It just wasn't exciting.
 There wasn't a lot of new console announcements.
 Xboxes and PlayStation, they're kind of like in their retirement phase or getting toward
 the end.
 They're creaking along.
 There's a farm.
 And the Xbox is going there.
 We're pointing them out to pastures.
 Is it going to be happy?
 It's going to be very happy.
 They're going to be bouncing.
 There are blue rings.
 They're going to a better place.
 But we did see some cool things.
 Ubisoft had a game called Watch Dogs.
 Which is gorgeous.
 Which looks insane.
 You can see some of it right here.
 The prevailing theory was that what we're seeing is next-gen graphics.
 This is not going to be on Xbox or PlayStation like this.
 Right, because the Xbox can't do this kind of graphics.
 Certainly not for the Wii, right?
 This isn't coming out for the Wii.
 This is a Wii U launch title.
 Is it?
 No, not a chance.
 The original Wii.
 It's definitely not.
 The original Wii, yes.
 Look at that waggle right there.
 I mean, you can see with the jacket animation, this is clearly next-gen stuff.
 I like that people didn't know if I was being serious or not on that.
 I was being serious.
 It's not funny, okay?
 But this was cool.
 We also saw the new Quantic Dreams game, Beyond Two Souls.
 Yeah, it's the guys that did Heavy Rain.
 Yeah.
 Ellen Page is in it.
 Ellen Page is in it.
 That game actually looks so insane that I went out and bought Heavy Rain.
 It's a great interactive movie.
 You bought Heavy Rain right before your wedding, right?
 Yeah, and then I played it throughout the wedding.
 I was like, hang on.
 He was like, I know we're dancing right now, but I just have to finish this chapter.
 And my personal favorite from E3 was The Last of Us, which is a game that is a post-apocalyptic
 nightmare world, zombies, and part of it takes place in Pittsburgh, which is where I'm from.
 You really could have just said it's Pittsburgh.
 It's in Pittsburgh, basically.
 So, no, but it looks really cool.
 I mean, here you can see some killing going on.
 And actually, killing was the theme of E3.
 It was one of the most, I think it was like the most violent E3 that I can remember.
 It's very, it's matured both technologically and creatively is the very nice way of saying it.
 Is that what you think it's matured?
 Well, in the same way Tarantino has matured from killing to massive brutal killing.
 But more stylish killing.
 Yeah, it's more stylish killing.
 So we actually noticed a trend at E3, something that we saw crop up.
 You know, all of the companies do their keynotes.
 They show a bunch of game demos.
 And we saw something that just kept appearing that we thought was a little weird,
 which was the neck stab.
 That's when you stab somebody in the neck.
 And they show, like repeatedly in games, we saw it.
 It would just be like a neck stab and then a fountain of blood.
 It's impressive, the particle effects of arterial spray.
 They're really pushing the consoles to their maximum with the neck stab.
 Because we put together a little video of E3.
 It's very short.
 Just a couple.
 Just a couple of things we saw at E3 just to kind of illustrate what was happening at the show.
 So take a look at this.
 I think you'll enjoy it.
 I think you'll enjoy it.
 That is really charming.
 We have come a long ways, etc.
 Just a little taste of what you missed if you didn't go to E3.
 I'm sorry.
 We were in rehearsal, Rick.
 How did we come out of that?
 It's upsetting.
 It turns out when we had the idea to do the video, we were like, that would be hilarious.
 But it turns out when you watch people getting stabbed in the neck repeatedly,
 it does actually feel a little upsetting.
 There's more to the couch.
 It's a very nice brand new way of doing it.
 Anyhow, let's move on, folks.
 Do you mind?
 We've got a show to do.
 But there were a couple other things at E3.
 Smart Glass.
 Have you guys seen this?
 Microsoft's version of AirPlay, essentially.
 Yeah, I mean, it's the thing that you use to connect the phone, the tablet.
 It's a little bit beyond AirPlay.
 It's a little bit.
 They do interactive stuff.
 There's Internet Explorer, which everyone is constantly dying for.
 I was going to say that.
 I was going to say that.
 Internet Explorer for the Xbox, which you've been waiting for.
 Microsoft has actually had a crazy month.
 I don't know if you guys are aware of this.
 They just announced Windows Phone 8 yesterday.
 That's what it looks like.
 They made smaller tiles.
 Get a load of those tiles.
 Some of them are longer, too, I think.
 Longer tiles.
 That's what you've been waiting for.
 Just fluctuating.
 But more importantly, their big announcement this month, I think, is the Surface.
 Have you guys seen the Surface?
 It's Microsoft's iPad competitor, basically.
 I mean, it used to be a table.
 It used to be a table.
 It's true.
 It's true.
 It was a table.
 It was a table, and now they've turned it into a tablet.
 It's actually kind of cool.
 It's got a kickstand.
 It has this smart cover that has a keyboard.
 Two different ones.
 Two different ones.
 I'm into it.
 I'll be the first to say it.
 How was the keyboard?
 Did you try it?
 They wouldn't let us...
 The keyboard, they wouldn't let us try.
 But we did do some hands-on stuff, but they wouldn't let us take photos while we were holding it.
 They would only let us take photos when someone else, like one of their guys, was holding it.
 But luckily, this is actually interesting.
 An Estonian newspaper took a picture of me holding the Surface.
 This is...
 I mean, thanks, Estonia.
 You accomplished what we could not, which was...
 You look very quizzical.
 You can see, look at the guy in the background.
 He's like, give that back to me.
 Lucky. He's like, okay, that's enough.
 Please stop holding that.
 Is that a cocktail app?
 Yeah, that's a cocktail app.
 After the event, I was just trying to figure out where I was going to go and get wasted, wasted drunk.
 But what's interesting about the Surface event is that Microsoft ended it with this commercial for the Surface,
 which had very hard, heavy dubstep.
 We have a few seconds of this commercial.
 Can we show it?
 This is what they showed when we finished with the live blog.
 It's really heavy, right?
 Very heavy stuff.
 But Microsoft has been doing this a lot.
 They have an IE ad, speaking of Internet Explorer, that has dubstep in it.
 And we actually have been seeing dubstep in a lot of ads.
 And I saw something the other day and I thought...
 And I feel like it was done by the same people who do the Microsoft stuff, and I thought, that's it.
 Dubstep in advertising has truly jumped the shark.
 I wanted to share this with you guys.
 Check out this ad.
 I seriously couldn't believe it.
 Approach phase, everything looking good.
 The angle has landed.
 I just feel...
 Wait, wait.
 I just...
 Is that sperm?
 Yeah.
 I mean, it was sperm.
 I can't avoid saying that.
 It did appear to be sperm fertilizing an egg.
 I can't be entirely sure, but...
 Ovaltine, man.
 When you think of ovaltine, do you not think of sperm fertilizing an egg?
 I've never been thirsty, but I am right now.
 I guess we're just very different people.
 So, yeah, dubstep in advertising maybe has passed a threshold that we don't want to pass.
 Okay, finally, on the news side, WWDC...
 Can I say that?
 Really?
 WWDC?
 Yeah, or WWDC.
 You are fired.
 You're fired.
 That works, too.
 That works, too.
 That works.
 That's terrible.
 Apple had their big developers event.
 iOS 6 was announced.
 Maps are gone.
 No more Google Maps.
 Yeah.
 But they built their own.
 They built their own.
 Mountain Lion, which we saw.
 Yeah.
 And, finally, MacBook.
 Right, the new MacBook Pro.
 With rednet display.
 Yeah, there it is right there.
 You reviewed it.
 You liked it.
 I did.
 It's really nice.
 It's thin.
 It's got a great screen, for the most part.
 For the most part?
 What is that?
 Well, I mean, like, if you have a website that has a lot of pictures, it's still...
 You mean like our website?
 Like our website.
 Yeah, our website.
 So that's cool.
 Thanks, Rust.
 Sorry.
 Anyhow, all right.
 We've got to get on with the news.
 Sorry, not on with the news.
 On with the show.
 We're done with the news.
 Yeah.
 But we have one more surprise for you guys.
 Paul, as we said, was in Chicago for Neely's wedding.
 And he filed a video diary from Chicago.
 And I think you can see, you can truly see a man unraveling from not being on the internet
 in this video.
 So take a look at this, and we'll be back with LeVar Burton.
 I'm Paul Miller.
 I'm in Chicago.
 And this is day...
 How many days?
 Like 45 of no internet?
 You know, I stopped counting.
 I stopped counting everything when I left the internet.
 So I don't know.
 But it's been a while since I've used the internet.
 And I've been in Chicago for about a week.
 I came to Chicago for Neely's wedding.
 And so I've just been hanging out in Chicago for a few days before the wedding.
 And then the wedding was like a three-day extravaganza.
 At first I felt a little out of place because a lot of cool things would happen.
 And then everybody would share them on Instagram or Facebook.
 But I think as the wedding progressed, some people, even like the Verge editors, started
 like slowing down how many pictures they were taking, how many tweets they were doing.
 And we all started living and loving and laughing a lot.
 Throughout the wedding, I felt no disadvantage dancing lines without the internet.
 I felt like I could pick up all the moves here on the spot.
 Nothing you had to look up on the internet.
 It was a good experience.
 I didn't really think a lot about the internet either way because I was just enjoying the
 wedding basically.
 So it was a blast.
 It was awesome.
 And yeah, you know, everybody was tweeting.
 I actually, I forgot my camera on this trip, which is kind of suck, but I got this Yashica
 Electro 35.
 So I'm learning how to shoot film.
 So I've been shooting a little bit of film.
 My big problem with film is that I forget if I'm rounded or not.
 I think I either have a lot of blank frames on here or a lot of double exposures.
 But it's a pretty cool camera.
 I haven't developed any films, so I don't know if I'm taking horrible pictures or not.
 There are definitely a few people here that know me from my work, my little internet work.
 Because like, you know, somebody asks you, what do you do?
 I said, well, I write about technology.
 And they're like, oh, like phones and laptops.
 Yeah, I was like, yeah, phones and laptops, you know.
 And a lot of times the conversations get in there.
 But it's fun for me because I get to say, yeah, I write about technology.
 Right now I'm living the year without the internet.
 And they're like, oh, well, you know.
 So I'm like, I'm cool right now.
 I'm a pretty hot commodity when it comes to conversations at social gatherings.
 I don't want to toot my own horn, but I think I'm getting really good at navigating cities.
 I've just absorbed them like sponge.
 When I rented my bike, they gave me this map.
 This map is courtesy of Rahm Emanuel.
 And this thing is epic.
 And so I can get anywhere in like, I don't even know what you call this area.
 Chicago is a very large place.
 I went to Wicker Park.
 I went to a camera store, a Best Buy, a wedding.
 I bought two shirts.
 You want to show you my shirts?
 Oh my gosh.
 My life is so boring.
 But still exciting, strangely.
 I don't miss the internet.
 I don't dream about it.
 I don't yearn for it.
 Every once in a while somebody is like, oh, there's this really funny thing happening
 on Twitter.
 I can't tell you.
 But I don't care.
 My biggest fear though is that at the end of the year, I don't want to really go back
 to the internet for more.
 Even though it's so awesome, it's such a cool thing, I like myself a lot better not on the
 internet.
 So I feel like doing a year of this is going to be like a piece of cake.
 This is basically really easy right now.
 There's tiny minor inconveniences in exchange for having a blast.
 A total, complete blast.
 Yeah.
 And then we actually, we were actually saying that it was like, eat, pray, Paul.
 He's going on kind of a vision quest.
 Now he's in Mexico.
 He may never come back, honestly.
 I hope he does though.
 So I just want to briefly.
 I don't need to introduce our first guest, but I'm going to.
 I mean, you guys know who he is.
 You know him as Jordy LaForge from Star Trek, Kunta Kinte from Roots, which is crazy that
 he's here doing this and doing stuff like that.
 And of course, Reading from Reading Rainbow.
 Please welcome the amazing LeVar Burton.
 Watch your step.
 Very careful.
 Thank you so much.
 Watch your step.
 So these are live human beings.
 Yeah, we have real people.
 We've convinced humans to come in here.
 Good job.
 LeVar, thank you so much for coming.
 You've been, now I know you've been on a whirlwind tour of New York.
 Yes.
 You've just been sightseeing.
 Indeed.
 No, you've been everywhere.
 You were on Late Night last night.
 You were at CNN today.
 You've been all over the place.
 And this is your last stop in New York?
 This is my last stop on the Reading Rainbow app launch press tour.
 And I wanted to spend it here with y'all.
 That is.
 No, seriously.
 I mean, I appreciate that.
 I appreciate that.
 And we're very glad that you did.
 So I mentioned before you came out, you have some very iconic roles in your history.
 Talking about the fantasy island I did.
 And fantasy island.
 I did the love boat too, you know.
 And of course, well of course, love boat.
 No one can forget the love boat.
 I have.
 No one but you can forget the love boat.
 But I was thinking, I feel like you've got these, the roles are so iconic and they have
 such a fan base around them, particularly Star Trek, that you must walk down the street
 and people are like, hey, Jordy.
 Does that drive you crazy?
 No.
 Really?
 No, it really doesn't.
 It doesn't bother you?
 It's not like my fans are like Gary Busey fans.
 You know what I mean?
 Does Gary Busey have fans?
 Yeah, he does.
 And they tend to put cigarettes out in his arm and stuff.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 But he's into that.
 He loves it.
 He loves it.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Wow.
 So that doesn't bother you at all.
 I'm going to go ahead and conduct the rest of the interview as if you were Jordy.
 Hold on.
 And before you answer, can we get some mood music on for this?
 You are serious?
 Well, this is the sound from the bridge.
 I know what that sound is.
 Josh.
 Actually, but actually, hold on.
 But you would be an engineer and so it would be a little louder.
 Can we bring up the sound a little bit more?
 And that sounds about right to me.
 Okay.
 That's fine.
 You can cut it.
 I'm not going to do this.
 I'm not going to subject you.
 No, no, no.
 I was really getting into it.
 You were ready to go into Jordy right there, weren't you?
 I was almost in character.
 We were talking backstage.
 The whole time you were on Star Trek, the visor, you really couldn't see very well in
 the visor.
 The visor actually took away about 85% of my vision when I put it on.
 And there's a tremendous irony there, right?
 Because the visor gave you, on the show, gave you all kinds of extra abilities.
 You could see what the makeup of the room was.
 And yet, in reality, you were stumbling around.
 I was stumbling around.
 I didn't know that, by the way.
 And it was brought up backstage, and I was shocked to find that.
 Fun Star Trek facts to no one tell.
 So besides being an actor, you're a director.
 You hosted Reading Rainbow.
 Any Reading Rainbow watchers in the house?
 Nice.
 I don't want to make you feel old, but I grew up on Reading Rainbow.
 I'm lying.
 I'm actually quite old.
 I'm quite old myself.
 But no, Reading Rainbow was, yes.
 That was a huge deal.
 26 years on PBS.
 26?
 26 years.
 And you won a bunch of Emmys.
 You won Peabody.
 So 26 seasons.
 Yeah.
 Do you feel the story's over?
 No.
 Or do you feel like there could be a movie in the offing?
 Oh, a movie.
 A Reading Rainbow movie, not a movie.
 Like a narrative film?
 Wow.
 Have you ever considered that?
 We could get some butterflies.
 Go on.
 Maybe a sky?
 That's probably pretty easy to do.
 Yeah.
 They have soundstages where they can recreate a sky, I understand, in Hollywood.
 I would probably want to do it all CGI though.
 Yeah, no, absolutely.
 So I want to talk, because you have an app.
 You have this app, and I want to talk about it.
 Yes, we do.
 Have you all heard about the Reading Rainbow app that's out in the App Store?
 Some.
 It's out right now.
 It's out now.
 It's out now.
 How much is it?
 It's a free app to download.
 It's free.
 What are you waiting for?
 It's free.
 It's free.
 So before we talk about that, I want to talk about your life on the internet.
 You've become very active on the internet.
 I love the internet.
 You're on Reddit.
 We have one of the co-founders of Reddit here.
 Now, correct me if I'm wrong, your username on Reddit is KuntaInTheHouse.
 Is that correct?
 That is absolutely true.
 That is true.
 That is true.
 And you're pretty active.
 I mean, you're fairly active on there.
 Yeah, a little.
 You're also a meme.
 You're aware of this?
 That you've been memed?
 I have been.
 Yes.
 Well, we had Neil deGrasse Tyson on here also.
 Do you know, he's an astrophysicist?
 Absolutely.
 And he's been memed heavily, and we asked him about it.
 I just want to kind of show you one of my favorites here.
 This is, if you're having hall problems, I feel bad for you, son.
 I've got 99 problems, but a breach ain't one.
 Apologies to Jay-Z.
 Does this weird you out?
 Is this strange for you?
 No, I love this stuff.
 Do you just randomly appear?
 Yes.
 You're into it.
 Wouldn't you?
 Yes, I would.
 Yes.
 I wish people did more creative memes with me.
 I'm going to put that out into the world.
 Please do more creative memes.
 So let's talk about the app.
 Okay.
 I actually have it here on an iPad.
 Let me see if I can get this up.
 So it has, can we get this on camera?
 Is it still talking to me?
 Yes.
 So check this out.
 It's got islands that you can fly through.
 And we were reading a book, You Have a Backpack, which I thought was great.
 I mean, Pirate Boy, one of my favorites.
 Who is the narrator of Pirate Boy?
 I don't know.
 You tell me.
 I don't know.
 There are 150-some-odd.
 It's talking.
 But mom, what if there are sea monsters?
 It's not you.
 No, that is Jim Meskimen, who is one of our storytellers.
 I read about 20% of the titles in the app.
 You are reading the titles as well?
 Oh yeah, absolutely.
 That seems like a lot of big time sink.
 I work cheap for myself.
 Okay.
 But it's a cool app.
 We were playing around with it.
 It has interactive alphabets.
 Yeah, it does.
 You can, the sea dragon here, you can touch it and it starts doing that.
 It is very much like a pop-up book on an iPad, though.
 I'm incredibly proud of what we've been able to do in terms of translating a television
 show into an app experience.
 There are a lot of challenges involved, and I think we've overcome a lot of them.
 Not the least of which is the fear of disappointing those who really know and are familiar with
 the brand.
 It can be dangerous to go to the well too many times with the same franchise.
 Just ask Paramount, where Star Trek is concerned.
 Oh, oh.
 I don't know.
 Star Trek has been pretty successful throughout the iteration.
 It has been, and they had to give it a long rest before JJ rebooted the franchise.
 Do you feel bummed that there's not going to be any more next generation movies?
 I'm tired, Josh.
 First Contact was on TV last night, by the way.
 Completely random.
 I had to watch it, obviously.
 You had to watch it.
 Well, I mean, it's really good.
 Wouldn't you stop and watch it?
 Whenever I'm on TV, I stop to watch.
 You're like, who's that guy?
 He is great.
 No, but it's no good.
 I miss the next generation crew.
 Do you keep in touch with those guys?
 Do you hang out?
 We all keep in touch, yeah.
 Really?
 This is the 25th anniversary of Next Gen coming on the air, so we are having a reunion tour
 of conventions.
 We started a couple of months ago in Calgary, and we have others coming up.
 There's one in Austin in a couple of months.
 So it's great.
 Patrick lives over in England now.
 Michael Dorn is spending his money.
 His wharf money.
 He was wharf on Next Gen.
 He was wharf on Deep Space.
 Oh, that's right.
 God, he had a long run.
 Michael Dorn's got more money than God.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 Can I get his contact information because I need to get some budget in here.
 Clearly.
 Yeah, I know, right?
 You know, we try.
 We're no CNN, but we're doing the best we can.
 So let me ask you about the Reading Rainbow app, though.
 It's clearly for kids.
 It is.
 Have you ever thought about adding-
 And those who are young at heart.
 Have you ever thought about adding more adult titles like Fifty Shades of Grey or Lolita
 would be something you might put in there.
 Maybe some of the Anne Rice novels.
 People have asked me for years about doing an adult version of Reading Rainbow, and I
 think we should get around to that in the fullness of time.
 Why not?
 It would be a lot of fun.
 Yeah.
 I mean, adults need to read.
 Let's hope.
 I mean, what are the goals for you with the app?
 What do you want to do with this app?
 I mean, obviously you want to encourage people to read.
 Yes.
 It's for you.
 It does.
 So in some way you're almost encouraging people to not read.
 Does that seem fair to the kids?
 Seems a little counterproductive.
 It does.
 Are we raising a generation of lazy kids who won't read?
 I think we're raising a generation of overindulged kids.
 With iPads.
 They all have iPads.
 No, no, no.
 I mean, this is a generation that gets rewarded for everything.
 If you're on a sports team, everybody gets a trophy, whether you suck or not.
 That's true.
 And it's just...
 And most people suck.
 And most...
 Think about sports.
 Yeah, yeah.
 You know, you see professional sports players, they're really good.
 Most people are not that good.
 You should not be getting an award if you're not really good at sports.
 I think that my generation of parents, in an effort to really give our children the
 sort of childhood that we feel we ourselves never had, have really gone way overboard
 in terms of indulging this upcoming generation.
 I just think they're a little spoiled.
 Yeah.
 I agree.
 We should be hitting them a lot more.
 Right?
 Spare the rod, spoil the child is my...
 So look, I know you're...
 We're going way off.
 LeBaron advocates beating children.
 You heard it here first.
 You heard it here first.
 LeBaron says hit your kids often.
 More, more, yeah.
 They just, they had it coming, frankly.
 They had it coming.
 So look, I know you're very tired.
 I'm not going to keep you too much longer.
 But I was thinking, so they rebooted the old Star Trek.
 I'm sorry, not to keep going back to Star Trek.
 No, no, no, no.
 But I can just tell you, I'm a little bit of a fan.
 I couldn't tell.
 But so they rebooted the original Star Trek, they put a bunch of new young actors in the
 roles that Shatner had and Leonard Nimoy.
 If they were to reboot Next Generation, which by the way seems weird to reboot the Next
 Generation, but if they were to reboot the Next Generation, who would you want?
 Is there anybody out there who you feel like would be a great new Geordi?
 I'm really putting you on the spot now.
 Gary Coleman?
 No, Gary Coleman's not here.
 No, that's not...
 He's not going to work.
 Why Gary Coleman of all...
 Because the cat needed a job.
 I felt so bad for him.
 I'll tell you what, I spent years watching you.
 I had no idea you were as funny as you are.
 You're like so serious on Star Trek and so much horrible shit always happens to you.
 You never get a chance to just cut loose on Star Trek.
 No, that wasn't part of Geordi's character.
 He always had to hold it together.
 Everybody was counting on him.
 No, it was always like everything is falling apart.
 Can you just whip up some new way to fix the warp core?
 And you always did.
 Sure, Captain.
 I'll get right on it.
 That is so amazing.
 So no actors in mind that you would want to...
 Let's see, who in this current crop of...
 Actually, I think Sam Jackson would make a hell of a Geordi.
 Geordi?
 Yeah.
 Don't you think?
 No, I don't.
 Come on.
 I mean, you have Geordi shot stuff all the time.
 The next generation of the next generation.
 Geordi LaForge, badass.
 Total badass.
 You know what?
 I'm going to leave it there.
 LeVar, thank you so much for coming.
 Really appreciate it.
 Thank you.
 Thank you.
 LeVar Burns, that was so good.
 Thank you very much.
 Thank you.
 I never loved him.
 Stick around.
 We got a message from our sponsor and we'll be back with Alexis Ohanian from Reddit.
 LeVar, thanks again so much.
 Absolutely.
 Really appreciate it.
 Thank you very much.
 Thank you.
 Thank you very much.
 Thank you so much.
 See you.
 Thank you.
 So, On the Verge is a show we do once a month.
 It's kind of a late night tech talk show.
 It's an incredible experience.
 We have a huge team that works on it.
 More than 30 people there the day of the shoot.
 We've got editors and shooters working all month long on segments and different pieces
 of the show.
 We get to have incredible guests.
 We have celebrities and people from the tech world who are fascinating and brilliant.
 And we do segments.
 We get a little weird.
 It's actually our chance to have a little bit of fun.
 The site is very much focused on news and features and reviews.
 The show is our opportunity to kind of loosen up.
 And it's really great.
 And I love doing it.
 Ford has been a great partner for us.
 Calling Paul Miller on cell.
 They sponsored our CES coverage, which was insane.
 Please say a command.
 Pandora.
 And it's great to have them back supporting the show.
 You can tell they really get what we're doing.
 Yeah.
 So before we bring Alexis out, while we were shooting that,
 we were shooting some of the behind the scenes stuff
 in Brooklyn, and something happened.
 It's not scripted.
 This is not planned.
 I just want to share this moment with you.
 We happened to catch it on video.
 Just take a look at this.
 And it's very odd.
 What the fuck?
 I mean, just you tell me.
 That happened.
 We were just standing there.
 It appears to be a flatbed with a part of a wrecked airplane
 on it.
 You know, we had Damon Lindelof on the show last month.
 And I feel like it was kind of a weird karmic moment.
 I just wanted to share that with you guys.
 I thought you would appreciate it.
 Anyhow, moving on.
 Our next guest, you may not know him as a human being,
 but you certainly know his website where
 you find all of your favorite memes and animated cat gifs.
 Please welcome one of the founders of Reddit, Alexis
 Ohanian.
 Yes, awesome.
 Watch your step.
 You're very careful.
 And watch your step over there.
 Look, you brought props.
 I like anybody who brings props.
 Carrot Top taught me well.
 Did you say Carrot Top taught you well?
 Yeah, he's a prop comic.
 Please leave.
 The record for shortest interview ever.
 Yeah.
 Now, first off, can I ask you anything?
 Yes, you may.
 It's a Reddit joke.
 Come on, guys.
 There were three Redditors.
 Only three Redditors in the audience.
 Yeah, seriously, very sad.
 So let's talk a little about, I want to talk about the creation,
 the ideation, the birth of Reddit.
 You co-founded it in 2005.
 Who are your partners?
 Steve Huffman.
 Just Steve?
 Yeah, me and Steve got together.
 We got together in an apartment about a month
 after we graduated from UVA and got
 started trying to create the front page of the internet.
 And a lot of fortunate things came together,
 and here we are today.
 And here you are.
 Can you imagine that you could you
 have ever thought you'd be sitting talking to me?
 Not in a million years.
 What an incredible climb.
 What a success story.
 My big concern is I know it's only downhill from here.
 It really is.
 Everything will seem boring and horrible after this,
 because I'm going to ruin it for you.
 So what was your thought when you were building Reddit?
 What did you want to do?
 In all frankness, Steve and I were friends
 since the first day of college when
 he thought I was a girl because of my name on the door.
 You do have a lady's name.
 You're aware of that, right?
 I do.
 I was actually named after a Nicaraguan boxer
 named Alexis Arguello, who is a dude.
 But at a very early age realized I
 needed to embrace my feminine name.
 So yes, I am Alexis.
 And you're feminine today.
 Oh, every day.
 But so most importantly, Steve and I really
 just wanted to perpetuate our college life.
 We really loved being able to eat pizza, drink beer,
 and work on fun projects.
 And we thought, let's try to do this by starting a company.
 And we didn't set out to do a lot of the things
 that Reddit has done in the way of philanthropic work
 or political work.
 I'd be lying if I said we did.
 We just wanted to create a place where
 we could find what was new and interesting online.
 That's really interesting.
 You just wanted a place to find hilarious stuff and collect it.
 And informative as well.
 Oh, come on.
 Cats can be instructional.
 That's true.
 They can.
 They can.
 And why do you think it's become,
 you call it the front page of the internet.
 Why do you think it has actually really become
 the front page of the internet?
 It has turned into something that is,
 based on what you're telling me, maybe you guys
 didn't even predict.
 But it has turned into something really big and special.
 How did that happen?
 Black magic.
 We made deals.
 Deals with Satan.
 Very nefarious individuals.
 Well, you know what?
 When we started Red in 2005, social media
 wasn't even a phrase.
 Facebook was still relegated to colleges.
 And many of the things we can't live without today didn't exist.
 And I think we just hit, oh goodness.
 Don't carry on.
 Are you OK?
 I would obviously need a drink, but it's alcoholic.
 So is mine.
 Is alcohol supposed to go into the lung?
 Is that right?
 Not a doctor.
 We can edit this.
 We're going to edit this.
 It's going to be seamless.
 Go ahead.
 Carry on as if nothing happened.
 I was busy trying to remember all my Heimlich training.
 Yeah, seriously.
 Thanks for nothing.
 I could have died.
 I could have freaking died.
 You just sat there.
 I was ready to jump in action.
 Sorry, so I was asking how it became what it is today.
 I think a lot of it was timing.
 And here's the thing.
 Not to take anything, Steve did a brilliant job
 actually building Reddit.
 By the way, we're open source, so take a look at his work.
 The work that went into it, there was a ton of it.
 But at the end of the day, we had a lot of really great
 timing, and we came about at a time when people were still
 starting, they were just now starting to realize that user
 generated content was a thing of value.
 And it turned out there were a lot of people interested in
 submitting links and voting on them and having discussions
 on the internet, far more than we'd ever experienced.
 And we caught things at the right time.
 And I think the overarching ethos, the spirit of Reddit
 that Steve and I knew we had to continue, was that the two
 of us sitting in an apartment were never going to be able to
 find the best stuff on the internet.
 We tried for the first couple weeks, because we were
 submitting things ourselves.
 And there was no way we'd be able to find it all.
 So we needed to be good to our users, because if our users
 weren't excited about submitting to Reddit and
 providing good content, they'd never do it.
 And we wouldn't have a site that was worth anything.
 So being good to those users, I think, is what helped Reddit
 continue to grow for all these years.
 And you've had a lot of competition.
 You've had competition out there.
 At one point, Digg kind of seemed to occupy the space
 that you guys occupy.
 And maybe, actually, when I think about Digg, it didn't
 seem to go as deep.
 And maybe that's just the way our culture is moving.
 But Reddit seems to go, reach deeper into both the dark
 heart of the internet and outwardly to things like
 policy.
 But Digg was, at one point, very much on top.
 And they made some pretty substantial changes.
 I feel like you guys saw kind of a flood of users who were
 looking for refuge.
 What did you learn from that?
 What did you see there?
 And what were your takeaways from it?
 We saw a significant bump after Digg version 4.
 It wasn't world changing.
 Reddit has always steadily grown.
 And I think what it did was it really reinforced this belief
 we had that we didn't need to care about our competition.
 We need to build the best site we could for our users.
 And like I said, do right by them.
 And the real fatal flaw to Digg 4 was taking away user
 submission, was taking the very last bit of that
 democratic platform away from the people who, like I said,
 added all the value.
 And as we moved closer towards giving users more power, I
 feel like they moved further away until it eventually
 undid them.
 Well, part of their thing was they felt like some users had
 too much power.
 And what do you do to combat?
 I mean, how are you trying to fight super users?
 Well, we work.
 I mean, there is a karma system on Reddit.
 And I hope many of you work hard to get
 lots of Reddit karma.
 But it really means nothing.
 It doesn't bias your votes.
 Every Redditor, all Redditors are equal.
 No Redditors are more equal than others.
 That was something in our FAQ from day zero.
 And we wanted to make sure that we had a system where if
 you wanted to come on for the very first time, and it
 happens every day on Reddit, submit a post, say, I'm a
 blank, ask me anything.
 You could be on the front page that evening and the next
 morning on the Today Show.
 And that literally actually happens now.
 Because we can let anyone who doesn't have any clout on the
 internet, but who's got a good story or has found some good
 content, get the fame, internet fame, that he or
 she's idea deserves.
 This is actually, it's in perforated my next question.
 So you recently banned some publications, a lot of news
 stories, you banned The Atlantic, some other guys, for
 abusing Reddit.
 And we run a publication, The Verge.
 We are occasionally on Reddit, which is wonderful.
 And I wanted to get some tips from you.
 I feel like if there's going to be a source on how not to
 abuse Reddit as a publication, that you're the
 guy to ask.
 So let me just have a couple questions here.
 How many accounts is normal for one person to have?
 Would you say, I'm going to give you a few ranges.
 Between 20 and 40?
 Between 40 and 60?
 Where do you feel is the comfort zone for one
 individual to have accounts?
 This is going to sound crazy, but one.
 I will say, I'll add in a has-bees there.
 100?
 And you hit the nail on the head.
 It's things like this we have always paid very close
 attention to.
 It's kind of an arms race.
 We're always trying to keep one step ahead of the cheaters.
 But that's a really obvious way to be bad on Reddit, is to
 create lots of shill accounts and upvote your content.
 I'll certainly agree that everyone needs a fake account
 so they can say the things they may not be comfortable
 saying.
 It's really racist stuff.
 No, no, I'd hope not.
 Really nasty, sad stuff.
 I was thinking more like the ask-me-any things, where
 candor is sort of required in being honest.
 But the fascinating thing is we've always tried really
 hard to keep that kind of cheating down.
 And we had publications that disregarded it.
 And I think partly because our predecessors actually sort of
 encouraged it, we've had to sort of undo that mess.
 OK, when using multiple accounts, IP spoofing, yes or
 no?
 No, no, don't try that.
 Don't do that?
 And in general, my final question in this extremely
 serious line of questioning, how many Verge links should I
 be submitting on a daily basis?
 Again, I'll give you a range.
 20 to 40, 40 to 60, or unlimited because it's all
 really great stuff?
 I think in the Verge's case, it should be that.
 Oh, really?
 No, God, no, please don't.
 You heard it here first, though.
 Unlimited submissions of Verge content.
 In a nutshell, the best secret that I tell publishers is, and
 I think people often forget this when they go on the
 internet, is just act like you would in real life.
 Don't act like a jerk.
 Don't act like you're self-promoting
 your own content.
 Don't do that because that wouldn't fly in real life, and
 it doesn't fly on the internet.
 So just make good stuff.
 Honestly, like Reddit, we're a new site, right?
 So we're growing.
 And when we see something on the front page of Reddit, the
 traffic is crazy.
 And it's not just that it's new traffic.
 I'll just get a little serious with you for a second, even
 though I was clearly joking.
 I thought this was a really serious internet.
 It is very serious.
 But it's not just that it's traffic.
 It's that it's a lot of new traffic.
 It's a lot of people who've never heard of the Verge
 before, and so we're actually really, I don't
 want to screw it up.
 And there are times when we're like, hey, our stuff has got a
 bunch of votes.
 Like, go check it out.
 Like, vote it up if you're on Reddit.
 And I don't want to be the kind of guy who abuses what
 you guys are doing, because I think what you're doing is
 really special and really important.
 And yes, I'm going to continue to use multiple accounts and
 spoof their IPs, but I'm going to do it in a way that is
 almost undetectable to me.
 And that's the important thing.
 So if you guys are the front page of the internet, and by
 the way, you have a lot in common with 4chan.
 If you're the front page, are they like the back door of the
 internet?
 Wow.
 I can't top that.
 Because I feel like there's almost a, you feel like it
 could go 4chan at any moment.
 Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing, but
 it would be a little bit more chaotic than what you have
 going on now.
 I mean, the moderation system that's in place, the pseudo
 anonymity, so unlike 4chan, your Redders have identities.
 They're anonymous.
 You have a username.
 It could be Alexis Ohanian, or it could be FluffyBunny26.
 But you still have an identity.
 That's me.
 That was, yeah.
 Spoiler.
 And so I think that has helped preserve it.
 And what's been really fascinating is Reddit is a
 platform, like Twitter, Tumblr, all these others we use.
 And communities form and use this platform to share links
 about everything from I subscribed to Redskins Reddit,
 because I happen to be a Die Hard Skins fan and a masochist.
 And that community has its own culture.
 It has its own ethos.
 It submits a certain type of links.
 It has its own inside jokes.
 And that's how they choose to use the platform.
 And it's those moderation tools that I think encourage
 that great behavior that we see bubbling up into great
 things like the philanthropy and the political work.
 I mean, are you doing this on purpose?
 You're segueing perfectly into my next question.
 I am psychic.
 So you are very active.
 You guys were very outspoken on SOPA.
 You are referred to as the mayor of the internet.
 It was a landslide election.
 No, but you guys laughed.
 But he had a chief of staff here earlier backstage.
 But how do you take the kind of rage and anger and
 disillusionment that you see on Reddit, which I feel, and I
 think a lot of us do, when you're watching these stupid
 pieces of legislation getting pushed and people who don't
 get the internet trying to legislate the internet.
 How do you take that rage and the stuff that bubbles up to
 the front page and turn it into something that
 creates real action?
 How do you go from Reddit to activism?
 You know, I am not entirely sure.
 We have, sorry.
 And it took a lot of check-ins, a ton of check-ins to
 get that mayorship.
 All over the place.
 On the internet.
 I don't know.
 I think if you see any of the stuff that starts out as a
 Reddit post and ends it with real world action, again,
 whether it's activism or philanthropy, there's just
 stuff that happens.
 It's some person who starts with a random idea and it
 starts snowballing.
 And what the internet does such a great job of is sort
 of giving us all ways to help.
 I use the metaphor to talk a little while back about
 everyone getting the chance to be their
 own Batman or Batwoman.
 We know there are lots of things screwed up that we want
 to try and fix.
 You want to create vigilantes who take to the streets at
 night to deal violently with criminals.
 Only if they're wearing this mask.
 Which I brought you.
 You brought this mask.
 Because I want to carry this metaphor into the real world.
 Because we all have our little figurative Gothams.
 Can we get it?
 Yeah.
 And this is not promotion for the film, although I highly
 recommend you all see it.
 Have you seen it?
 No.
 Really?
 Do you guys get access?
 No, we don't get access.
 You think the entertainment industry does not
 do me any favors.
 There goes my hair.
 Yes.
 This is really not comfortable, by the way.
 Well, it's not easy.
 It's not easy being Batman.
 Does Batman have bad sight?
 Is that what's going on?
 He's like, I think you're the Joker.
 Stop committing crimes.
 With the voice.
 Yeah.
 There you go.
 That is lovely.
 But that is nice.
 That is.
 That I'll be using the bedroom later tonight.
 As long as you.
 To protect the people in the bedroom, obviously.
 From Josh Dupolsky.
 But there is this really empowering thing.
 It just suddenly became a role play.
 It really is getting nasty in here.
 That's the really empowering thing,
 is that you can be sitting there.
 Just yesterday, we saw this video of this woman on a bus
 up in Queens, New York, being harassed by a bunch of students.
 And 24 hours later, after that story,
 that video, front page is on Reddit.
 She has literally $200,000 donated to her
 from people all over the world who simply said, this is wrong.
 I want to do something about it.
 Well, I got to get harassed.
 That is a lucrative new career.
 Make sure it's videotaped.
 Yeah.
 No, on video, obviously.
 Alexis, I wish we had more time.
 There's so much more to talk about.
 Well, you know what?
 I was a little bummed I didn't get to sit down with LeVar.
 But you know what?
 You can't disappoint a picture.
 And maybe it's better that I actually get to meet him.
 That's very mean of you to say.
 Alexis, thank you so much for coming.
 Thank you very much.
 You've got to come back.
 Thank you.
 You've got to come back.
 That was awesome.
 This is awesome.
 Oh, and I brought you a card.
 What is this?
 I'm sorry, we didn't even get to this.
 This is a.
 I'm a book publisher.
 This company I started.
 It's like a Newman's Zone for nerds called Breadpig.
 Our goal, our specified aim is to make the world suck less.
 Can we get this on camera?
 Can we read this on camera?
 And take a look.
 I'll give you $10 to show this.
 This is Saturday morning breakfast cereal.
 So Zach Wiener wrote this.
 It's a web comic, one of the most popular on the internet.
 We published the book for him.
 He gets a majority of the profits.
 It's published under a Creative Commons license.
 And our profits all get donated to DonorsChoose.org,
 specifically to classroom projects in math and science.
 Now, that's not totally benevolent.
 You know why?
 Because little kids who don't learn about math and science
 don't grow up into being the geeks who will read this book.
 So if we can make more geeks, we'll sell more books.
 It's just a long-term goal.
 I fully support that.
 Go buy this book.
 So thank you.
 Go buy it right now.
 Thank you again.
 Thank you again.
 Thank you very much.
 So good.
 We have Tim Wu coming up to talk more
 about activism and the internet.
 But Neelai went out on the street.
 Did somebody just scream?
 Very excited about that.
 It was Tim, actually.
 Neelai went out on the street and asked people if they knew
 what net neutrality was.
 And I'm sure you can imagine the results were highly
 entertaining.
 So take a look at this.
 We'll be right back with Tim Wu.
 I think about net neutrality every day,
 because I'm a huge nerd.
 And Tim Wu is my hero.
 But I'm here in the Flatiron District in New York
 to ask these people what they think about it,
 if they even know what it is, and most importantly,
 if they think anything should be done about it.
 What is net neutrality?
 What?
 Net neutrality.
 I have no idea.
 I have no idea.
 I have no idea.
 I don't know.
 So I've seen various YouTube tutorials or explanations
 of net neutrality.
 And all of them make sense once I finish watching them.
 But when you ask me what it is, it's
 fairly complicated to explain.
 So let me ask you a question.
 Who owns the internet?
 I want to say people own the internet.
 The people.
 The data is owned by the people that have the data
 on their servers.
 And the connections to the data is owned by the ISPs,
 the providers.
 The problem really is, this is basically
 impossible to explain.
 What can you say?
 Do you want to pay more for YouTube?
 So do you think Verizon could say,
 you can go to every site on the internet except for YouTube?
 No.
 I don't think they should.
 But if you want YouTube, you have to pay an extra $5?
 No, absolutely not.
 I think that's the point of YouTube.
 It wouldn't be cool, but it's business.
 This is awful.
 Nobody knows what net neutrality is.
 When they do find out, they don't
 want to talk about it because it's really political.
 But in the spirit of this election year,
 I'm going to get desperate.
 I'm calling Barack Obama, and I'm calling Mitt Romney.
 Let's see what they have to say.
 This is Evelyn.
 I'm going to help you.
 Hi.
 Where does the president stand on net neutrality?
 On net neutrality?
 Yeah, do you know what net neutrality is?
 No, I don't.
 Why don't you tell me a little bit about it?
 So who should have more regulatory power
 over the internet, the government or Verizon?
 Verizon.
 Even though Verizon sells you a product,
 they should be the ones who determine how that product
 works.
 That makes sense because if anything ever goes wrong,
 you know who to go to.
 Romney for president.
 This is Scott speaking.
 Hi there.
 I'm really interested in voting for Mitt Romney.
 But I have a policy question.
 I'm just wondering what his position on net neutrality is.
 On the net neutrality, let's see here.
 Don't recall if it's come up as a major issue on the campaign
 that I can recall, but I've got a source for you
 that can tell you.
 Want to call the policy hotline?
 Thank you for calling the Romney for President
 National Headquarters.
 Your call is in port-z.
 If you'd like to leave a message, please do so now.
 Can you send me back the fucking phone tree?
 We're breaking about our offices around the country.
 I got to say, Mitt, you can't just
 keep on putting me into robot town like this.
 You know what happens when you press zero
 and you call Romney Headquarters?
 It tells you to wait.
 And then it takes you to the top of the phone tree.
 So this has been the worst day of my life.
 Nobody knows what net neutrality is.
 Nobody cares about it.
 Nobody even really wants to talk about it with me, not even
 the president or Mitt.
 I thought Mitt would be on my side.
 So I'm going to go.
 I'm going to take a break, maybe have a drink,
 maybe throw myself in front of a bus.
 Goodnight, internet.
 It was nice knowing you.
 Yeah.
 It's good.
 An upsetting story, one we hope will find an end someday.
 But you're in luck.
 We have the man who coined the term net neutrality here.
 Please welcome Tim Wu.
 Walk your step.
 All right.
 Walk your step over there.
 I have to say, I realize now after having three guests,
 the most guests we've ever had on the show, by the way,
 that we have a lot of obstacles to getting onto the couch.
 Well, that's what it means to be fancy.
 Just you've got to put up, you've got to make the barrier
 to entry very high.
 Tim, thank you for coming.
 Now, Tim is the author of a book called The Master Switch.
 It looks like this.
 It's available in stores around the world.
 And by the way, apparently very hard to find.
 We had some of our people go looking for copies of this.
 And you might want to call Barnes and Noble.
 Barnes and Noble is my internet.
 It's almost like they don't want it to be sold.
 They don't want to hear the truth of this book.
 But you coined the term net neutrality.
 What does it mean?
 I mean, these people, people on the street don't know what it
 is, what is it?
 You know, I was watching that video,
 and I was thinking, you've got a lot of taxis in this video.
 And it's exactly the principle that applies
 when you get in a taxi cab.
 The taxi cab has to take you where you want to go.
 You know, imagine you get in the taxi cab.
 This actually happens in some countries.
 And you say, I want to go to Brooklyn.
 And you end up in the gift store.
 Yeah, yeah.
 That happens in this country.
 When I want to go home from Manhattan,
 I'm like, I want to go to Brooklyn.
 They're like, no, I don't go to Brooklyn.
 Well, there's that problem too.
 But essentially, it's the idea that the taxi
 is supposed to take you where you want to go.
 And the basic principle is the internet
 was built on the principle that the carriers take your data
 where you want it to go, and that people
 are allowed to communicate over the internet
 without interference by the people in the middle.
 It's a pretty profound principle.
 And the fact that people don't know about it is,
 on the street, doesn't mean it's not important.
 Because I think some of the most important principles
 are just sometimes very subtle.
 They operate at the subterranean level.
 Like E equals mz square.
 That's not a good example.
 People on the street don't need to know what that means.
 Yeah, no, I think it's a kind of.
 Does anybody need to know?
 I don't think it's that important.
 Well, we can debate about that.
 But a lot of these things, freedom
 is a kind of a thing that you can't really experience.
 You just experience its absence.
 You know when you're not free.
 But you don't notice when you're able to go to internet sites
 when you want to or say what you want to.
 Because you just live in life.
 Because you just live in.
 And you're just doing what you want.
 It's when you aren't able to do that,
 that suddenly you notice it.
 And I think that's why this is a profound principle.
 It was baked into the original design of the internet.
 It's what made the internet so revolutionary in so many ways.
 I mean, what made all these companies able to grow
 without asking somebody for permission.
 The companies like Google, eBay, Amazon, whatever,
 they just started their businesses.
 They didn't sort of have to say, you know, AT&T or Verizon,
 I've got a good idea.
 You want to run my service.
 Because they would have been like, well, you know, well,
 check it out.
 Wait for five years, 10 years, see what happens.
 I mean, it's a very profound thing that, as I said before,
 you don't notice freedom.
 You notice its absence.
 And whose job is it to ensure net neutrality?
 Is it the government's job?
 Is it Verizon's job?
 Is it a citizen's job?
 I think it's kind of everybody's.
 Damn it.
 I knew you were going to say that.
 But I'll tell you that in a functioning system,
 it's never completely possible to allocate responsibility
 to one entity.
 When you talk about something like,
 how do you guarantee freedom of speech?
 Well, you could say, well, you just
 have to have the government do that.
 But you know, the government, I work for the government.
 Sometimes they're lazy.
 Not everything gets to them.
 They're not all powerful.
 But the government does, but the government
 did do a lot of stuff to guarantee free speech.
 They do.
 They also try and mess with it.
 So they're not completely reliable.
 No one's totally reliable.
 I sound a little paranoid.
 Although, I'm sure you have people.
 But in terms of free speech, but you
 have to admit, the US government has done a relatively good job
 of saying, we need to have free speech,
 and we're going to push that on our citizens.
 We're going to say, you can't just limit
 what somebody has to say.
 Well, the courts have said that.
 Right.
 The executive branch now and then is like,
 maybe we don't want so much free speech.
 Maybe we'd like the New York Times
 to say that there's weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
 or something.
 You know what I mean?
 That's not freedom of speech.
 That's manipulation of the press.
 Well, that's true.
 I'll just say that the federal, the executive branch
 hasn't been exactly reliable.
 To hell with the executive branch.
 I agree.
 You know, they have their moments.
 But my point is.
 But the laws exist.
 Sorry.
 I mean, not to get off track.
 But we have said, not through legislation,
 but we've said, we've got some basic rules here
 that we believe in.
 And one of those rules is free speech.
 And people have fought on both sides of it.
 But we have kind of pushed this agenda of free speech
 is valuable and we need to protect it.
 There has not been a similar fight for the internet.
 Nobody has said the free internet, the open internet
 is important and we need to protect it.
 What they have said is, with things like SOPA,
 fuck the free internet.
 We want to protect.
 We want to make sure we have money.
 And you've got people who are backed by lobbyists pushing
 laws that will ultimately diminish
 the openness of the internet.
 You're not a SOPA fan, are you?
 How would that be possible?
 I don't know.
 You tell me.
 I like SOAP.
 I don't like SOPA.
 You're a SOAP fan.
 That's great.
 So what do we do?
 I mean, what's the obstacle here?
 How do we combat?
 I mean, it feels like we've got Verizon and AT&T largely
 controlling the pipes.
 There's a few other players in there, but not that many.
 And they are dictating in many ways
 what happens on the internet or what happens with the internet.
 You obviously have forces.
 You've got forces from places like Hollywood, which
 you talk about in your book and you've talked about elsewhere.
 I ran into some Hollywood forces recently
 that were very psyched on the idea that it's
 Verizon and AT&T's responsibility to block things.
 So that's a fairly scary concept.
 What are we supposed to do?
 How do we fix this?
 You need two things.
 You need a norm and you need a law.
 So first of all, it has to be a principle
 that internet freedom is sacred and fundamentally important
 to a civilized nation.
 It has to be understood at the level of free speech,
 just like we've talked about.
 So you equate net neutrality with free speech.
 Yeah, I think it's sort of the flip side of it.
 I mean, free speech is I can say whatever I want.
 Net neutrality is I get to connect with whoever I want.
 You know, unless there's a really strong reason not to.
 Free speech is an absolute.
 Net neutrality is an absolute.
 As a general rule, I get to connect with whoever I want.
 Well, I mean, what are those reasons?
 How do we pick them?
 How do we decide?
 Well, that's another story.
 And you know, there's obvious examples in free speech.
 You have principles like it might
 send a very serious message to assassinate the president,
 but that doesn't mean it should be legal.
 It obviously needs to be prevented.
 Similarly, with net neutrality, you can think of, I think,
 very narrow categories, but certain reasons
 that it might be reasonable to influence
 what people can connect to.
 But they're rare.
 They're sort of like interfering with terrorist efforts
 to sort of attack the United States or other countries.
 Things like this are relatively rare.
 Child pornography?
 Child pornography is probably another exception.
 What about pirated movies?
 No.
 I mean, because one man's pirated movie,
 you know, one man's pirated movie
 is another man's innovation.
 What is exactly a pirated movie is often not exactly clear.
 And you know, you say it as if we know what a pirated movie is,
 and sometimes you do.
 But the copyright law is so unclear that sometimes it's
 not legal, it's sometimes legal.
 And the other issue I have with pirated movies
 is that fundamentally, I don't think
 it's important to pass laws to protect an industry that
 is in decline.
 And you know, I think we go in a dangerous direction when
 we have an industry which is essentially in decline,
 and you know, has been in decline for some time,
 to try to use all the powers of government to try to save them.
 Right.
 This has been an issue since the 16th century,
 is every time an industry is dying,
 it says I'm threatened by piracy.
 Can you give us some examples?
 The booksellers in the 16th, I can give you a million
 examples.
 My book is full of them.
 Again, the master switch by Tim Wu,
 available in paperback, $15.95, very affordable,
 available in e-book form, I would imagine.
 Yeah, it's 10, I think it's about $9 on Amazon.
 $9 on Amazon, where they're taking a cut of the profits,
 but hopefully not too big.
 No, I think Amazon's good, yeah, but go ahead.
 But so no, so you have examples.
 So you've got.
 I have tons of examples.
 You know, if you look as early as in 1920s, for example,
 at that point, sheep music was the dominant industry
 for distributing music.
 And they said, sheet music.
 Oh, sheet.
 Sheet music.
 I thought you said, did anybody else think you said sheet music?
 I thought like the animal.
 I don't remember that.
 I've never heard of that.
 Sorry, go on.
 No, but I mean, the way you made music in the 19th century,
 it was actually nice, is you bought music,
 and then you took it home and played it.
 That was the recording industry in the day.
 They were the dominant way of distributing music.
 Along came the record player.
 And the sheet music was suffering,
 because people were listening to records,
 even when playing it yourself.
 So what did they say?
 They said, the recording industry
 are a bunch of pirates who are destroying American culture.
 They're just taking the sheet music, recording what's on it,
 and then selling it.
 Exactly.
 And they're like, these guys are destroying America.
 Because America used to be a place where
 people would sing and dance.
 And now people are listening to these crazy phonographs
 and player pianos.
 And we've lost our culture, and it's a disaster.
 Musicians are out of work.
 Everyone's out of work.
 You see the hair of the same thing every 20 years.
 I mean, that is what the entertainment industry is saying.
 Ari Emanuel said, you can't make Curb Your Enthusiasm
 in any other way than to have this big industry behind it,
 and if you don't have the $3 million per episode.
 There's a 100, maybe 500-year-old tradition
 of making starving artists the kind of symbol of what
 is really an industry that's dying, that's being replaced
 by different technology.
 Same thing happened when cable came out.
 People were like, cable?
 And I don't love cable.
 But when it came out as a new industry,
 and they said these cable guys are a bunch of pirates.
 All they want to do is loot Hollywood, loot TV.
 The same thing is said every single time.
 And is this you become what you despise?
 Because I feel like you've got the cable guys who are like,
 hey, we're innovators.
 And now they're the old guard, and you've
 got internet television, sort of this whole IP revolution.
 And the cable guys are going, we've
 got to do something about this.
 Everyone becomes what they despise.
 Didn't you know that?
 Oh, really?
 Sorry.
 Great.
 I'm going to become something terrible in that case.
 Just absolutely terrible.
 So obviously, very complex.
 A lot to talk about here.
 We're not going to get to all of it tonight.
 But how are we doing?
 I mean, we've got Verizon, as I was saying earlier,
 they've got this monopoly.
 How do we regulate these guys?
 I mean, they own the pipes.
 They build the pipes.
 There doesn't seem to be a ton of regulation.
 There's a fear with government regulation
 that you're going to end up down this rabbit hole of,
 it's going to be like Brazil, and nothing
 will ever get innovated on.
 I mean, how do you strike a balance?
 How do you do this?
 I think you have to have just very simple rules, net
 neutrality rules, that say you must allow people to connect
 with who they want to connect with.
 Exactly what I said before.
 They have to be regulated basically like New York taxi
 cabs.
 And I know New York taxi cabs don't always obey the rules.
 But the basic rule when you get in a taxi cab
 is it goes where you want to go, not where they want to go.
 And as long as they understand that position,
 I think it's relatively straightforward.
 But that is difficult because, as you pointed out,
 there is a growth, a return of the power of the telephone
 and cable monopoly.
 For most of the history of the United States,
 we had one company, AT&T, running the show.
 And things have a way, like the Terminator robot,
 of kind of going back to the way they were.
 And we have to be very careful to see
 that our phone companies, Ryzen, AT&T, Comcast,
 I guess their cable company, don't end up
 being essentially the gatekeepers of the internet.
 That's extremely important.
 So what do you say to people here?
 What's the best thing you can do?
 What is the best thing you can do to help promote?
 I think the best thing you can do is complain or get angry.
 Yes.
 When?
 No problem.
 We got Reddit for that.
 Reddit helps.
 You just need to be not willing to accept it
 when your cable company or your phone company
 says we're going to decide what the internet is.
 You have to take possession of this thing
 and say it is our network.
 I mean, some of the people on there were like,
 who owns the internet?
 People own the internet.
 And that's actually true.
 It was not designed to be owned by anyone.
 But phone companies.
 For all intents and purposes, Verizon owns the internet.
 Oh, that's not true at all.
 I can't just go get on the internet.
 I have to go through something.
 I have to go through something that somebody else owns.
 Look, you have to take a taxi to go to Brooklyn.
 It doesn't mean the taxi owns Brooklyn.
 But I could also buy a car.
 You got to go through the Brooklyn Bridge to get there.
 And I could drive that road as anybody can drive on.
 By the way, this is a metaphor that apparently people
 who like soap hate.
 But I mean, you can.
 But I can go buy a car and drive myself to Brooklyn.
 You can't drive yourself to the internet.
 To get to Brooklyn, you got to pass either the Brooklyn Bridge
 or the Manhattanville Bridge.
 Those guys at Williamsburg, they don't own Brooklyn.
 You got to go through them.
 If they had a policy like, oh, we're
 only going to let so-and-so through,
 that would change who could get there.
 But it doesn't mean they own Brooklyn.
 And it's very important not to confuse a gatekeeper
 with an owner.
 They're completely different people.
 Someone has a toll booth does not mean they own the thing.
 But the gatekeeper has almost as much power as the owner.
 They have a lot of power.
 And that's why since basically medieval times,
 there's been a series of laws designed
 to guard the gatekeepers.
 So you think violent revolution is the only way to solve this.
 Maybe I'm paraphrasing.
 All right, we have to wrap up.
 But you're working on a new book.
 Can you just tell me quickly about your new book?
 I'm interested basically in what technology should do next.
 I think we're starting to solve some of the problems of scarcity
 that have obsessed humanity for 500 years or so.
 And I think we're starting to get this question of,
 what do we do now?
 Now that we have a lot of things, enough food,
 enough information, what's next?
 That's my next book.
 I think Huge Party is going to be the answer.
 Tim, thank you so much.
 Great, my pleasure.
 Tim Wu, everyone.
 And again, the master switch in bookstores now.
 Thank you.
 No, no, you stay right here.
 Don't you go anywhere.
 That's our show, actually.
 We have no musical guest tonight.
 We had so much show.
 I want to thank LeVar Burton, Alexis Ohanian, Tim Wu,
 of course, and our sponsor Ford for helping us put this on,
 and you guys for coming out.
 Really appreciate it.
 We have some giveaways.
 Don't go anywhere, including some of these signed by Tim.
 Yes?
 So that's our show.
 Thank you so much.
 We'll be back next month.
 Thank you.