 Hello. Thank you. Thank you, Joey. Let's keep going. I need five minutes. Why are you stopping? After the show, we're going to get a bed. We need five minutes of continuous clapping. Any places that didn't work, we're just going to throw that in. This thunderous applause. Hi. Welcome to On the Verge. I'm Josh Topolsky, editor-in-chief of The Verge. And very excited to have you guys here. You're here for one of our biggest shows ever, maybe our biggest show ever. You know, screw it. It's our biggest show ever. And you're here for it. You guys get to experience that firsthand. It's seriously huge. We have an exclusive interview tonight with Damon Lindelof, who is a guy who co-wrote Prometheus, a new Ridley Scott movie you may have heard of, One of the Men Behind Lost, which I'm sure some of you have seen. I know you've seen it. Don't lie to me. We also have a segment with Masi Oka from Heroes, played Hero on Heroes, which is very cool. Him and Paul took a wild trip together. And in studio, we have Marco Arment, who created Instapaper and Tumblr. You may have heard of. You've looked at pornography on at least one of those. You bastards. And we have Infinity Shred here, which is an amazing band. They're going to play for you. Yes. We have such a big show, I want to get into it. I want to first thank our sponsor, which is Clear Scalp Therapy for Men. No, seriously, it's great. My head is tingling right now. You laugh, but you're all going to be trying it later because they're giving everybody here a sample of their... Somebody here was like, yes, my dandruff. Good luck with that. But we're psyched, and they also actually gave us some giveaways beyond the shampoo. An Xbox 360, a PS3, and an Apple TV. So somebody here, unless you work for us, and there's a couple of you out there, you're not getting anything. But you get to work for us, that's cool. Oh, and we also have two tickets to the Blipfest to give away, which is a big chiptune music festival that's going on next week. So two of you in this audience will be going, hopefully together. But maybe not, it's fine. So anyhow, we have a big show. I want to get underway. I'm not even going to wait to get Paul and Neelai out. So let's get started. Please welcome Paul Miller and Neelai Patel. Yes. I'm trying to wait for you here. So good to see you. Hey. Yes. Oh, yeah. Hey, it's Paul Miller. I remember you. You used to be on the internet. Remember when you were on the internet? Guys, remember Paul Miller? I'm not dead. I know there's some rumors. Every time I tweet about Paul, I'm like, Paul is here. He said this thing to me. Somebody responds to me with, why are you talking about Paul? Isn't he supposed to be off the internet? Yeah, you can't exist. Right. Paul works next to me. If you're off the internet, you're out of existence. I told my fellow employees at The Verge, I was like, they're like, I guess I'll see you in a year. I was like, you know what? You could call me. I could call you. Who wants to call somebody? Have I called you yet? No. So, Paul, you are off the internet. Yeah. How's it been? It's great. I mean, I'm crying a lot. Really? Yeah, and I just write into my word processor. Just alone, in a corner. Yeah, and then I save it to a floppy disk. You don't have to be in a corner. I mail to somebody. But you actually have been writing a lot. I feel like you've been writing more since you're off the internet than you were before you were off the internet. I have nothing to do. I'm very productive now. Guess I'll write a feature today. Yeah. No, you've been filing reports from the world of not having the internet. And you actually, you've been doing videos. And you did a video. I want to show this. You did a video with Masi Oka, who, as I mentioned, was a hero on heroes. My absolute favorite character. I like the horn room glasses guy. He's all right. He's all right. But he's, you know. He's not a hero. He's not a hero. He's on Y5O. This is a show on CBS. Yes. And Eli was like, it's still on the air? Apparently it's super popular. Well, everything on CBS is popular. That's right. Yeah. Old people. They just don't know how to change a channel. Masi's on smart TV. Just play it on CBS and leave it alone. Just leave it there. Masi also worked at ILM. Oh, yeah. He did special effects for Star Wars. Yeah, like the prequels. He was working on that. If you ever had around this, if you didn't know this, the guy who played hero on heroes actually worked on the special effects for the first three, the new three Star Wars. He was literally a programmer and then became a star on TV show. He did the animated Anakin. Yes. That was a synthetic character. Wow. Wow. He acted like a synthetic character. Why am I missing a kid? Yeah. Anyhow, you went to the Museum of, what is it? Museum of Moving Image? Yeah, in Queens. In Queens. Yes. In Queens, in the University of New York. And we have a video record of it. Take a look at this. I think you'll find it very interesting. Hi, I'm Paul at The Verge. I'm here in Queens at the Museum of the Moving Image. I'm going to meet Masi Oka from Heroes. He was hero in Heroes, which should give you a clue about how awesome he was in that show. And he's basically the best human being on the planet Earth. So just no big deal. So you worked at ILM back then. You mean that was before Heroes, right? That was before Heroes. How long were you with ILM? Well, I would say probably a good 10 years maybe. Okay, you were involved with like, during the prequels. I was involved with the prequels as well, yeah. Cool. What software were you making for them then? Well, our main platform was Maya, so I wrote a lot of Maya plugins. A specific example might be like where Boba Fett chases an asteroid sequence. So basically the production said, hey, we need to be able to destroy this asteroid in a million pieces, but we want to be able to control which way everything goes. Because an animator needs to be able to have all that fine control. And in ILM, when in visual effects, you want to be able to do it so that it's visually accurate, but not necessarily physically accurate. It has to be physically accurate enough. So there's a lot of communication back and forth where they want to make something look and you just have to enable them. I remember one shot where we had to do breast enhancements. Literally. Really? Yeah. We had to do breast and the director wanted it bigger, so we had to digitally enhance that. That sounds like really hard work. Yeah, it is. Right after ILM, you got the job with Heroes. That's why you left, right? Well, actually what it started was, San Francisco was their headquarters, so I was there and I finished my first big show there on Perfect Storm. I was on there two or three years. And I said, you know, I love working here. I'm a lifer. I could stay here. So that meant that was a sign for me to leave. So I came down to LA and I ran out of money very quickly. So I was like, oh shit, I got to do something about my financial situation. But then ILM said, you know what? If you're going to look for a job elsewhere, I want you to stay working for us. You could telecommute for us in LA. Wow. So that was very nice of them, but I had to sign this contract saying if I didn't get a recurring role on a pilot or a supporting role in a film in my first year in LA, I would have to move back up to San Francisco. I feel like Heroes was this realization that you could do movie-level effects now on a TV show. And was that a pretty big leap forward? I actually think before that, you know, Lost did a great job of bringing something cinematic, especially when you tell a serialized show, you know, it goes that. With that always comes budget, you know. I think now if we do Heroes, we could do it on a slightly cheaper budget and it's going to get better and better. Did you have any of these growing up? I actually didn't have a lot of the figures. The only one I had was that dude with the cape. I don't even know his name. It's great because there's all these fans of that world, you know, and to have people who are so passionate about it. But it's also, you know, it's upon the filmmakers. My former boss George, you know, he needs to take care of that fan. These days it's getting to a point that I feel like he's milking every cent possible, which is, you know, I get it. It's a business. You know, he was a great creator. When he created the first Star Wars, you know, he created something revolutionary. If you see the original original Star Wars, there's a lot of interesting mistakes. He saw all these mistakes when he first created it. So he had ILM do an entire pass at the movie and makes little changes. Were you there at the time? Yeah, I was there. Like there were those projects and just like simple things like putting their badges here to here. You know, there's actually a fan project to restore the original cuts because you can't buy in high definition the original cuts of the movie. So they're like, they're trying to undo you. They're reverse engineering your work. Well, I think there's a reason why it was a classic of that. I think you need to embrace mistakes as well. There's always going to be mistakes. Even this shoot right now, like I was wearing a watch and I'm not wearing a watch. Everybody's going to freak out. Do you have action figures of yourself? My action figure was like really, you know, loosely made so the head would always come up. So it was like, oh, that's kind of like a diss. I have a confession. I saw the first two seasons and I saw the first episode of the third. I just, I walked away. I totally understand. Are you okay with that? Yeah, I think so. I think the first season of that show was absolutely brilliant. So even as a fan myself, I was a fan of the show. We were so proud and everybody around the world, you know, it was a phenomenon. Without a doubt, I'm very proud of the work we did in the first season. Do you think there's something to that where you get a backlash, like with Star Wars, because the first season or the first movie was so good and fans just expect that greatness throughout and they get mad when that's not met? Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit difficult, but at the same time, that's our job. I think you need to take a bold choice, make a bold choice and see if it fits. Sometimes it works and sometimes it didn't. So you play emulated games? I play emulated games, yeah, absolutely. I spend so much quarters on gauntlets, so I kind of like go back and play. I played some gauntlet. That thing is designed to make so much money. I didn't realize that, but I was like, wow, it's a money truck. I love the shot director and the player. Where do you see yourself going? Do you want to direct? Yeah, I think ultimately I love to direct. I love the collaborative nature behind the scenes. I also like being in front of the camera, so I think directing seems to be a natural kind of way of culminating all the experiences I've had. You've got sort of all angles of the craft. I try it. You think you have a blind spot? I have so many blind spots. This is a continuing education. You can always be learning. I could be like nine years old and I could still be learning stuff. That's what's kind of fun. I enjoy knowledge. I create new stuff. I love exploration and it's constant learning something new every day, which is great. That's cool. Well, thank you so much. I need to go to this museum. It looks incredible. It has an arcade in it? It has a whole arcade. I'm so ignorant. I don't know anything about it. Also, that installation you probably saw at the start of the video, it's like a whole wall of gifts. I actually did an interview with the curator of that. Is that why you went there? So you could see gifts? Maybe. Mossy is awesome. Was that a separate trip? You were there twice for two separate? I did two shoots in one day. That's how in the zone I am. That's called TV magic. I'm not like checking my phone. Web video magic, as they say. As they always say. The one thing cool about Mossy, he cares so much about the whole process of film. Now he's pitching anime to Hollywood. Anime shows he wants to see adapted because he's just so concerned that they're adapted right. I don't know. Hollywood is definitely going to be the place. Hollywood is the place where you want to take, when you want something to remain true to its source material, Hollywood. In other news, moving along, I don't know if you guys have heard, Yahoo is in the news. First off, Yahoo is in the news. Yahoo.com. Yahoo.com. That's the whole bit, actually. Let's just take that in. Let that soak in for a second. I'm excited. They hired the CEO's name was Scott Thompson. Scott Thompson. Is that right? Did I just make that up? Anyhow, he was there for five months and then he got fired because he lied on his resume about having a computer science degree. He's actually an accountant. He has an accounting degree, but he does not have a computer science degree. There's a big kerfluffle, that's a word. You think he would check that. They fired him. We were talking about it and I said, look, everybody lies on their resume, right? You've all lied on your resume. He said this to an audience of his employees. Yeah. Have you? I mean, I lied. There's no way I should be running The Verge. I lied about my height. I mean, no, I'm not qualified. I tell people I'm a doctor. There you go. It was super easy. I'm Dr. Patel. I thought you were a doctor. No one questions it. You're not a doctor? That makes sense. Paul, don't take those. That's ecstasy. He's like, this will make you feel a lot better. That's the thing. I feel like there's an ecstasy joke. There's definitely an ecstasy joke on every On The Verge. All right, anyhow, but we were like, let's find people and ask them if they've lied. Let's see if people will tell us if they've lied on their resume and specifically what they've lied about. Paul thought that people would not go for it. Paul was dead wrong. Yeah, very wrong. Neelai took to the streets of New York, the hot, sweaty, sexy streets of New York. We went different ways. We talked to people. We harassed people. Everyone is like, you know, I don't usually lie, but I'll lie on my resume. Here's exactly what I did. Take a look at this. It's a fascinating look into the minds and hearts of average New Yorkers. Have you ever lied on your resume to get a job? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I wouldn't say I had lied. I've maybe like exaggerated responsibilities. So on your resume right now, it says you're fluent in Portuguese. It might say proficient. Do you know one word in Portuguese? Seem. Does that mean yes? Yes. Do you know how to say no? No. Okay. Do you know how to say maybe? It's almost just like if you don't do it, you're an idiot because you won't get the job. I lied about having a college degree. Oh my God. What? You know, I think the weirdest resume we ever received at The Verge is literally just the word please. I don't know what that means, but I know I didn't sleep that night. So on your resume, it said you were a manager at Chase. Yeah. What were you actually at Chase? No, I wasn't actually. I was at Bank at Chase, but I'm not actually. I was a manager. I got a checking account. We need some like suits. We need to see what the 1% thinks of lies. The problem is none of them will talk to us. Excuse me, sir. We're doing some interviews. No, none of that. Excuse me. We're doing an interview about a line on resumes. No, thank you. Just wondering if you want to be involved. Okay, thank you. All right. Thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. I appreciate it. Excuse me, sir. Your boyfriend is right here. Hi. We'll talk to you next. Oh my God. It's finally a guy in a suit. Oh my God. It's finally a guy in a suit. Yeah. Let me ask you this. If you were hiring people and you came across a resume with a Yahoo email address on it, would you kind of judge? I would be a little offended. I would be a little offended because everyone uses Gmail. Who has Yahoo or like Hotmail? I had a Hotmail account before my Gmail and everyone was like, that's only for like child predators. What's your main personal email? I have a Hotmail account. When they don't have a Gmail email address, actually I judge them. You judge people when they don't have Gmail? Yeah. I never use Yahoo. I told somebody my email address is at AOL and the person at my job just kind of looked at me like, do you still have AOL? Like, come on, you got to get up on the Gmail now. I have Gmail. I'm pretty happy with that. I'm a Gmail guy. What are the three things you would immediately do if you were to see a Yahoo? Oh God. I would cry. I would pray. Pray. Cry, pray. Cry, pray, and then I would call a big meeting to restructure the fuck out of it. My first move would be to quit. Second move would be to sell my shares because then you wouldn't be obstructed by that. Third move would be to move. Get out. Ultimately, we're all liars. We all stretch the boundaries of reality to construct a box that makes us feel more comfortable. But as I looked inward today, a universal truth revealed itself to me. No one gives a shit about Yahoo. That was enlightening. It seems like you got enlightened there. It was very, very strange. Yeah. I liked your last line. No one gives a shit about Yahoo. It is true. That was really touching. Well, the whole problem is that Yahoo doesn't give a shit about Yahoo and that's how this happened. It does seem like if they just took a little more care with the brand, they might not have hired the guy who lied about his resume. They're like, Scott, what? What, Thompson? It's fine. Just hire him. Does he have a computer science degree? Does he have a computer? Oh, that's great. Does he have a computer? All right. Ultimately, aren't we all computer scientists though? On our resumes. We have one more news item to talk about, which is not really a technology news item. By the way, I feel like I can't top that. I almost can this. Did you see the Social Security office or agency or whatever they call themselves these days? They released administration. That's what it is. The Ministry of Social Security. The Ministry of Social Security. They released the most popular baby names. Josh was livid in the office. Yeah. I was screaming. Yeah. The names are like the hot names are celebrity names. People are naming their... They're just like, oh, it's a kid. I'll name it after Adele or Jaden. Jaden is a popular name. The rising star this year was Mason based on the child from the Kardashian show. What is it called, Neelay? I have no idea. Really? You know, DVR, the show you're always talking about? No. I mean, Kim is a goddess and an angel, but I wouldn't watch her show. Anyhow, the Kardashian child. You were the one who knew that Mason was their child. I know. Of course, I follow Mason's story. Anyhow, so at The Verge, we like to talk about the show. We like to say that technology culture is becoming pop culture. We got to thinking, as we were wont to do in the offices. We thought if celebrity names are kind of moving into the mainstream, then surely some stuff from technology would move into the mainstream of baby names. It's inevitable. It's inevitable. Scientific fact, basically. We wanted to gaze into the future and maybe think of some names that we might see in the upcoming years that are... I think we came up with some very accurate results. I think these are real names that we're probably going to see because of how technology is just becoming a part of our lives. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. Let's take a look at a few of these possible, these future babies, as I like to call them. Oh, God. Why did I agree to this? Here's our first baby. Yeah, yes. Beautiful baby. Who wouldn't want to have this very uncomfortable childbirth with the glasses on, of course. What could this child's name be in the future? I'm thinking probably something like, I don't know, Zyborg Topolsky. That's good. Yeah, that looks good. God, why? Let's take another look at an adorable child. Shall we? Yes. I know what you're thinking. What's this baby's name? That's right. It's Optimus Epic Miller. For GLT. Touch. Touch. Touch. For GLT, touch. Yeah. Finally, thankfully. Who are these? These twins run in my family. Who are these adorable, adorable- You want a name that's a little ethnic? Are those doctors? Are they? Are those computer scientists? Yeah. These adorable children are, of course, Siri Patel and her twin brother, ITV Patel, launching this fall. I can guarantee that ITV Patel will be released within two years. Your fiance is very happy about that. She's shaking her head. Those are future baby names. Yeah. Yes, real future baby names. Okay, you can turn the tone off now. We were doing the research. There's a couple Siri Patels out there in the world. I would like to apologize for that. Do not derail our jokes. Siri Patel, real name, real people. Anyhow, that was horrific on many levels. We have an amazing interview that I want to show you guys right now. We flew out to Los Angeles to talk to Damon Lindelof. As I mentioned, he co-wrote Prometheus, which is an alien prequel, maybe. You'll find out in a second. He's one of the guys behind Lost, which I know was a show that everybody had a good feeling about when it ended. They liked the ending. They felt satisfied that it had answered all of their questions. They walked away thinking, I'm glad I spent years and years of my life. I know. That's how I felt. Literally years and years watching and waiting for the show to end. Anyhow, we had this amazing conversation with Damon Lindelof. Take a look. It's very enlightening. Hey, we're here at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles. I flew out from New York to sit down with Damon Lindelof, one of the men behind Lost, the co-streamwriter of Prometheus, and basically just an insane genius. Let's go have a chat. You're a busy man. You've got a pretty major project that's about to be revealed to the world. Which one are you referring to? I was talking about Prometheus. Oh, yeah. Is there something else that I should know about? You're a very busy guy. You're doing more than one thing. There's this Disney movie, 1952, that we just announced Brad Bird is going to direct, but we're not talking about what it is. Can you tell me a little bit about what it is? No. Can you just give me an idea of the plot? It's about characters who want something, and there's other characters trying to stop them. Can you tell me who you're starring in this film? No, we don't have any... I would tell you, but there's no actors. It's animated. No, I'm not complimenting. It's live action. Can you tell me how it ends? Happily. Is that true? There's a happy ending? Yes. It's a Disney movie. Well, I mean, anything's possible. In this day and age, it's 2012. Nothing is guaranteed. Even the movie 2012 has a happy ending. I've never seen it. It's the end of the... I'm sorry to hear that. When you think about a movie that's essentially about the end of the world, and it's John Cusack versus the end of the world, what's the ending of that movie look like? How does one character beat the end of the world? Can I riff on what I think happens? This is much more interesting probably than the actual movie. Maybe. I should give you a hint. I think that John Cusack, along with a small band of survivors, find one spot on the planet that's where we're going to start over and rebuild humanity the way it should have been built the first time around. Right. Without fossil fuels. Yes, more or less. I got the idea. I sort of amend small band of survivors to four ginormous arc loads of survivors who basically represent the lottery winners slash wealthy oligarchs of all societies. Doesn't sound like a happy ending. These arcs do get to the place that you refer to. It's all rich bastards. Most of them are rich bastards. Is John Cusack one of them? Is he a stock broker? He's not a rich bastard. If memory serves, his ex-wife has married a rich bastard. Or he falls in with a Russian rich bastard. This is I'm sure why people have tuned in. They've tuned out now, so we can say whatever. You can't talk about 1952, which has a happy ending and stars no one. Sounds good. You can't talk about Prometheus, which is a small film that you've done, an independent film you've done with Ridley Scott. Sure. You are the co-screenwriter? Yeah. A gentleman by the name of John Spates wrote the first draft of the screenplay for several first drafts. He worked on the movie for about a year, and then I came in after him. We didn't ever work simultaneously. You kind of took what he had and brought it to another place. The movie, a lot of the ideas are actually the seeds are from Ridley directly. Absolutely. Because aside from its relationship to the original Alien, which is a question, iterations of that question are the things that I've been asked about the most. Just wait. I'm looking forward to it. At the end of the day, when you're working with Ridley Scott, it's not about me coming in and saying, hey, Ridley, I've got this great idea. Do you want to direct it? It's about him saying, I want to direct a movie in this universe. Here's what I want it to be about. Here are the ideas that excite me. Here are the thematics that I'm interested in. Here are the character traits that I want to demonstrate. Not to reduce the process of screenwriting, but I feel like in film, which is much different than what I did in TV, it is a little bit like Mad Libs, where my job is essentially Ridley saying adjective, noun, euphemism. That's how the movie was made. Really interesting. That explains it. I'm sure he'll be excited to hear that you described the movie making process as Mad Libs. I do feel like I have great pride in my own lack of authorship in the movie. I feel like if the movie is a huge success, it's all because of Ridley Scott. If the movie is not a success, it's because I wasn't able to execute his vision successfully. That's the feeling that I have. Let's talk about the connection between Aliens or Alien or that universe. You're saying this is a different movie, but it's not a sequel. It's a prequel, if anything. You're not even calling it that. I take exception to the fact that it's called a prequel. I know a lot of this sounds a lot like that you have to get on slightly defensive terrain. For me, just as a fanboy, when I hear the word prequel, that doesn't get me excited. The reason that it doesn't get me excited isn't because I have a negative association with prequels. We have to think, let's contextualize that word. The first time that I heard that word in any sort of public or social setting was in reference to the fact that George was going to do the first three Star Wars movies. I was enormously excited about that. That aside, once you actually see what a prequel is, a prequel is by definition a march towards the inevitable. While we know that the guy is going to get the girl or there's going to be a happy ending, there are certain story beats that you hit, the idea of saying, I'm now just going to watch this young boy turn into Darth Vader. You're leading me into the story that I already know. There are certain things that I know can't happen, like nothing's going to happen to Obi-Wan because it's a prequel. I felt it was really important that Prometheus was not positioned as a prologue to Alien. In fact, if Prometheus were successful and there was a sequel to it, the sequel to Prometheus would not be Alien. I also felt like Alien is as close to a perfect movie as it gets. I was very reluctant to engage in a conversation that would somehow diminish Alien. If you saw, if for some reason Prometheus didn't succeed creatively, that when you went and watched Alien again, you'd be like, this movie is now diminished. You'd be used to the taste would be soured in some way. Yeah, why bet that? All that by way of saying that if you... My hope is that if you see Prometheus and you watch Alien again, there will be certain things that were mysteries before about Alien that you have more clarity on, but the mysteries that made Alien great are still mysteries. I've had a certain degree of success and failure in mystery resolution. I feel some mysteries are just much more engaging than their resolution and I don't want to answer those. It's like, ooh, where is Amelia Earhart? She's rotting somewhere in the bottom of the ocean. You're saying that's... Probably, unless she was abducted by aliens or she's living somewhere in France and has discovered the fountain of youth. The reality is the answer to these mysteries are usually less compelling than whatever our imagination transposes onto them. I do think that we succeeded in, if there's a sequel to Prometheus, it's not about the things that Alien is about, which is eggs and face huggers and chest bursters and xenomorphs. That not only Alien, but then aliens, they need to go and live off on that tangent. Prometheus is servicing that tangent. It's saying, here's an explanation. You'll understand the context of maybe where some of those things came from, but it's much more interested in going off in its own direction. Were there a sequel to Prometheus, it probably wouldn't need to trade in any of those ideas. Let's just get nerdy for a second. I'm going to get real specific. As opposed to what I've been for the last 20 minutes. You're speaking very broadly about you're setting the stage for this, but it does seem to be taking place in or on or around the beginning of Alien, or Alien full stop, which is this large alien craft they stumble upon. That seems to be in Prometheus. Let me just say, there was a two minute trailer out there that people were like, I can't wait to see this movie. Then there was a three minute international trailer. That one extra minute of material is the line that you cross where people start to say, you told me too much. I agree. I think the three minute trailer gave away a lot of stuff. My desire to not tell you what is the relationship between my hope is, and again, this is frustrating to some, but it's the space in which I live, which is the reason to me that I loved Inception was after Inception was over, there was stuff for me to fight about and discuss with my friends as to what it meant, what happened, what was a dream, what wasn't a dream, all those things that the movie left in some sort of ambiguous space. I know ambiguity is a very scary word, especially when you apply it to the context of the television that I've done. However, I will continue to embrace ambiguity because I find it really interesting, and I have a tremendous amount of faith in the intelligence of the audience. Most of them are much smarter than I am, and I will have an intention, but the idea of not spelling it out entirely, I will tell you right now that this movie, even when you go and see it, there is space to debate what the relationship between this movie and Alien is. We are not connecting the dots for you. We are giving you the requisite information to have an impassioned discussion about it. You will know a hell of a lot more than you did before, but it's not like this movie ends with a derelict spacecraft full of eggs crash landing on LV-426, which is the derelict spacecraft that the Nostromo happens upon at the beginning of Alien. That's inevitability, and it's not interesting. I totally get it. I guess my question was, they're in the same universe, because there's been a debate with people that this is in a completely separate universe. They share the universe. Absolutely. Very early on, we started saying, this is the question that is not going to go away. Is it a prequel? What is it? Is there a way that we can start generating content other than just the trailer? That was the birth of what evolved into this Peter Weyland TED Talk. It's hard to watch that in any context and then make the argument that these don't occupy the same timeline. Getting back to the ambiguity point, I think the danger there and what's frustrating for people and I think that with Lost, I think a lot of people feel this way is that ambiguity can sometimes come off as not like, hey, here's something for discussion, but you didn't know. I'm a person who watched Lost all the way through and thought the ending was extremely disappointing. Disappointing because it felt like there was a promise of something much more, and not profound, maybe not more moving, certainly not more moving in my opinion, but something smarter. It felt like it ended in this way that was like, well, so what was the point? Does that now haunt you, that kind of sense of people needing the answer and not getting it and you having to answer for it? I think haunt implies it's something that creates a tremendous amount of stress and sadness and fear for me as much as it is something that I accept as a part of the legacy of that show. As obnoxious and entitled as The Sounds, I also have no regrets about it. If there was one regret that I had, there were times over the course of the show where in interviews I said, the answers are coming, but I challenge you to look at any interview that I gave post the middle of season three, which was the turning point, when they said, we can now give you an end date to the show. Up until then, there was a degree of improvisation that had to occur because we didn't know how many of these things we were going to do or how long we were going to be around to be doing them. Once we said, there's going to be 48 episodes left, at that point a firm plan had to come into motion. From that point on, I think that I started saying publicly, if you are watching the show for the answers to your mysteries, you are not going to like the ending. Many shows have come and gone that are very focused on their mysteries and their mythologies and their ambiguity. There is no worse scene in the history of genre than the architect explaining to Neo everything that happened in The Matrix. I wasn't going to touch that with a 10-foot pole. That is a particularly awful instance of over-explanation of feeling like you owe it to the audience. We have the architect, and then we have Lost. The Lost is not enough, and the architect is too much. There in between is just right, and I'm going to always be closer to Lost than I am to the architect because that is just not interesting to me. I've just been sitting here listening to you talk about it, and I realized I wasn't disappointed with Lost not giving me answers at the end. I was actually disappointed with the answer it gave, which it felt like the answer was all of the things that just happened didn't really mean anything. They kind of didn't happen. That was my takeaway from it. What do you mean they didn't happen? It was like all of the things that happened, all of these things that were set up as you've got to stop the man in black because X, Y, and Z. It didn't matter because it wasn't real. Yes, it was. Well, but not really. It was like a shared fantasy. I mean, it didn't seem like there was like... No. So, the things that were going on on the island were happening in the actual world? Yes. So, they were happening in our timeline? Correct. I mean, yes. I mean, there's no oceanic airlines in our timeline. No, no, no. I mean, but in the real world, not in this kind of like moment before death fantasy world where everybody's trying to find each other so they can go to heaven. No, correct. So, at the end of the show, the last frame of the show, Matthew Fox closes his eyes and dies. That happened. In our context of happening, that happened. That's all real. And from the moment that he closed his eye, all that other stuff that we did in the sixth season of the show, the flash sideways where nobody knows each other and the plane never crashed, that is whatever your interpretation is. I'm not going to talk about what our intention is, but that's what you would define as not having happened or happening. But everything that we ever showed you, anything that takes place on the island and lost happened. You know, absolutely 100%. The plane crashed. Those people survived. Everything that you saw throughout those six seasons, like somehow- The whole struggle between good and bad, that's like a really meaningful thing that actually occurred. Yes. That would have threatened the universe had it not been- The Dharam Initiative is real. The island is real. All those Hurley right now, right now at this moment in time, Hurley and Ben, and with some help from Walt, are actually running things on the island, maintaining it. I do feel like one of the things that we always wanted to do and were very passionate about doing was exploring the idea of purgatory, both figuratively and literally. And this was so obvious to the audience that within three or four episodes of the first season of the show, they were like, it's purgatory, right? They're all dead. And we kept saying, we swear to God, they are not all dead. This is really happening. But the audience is telling us that they really want some sort of clinical evaluation of an afterlife and purgatory is about judgment. And this show has never really offered up what I would call Christian Judeo judgment in terms of there's a deity. It's always about self-judgment. So the idea of like, does Jack think that he's worthy? Or can Sawyer forgive himself for his sins? Or did Kate kill her stepfather justifiably? So I always felt like if the characters can forgive themselves, then they can, then the show's over. The show's called Lost. It's not because they're on an island. It's because they're lost. Anytime you say to people, what's Lost about? It starts with like, well, there's this plane crash. And therefore, they don't say like, well, centuries and centuries ago, in fact, millennia ago. If they say that, you go like, boop, I'm out. So I always just felt like the show, the ending that we were shooting for was going to be one that dealt with sort of the emotional reality of the characters and gave some fundamental explanation for why, what did these people get out of this plane crash? And the answer, as corny as it sounds, was the one that appealed to me the most, which is each other. That's what they got. If they hadn't met each other and spent all that time on the island, then they would never have been able to forgive themselves for their past sins and break through to some sort of level of self-awakening and forgiveness. Is it more satisfying to you in some ways to work on something like Prometheus, where you have, you're like, look, I've got two hours to deal with this thing. There is not going to be any filler. I've got to tell the story succinctly and answer questions in a relatively short amount of time. Yeah, I mean, it is very satisfying to do a movie that has a beginning, middle, and end, and you know exactly what you're getting into when you start the job. Television, you don't know what you're getting into. You don't know how many years it's going to be on for. You don't. It's hubris to say, I have a plan for the entire second season of the show, because no one's even watching it yet. They have to like it for you to get to that point. So they're, you know, and I talk about this often, so I won't belabor the point, but the two things that sort of came up all the time during Lost were question number one, are you making it up as you go along? And the answer to that question is no. Like that's what people want you to say. No, we absolutely have a firm plan, and there's a binder over there, and that's where our plan is, and we've got it, and you're in good hands. Mommy and daddy know where we're going. Don't worry about it. You have a map. That's question number one. Question number two, how much input does the audience have? And the answer to that question is a lot. We listen to you guys all the time. We want to know what you like and what you don't like, and we will adjust accordingly. The truth is- Are those the real answers? They are not the real answers. The real answers I've given, as politic as they may sound, the real answers are there is a plan, and when the plan doesn't work, we change the plan. And the other answer is yes, we really listen to what you have to say, but 98% of the time we agree with you before you've said it. I did learn lessons from Lost that I feel rolled into Prometheus, and what's interesting about the original Alien is you can watch that movie and be like, I'm curious as to what's the story with that space jockey and the Sterilek ship, but that isn't important. The movie isn't telling you that that's important. The movie is telling you that the thing that just jumped out of the egg on that ship and is now stuck to John Hurt's face, that's important. That's what you're supposed to worry about now, and then the sequel and so on and so forth. But the idea that Prometheus now enters into a more, and maybe this is why Ridley and those guys sought me out in the first place, into the movie is asking very specific questions. The characters are saying, we want answers to these questions. Some of the answers they get. Some of the answers they extrapolate, but then something happens that leads the resolution of the questions is secondary to their own survival. I think all of this stuff is already endemic. People don't want to see Prometheus like a bunch of people sitting around a table pondering the meaning of life. They want to see what happens when you open Pandora's box. That's fundamental sci-fi storytelling. Is Prometheus an action movie? Before you answer, I want to set this up a little bit. It seems like modern day science fiction cannot exist without it having an action component. If you look at a movie like 2001, I would not classify it's not an action movie. Correct. It's something else. Yes. Is Prometheus an action movie or is it something else? I couldn't describe it as an action movie any more than I would describe Inception as an action movie. That being said, once that fuse gets lit, there is a fair amount of scope and sizzle to it. There's much more of an action fuse on Prometheus than I think Alien. I would say Aliens is an action movie. Prometheus is much more... It feels a lot more like Alien than Aliens to me in terms of its storytelling. I think one of the things that I've been hearing, both again in the recurring theme of this interview, you take the good with the bad is. The good side, it's like this feels a lot like the original Alien. There's motifs in the original Alien. There's an android you're not entirely sure you trust. There's people in cryo sleep. There's a female lead. There's clearly something happening to these people that is reminiscent of those ideas. There's creeping around through dark corridors with flashlights. People go, this feels a lot like Alien. Then there's other people who are saying, this feels a lot like Alien. I would rather have people say to me for the rest of my career, you screwed up a Ridley Scott movie, than not say that to me because I'm like, hey, I got to be involved in a Ridley Scott movie. I got to screw up a Ridley Scott movie. Not only did I screw up a Ridley Scott movie, I screwed up the first Ridley Scott sci-fi movie in 30 years. If that's not going to go on your headstone, then what should? I think that's a good place to end it, Damon. Thanks so much. My pleasure. Really awesome. Thanks. Yeah. I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking, that was good, but I'd like to see a version of that interview that's like three times as long. All I have some good news for you. That interview is like three times as long as what we have here. We had to cut it down. Now we're going to show you the rest of it. No, I'm kidding. It will be available when the new show goes up. We're going to do the full length interview you guys can watch. It's pretty fascinating. I think it's a really fascinating dude to listen to and to talk to. We're glad that we got a chance to do it. Speaking of... That's a segue, by the way. Speaking of fascinating, interesting dudes, I want to bring out our next guest. He's a really smart, very creative guy. Frankly, I'm a little bit in love with him. Please welcome Marco Arment. That works, right? Thank you. Thank you. Yes. This is nice. We're stepping up the nerdiness. We're going... From that? Yeah, we're getting increasingly nerdy. At the end of the show, we're just going to be sitting here coding. Is that cool? Well, as long as we put two big top windows on the screen, and one red, one green. Nah, two inside baseball? All right. Is that a coding thing? I'm confused. To some people. I'm totally confused right now. Marco, we're just going to pretend that never happened. I didn't get confused by that joke. We're just moving right along here. Marco, you're an interesting man. You are one of the people who created Tumblr, which as I said, we've all used, many, many times, multiple times a day. Tell your bosses I'm sorry. And Instapaper, which now everybody, it probably says Instagram to you every time they talk about it, right? They're like, you created Instagram. That's awesome. How does it feel to have a billion dollars? Yeah. Can you buy me something? I actually, I heard a few of those. That was an interesting day. So I'm sure you did. Congrats. So tell me, I want to talk about Tumblr a little bit. I mean, Tumblr has become a phenomenon. I mean, everybody uses it. Every new site I see is just a Tumblr site. And obviously, it's been great for the porn industry. No, I'm sorry. It hasn't been. But for porn users. But when did that start? How did that start? What was your role? Just can you give me a little bit of background? Sure. And spice it up. Sexy. Sexy stuff. As sexy as two guys writing code in an office for a couple years. That's very sexy. I don't know why I'm so focused on sex right now. I did say I was a little bit in love with you. It is late at night. That's true. So yeah, so where did that start? It started as me and David Karp. David had a consulting company, just making websites for people. And one day, we were between clients for about two weeks. And he said, hey, I've had this idea. I want to work on it. Let's see what we can get done in the next two weeks before we got to do this next project. And that was Tumblr. And that was late 2006. And we built the prototype. And it took off. We kept iterating on it as we were doing client work until eventually the client work had to be dropped because we had to do this thing full time. You had Tumblr work. Yeah. So what was the idea? It was like, I mean, it's like this weird halfway place between WordPress and Twitter. It's this kind of like, was the idea like blogging is just too complicated? That was basically it. It was that a lot of us, especially if you were a nerd playing with the internet in 2006, chances are you had started and abandoned a blog. I have several. Right. A lot of people did. Yeah. And the problem is that at the time, what was really the traditional WordPress movable type style format is more like a magazine column where it's a lot of work. You're writing these longer pieces, lots of paragraphs, and throwing in images and stuff every day or once a week or at least you got to do this. As you know, it takes a lot of time. Yes. Very time consuming. Right. And if you're doing it as just like a little side hobby and you only get like one or two comments in a week and one of them is spam and the other one is telling you that you're stupid, it's kind of hard to keep the motivation going to keep something like that up. So Tumblr was created to lower the friction, to make publishing online easy and to lower the expectation that you had to produce this giant magazine column every day because in reality most people just wouldn't and they would abandon it. And with Tumblr, that wasn't really an issue because what the platform cultivated and expected was much more sustainable because it was so much easier. Right. Did you think that, I mean I know maybe, I don't know the answer to this, but did you think it would become this kind of default almost? I mean that's what it's become really. Now when people start something, I mean it feels like they've moved away from like, oh I'm going to start a WordPress blog too, I'm just going to start a Tumblr. Like I have seven Tumblrs and they're all like, one day I was like, I'm going to do a Tumblr just of pictures of bags I like. Why not? It's cool, right? And I just started it. I did one, I was going to film trailer reviews. I was just going to do film trailer reviews. That's good. I did like six and now it's abandoned. But Tumblr makes it so easy. Did you expect it would be this default or were you like, well there's just be an easier way to do a blog? I knew that, you know, once we had the product at a usable stage pretty early on, I knew that people who used it were going to love it. But I think what surprised me is how much it took over outside of people who used to be the ones blogging. People who were blogging are mostly nerds. Now it's a lot more people. It's like normals, it's everybody. Nobody here probably. No, certainly not. Maybe somebody who wandered in by accident. They have a Tumblr though, we can agree. Or seven of them. Yes, that's right. And one is about bags. So you stopped working at Tumblr when? 2010, end of 2010. So pretty recently. Yeah. And so talk to me about Instapaper. This was your next big project. Why did you, where did Instapaper come from? Was it, were you sitting there one day? I mean, you were like bookmarking something, you were like, there's got to be a better way to do this. Basically yeah. I mean, what happened was in late 2007, I got an iPhone and I was still working at Tumblr and I was commuting every day on the train. Not the subway, you know, the suburb train. Nobody here knows about it. An actual train. An actual train. The LIRR or the? No, the Metro North. Metro North. Yeah, which leads up to what most people consider farmland upstate, even though it's like 10 miles that way. You live on a farm. Pretty much no. But everyone thinks I do. We'll keep that up. Yeah. So, you know, I had this long train commute and I would be browsing the web at work like I wasn't supposed to be doing, but when you're making a platform about browsing the web, it's really hard not to while you're testing it. So I was browsing the web at work and I would find links to read and I wouldn't have time to read them because I was supposed to be working. So I would want to save them and read them sometime. The same time I was on the train and I had this new iPhone that had this terrible edge connection and was offline half the time for the ride. And I wanted to read things on the train, but by the time I got there, the connection was too slow to browse much, to browse around. And I would have already gone through RSS feeds, dig, which at the time still mattered. I would have gone through all these things. And so it was like I was burning through my queue when I couldn't read it and when I could read it, there was nothing there. So I made Instapaper to bridge that gap, to solve that problem, to be just a temporary place, just the one click bookmark, just save it. I don't want to tag it. I don't want to categorize it and reference this forever in a giant library of things I've ever read. It was just a temporary, I haven't read this, but I want to. Save it until I have read it and then get rid of it. Do you feel it's the highest form of flattery that Apple has completely ripped you off? Oh yeah. I mean, is that weird for you? I'd be really upset if I read it. Because you're just a guy. Yeah. Just a guy living on a farm. Right. And here comes big bad Apple and they're just like, oh hey, we're going to make this other thing that does exactly what Instapaper does that's going to be default in all of our browsers. Well it helped a lot that they really did kind of a half baked job of it. Really? That's interesting. Do you think they did a half baked job? I mean the first version had pretty much, the first version was basically a bookmark folder. Right. And so now, and they're adding offline support in Mountain Lion, although I'm not supposed to know that, but I'm not officially a Mac developer so I'm allowed to tell you that. You're not a Mac developer. Right. Right. I actually haven't seen Mountain Lion. You probably have seen more of it than I have. I don't know anything about it. Of course you don't. But you're telling me that they're adding offline. Yeah, somebody on Twitter told me they were adding offline. I assume they're right. That's good. Well people on the internet are always right. Sure, sure. I'm sure of course they do. Like Wikipedia, always right. Uh huh. Always right. Always, yeah. Oh, it seems crazy to me. Has it hurt? Has it hurt business? It's hard to tell. My business is fine. That feature was released a year ago, the main reading list feature, and then we'll see this summer when they release the offline version of it. It's hard to tell. I mean the reality is that's only useful if you use Safari everywhere. Right. And only about a third of my customers do. Well you're using mobile, everybody's using mobile Safari. Right. But I think that the desktop syncing part is very important. I mean there are a lot of people who both get and save the links on their iOS devices. Right. But there's also a lot who are doing the way I originally made it, which was you save it on a computer and then you go read on your devices later. Right. So on the topic of Instapaper, there's been a lot of controversy about your, I don't know if I want to call it allegiance to iOS, but you have not, you won't make an Android application. Right. I'm going to say it bluntly. And you even had this challenge, which was if somebody makes, I want to make sure I get this right. That was so misunderstood. If somebody makes a good Android Instapaper client, you'll call it Instapaper for Android and you'll split the profits. Close. It was if that one developer that I was linking to made it, it wasn't intended to be an open challenge because I don't... It seemed like an open challenge because I've been working on an Instapaper app. Of course. In the design world, spec work is considered a very bad word, which is the idea... I'm sorry, designers, if I'm getting this wrong. The idea is you put out a call, hey, everyone do something, work for free, and if we like your thing, we'll pick it and we'll pay you. So you have a whole week of people working for free and most of them just get nothing out of it. I didn't want to do that. That's why I didn't intend for it to be like a, hey, everyone try and just whoever gets there first wins it, because I don't want people to waste all their time. So this guy didn't do it, I guess. Yeah, it didn't happen. What about anybody else? Have you looked? Eh. Why don't you just make something for Android? It is in the market in a big way, right? That's agreed. I totally agree. There's like literally half of smartphones in this camp. So are BlackBerrys. Yeah. So, you know, I mean... Come on, let's not be... Don't give me that straw man argument. Of course. It's a real platform. It is a real platform and it's big, no question. But the thing is, you know, if you are in the business of trying to get as many users as possible, something like Instagram, that actually makes sense to spread to Android, get as many users as you can. Usually it's for free, some kind of free service. That makes sense. Tumblr has to have an Android app. Totally makes sense. But when you're in the business of selling the app, the majority of the newspaper's revenue comes from the app sales. So I'm selling a $5 app. On iOS, that's pretty expensive. On Android, that's probably impossible. I buy Android apps all the time. And everyone's just like you. Well, I mean, there are people buying Android apps. Right. I mean, there are more and more developers making apps for Android. I'm sure somewhere. No, I mean, there are. No, there definitely are. I'm telling you. I know people with Android phones that buy apps. Of course. Okay, I do. Yeah, you know a person. But you think that all the other people who are not... There's probably one guy. Who don't write for The Verge are like, no way, I don't need apps. Well, it's not all of them. It's a question of really just economics and how to allocate limited resources, which is... The most limited resource that I have right now is my time. Everyone's most limited resource. I only have this one awesome version of the app that I'm really focused on. If I were to take time off and either do an Android app myself or pay someone else a whole bunch of money to do it, that would significantly detract from my ability to make the iOS app great. But in the face of ever increasing competition, I can't afford to let up. I have to keep making the iOS app awesome. I mean, you're competing with Apple, so you can't really screw around. I'm competing with everyone who doesn't charge any money. Right. And Pocket. Yeah, and Readability, Evernote clearly, Spool, Scribd's Balloon thing. And which one do you like the best out of all of your competitions? Honestly, I've seen very few of them. You might wanna check them out. Yeah. I tell you something. I mean, in all seriousness. I've talked to people in our industry. There are other people that are like, yeah, I don't really check out the competition. John Rubenstein from Palm famously was like, yeah, I haven't really seen an iPhone. Well, that went well. We know how that ended. So my suggestion... This is my from one man to another as a friend. I've seen the big ones. Okay. There's a whole bunch of little ones. I've seen the big ones. And are you gonna add... Do you think you're gonna add features or try to compete on any of the stuff? Like Pocket does a bunch of stuff that Intipaper doesn't. I mean, it does some things, not a bunch. It does more things than it does. No, I highly value originality. And we have to distinguish... There was that awesome HP Envy, whatever that came out. We have to distinguish between... Did you say HP Envy? Whatever the... You mean the computer that looks exactly like a MacBook? Yeah, that thing. Yeah, that's the HP Envy. The HP MacBook Air? Yeah. We have to distinguish with originality. The problem of simultaneous invention versus true originality. Now I want to be the original. In many ways of what Intipaper does, it is the original. And I like Apple products, because many of them are very original. Not all, of course, but many. And I value that a lot. I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. And so I don't want to copy other people's products or features if it's not something obvious. But I think if it is something obvious, like, okay, I have a read later app, and if you tap on a link, should it just open? Or should it offer you an option to read that link later? Once you're building a read later app, that's a pretty obvious feature. And so if someone else did that first, and then I copied it later, I wouldn't really feel bad about that. So when I look at other competitors' features, and if a competitor does a feature before me, and I'm getting a lot of pressure to add it, I try to be original as much as possible in the sense that I try to not just copy it directly. I try to only copy things that I would have come upon anyway that were obvious. You're walking a fine line there. Or if I can't do that, if it's something that someone else just made a really good point and did this awesome feature that I never would have thought of, and I'm like, I really have to implement that to stay competitive, I'll try to do it differently. I'll try to do it in a substantially different way. If somebody has a grid, you'll make a wheel. I have the grid first. Okay. So you're owning the grid is what you're saying. Yeah. I'll flip or beat everybody. I try to be original. So even if I have to copy someone else's feature, I'll try to do it my own way. And so I respect other people who do that same thing. So I see in the PC laptop space or the Android phone space versus Apple and other people, I like when Android and when crazy PC manufacturers come up with their own solutions to problems. I respect that. Even if I don't like their solution as much, I have more respect for that. Oh my god. I want to have another separate conversation just about what you don't like about Android. Because I'm sure there's some fascinating things. Honestly, I haven't used it that much. Well, there's your problem right there. Android is not in my world. It's not in my attention span most days. I don't spend that much time thinking about it because thinking about iOS and the website, which even that I barely think about, thinking about the iOS app is a full-time job. And staying competitive on the iOS app is a full-time job. All right. We have to wrap, unfortunately, because I have a bunch more things I want to talk to you about. But I quickly want to know, just a couple of... I mean, you're obviously very focused. You just talked about being original and you obviously appreciate beautiful design. What are some apps... What are things that you use every day that you're like, I wish I could have made this? Or I'm in awe of this? Or this is a beautiful, really smart design that I love? What's something for you... I mean, I'd just like to know. Is that tough? Yeah. Inst<|pt|><|translate|> I have a long answer, but we don't have time for a long answer. My opinion of design is very different from what most people... My opinion of design is, to quote Steve Jobs, how it works. Most people think design is putting textures and gradients on everything. I win for design with Почему. like you took them with an SLR, and if you did and you imported it, that's kind of dirty, don't do that. People do that. I know, that's rude. They take pictures of DSLRs and then import them, and they're like, hey, check out this awesome picture I took. Phil Schiller did that. Did he? Yeah. And then he quit. No wonder. He was like, I've been shamed into quitting. Yeah. Mark, I wish I could talk to you longer. You gotta come back. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Mark Harman, everybody. And... Yeah, you're definitely coming back. You got it. We're gonna take a quick break, and then we'll be back with Infinity Shred. So stay tuned. Hi guys, I'm Jen Atkins, celebrity hairstylist on the Clear Men Scalp Therapy Team. Here are a few of my tips for becoming the perfect man. First, go to a stylist and not just a barber. They'll pay much more attention to your style and give you really good tips. Second, make sure that your clothes fit. It's a really good idea to take them to a tailor so that they can specifically fit everything to your body type. Third, make sure to pay attention to your hair and your scalp with Clear Men Scalp Therapy. It stops dandruff at the source for 100% dandruff protection. Share your style at facebook.com slash clearmen. Yeah, yeah. I've been following all of those tips and they're great. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a big round of applause to Infinity Shred. Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Oh my goodness. That was awesome. That was very good. Very nice. Very nice. We did it. We did the handshake. Infinity Shred, everyone. That was amazing. Well, that's pretty much our show. I want to thank Damon Lindelof, Masi Oka, Mark Armand, Infinity Shred, obviously, Paul, Neelai, you guys, our sponsor Clear, who's helped me get rid of my dandruff, which is very important for my wife. And we're going to hear one more song and then we're going to do some giveaways. Thank you guys so much for coming out. Thank you. Thank you.
 Hello. Thank you. Thank you, Joey.
 Let's keep going.
 I need five minutes.
 Why are you stopping?
 After the show, we're going to get a bed.
 We need five minutes of continuous clapping.
 Any places that didn't work, we're just going to throw that in.
 This thunderous applause.
 Hi. Welcome to On the Verge.
 I'm Josh Topolsky, editor-in-chief of The Verge.
 And very excited to have you guys here.
 You're here for one of our biggest shows ever, maybe our biggest show ever.
 You know, screw it. It's our biggest show ever.
 And you're here for it.
 You guys get to experience that firsthand.
 It's seriously huge.
 We have an exclusive interview tonight with Damon Lindelof, who is a guy who co-wrote Prometheus,
 a new Ridley Scott movie you may have heard of,
 One of the Men Behind Lost, which I'm sure some of you have seen.
 I know you've seen it. Don't lie to me.
 We also have a segment with Masi Oka from Heroes, played Hero on Heroes, which is very cool.
 Him and Paul took a wild trip together.
 And in studio, we have Marco Arment, who created Instapaper and Tumblr.
 You may have heard of.
 You've looked at pornography on at least one of those.
 You bastards.
 And we have Infinity Shred here, which is an amazing band.
 They're going to play for you.
 Yes.
 We have such a big show, I want to get into it.
 I want to first thank our sponsor, which is Clear Scalp Therapy for Men.
 No, seriously, it's great.
 My head is tingling right now.
 You laugh, but you're all going to be trying it later because they're giving everybody here a sample of their...
 Somebody here was like, yes, my dandruff.
 Good luck with that.
 But we're psyched, and they also actually gave us some giveaways beyond the shampoo.
 An Xbox 360, a PS3, and an Apple TV.
 So somebody here, unless you work for us, and there's a couple of you out there, you're not getting anything.
 But you get to work for us, that's cool.
 Oh, and we also have two tickets to the Blipfest to give away, which is a big chiptune music festival that's going on next week.
 So two of you in this audience will be going, hopefully together.
 But maybe not, it's fine.
 So anyhow, we have a big show.
 I want to get underway.
 I'm not even going to wait to get Paul and Neelai out.
 So let's get started.
 Please welcome Paul Miller and Neelai Patel.
 Yes.
 I'm trying to wait for you here.
 So good to see you.
 Hey.
 Yes.
 Oh, yeah.
 Hey, it's Paul Miller.
 I remember you.
 You used to be on the internet.
 Remember when you were on the internet?
 Guys, remember Paul Miller?
 I'm not dead.
 I know there's some rumors.
 Every time I tweet about Paul, I'm like, Paul is here.
 He said this thing to me.
 Somebody responds to me with, why are you talking about Paul?
 Isn't he supposed to be off the internet?
 Yeah, you can't exist.
 Right.
 Paul works next to me.
 If you're off the internet, you're out of existence.
 I told my fellow employees at The Verge, I was like, they're like, I guess I'll see you in a year.
 I was like, you know what?
 You could call me.
 I could call you.
 Who wants to call somebody?
 Have I called you yet?
 No.
 So, Paul, you are off the internet.
 Yeah.
 How's it been?
 It's great.
 I mean, I'm crying a lot.
 Really?
 Yeah, and I just write into my word processor.
 Just alone, in a corner.
 Yeah, and then I save it to a floppy disk.
 You don't have to be in a corner.
 I mail to somebody.
 But you actually have been writing a lot.
 I feel like you've been writing more since you're off the internet than you were before you were off the internet.
 I have nothing to do.
 I'm very productive now.
 Guess I'll write a feature today.
 Yeah.
 No, you've been filing reports from the world of not having the internet.
 And you actually, you've been doing videos.
 And you did a video.
 I want to show this.
 You did a video with Masi Oka, who, as I mentioned, was a hero on heroes.
 My absolute favorite character.
 I like the horn room glasses guy.
 He's all right.
 He's all right.
 But he's, you know.
 He's not a hero.
 He's not a hero.
 He's on Y5O.
 This is a show on CBS.
 Yes.
 And Eli was like, it's still on the air?
 Apparently it's super popular.
 Well, everything on CBS is popular.
 That's right.
 Yeah.
 Old people.
 They just don't know how to change a channel.
 Masi's on smart TV.
 Just play it on CBS and leave it alone.
 Just leave it there.
 Masi also worked at ILM.
 Oh, yeah.
 He did special effects for Star Wars.
 Yeah, like the prequels.
 He was working on that.
 If you ever had around this, if you didn't know this, the guy who played hero on heroes
 actually worked on the special effects for the first three, the new three Star Wars.
 He was literally a programmer and then became a star on TV show.
 He did the animated Anakin.
 Yes.
 That was a synthetic character.
 Wow.
 Wow.
 He acted like a synthetic character.
 Why am I missing a kid?
 Yeah.
 Anyhow, you went to the Museum of, what is it?
 Museum of Moving Image?
 Yeah, in Queens.
 In Queens.
 Yes.
 In Queens, in the University of New York.
 And we have a video record of it.
 Take a look at this.
 I think you'll find it very interesting.
 Hi, I'm Paul at The Verge.
 I'm here in Queens at the Museum of the Moving Image.
 I'm going to meet Masi Oka from Heroes.
 He was hero in Heroes, which should give you a clue about how awesome he was in that show.
 And he's basically the best human being on the planet Earth.
 So just no big deal.
 So you worked at ILM back then.
 You mean that was before Heroes, right?
 That was before Heroes.
 How long were you with ILM?
 Well, I would say probably a good 10 years maybe.
 Okay, you were involved with like, during the prequels.
 I was involved with the prequels as well, yeah.
 Cool.
 What software were you making for them then?
 Well, our main platform was Maya, so I wrote a lot of Maya plugins.
 A specific example might be like where Boba Fett chases an asteroid sequence.
 So basically the production said, hey, we need to be able to destroy this asteroid in
 a million pieces, but we want to be able to control which way everything goes.
 Because an animator needs to be able to have all that fine control.
 And in ILM, when in visual effects, you want to be able to do it so that it's visually
 accurate, but not necessarily physically accurate.
 It has to be physically accurate enough.
 So there's a lot of communication back and forth where they want to make something look
 and you just have to enable them.
 I remember one shot where we had to do breast enhancements.
 Literally.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 We had to do breast and the director wanted it bigger, so we had to digitally enhance
 that.
 That sounds like really hard work.
 Yeah, it is.
 Right after ILM, you got the job with Heroes.
 That's why you left, right?
 Well, actually what it started was, San Francisco was their headquarters, so I was there and
 I finished my first big show there on Perfect Storm.
 I was on there two or three years.
 And I said, you know, I love working here.
 I'm a lifer.
 I could stay here.
 So that meant that was a sign for me to leave.
 So I came down to LA and I ran out of money very quickly.
 So I was like, oh shit, I got to do something about my financial situation.
 But then ILM said, you know what?
 If you're going to look for a job elsewhere, I want you to stay working for us.
 You could telecommute for us in LA.
 Wow.
 So that was very nice of them, but I had to sign this contract saying if I didn't get
 a recurring role on a pilot or a supporting role in a film in my first year in LA, I would
 have to move back up to San Francisco.
 I feel like Heroes was this realization that you could do movie-level effects now on a
 TV show.
 And was that a pretty big leap forward?
 I actually think before that, you know, Lost did a great job of bringing something cinematic,
 especially when you tell a serialized show, you know, it goes that.
 With that always comes budget, you know.
 I think now if we do Heroes, we could do it on a slightly cheaper budget and it's going
 to get better and better.
 Did you have any of these growing up?
 I actually didn't have a lot of the figures.
 The only one I had was that dude with the cape.
 I don't even know his name.
 It's great because there's all these fans of that world, you know, and to have people
 who are so passionate about it.
 But it's also, you know, it's upon the filmmakers.
 My former boss George, you know, he needs to take care of that fan.
 These days it's getting to a point that I feel like he's milking every cent possible,
 which is, you know, I get it.
 It's a business.
 You know, he was a great creator.
 When he created the first Star Wars, you know, he created something revolutionary.
 If you see the original original Star Wars, there's a lot of interesting mistakes.
 He saw all these mistakes when he first created it.
 So he had ILM do an entire pass at the movie and makes little changes.
 Were you there at the time?
 Yeah, I was there.
 Like there were those projects and just like simple things like putting their badges here
 to here.
 You know, there's actually a fan project to restore the original cuts because you can't
 buy in high definition the original cuts of the movie.
 So they're like, they're trying to undo you.
 They're reverse engineering your work.
 Well, I think there's a reason why it was a classic of that.
 I think you need to embrace mistakes as well.
 There's always going to be mistakes.
 Even this shoot right now, like I was wearing a watch and I'm not wearing a watch.
 Everybody's going to freak out.
 Do you have action figures of yourself?
 My action figure was like really, you know, loosely made so the head would always come
 up.
 So it was like, oh, that's kind of like a diss.
 I have a confession.
 I saw the first two seasons and I saw the first episode of the third.
 I just, I walked away.
 I totally understand.
 Are you okay with that?
 Yeah, I think so.
 I think the first season of that show was absolutely brilliant.
 So even as a fan myself, I was a fan of the show.
 We were so proud and everybody around the world, you know, it was a phenomenon.
 Without a doubt, I'm very proud of the work we did in the first season.
 Do you think there's something to that where you get a backlash, like with Star Wars, because
 the first season or the first movie was so good and fans just expect that greatness throughout
 and they get mad when that's not met?
 Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit difficult, but at the same time, that's our job.
 I think you need to take a bold choice, make a bold choice and see if it fits.
 Sometimes it works and sometimes it didn't.
 So you play emulated games?
 I play emulated games, yeah, absolutely.
 I spend so much quarters on gauntlets, so I kind of like go back and play.
 I played some gauntlet.
 That thing is designed to make so much money.
 I didn't realize that, but I was like, wow, it's a money truck.
 I love the shot director and the player.
 Where do you see yourself going?
 Do you want to direct?
 Yeah, I think ultimately I love to direct.
 I love the collaborative nature behind the scenes.
 I also like being in front of the camera, so I think directing seems to be a natural
 kind of way of culminating all the experiences I've had.
 You've got sort of all angles of the craft.
 I try it.
 You think you have a blind spot?
 I have so many blind spots.
 This is a continuing education.
 You can always be learning.
 I could be like nine years old and I could still be learning stuff.
 That's what's kind of fun.
 I enjoy knowledge.
 I create new stuff.
 I love exploration and it's constant learning something new every day, which is great.
 That's cool.
 Well, thank you so much.
 I need to go to this museum.
 It looks incredible.
 It has an arcade in it?
 It has a whole arcade.
 I'm so ignorant.
 I don't know anything about it.
 Also, that installation you probably saw at the start of the video, it's like a whole
 wall of gifts.
 I actually did an interview with the curator of that.
 Is that why you went there?
 So you could see gifts?
 Maybe.
 Mossy is awesome.
 Was that a separate trip?
 You were there twice for two separate?
 I did two shoots in one day.
 That's how in the zone I am.
 That's called TV magic.
 I'm not like checking my phone.
 Web video magic, as they say.
 As they always say.
 The one thing cool about Mossy, he cares so much about the whole process of film.
 Now he's pitching anime to Hollywood.
 Anime shows he wants to see adapted because he's just so concerned that they're adapted
 right.
 I don't know.
 Hollywood is definitely going to be the place.
 Hollywood is the place where you want to take, when you want something to remain true to
 its source material, Hollywood.
 In other news, moving along, I don't know if you guys have heard, Yahoo is in the news.
 First off, Yahoo is in the news.
 Yahoo.com.
 Yahoo.com.
 That's the whole bit, actually.
 Let's just take that in.
 Let that soak in for a second.
 I'm excited.
 They hired the CEO's name was Scott Thompson.
 Scott Thompson.
 Is that right?
 Did I just make that up?
 Anyhow, he was there for five months and then he got fired because he lied on his resume
 about having a computer science degree.
 He's actually an accountant.
 He has an accounting degree, but he does not have a computer science degree.
 There's a big kerfluffle, that's a word.
 You think he would check that.
 They fired him.
 We were talking about it and I said, look, everybody lies on their resume, right?
 You've all lied on your resume.
 He said this to an audience of his employees.
 Yeah.
 Have you?
 I mean, I lied.
 There's no way I should be running The Verge.
 I lied about my height.
 I mean, no, I'm not qualified.
 I tell people I'm a doctor.
 There you go.
 It was super easy.
 I'm Dr. Patel.
 I thought you were a doctor.
 No one questions it.
 You're not a doctor?
 That makes sense.
 Paul, don't take those.
 That's ecstasy.
 He's like, this will make you feel a lot better.
 That's the thing.
 I feel like there's an ecstasy joke.
 There's definitely an ecstasy joke on every On The Verge.
 All right, anyhow, but we were like, let's find people and ask them if they've lied.
 Let's see if people will tell us if they've lied on their resume and specifically what
 they've lied about.
 Paul thought that people would not go for it.
 Paul was dead wrong.
 Yeah, very wrong.
 Neelai took to the streets of New York, the hot, sweaty, sexy streets of New York.
 We went different ways.
 We talked to people.
 We harassed people.
 Everyone is like, you know, I don't usually lie, but I'll lie on my resume.
 Here's exactly what I did.
 Take a look at this.
 It's a fascinating look into the minds and hearts of average New Yorkers.
 Have you ever lied on your resume to get a job?
 Yeah.
 Absolutely.
 Absolutely.
 Yeah.
 I wouldn't say I had lied.
 I've maybe like exaggerated responsibilities.
 So on your resume right now, it says you're fluent in Portuguese.
 It might say proficient.
 Do you know one word in Portuguese?
 Seem.
 Does that mean yes?
 Yes.
 Do you know how to say no?
 No.
 Okay.
 Do you know how to say maybe?
 It's almost just like if you don't do it, you're an idiot because you won't get the
 job.
 I lied about having a college degree.
 Oh my God.
 What?
 You know, I think the weirdest resume we ever received at The Verge is literally just the
 word please.
 I don't know what that means, but I know I didn't sleep that night.
 So on your resume, it said you were a manager at Chase.
 Yeah.
 What were you actually at Chase?
 No, I wasn't actually.
 I was at Bank at Chase, but I'm not actually.
 I was a manager.
 I got a checking account.
 We need some like suits.
 We need to see what the 1% thinks of lies.
 The problem is none of them will talk to us.
 Excuse me, sir.
 We're doing some interviews.
 No, none of that.
 Excuse me.
 We're doing an interview about a line on resumes.
 No, thank you.
 Just wondering if you want to be involved.
 Okay, thank you.
 All right.
 Thanks.
 No, thanks.
 No, thanks.
 I appreciate it.
 Excuse me, sir.
 Your boyfriend is right here.
 Hi.
 We'll talk to you next.
 Oh my God.
 It's finally a guy in a suit.
 Oh my God.
 It's finally a guy in a suit.
 Yeah.
 Let me ask you this.
 If you were hiring people and you came across a resume with a Yahoo email address on it,
 would you kind of judge?
 I would be a little offended.
 I would be a little offended because everyone uses Gmail.
 Who has Yahoo or like Hotmail?
 I had a Hotmail account before my Gmail and everyone was like, that's only for like child
 predators.
 What's your main personal email?
 I have a Hotmail account.
 When they don't have a Gmail email address, actually I judge them.
 You judge people when they don't have Gmail?
 Yeah.
 I never use Yahoo.
 I told somebody my email address is at AOL and the person at my job just kind of looked
 at me like, do you still have AOL?
 Like, come on, you got to get up on the Gmail now.
 I have Gmail.
 I'm pretty happy with that.
 I'm a Gmail guy.
 What are the three things you would immediately do if you were to see a Yahoo?
 Oh God.
 I would cry.
 I would pray.
 Pray.
 Cry, pray.
 Cry, pray, and then I would call a big meeting to restructure the fuck out of it.
 My first move would be to quit.
 Second move would be to sell my shares because then you wouldn't be obstructed by that.
 Third move would be to move.
 Get out.
 Ultimately, we're all liars.
 We all stretch the boundaries of reality to construct a box that makes us feel more comfortable.
 But as I looked inward today, a universal truth revealed itself to me.
 No one gives a shit about Yahoo.
 That was enlightening.
 It seems like you got enlightened there.
 It was very, very strange.
 Yeah.
 I liked your last line.
 No one gives a shit about Yahoo.
 It is true.
 That was really touching.
 Well, the whole problem is that Yahoo doesn't give a shit about Yahoo and that's how this
 happened.
 It does seem like if they just took a little more care with the brand, they might not have
 hired the guy who lied about his resume.
 They're like, Scott, what?
 What, Thompson?
 It's fine.
 Just hire him.
 Does he have a computer science degree?
 Does he have a computer?
 Oh, that's great.
 Does he have a computer?
 All right.
 Ultimately, aren't we all computer scientists though?
 On our resumes.
 We have one more news item to talk about, which is not really a technology news item.
 By the way, I feel like I can't top that.
 I almost can this.
 Did you see the Social Security office or agency or whatever they call themselves these
 days?
 They released administration.
 That's what it is.
 The Ministry of Social Security.
 The Ministry of Social Security.
 They released the most popular baby names.
 Josh was livid in the office.
 Yeah.
 I was screaming.
 Yeah.
 The names are like the hot names are celebrity names.
 People are naming their... They're just like, oh, it's a kid.
 I'll name it after Adele or Jaden.
 Jaden is a popular name.
 The rising star this year was Mason based on the child from the Kardashian show.
 What is it called, Neelay?
 I have no idea.
 Really?
 You know, DVR, the show you're always talking about?
 No.
 I mean, Kim is a goddess and an angel, but I wouldn't watch her show.
 Anyhow, the Kardashian child.
 You were the one who knew that Mason was their child.
 I know.
 Of course, I follow Mason's story.
 Anyhow, so at The Verge, we like to talk about the show.
 We like to say that technology culture is becoming pop culture.
 We got to thinking, as we were wont to do in the offices.
 We thought if celebrity names are kind of moving into the mainstream, then surely some
 stuff from technology would move into the mainstream of baby names.
 It's inevitable.
 It's inevitable.
 Scientific fact, basically.
 We wanted to gaze into the future and maybe think of some names that we might see in the
 upcoming years that are...
 I think we came up with some very accurate results.
 I think these are real names that we're probably going to see because of how technology is
 just becoming a part of our lives.
 It's everywhere.
 It's everywhere.
 Let's take a look at a few of these possible, these future babies, as I like to call them.
 Oh, God.
 Why did I agree to this?
 Here's our first baby.
 Yeah, yes.
 Beautiful baby.
 Who wouldn't want to have this very uncomfortable childbirth with the glasses on, of course.
 What could this child's name be in the future?
 I'm thinking probably something like, I don't know, Zyborg Topolsky.
 That's good.
 Yeah, that looks good.
 God, why?
 Let's take another look at an adorable child.
 Shall we?
 Yes.
 I know what you're thinking.
 What's this baby's name?
 That's right.
 It's Optimus Epic Miller.
 For GLT.
 Touch.
 Touch.
 Touch.
 For GLT, touch.
 Yeah.
 Finally, thankfully.
 Who are these?
 These twins run in my family.
 Who are these adorable, adorable- You want a name that's a little ethnic?
 Are those doctors?
 Are they?
 Are those computer scientists?
 Yeah.
 These adorable children are, of course, Siri Patel and her twin brother, ITV Patel, launching
 this fall.
 I can guarantee that ITV Patel will be released within two years.
 Your fiance is very happy about that.
 She's shaking her head.
 Those are future baby names.
 Yeah.
 Yes, real future baby names.
 Okay, you can turn the tone off now.
 We were doing the research.
 There's a couple Siri Patels out there in the world.
 I would like to apologize for that.
 Do not derail our jokes.
 Siri Patel, real name, real people.
 Anyhow, that was horrific on many levels.
 We have an amazing interview that I want to show you guys right now.
 We flew out to Los Angeles to talk to Damon Lindelof.
 As I mentioned, he co-wrote Prometheus, which is an alien prequel, maybe.
 You'll find out in a second.
 He's one of the guys behind Lost, which I know was a show that everybody had a good
 feeling about when it ended.
 They liked the ending.
 They felt satisfied that it had answered all of their questions.
 They walked away thinking, I'm glad I spent years and years of my life.
 I know.
 That's how I felt.
 Literally years and years watching and waiting for the show to end.
 Anyhow, we had this amazing conversation with Damon Lindelof.
 Take a look.
 It's very enlightening.
 Hey, we're here at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles.
 I flew out from New York to sit down with Damon Lindelof, one of the men behind Lost,
 the co-streamwriter of Prometheus, and basically just an insane genius.
 Let's go have a chat.
 You're a busy man.
 You've got a pretty major project that's about to be revealed to the world.
 Which one are you referring to?
 I was talking about Prometheus.
 Oh, yeah.
 Is there something else that I should know about?
 You're a very busy guy.
 You're doing more than one thing.
 There's this Disney movie, 1952, that we just announced Brad Bird is going to direct, but
 we're not talking about what it is.
 Can you tell me a little bit about what it is?
 No.
 Can you just give me an idea of the plot?
 It's about characters who want something, and there's other characters trying to stop
 them.
 Can you tell me who you're starring in this film?
 No, we don't have any... I would tell you, but there's no actors.
 It's animated.
 No, I'm not complimenting.
 It's live action.
 Can you tell me how it ends?
 Happily.
 Is that true?
 There's a happy ending?
 Yes.
 It's a Disney movie.
 Well, I mean, anything's possible.
 In this day and age, it's 2012.
 Nothing is guaranteed.
 Even the movie 2012 has a happy ending.
 I've never seen it.
 It's the end of the... I'm sorry to hear that.
 When you think about a movie that's essentially about the end of the world, and it's John Cusack
 versus the end of the world, what's the ending of that movie look like?
 How does one character beat the end of the world?
 Can I riff on what I think happens?
 This is much more interesting probably than the actual movie.
 Maybe.
 I should give you a hint.
 I think that John Cusack, along with a small band of survivors, find one spot on the planet
 that's where we're going to start over and rebuild humanity the way it should have been
 built the first time around.
 Right.
 Without fossil fuels.
 Yes, more or less.
 I got the idea.
 I sort of amend small band of survivors to four ginormous arc loads of survivors who
 basically represent the lottery winners slash wealthy oligarchs of all societies.
 Doesn't sound like a happy ending.
 These arcs do get to the place that you refer to.
 It's all rich bastards.
 Most of them are rich bastards.
 Is John Cusack one of them?
 Is he a stock broker?
 He's not a rich bastard.
 If memory serves, his ex-wife has married a rich bastard.
 Or he falls in with a Russian rich bastard.
 This is I'm sure why people have tuned in.
 They've tuned out now, so we can say whatever.
 You can't talk about 1952, which has a happy ending and stars no one.
 Sounds good.
 You can't talk about Prometheus, which is a small film that you've done, an independent
 film you've done with Ridley Scott.
 Sure.
 You are the co-screenwriter?
 Yeah.
 A gentleman by the name of John Spates wrote the first draft of the screenplay for several
 first drafts.
 He worked on the movie for about a year, and then I came in after him.
 We didn't ever work simultaneously.
 You kind of took what he had and brought it to another place.
 The movie, a lot of the ideas are actually the seeds are from Ridley directly.
 Absolutely.
 Because aside from its relationship to the original Alien, which is a question, iterations
 of that question are the things that I've been asked about the most.
 Just wait.
 I'm looking forward to it.
 At the end of the day, when you're working with Ridley Scott, it's not about me coming
 in and saying, hey, Ridley, I've got this great idea.
 Do you want to direct it?
 It's about him saying, I want to direct a movie in this universe.
 Here's what I want it to be about.
 Here are the ideas that excite me.
 Here are the thematics that I'm interested in.
 Here are the character traits that I want to demonstrate.
 Not to reduce the process of screenwriting, but I feel like in film, which is much different
 than what I did in TV, it is a little bit like Mad Libs, where my job is essentially
 Ridley saying adjective, noun, euphemism.
 That's how the movie was made.
 Really interesting.
 That explains it.
 I'm sure he'll be excited to hear that you described the movie making process as Mad
 Libs.
 I do feel like I have great pride in my own lack of authorship in the movie.
 I feel like if the movie is a huge success, it's all because of Ridley Scott.
 If the movie is not a success, it's because I wasn't able to execute his vision successfully.
 That's the feeling that I have.
 Let's talk about the connection between Aliens or Alien or that universe.
 You're saying this is a different movie, but it's not a sequel.
 It's a prequel, if anything.
 You're not even calling it that.
 I take exception to the fact that it's called a prequel.
 I know a lot of this sounds a lot like that you have to get on slightly defensive terrain.
 For me, just as a fanboy, when I hear the word prequel, that doesn't get me excited.
 The reason that it doesn't get me excited isn't because I have a negative association
 with prequels.
 We have to think, let's contextualize that word.
 The first time that I heard that word in any sort of public or social setting was in reference
 to the fact that George was going to do the first three Star Wars movies.
 I was enormously excited about that.
 That aside, once you actually see what a prequel is, a prequel is by definition a march towards
 the inevitable.
 While we know that the guy is going to get the girl or there's going to be a happy ending,
 there are certain story beats that you hit, the idea of saying, I'm now just going to
 watch this young boy turn into Darth Vader.
 You're leading me into the story that I already know.
 There are certain things that I know can't happen, like nothing's going to happen to
 Obi-Wan because it's a prequel.
 I felt it was really important that Prometheus was not positioned as a prologue to Alien.
 In fact, if Prometheus were successful and there was a sequel to it, the sequel to Prometheus
 would not be Alien.
 I also felt like Alien is as close to a perfect movie as it gets.
 I was very reluctant to engage in a conversation that would somehow diminish Alien.
 If you saw, if for some reason Prometheus didn't succeed creatively, that when you
 went and watched Alien again, you'd be like, this movie is now diminished.
 You'd be used to the taste would be soured in some way.
 Yeah, why bet that?
 All that by way of saying that if you... My hope is that if you see Prometheus and you
 watch Alien again, there will be certain things that were mysteries before about Alien that
 you have more clarity on, but the mysteries that made Alien great are still mysteries.
 I've had a certain degree of success and failure in mystery resolution.
 I feel some mysteries are just much more engaging than their resolution and I don't want to
 answer those.
 It's like, ooh, where is Amelia Earhart?
 She's rotting somewhere in the bottom of the ocean.
 You're saying that's... Probably, unless she was abducted by aliens or she's living
 somewhere in France and has discovered the fountain of youth.
 The reality is the answer to these mysteries are usually less compelling than whatever
 our imagination transposes onto them.
 I do think that we succeeded in, if there's a sequel to Prometheus, it's not about the
 things that Alien is about, which is eggs and face huggers and chest bursters and xenomorphs.
 That not only Alien, but then aliens, they need to go and live off on that tangent.
 Prometheus is servicing that tangent.
 It's saying, here's an explanation.
 You'll understand the context of maybe where some of those things came from, but it's much
 more interested in going off in its own direction.
 Were there a sequel to Prometheus, it probably wouldn't need to trade in any of those ideas.
 Let's just get nerdy for a second.
 I'm going to get real specific.
 As opposed to what I've been for the last 20 minutes.
 You're speaking very broadly about you're setting the stage for this, but it does seem
 to be taking place in or on or around the beginning of Alien, or Alien full stop, which
 is this large alien craft they stumble upon.
 That seems to be in Prometheus.
 Let me just say, there was a two minute trailer out there that people were like, I can't wait
 to see this movie.
 Then there was a three minute international trailer.
 That one extra minute of material is the line that you cross where people start to say,
 you told me too much.
 I agree.
 I think the three minute trailer gave away a lot of stuff.
 My desire to not tell you what is the relationship between my hope is, and again, this is frustrating
 to some, but it's the space in which I live, which is the reason to me that I loved Inception
 was after Inception was over, there was stuff for me to fight about and discuss with my
 friends as to what it meant, what happened, what was a dream, what wasn't a dream, all
 those things that the movie left in some sort of ambiguous space.
 I know ambiguity is a very scary word, especially when you apply it to the context of the television
 that I've done.
 However, I will continue to embrace ambiguity because I find it really interesting, and
 I have a tremendous amount of faith in the intelligence of the audience.
 Most of them are much smarter than I am, and I will have an intention, but the idea of
 not spelling it out entirely, I will tell you right now that this movie, even when you
 go and see it, there is space to debate what the relationship between this movie and Alien
 is.
 We are not connecting the dots for you.
 We are giving you the requisite information to have an impassioned discussion about it.
 You will know a hell of a lot more than you did before, but it's not like this movie ends
 with a derelict spacecraft full of eggs crash landing on LV-426, which is the derelict spacecraft
 that the Nostromo happens upon at the beginning of Alien.
 That's inevitability, and it's not interesting.
 I totally get it.
 I guess my question was, they're in the same universe, because there's been a debate with
 people that this is in a completely separate universe.
 They share the universe.
 Absolutely.
 Very early on, we started saying, this is the question that is not going to go away.
 Is it a prequel?
 What is it?
 Is there a way that we can start generating content other than just the trailer?
 That was the birth of what evolved into this Peter Weyland TED Talk.
 It's hard to watch that in any context and then make the argument that these don't occupy
 the same timeline.
 Getting back to the ambiguity point, I think the danger there and what's frustrating for
 people and I think that with Lost, I think a lot of people feel this way is that ambiguity
 can sometimes come off as not like, hey, here's something for discussion, but you didn't know.
 I'm a person who watched Lost all the way through and thought the ending was extremely
 disappointing.
 Disappointing because it felt like there was a promise of something much more, and not
 profound, maybe not more moving, certainly not more moving in my opinion, but something
 smarter.
 It felt like it ended in this way that was like, well, so what was the point?
 Does that now haunt you, that kind of sense of people needing the answer and not getting
 it and you having to answer for it?
 I think haunt implies it's something that creates a tremendous amount of stress and
 sadness and fear for me as much as it is something that I accept as a part of the legacy of that
 show.
 As obnoxious and entitled as The Sounds, I also have no regrets about it.
 If there was one regret that I had, there were times over the course of the show where
 in interviews I said, the answers are coming, but I challenge you to look at any interview
 that I gave post the middle of season three, which was the turning point, when they said,
 we can now give you an end date to the show.
 Up until then, there was a degree of improvisation that had to occur because we didn't know how
 many of these things we were going to do or how long we were going to be around to be
 doing them.
 Once we said, there's going to be 48 episodes left, at that point a firm plan had to come
 into motion.
 From that point on, I think that I started saying publicly, if you are watching the show
 for the answers to your mysteries, you are not going to like the ending.
 Many shows have come and gone that are very focused on their mysteries and their mythologies
 and their ambiguity.
 There is no worse scene in the history of genre than the architect explaining to Neo
 everything that happened in The Matrix.
 I wasn't going to touch that with a 10-foot pole.
 That is a particularly awful instance of over-explanation of feeling like you owe it to the audience.
 We have the architect, and then we have Lost.
 The Lost is not enough, and the architect is too much.
 There in between is just right, and I'm going to always be closer to Lost than I am to the
 architect because that is just not interesting to me.
 I've just been sitting here listening to you talk about it, and I realized I wasn't disappointed
 with Lost not giving me answers at the end.
 I was actually disappointed with the answer it gave, which it felt like the answer was
 all of the things that just happened didn't really mean anything.
 They kind of didn't happen.
 That was my takeaway from it.
 What do you mean they didn't happen?
 It was like all of the things that happened, all of these things that were set up as you've
 got to stop the man in black because X, Y, and Z.
 It didn't matter because it wasn't real.
 Yes, it was.
 Well, but not really.
 It was like a shared fantasy.
 I mean, it didn't seem like there was like...
 No.
 So, the things that were going on on the island were happening in the actual world?
 Yes.
 So, they were happening in our timeline?
 Correct.
 I mean, yes.
 I mean, there's no oceanic airlines in our timeline.
 No, no, no.
 I mean, but in the real world, not in this kind of like moment before death fantasy world
 where everybody's trying to find each other so they can go to heaven.
 No, correct.
 So, at the end of the show, the last frame of the show, Matthew Fox closes his eyes and
 dies.
 That happened.
 In our context of happening, that happened.
 That's all real.
 And from the moment that he closed his eye, all that other stuff that we did in the sixth
 season of the show, the flash sideways where nobody knows each other and the plane never
 crashed, that is whatever your interpretation is.
 I'm not going to talk about what our intention is, but that's what you would define as not
 having happened or happening.
 But everything that we ever showed you, anything that takes place on the island and lost happened.
 You know, absolutely 100%.
 The plane crashed.
 Those people survived.
 Everything that you saw throughout those six seasons, like somehow-
 The whole struggle between good and bad, that's like a really meaningful thing that actually
 occurred.
 Yes.
 That would have threatened the universe had it not been-
 The Dharam Initiative is real.
 The island is real.
 All those Hurley right now, right now at this moment in time, Hurley and Ben, and with some
 help from Walt, are actually running things on the island, maintaining it.
 I do feel like one of the things that we always wanted to do and were very passionate about
 doing was exploring the idea of purgatory, both figuratively and literally.
 And this was so obvious to the audience that within three or four episodes of the first
 season of the show, they were like, it's purgatory, right?
 They're all dead.
 And we kept saying, we swear to God, they are not all dead.
 This is really happening.
 But the audience is telling us that they really want some sort of clinical evaluation of an
 afterlife and purgatory is about judgment.
 And this show has never really offered up what I would call Christian Judeo judgment
 in terms of there's a deity.
 It's always about self-judgment.
 So the idea of like, does Jack think that he's worthy?
 Or can Sawyer forgive himself for his sins?
 Or did Kate kill her stepfather justifiably?
 So I always felt like if the characters can forgive themselves, then they can, then the
 show's over.
 The show's called Lost.
 It's not because they're on an island.
 It's because they're lost.
 Anytime you say to people, what's Lost about?
 It starts with like, well, there's this plane crash.
 And therefore, they don't say like, well, centuries and centuries ago, in fact, millennia
 ago.
 If they say that, you go like, boop, I'm out.
 So I always just felt like the show, the ending that we were shooting for was going to be
 one that dealt with sort of the emotional reality of the characters and gave some fundamental
 explanation for why, what did these people get out of this plane crash?
 And the answer, as corny as it sounds, was the one that appealed to me the most, which
 is each other.
 That's what they got.
 If they hadn't met each other and spent all that time on the island, then they would never
 have been able to forgive themselves for their past sins and break through to some sort of
 level of self-awakening and forgiveness.
 Is it more satisfying to you in some ways to work on something like Prometheus, where
 you have, you're like, look, I've got two hours to deal with this thing.
 There is not going to be any filler.
 I've got to tell the story succinctly and answer questions in a relatively short amount
 of time.
 Yeah, I mean, it is very satisfying to do a movie that has a beginning, middle, and
 end, and you know exactly what you're getting into when you start the job.
 Television, you don't know what you're getting into.
 You don't know how many years it's going to be on for.
 You don't.
 It's hubris to say, I have a plan for the entire second season of the show, because
 no one's even watching it yet.
 They have to like it for you to get to that point.
 So they're, you know, and I talk about this often, so I won't belabor the point, but the
 two things that sort of came up all the time during Lost were question number one, are
 you making it up as you go along?
 And the answer to that question is no.
 Like that's what people want you to say.
 No, we absolutely have a firm plan, and there's a binder over there, and that's where our
 plan is, and we've got it, and you're in good hands.
 Mommy and daddy know where we're going.
 Don't worry about it.
 You have a map.
 That's question number one.
 Question number two, how much input does the audience have?
 And the answer to that question is a lot.
 We listen to you guys all the time.
 We want to know what you like and what you don't like, and we will adjust accordingly.
 The truth is-
 Are those the real answers?
 They are not the real answers.
 The real answers I've given, as politic as they may sound, the real answers are there
 is a plan, and when the plan doesn't work, we change the plan.
 And the other answer is yes, we really listen to what you have to say, but 98% of the time
 we agree with you before you've said it.
 I did learn lessons from Lost that I feel rolled into Prometheus, and what's interesting
 about the original Alien is you can watch that movie and be like, I'm curious as to
 what's the story with that space jockey and the Sterilek ship, but that isn't important.
 The movie isn't telling you that that's important.
 The movie is telling you that the thing that just jumped out of the egg on that ship and
 is now stuck to John Hurt's face, that's important.
 That's what you're supposed to worry about now, and then the sequel and so on and so
 forth.
 But the idea that Prometheus now enters into a more, and maybe this is why Ridley and those
 guys sought me out in the first place, into the movie is asking very specific questions.
 The characters are saying, we want answers to these questions.
 Some of the answers they get.
 Some of the answers they extrapolate, but then something happens that leads the resolution
 of the questions is secondary to their own survival.
 I think all of this stuff is already endemic.
 People don't want to see Prometheus like a bunch of people sitting around a table pondering
 the meaning of life.
 They want to see what happens when you open Pandora's box.
 That's fundamental sci-fi storytelling.
 Is Prometheus an action movie?
 Before you answer, I want to set this up a little bit.
 It seems like modern day science fiction cannot exist without it having an action component.
 If you look at a movie like 2001, I would not classify it's not an action movie.
 Correct.
 It's something else.
 Yes.
 Is Prometheus an action movie or is it something else?
 I couldn't describe it as an action movie any more than I would describe Inception as
 an action movie.
 That being said, once that fuse gets lit, there is a fair amount of scope and sizzle
 to it.
 There's much more of an action fuse on Prometheus than I think Alien.
 I would say Aliens is an action movie.
 Prometheus is much more... It feels a lot more like Alien than Aliens to me in terms
 of its storytelling.
 I think one of the things that I've been hearing, both again in the recurring theme
 of this interview, you take the good with the bad is.
 The good side, it's like this feels a lot like the original Alien.
 There's motifs in the original Alien.
 There's an android you're not entirely sure you trust.
 There's people in cryo sleep.
 There's a female lead.
 There's clearly something happening to these people that is reminiscent of those ideas.
 There's creeping around through dark corridors with flashlights.
 People go, this feels a lot like Alien.
 Then there's other people who are saying, this feels a lot like Alien.
 I would rather have people say to me for the rest of my career, you screwed up a Ridley
 Scott movie, than not say that to me because I'm like, hey, I got to be involved in a Ridley
 Scott movie.
 I got to screw up a Ridley Scott movie.
 Not only did I screw up a Ridley Scott movie, I screwed up the first Ridley Scott sci-fi
 movie in 30 years.
 If that's not going to go on your headstone, then what should?
 I think that's a good place to end it, Damon.
 Thanks so much.
 My pleasure.
 Really awesome.
 Thanks.
 Yeah.
 I know what you're thinking right now.
 You're thinking, that was good, but I'd like to see a version of that interview that's
 like three times as long.
 All I have some good news for you.
 That interview is like three times as long as what we have here.
 We had to cut it down.
 Now we're going to show you the rest of it.
 No, I'm kidding.
 It will be available when the new show goes up.
 We're going to do the full length interview you guys can watch.
 It's pretty fascinating.
 I think it's a really fascinating dude to listen to and to talk to.
 We're glad that we got a chance to do it.
 Speaking of... That's a segue, by the way.
 Speaking of fascinating, interesting dudes, I want to bring out our next guest.
 He's a really smart, very creative guy.
 Frankly, I'm a little bit in love with him.
 Please welcome Marco Arment.
 That works, right?
 Thank you.
 Thank you.
 Yes.
 This is nice.
 We're stepping up the nerdiness.
 We're going... From that?
 Yeah, we're getting increasingly nerdy.
 At the end of the show, we're just going to be sitting here coding.
 Is that cool?
 Well, as long as we put two big top windows on the screen, and one red, one green.
 Nah, two inside baseball?
 All right.
 Is that a coding thing?
 I'm confused.
 To some people.
 I'm totally confused right now.
 Marco, we're just going to pretend that never happened.
 I didn't get confused by that joke.
 We're just moving right along here.
 Marco, you're an interesting man.
 You are one of the people who created Tumblr, which as I said, we've all used, many, many
 times, multiple times a day.
 Tell your bosses I'm sorry.
 And Instapaper, which now everybody, it probably says Instagram to you every time they talk
 about it, right?
 They're like, you created Instagram.
 That's awesome.
 How does it feel to have a billion dollars?
 Yeah.
 Can you buy me something?
 I actually, I heard a few of those.
 That was an interesting day.
 So I'm sure you did.
 Congrats.
 So tell me, I want to talk about Tumblr a little bit.
 I mean, Tumblr has become a phenomenon.
 I mean, everybody uses it.
 Every new site I see is just a Tumblr site.
 And obviously, it's been great for the porn industry.
 No, I'm sorry.
 It hasn't been.
 But for porn users.
 But when did that start?
 How did that start?
 What was your role?
 Just can you give me a little bit of background?
 Sure.
 And spice it up.
 Sexy.
 Sexy stuff.
 As sexy as two guys writing code in an office for a couple years.
 That's very sexy.
 I don't know why I'm so focused on sex right now.
 I did say I was a little bit in love with you.
 It is late at night.
 That's true.
 So yeah, so where did that start?
 It started as me and David Karp.
 David had a consulting company, just making websites for people.
 And one day, we were between clients for about two weeks.
 And he said, hey, I've had this idea.
 I want to work on it.
 Let's see what we can get done in the next two weeks before we got to do this next project.
 And that was Tumblr.
 And that was late 2006.
 And we built the prototype.
 And it took off.
 We kept iterating on it as we were doing client work until eventually the client work had
 to be dropped because we had to do this thing full time.
 You had Tumblr work.
 Yeah.
 So what was the idea?
 It was like, I mean, it's like this weird halfway place between WordPress and Twitter.
 It's this kind of like, was the idea like blogging is just too complicated?
 That was basically it.
 It was that a lot of us, especially if you were a nerd playing with the internet in 2006,
 chances are you had started and abandoned a blog.
 I have several.
 Right.
 A lot of people did.
 Yeah.
 And the problem is that at the time, what was really the traditional WordPress movable
 type style format is more like a magazine column where it's a lot of work.
 You're writing these longer pieces, lots of paragraphs, and throwing in images and stuff
 every day or once a week or at least you got to do this.
 As you know, it takes a lot of time.
 Yes.
 Very time consuming.
 Right.
 And if you're doing it as just like a little side hobby and you only get like one or two
 comments in a week and one of them is spam and the other one is telling you that you're
 stupid, it's kind of hard to keep the motivation going to keep something like that up.
 So Tumblr was created to lower the friction, to make publishing online easy and to lower
 the expectation that you had to produce this giant magazine column every day because in
 reality most people just wouldn't and they would abandon it.
 And with Tumblr, that wasn't really an issue because what the platform cultivated and expected
 was much more sustainable because it was so much easier.
 Right.
 Did you think that, I mean I know maybe, I don't know the answer to this, but did you
 think it would become this kind of default almost?
 I mean that's what it's become really.
 Now when people start something, I mean it feels like they've moved away from like, oh
 I'm going to start a WordPress blog too, I'm just going to start a Tumblr.
 Like I have seven Tumblrs and they're all like, one day I was like, I'm going to do
 a Tumblr just of pictures of bags I like.
 Why not?
 It's cool, right?
 And I just started it.
 I did one, I was going to film trailer reviews.
 I was just going to do film trailer reviews.
 That's good.
 I did like six and now it's abandoned.
 But Tumblr makes it so easy.
 Did you expect it would be this default or were you like, well there's just be an easier
 way to do a blog?
 I knew that, you know, once we had the product at a usable stage pretty early on, I knew
 that people who used it were going to love it.
 But I think what surprised me is how much it took over outside of people who used to
 be the ones blogging.
 People who were blogging are mostly nerds.
 Now it's a lot more people.
 It's like normals, it's everybody.
 Nobody here probably.
 No, certainly not.
 Maybe somebody who wandered in by accident.
 They have a Tumblr though, we can agree.
 Or seven of them.
 Yes, that's right.
 And one is about bags.
 So you stopped working at Tumblr when?
 2010, end of 2010.
 So pretty recently.
 Yeah.
 And so talk to me about Instapaper.
 This was your next big project.
 Why did you, where did Instapaper come from?
 Was it, were you sitting there one day?
 I mean, you were like bookmarking something, you were like, there's got to be a better
 way to do this.
 Basically yeah.
 I mean, what happened was in late 2007, I got an iPhone and I was still working at Tumblr
 and I was commuting every day on the train.
 Not the subway, you know, the suburb train.
 Nobody here knows about it.
 An actual train.
 An actual train.
 The LIRR or the?
 No, the Metro North.
 Metro North.
 Yeah, which leads up to what most people consider farmland upstate, even though it's like 10
 miles that way.
 You live on a farm.
 Pretty much no.
 But everyone thinks I do.
 We'll keep that up.
 Yeah.
 So, you know, I had this long train commute and I would be browsing the web at work like
 I wasn't supposed to be doing, but when you're making a platform about browsing the web,
 it's really hard not to while you're testing it.
 So I was browsing the web at work and I would find links to read and I wouldn't have time
 to read them because I was supposed to be working.
 So I would want to save them and read them sometime.
 The same time I was on the train and I had this new iPhone that had this terrible edge
 connection and was offline half the time for the ride.
 And I wanted to read things on the train, but by the time I got there, the connection
 was too slow to browse much, to browse around.
 And I would have already gone through RSS feeds, dig, which at the time still mattered.
 I would have gone through all these things.
 And so it was like I was burning through my queue when I couldn't read it and when I could
 read it, there was nothing there.
 So I made Instapaper to bridge that gap, to solve that problem, to be just a temporary
 place, just the one click bookmark, just save it.
 I don't want to tag it.
 I don't want to categorize it and reference this forever in a giant library of things
 I've ever read.
 It was just a temporary, I haven't read this, but I want to.
 Save it until I have read it and then get rid of it.
 Do you feel it's the highest form of flattery that Apple has completely ripped you off?
 Oh yeah.
 I mean, is that weird for you?
 I'd be really upset if I read it.
 Because you're just a guy.
 Yeah.
 Just a guy living on a farm.
 Right.
 And here comes big bad Apple and they're just like, oh hey, we're going to make this other
 thing that does exactly what Instapaper does that's going to be default in all of our browsers.
 Well it helped a lot that they really did kind of a half baked job of it.
 Really?
 That's interesting.
 Do you think they did a half baked job?
 I mean the first version had pretty much, the first version was basically a bookmark
 folder.
 Right.
 And so now, and they're adding offline support in Mountain Lion, although I'm not supposed
 to know that, but I'm not officially a Mac developer so I'm allowed to tell you that.
 You're not a Mac developer.
 Right.
 Right.
 I actually haven't seen Mountain Lion.
 You probably have seen more of it than I have.
 I don't know anything about it.
 Of course you don't.
 But you're telling me that they're adding offline.
 Yeah, somebody on Twitter told me they were adding offline.
 I assume they're right.
 That's good.
 Well people on the internet are always right.
 Sure, sure.
 I'm sure of course they do.
 Like Wikipedia, always right.
 Uh huh.
 Always right.
 Always, yeah.
 Oh, it seems crazy to me.
 Has it hurt?
 Has it hurt business?
 It's hard to tell.
 My business is fine.
 That feature was released a year ago, the main reading list feature, and then we'll
 see this summer when they release the offline version of it.
 It's hard to tell.
 I mean the reality is that's only useful if you use Safari everywhere.
 Right.
 And only about a third of my customers do.
 Well you're using mobile, everybody's using mobile Safari.
 Right.
 But I think that the desktop syncing part is very important.
 I mean there are a lot of people who both get and save the links on their iOS devices.
 Right.
 But there's also a lot who are doing the way I originally made it, which was you save it
 on a computer and then you go read on your devices later.
 Right.
 So on the topic of Instapaper, there's been a lot of controversy about your, I don't know
 if I want to call it allegiance to iOS, but you have not, you won't make an Android application.
 Right.
 I'm going to say it bluntly.
 And you even had this challenge, which was if somebody makes, I want to make sure I get
 this right.
 That was so misunderstood.
 If somebody makes a good Android Instapaper client, you'll call it Instapaper for Android
 and you'll split the profits.
 Close.
 It was if that one developer that I was linking to made it, it wasn't intended to be an open
 challenge because I don't...
 It seemed like an open challenge because I've been working on an Instapaper app.
 Of course.
 In the design world, spec work is considered a very bad word, which is the idea...
 I'm sorry, designers, if I'm getting this wrong.
 The idea is you put out a call, hey, everyone do something, work for free, and if we like
 your thing, we'll pick it and we'll pay you.
 So you have a whole week of people working for free and most of them just get nothing
 out of it.
 I didn't want to do that.
 That's why I didn't intend for it to be like a, hey, everyone try and just whoever gets
 there first wins it, because I don't want people to waste all their time.
 So this guy didn't do it, I guess.
 Yeah, it didn't happen.
 What about anybody else?
 Have you looked?
 Eh.
 Why don't you just make something for Android?
 It is in the market in a big way, right?
 That's agreed.
 I totally agree.
 There's like literally half of smartphones in this camp.
 So are BlackBerrys.
 Yeah.
 So, you know, I mean...
 Come on, let's not be...
 Don't give me that straw man argument.
 Of course.
 It's a real platform.
 It is a real platform and it's big, no question.
 But the thing is, you know, if you are in the business of trying to get as many users
 as possible, something like Instagram, that actually makes sense to spread to Android,
 get as many users as you can.
 Usually it's for free, some kind of free service.
 That makes sense.
 Tumblr has to have an Android app.
 Totally makes sense.
 But when you're in the business of selling the app, the majority of the newspaper's revenue
 comes from the app sales.
 So I'm selling a $5 app.
 On iOS, that's pretty expensive.
 On Android, that's probably impossible.
 I buy Android apps all the time.
 And everyone's just like you.
 Well, I mean, there are people buying Android apps.
 Right.
 I mean, there are more and more developers making apps for Android.
 I'm sure somewhere.
 No, I mean, there are.
 No, there definitely are.
 I'm telling you.
 I know people with Android phones that buy apps.
 Of course.
 Okay, I do.
 Yeah, you know a person.
 But you think that all the other people who are not...
 There's probably one guy.
 Who don't write for The Verge are like, no way, I don't need apps.
 Well, it's not all of them.
 It's a question of really just economics and how to allocate limited resources, which is...
 The most limited resource that I have right now is my time.
 Everyone's most limited resource.
 I only have this one awesome version of the app that I'm really focused on.
 If I were to take time off and either do an Android app myself or pay someone else a whole
 bunch of money to do it, that would significantly detract from my ability to make the iOS app
 great.
 But in the face of ever increasing competition, I can't afford to let up.
 I have to keep making the iOS app awesome.
 I mean, you're competing with Apple, so you can't really screw around.
 I'm competing with everyone who doesn't charge any money.
 Right.
 And Pocket.
 Yeah, and Readability, Evernote clearly, Spool, Scribd's Balloon thing.
 And which one do you like the best out of all of your competitions?
 Honestly, I've seen very few of them.
 You might wanna check them out.
 Yeah.
 I tell you something.
 I mean, in all seriousness.
 I've talked to people in our industry.
 There are other people that are like, yeah, I don't really check out the competition.
 John Rubenstein from Palm famously was like, yeah, I haven't really seen an iPhone.
 Well, that went well.
 We know how that ended.
 So my suggestion...
 This is my from one man to another as a friend.
 I've seen the big ones.
 Okay.
 There's a whole bunch of little ones.
 I've seen the big ones.
 And are you gonna add...
 Do you think you're gonna add features or try to compete on any of the stuff?
 Like Pocket does a bunch of stuff that Intipaper doesn't.
 I mean, it does some things, not a bunch.
 It does more things than it does.
 No, I highly value originality.
 And we have to distinguish...
 There was that awesome HP Envy, whatever that came out.
 We have to distinguish between...
 Did you say HP Envy?
 Whatever the...
 You mean the computer that looks exactly like a MacBook?
 Yeah, that thing.
 Yeah, that's the HP Envy.
 The HP MacBook Air?
 Yeah.
 We have to distinguish with originality.
 The problem of simultaneous invention versus true originality.
 Now I want to be the original.
 In many ways of what Intipaper does, it is the original.
 And I like Apple products, because many of them are very original.
 Not all, of course, but many.
 And I value that a lot.
 I get a lot of satisfaction out of that.
 And so I don't want to copy other people's products or features if it's not something
 obvious.
 But I think if it is something obvious, like, okay, I have a read later app, and if you
 tap on a link, should it just open?
 Or should it offer you an option to read that link later?
 Once you're building a read later app, that's a pretty obvious feature.
 And so if someone else did that first, and then I copied it later, I wouldn't really
 feel bad about that.
 So when I look at other competitors' features, and if a competitor does a feature before
 me, and I'm getting a lot of pressure to add it, I try to be original as much as possible
 in the sense that I try to not just copy it directly.
 I try to only copy things that I would have come upon anyway that were obvious.
 You're walking a fine line there.
 Or if I can't do that, if it's something that someone else just made a really good point
 and did this awesome feature that I never would have thought of, and I'm like, I really
 have to implement that to stay competitive, I'll try to do it differently.
 I'll try to do it in a substantially different way.
 If somebody has a grid, you'll make a wheel.
 I have the grid first.
 Okay.
 So you're owning the grid is what you're saying.
 Yeah.
 I'll flip or beat everybody.
 I try to be original.
 So even if I have to copy someone else's feature, I'll try to do it my own way.
 And so I respect other people who do that same thing.
 So I see in the PC laptop space or the Android phone space versus Apple and other people,
 I like when Android and when crazy PC manufacturers come up with their own solutions to problems.
 I respect that.
 Even if I don't like their solution as much, I have more respect for that.
 Oh my god.
 I want to have another separate conversation just about what you don't like about Android.
 Because I'm sure there's some fascinating things.
 Honestly, I haven't used it that much.
 Well, there's your problem right there.
 Android is not in my world.
 It's not in my attention span most days.
 I don't spend that much time thinking about it because thinking about iOS and the website,
 which even that I barely think about, thinking about the iOS app is a full-time job.
 And staying competitive on the iOS app is a full-time job.
 All right.
 We have to wrap, unfortunately, because I have a bunch more things I want to talk to
 you about.
 But I quickly want to know, just a couple of...
 I mean, you're obviously very focused.
 You just talked about being original and you obviously appreciate beautiful design.
 What are some apps...
 What are things that you use every day that you're like, I wish I could have made this?
 Or I'm in awe of this?
 Or this is a beautiful, really smart design that I love?
 What's something for you...
 I mean, I'd just like to know.
 Is that tough?
 Yeah.
 Inst
 I have a long answer, but we don't have time for a long answer.
 My opinion of design is very different from what most people...
 My opinion of design is, to quote Steve Jobs, how it works.
 Most people think design is putting textures and gradients on everything.
 I win for design with Почему.
 like you took them with an SLR,
 and if you did and you imported it,
 that's kind of dirty, don't do that.
 People do that.
 I know, that's rude.
 They take pictures of DSLRs and then import them,
 and they're like, hey, check out
 this awesome picture I took.
 Phil Schiller did that.
 Did he? Yeah.
 And then he quit.
 No wonder.
 He was like, I've been shamed into quitting.
 Yeah.
 Mark, I wish I could talk to you longer.
 You gotta come back.
 Thank you so much.
 Really appreciate it.
 Mark Harman, everybody.
 And...
 Yeah, you're definitely coming back.
 You got it.
 We're gonna take a quick break,
 and then we'll be back with Infinity Shred.
 So stay tuned.
 Hi guys, I'm Jen Atkins,
 celebrity hairstylist on the Clear Men Scalp Therapy Team.
 Here are a few of my tips for becoming the perfect man.
 First, go to a stylist and not just a barber.
 They'll pay much more attention to your style
 and give you really good tips.
 Second, make sure that your clothes fit.
 It's a really good idea to take them to a tailor
 so that they can specifically fit everything
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 Third, make sure to pay attention to your hair
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 It stops dandruff at the source
 for 100% dandruff protection.
 Share your style at facebook.com slash clearmen.
 Yeah, yeah.
 I've been following all of those tips and they're great.
 Ladies and gentlemen,
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 Wow.
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 That was awesome.
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 We did it.
 We did the handshake.
 Infinity Shred, everyone.
 That was amazing.
 Well, that's pretty much our show.
 I want to thank Damon Lindelof, Masi Oka,
 Mark Armand, Infinity Shred, obviously, Paul,
 Neelai, you guys, our sponsor Clear,
 who's helped me get rid of my dandruff,
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