Scriptnotes: 10 Year Anniversary (podcast)
I always enjoy a good podcast anniversary episode because it’s often a podcast about podcasting. In this one, John and Craig are interviewed by Julia Turner and they talk about starting the show and how it’s affected their lives.
They know that people listen to it while still finding the numbers hard to believe—you could fill a college football stadium with the number of people that listen to each episode.
They didn’t expect such a broad audience: they expected to have LA listeners because it can be a really industry-focused show. But plenty of people listen from around the United States and around the world. And plenty of listeners have no intention of writing screenplays but just find writing and the development of TV & movies interesting.
“Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire” by James Wallace (book)
Finished reading this earlier this week and have really enjoyed it. Sometimes I try to avoid reading books related to tech because I don’t want to think about work during leisure hours. But I think I’m just very interested in tech which is what got me into my career in the first place. I’m finding older tech history books to strike a good balance of exploring my curiosity without directly thinking “Oh how do I apply this to some very specific, very current work problem…?”
(Game development books are another outlet for me because they’re tech & design related—but not about SaaS products.)
Oh yeah so thoughts on the book itself—this really gave me a better understanding of how Microsoft came to be Microsoft. It also made me realize that, growing up in the 90s, the company was it was already. I didn’t really know the history. Bill Gates was the first richest person from whenever I could understand what it meant to be the world’s richest person.
He talks about that rapid ascent: one year he’s a millionaire, the next he’s got 10 million, the next he’s got 100 million.
Toward the end of the book, he’s become a billionaire. And I actually believe him when he says it’s not about the money and he doesn’t worry too much about the stock price, knowing then that software stocks would be extremely volatile. (I believe him more than many people today who say they don’t care about money but then their company’s purpose is some combo of buzzwords + humanity.)
Fun fact: First version of Excel was for the Mac
The Danny Miranda Podcast: Andrew Warner
Danny’s been podcasting for a year and Andrew’s been podcasting for ten years. This one was great in a bit of a Socratic method sort of way—Danny asks questions about how to interview well and Andrew’s thought deeply about it for years.
- Hunter-gatherer interviewing: They discuss Joe Rogan’s effectiveness as an interviewer. He’ll poke at different topics with a guest and if there’s nothing there he’ll be happy to move to a different topic. Once there’s some substance then he’ll be able to go deep with them on that topic. Guests have fun. Listeners have fun. Everyone benefits.
- Heroes and goats: People hit game winning shots or the grounder bounces between their legs. Society rarely cares about the people in between because we want black and white stories. But it can be good to take a look at both sides. When did heroes fail and what can you learn from that? What helped goats rise to prominence in the first place before their fall and what can you learn from that?
- Change the voice in your head: You’re the average of the five people you’re around the most. Your thoughts work in a similar way depending on what you’re putting in your head.
These are a couple good voices to have inside your head. Danny’s coming on one year now with podcasting and it’s inspiring to see his tenacity with it. He’s got me wanting to turn the mic back on and get to recording.