Gadgetory

listen before we start I ain't really really could use a drink could you get me a vodka soda with lemon in like and like a rocks glass you know the it's like a shorter glass yeah we don't what we don't have rocks lat that's fine just whatever glass we have just just vodka so with lemon we're out we don't have lemons okay just give me that thank you just give me the vodka soda yeah no soda we don't we don't have we don't have soda okay that's do we could you okay just visvasa in a glass with ice no ice we don't have ice okay just give me the vodka just like a little shot of vodka we're out of vodka we don't we never had vodka we didn't have it at all today what was so what the whole thing was you couldn't have made it to begin with okay all right just give me can you give me some water no water really there's no there's no water on this floor okay all right anything like a diet coke no all right you know why don't we just let you start the ship what is there's no show welcome to on the verge I'm your host Josh Topolsky and you are a chatbot so there's really no point in addressing you in any material way we have a very cool very exciting show for you today kind of a special one we had a chance to sit down with Ashton Kutcher star of that 70s show Two and a Half Men and most recently the film jobs and talk about all sorts of stuff from startups to his love-hate affair with Twitter and of course the movie in which he portrays Steve Jobs it's a really in-depth very interesting conversation and I'm excited to share with you so take a look and we'll be right back Ashton thank you for being here yeah for joining Jay in Chicago yeah we're getting sausages and pizza after this yeah we're going for it are we your treat you're making an investment and a deep-dish pizza or not oh you bought it all right so tell me about so obviously you're extremely you're literally invested in this in the world of technology and in startups but you're obviously like intellectually invested in it right like you really care about the stuff you're really interested in it where does that come from I mean what is the what does the start for you like were you a nerdy kid were you like a PC geek like what where does this where did this start well I went to school for biochemical engineering and when I got to the University of Iowa School of Engineering we started programming in Fortran and this was in like 1997 and and I was and and I was a kid who didn't I didn't really grow up with email I grew up like on a farm we didn't really have you know what's we getting email you know the camels and the first day my professor was like you know if you have any questions just email me and I'm like ah man I gotta learn how to use email you were in college you were like what's well I'm learning how programming Fortran but I didn't really even know how to use email at that point all right so it was there was like a real bind there I had a professor in school that said you know scientists discover problems engineers solve them and and I really took that to heart and like I wanted to grow up to be someone who solved problems it took a little detour into acting modeling this thing and that thing and but but always just by accident you know it just kind of worked out so the the notion of wanting to solve these problems always stayed with me and then I've been kind of an early adopter of tech for alongs once you figured out email I was like I had like the sidekick you know and I had the like Motorola two-way pager back in the day but I got push-to-talk and yeah like I really liked all of that stuff I remember when I was promoting dude where's my car I would go into a wall chat rooms and just start up dude sweet conversations - like Groot and gorila promote the movie really yeah and then you personally yeah I would just personally sit at home my computer for like two hours a night just starting dude sweet arguments in chat rooms on AOL oh yes and then my company I had a production company I started when I was 20 years old and we as we started to see buffering speeds on video get better and better and better to the point where it was almost streaming we thought that it'd be a good idea to start moving into digital video this is like six and a half years ago or something and we did a very early deal with AOL to program the aim Instant Messenger and actually start to create original video content for the aim instant messenger for the app for the application for aim and because aim was the way that everyone was chatting it right now I mean I remember we used to use aim back at any gadget when we were at any well we were we would we started just a name that's how we had all of our business conversation yeah and we would we would sit in the office and just like shoot stuff back and forth on aim and we're like wow this is really aim is this is really powerful yeah and we thought that if we could embed video content units in aim we start to make those video content units highly shareable inside at aim right which ultimately if you if you look at it now retrospectively it would have been a lot like the way that people share content on Twitter yeah it's natively part of it right so that's where you started to think like this is not just this is not just something that I like or something that's cool or something's useful but this is kind of somewhere to put energy into well I was actually just using it as an adjunct to our production services business and then I progressively became more and more that's with it and I started learning more and more and more and investing more time and time and energy and then just started slowly making angel investments in consumer Internet companies right and now here you are talking to me so it's all now I totally know what I'm talking exactly so I'm really dumb I want to about Twitter what about your relationship with Twitter you were for a long time like the Twitter evangelist right you were like the guy the loudest the most public celebrity or anybody really using Twitter you were like everybody's got to be on Twitter Twitter's happening this is a thing that needs to happen yeah and you know you've had some moments on Twitter that we're not great obviously for you and then you bailed like not a bell well but you're not running your account anymore yeah yeah are you I really I thought you handed it off to something no I make sure before I post something that a group of people see it so that I don't post anything recklessly right because I think it at a certain point it gets like you know everybody wants forgiveness but people don't really want to give it to other people and when you make mistakes publicly you make them really loudly publicly like permanent yeah and I you know what do I get from Twitter right I don't but I don't I don't get anything you know I don't make money off it's not my livelihood so why would I do things that would jeopardize the things that are my livelihood to say something that I'm you know that I haphazardly see on TV and go oh and I have an opinion on it right so all I do is now before I post something I say hey what do you think about this so a couple people on my team that are usually with me all the time and then I posted well ha what did you get from it two years ago I mean what was different you know what was your relationship with the two years ago that's just a chain I used to use it pretty personally where I would actually ask a question about something or like what do you think about this so what do you think about that and the content that I posted didn't get blasted out on a mainstream system it was a group of you know five hundred thousand eight hundred thousand a million people that were actually interested and invested in what I thought or cared about what I was saying or what I was working on and wanted to give feedback and that was an awesome feedback loop for me right they took the the retweet that used to be syntax so used to actually type in RT yeah whatever the thing is which actually had friction in it so you had a copy pasted something put in RT and then and then repost it right and the friction that existed there caused people to only retweet things that had enough value that they were willing to put the work into right doing the syntax right actually retweeted right and often people would I mean I still do that cuz I use an app that does the the old-school RT right it's like you get to actually have commentary when you're really good at the comment you say yeah I agree with this write down or whatever so therefore that that participation in the system actually added value to whatever it was that you were reposting right when they when they took away the mandatory you know syntax slash you add value to this post they actually inadvertently I don't think anybody did it on purpose they inadvertently degraded the value of the signal annoys value on the network that's really interesting I mean that's actually a really right on observation cuz it does it just becomes like you hit the button and then it's out there and it's in somebody else's feed who didn't even like you they don't even know the context and the friction the friction well you know listen engineers are trained to remove friction from systems sometimes the friction is valuable and you don't even realize it until it's changed and it's too late right and I think that that's I think that that's what dynamically shifted it Twitter by no means is in any kind of trouble I don't think but I think that they need to think heavily about that signal-to-noise ratio because it's become less about the one-to-one interactions and more about the broadcasting I mean I think yeah I think you're totally right I think that you know for me I look I run a media company right and so it's really great to be able to broadcast your stuff to as many people as possible but you're looking for which I think is rare for somebody in your position a more personal interaction I mean the thing about it but this is my takeaway from watching you Twitter over the last few years is that you're looking for something that is this unfiltered uncontrolled interaction with people who might be interested in you or that you might be interested in that's like you don't have to worry about email or the phone or whatever and you have this a conversation that's very personal conversation my discourse to other places if I want like high-value feedback against something now I go to Cora and I asked her you know pastor I ask a question on Quora yeah okay but of course it's so I mean Cora to me is such a weird like single so binary it's like ask a question get responses it's not really a conversation exactly but it's not not necessarily a conversation but if you want high by you feedback it's a pretty good place to go right so we so you're just moving that stuff somewhere else yeah move it there and then you know if I get I still post things on Twitter I just don't post intimate things on Twitter because now my Twitter feed has become a broadcasting feed and why might I don't want to display it out the other you know the other thing that has sort of here's another inadvertent side-effect of Twitter that most people probably don't realize if I go to a restaurant anywhere in town there'll be people outside the restaurant waiting for me outside the restaurant when I leave the restaurant when I go how did you know I was here they sell it on Twitter yeah so the people do like a search of my name on Twitter and then they can find exactly where I am at any given place this is like Gawker stalker fully raised a little like not awesome yeah for people yeah all right so let's I want to talk about I want it I know we don't have a ton of time I want to get to this movie you made a small film about a small topic jobs about Steve Jobs so I have to ask you does it seem trying to think the right way to phrase this it's a pretty big ego kind of an egotistical move to say I'm gonna play Steve Jobs in a movie and I think this is for anybody who plays like a great sort of great figure from history it takes a certain amount of ego to be able to say I can embody this guy or a girl what what was the what was your thinking I mean how did this come to be and what was your thinking when you're like okay I'm gonna be Steve Jobs in a movie like how do you wrap your head around that well first I think it's it's I'm gonna portray Steve Jobs in movie right I'm not gonna be Steve Jobs I can't be Steve Jobs I'm just so far removed from for this be Steve Jobs but for the purposes of the movie you've gotta like become that care well so my decision to actually take the role was a tough one in that I have a lot of friends and colleagues that knew Steve or work with Steve cared deeply about Steve and you know I read the script and the character of Steve in the script you know if you're gonna tell a true story about someone you have to tell the good things about them and the bad things about them and in it and in certain places and circumstances some of the things that he did seemed extremely irrational and in the when I read it I was like offended for him right when I read the script and so I was I I had an immediate reaction of like well if I play this or the people that I'm friends with that knew him gonna be upset about it that you know I'm trying to sort of balance two worlds right and also wanting to defend the legacy of a person I really admired and I sat third sort of imagining other people playing it that didn't have the insights that I had as to the fact that that yes he was a very aggressive boss but yes he had like a 98% approval rating from his employees and and I just imagined somebody else playing it and not actually taking the time to fully investigate right him and who he was and how he was and why he was the way he was and what he had to sacrifice to actually make the great things that we take for granted every day and and almost felt compelled to like defensively play the role right really yeah like I want to attack I want to make sure that it's protected that like it's like even if I screw it up and totally bomb it I love that guy I love that again personally really yeah and and so I'd rather have someone that cared about him screw it up than someone who didn't that's a really I mean did not see that answer coming at all so I kind of a bizarre reason to play a role that was one - it terrified me and I found that most of the great things I've been able to accomplish in my life were things that terrified me when I took on when I felt like I was way over my head on something and I just went for it anyway and the third thing is it was kind of the perfect dovetail of my interest in my craft right yeah because how many chances as a guy who's really into tech and investing in it and kind of living it when you're not doing your day job as an actor how many opportunities where you get to play that kind of role exactly very few and then the last thing was is it aligned really closely with with what I feel about the world right now which is I think people need to build things and I think that inspiring entrepreneurs to build really great things and persevere over so much challenge in the world I think that that's what the world needs and and I mean I wanted to tell a story about a guy who did that to hopefully inspire other entrepreneurs to go out and not just live in the world but actually see what it is and and and try to build other things that make it the world that other people can live in so how hard was it to be jobs in that movie I mean you got the walk I mean I got to tell you guys you know you look really really similar I mean my wife Laura was who's also one of our editors was was like Oh Ashton looks exactly like him if you look at pictures of Steve Jobs when he's young and he put them side-by-side in fact I did I think I did the post when they announced that you were gonna be in it and there's a picture of you guys side-by-side and it's uncanny so you obviously look alike you got that walk down that weird walk which seems like I don't even know how you do that because it's a you know it's funny until I saw you in the movie I kind of didn't think about it but when I saw it I was like oh yeah that's exactly how Steve walked the one thing that I was wondering he hid a really distinct voice and you have a really distinct voice and they're very different was there any was there any consideration there where you thought I need to change the way I sound for this or I need to sound more like Steve they're really three steps to the research of Steve wood the first thing was just like a data collection thing where I was just read every book about him and you know just anything I could get my hands on it was Steve of video and audio file and anything just trying to understand get the kind of whole story about the guy because I think a lot of the stories that have been put out there about him don't always jive with each other and you sort of go like what this is a little awkward compared to that and why would he do that and you know and trying to get that and then then the second phase of the research was trying to get to know why he made the decisions that he made why he got angry why he got sad why he cried why he laughed what you know trying to understand that and I met with a ton of people that that knew him pretty intimately to actually try to glean some understanding of that because more important at the end of the day then then you know being exactly like him from a you know gesture demeanor walk talk look is to actually capture that essence of like why he was doing the things that he was right and then the last part is kind of like the window dressing which is the walk and the talk and the things like that and what I try to do is find footage of him whether it was audio file footage or whether it was video footage or photographs that were him not in a public setting because he had to there were two versions of him and I got this from a lot of friends his that I talked to there was the guy who went on stage and presented things and the guy who went up and gave a speech and then there was the guy who was in the boardroom and the guy who was working on a product and a guy who was having an intimate conversation and and I tried to find like little tiny snippets of stuff where he wasn't aware that he was being recorded or speeches that he didn't think other people were ultimately gonna hear mm-hmm so I could get a little bit more of who he and how he honestly was and how we honestly walked and how he honestly talked and how he honestly gestured and all those things and so and that was a little bit that was hard to find but once I got a couple things down like the way he spoke was a combination of I think he's father and it yeah his father was from Wisconsin and his mother was from the Northern California and so it's kind of a combination of those two yeah and while I don't have his exact voice I can drop into it's a little bit more of an open speaking pattern with a little bit of a Midwestern Wisconsin act gives a little bit of that but there's a little combination he's got a tiny bit of a list that I picked up from listening to stuff so I just I had like probably 20 hours I've liked a SoundCloud file that I posted I actually just posted yesterday I posted this set of like I think to get 15 hours of Steve just talking giving speeches and stuff yeah and I we just listened to it all day long and then gradually start taking on some of the mannerisms of how he talked it's interesting because because it it's funny when he's on stage he is a pleading almost a pleading quality to his voice right where he really is it's intense and it gets higher and you have and I have heard music he's a sales he was a Salesman like when it's funny when you watch it it's not that different when he would present him in stage not that different than what like like it also got Ron Popeil or like one of those guys like I'm he was selling that product yeah and he would take moments to think he would use the word and a lot news good and and he used that moment just to think about what he was gonna say next he was actually really slow it's funny when when an IED liveblog him a bunch of times and one of the things you notice is that he speaks really slowly on stage he gives you a lot of air is slowly very deliberate exactly and he takes a lot of time to think about what he's gonna say that yeah and each word sounds thoughtful yeah it's like he's he's really in that moment thinking about the stuff that he's saying it's actually it's really that's a very interesting I mean I guess what you have you spent enough time studying him and you start to pick that up I mean I've spent years like watching him do his thing and so I saw a lot of that particularly the slow that pacing of it made it nice to do live blogs because when you're typing furiously and you want to capture everywhere that somebody says he was one of the few guys that I knew when he talked I always get most of it because he actually was really deliberate and it's been a and then there were a lot of like nonverbal things that he did was like when he would listen to people he did this like thing where he just would kind of take in what they were saying kind of that you know even make you feel like in an interview he would make you feel like you were hurt other times maybe not so much all right seriously thank you so much appreciate it so there you have it very interesting guy and you should definitely check out jobs even if you've seen pirates of Silicon Valley they are different films now we've got one of the things that I want to share with you something I'm very excited about next week on the verge we're starting a new series called small empires with Alexis Ohanian you may know Alexis as the co-founder of Reddit he's also a brilliant and hilarious and fantastic host and he's gonna be taking a look at startups in New York City it's very cool and we've got a clip from the first episode no one's ever seen it I haven't seen it so anything could happen in it take a look at this and we'll be right back finding a doctor isn't all see getting an appointment in the timely manner seems to be even more difficult than that but there's an app for that there's not for that there's an app for that there's no an app for that dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock dock you know the great thing about these apps is that they're in our phone so they're always with us kind of like our teachers oh right so what is this three years running cranes best place to work in New York three years in the row we've made the cranes best places to work list this past year we were in the big fortune top 50 best places to work in America list and second year in a row best place to work in healthcare and so it's something that we really pride ourselves on you know we're not lavishly putting Aeron chairs throughout our offices etc a lot of our furnitures refurbished will be bought it that we got it for free and so it's not about like how much money we spend on the actual physical infrastructure of the space it's really about what we do to enhance people's lives number-16 best small places to work in America from Fortune magazine so who are the other 15 men I don't know yeah crush them yes and that is it that's our show I want to thank Ashton Kutcher the crew of small empires and Alexis Ohanian definitely tune into that show next week here on the verge and of course I want to thank you the human being that watched this you didn't have to you did it and we created something magical together that's our show for this week we'll be back soon and until then there is no until then