Really Specific Stories: Daniel Jalkut Duration: 57:52 SPEAKERS Martin Feld, Daniel Jalkut Martin Feld 00:21 Thank you very much for joining Really Specific Stories, Daniel; it's great to have you on the show. Daniel Jalkut 00:26 Thanks for having me! Martin Feld 00:27 Now to kick off this episode, I'm gonna ask you the same question that I start every episode with, with every guest, and that is: how did you first get into podcasts? Daniel Jalkut 00:36 As a listener or as a producer? Or both? I guess... Martin Feld 00:40 Either way, what was your first experience with it? Daniel Jalkut 00:43 My memory is back, it must have been 2004 (or five), I was still living in San Francisco. And so, it was before it was before July of 2005. It must have been... uh, it's a foggy memory now because of course, that's almost 20 years back, but it must have been around the time with: why am I blanking on his name, now? He was pretty well known in the early podcast scene (American DJ). But it's not, it's not coming to me. Um, he was a big part of the early—I think maybe helping to coin the term 'podcast', and I can't remember the specific first podcast I listened to. But it was before, it was before Apple had gotten involved with the whole um, you know, making an actual feature of iTunes. I seem to recall using NetNewsWire to download podcasts, syncing them over to my iPod, as of course, that's where the eventually the um, the podcast name came from. But I can't remember the specifics of how, of what I listened to. Until a couple years later, I didn't... I know like a, or very early rotation of podcasts included, shows like one from CNET, which was called Buzz Out Loud, and I remember, most specifically, remember walking around the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts; and I remember um, as a listener, having these podcasts, like Buzz Out Loud, I think, pretty early on there, some of Leo Laporte's early podcasts. Maybe I was starting to get some NPR stuff on podcasts at that point, but I just remember distinctly feeling that it was no longer a chore to walk anywhere, because everywhere I walked, I had this delightful, infinite supply of stimulating, you know, intellectual radio, basically. But, you know, a lot of us, I think, who are of a certain age used to sort of listen to the radio for that if we got it anywhere. Daniel Jalkut 03:05 And so like, way back when I was still living in California, working at Apple, driving from San Francisco down to Cupertino, you know, listening to NPR was like the, the thing to do for me in my car while I was driving, and it's interesting now to think back that I almost never listen to the radio now. It's all time-shifted podcasts—more, more or less. (I also listened to audiobooks.) But yeah, so it's been, it's had a really profound impact on my, that my use of time. A lot of people ask me, 'When do you get the time to listen to podcasts?' Because it seems, seems a lot of people don't, don't have an easy time finding time for podcasts. And for me, there's just so much stuff, I do: washing dishes; you know, mowing the lawn; cleaning the house; walking anywhere; running, exercise; anytime I have like a physical obligation, it's basically a place to put my mind as a listener. Daniel Jalkut 04:10 So that's really been a huge part of my life since, I guess for almost 20 years now. And then, kind of like astoundingly, almost as long, really, like 13 years of that time has also been as a podcast producer with my friend Manton Reece on the Core Intuition podcast. And you know, as I should note, I guess, I did a separate podcast called the Bitsplitting podcast, which was an interview format. It only lasted for 10 episodes; that was almost 10 years ago, I think. It's one of these, like, quote, unquote, on hiatus, but I think I thought I was going to take a short break from doing it because it wiped me out. And unfortunately, I never started it back up again. So, my experience with podcasting as a producer, really started, probably, very shortly before starting Core Intuition, I was a guest on a couple podcasts. Notably getting back to Leo Laporte, like I was privileged to be on the MacBreak Weekly podcast—way, you know, I think before Core Intuition started, so probably 2006/2007. But I remember having that like, stage-fright-jitters feeling of being on a podcast. And now luckily, I've been doing this so long, for exam-, for example, I'm sure you will talk to some people who are a little jittery about talking to you and I have zero jitters about talking to you, because luckily, I've been doing this so long that you kind of get, um, comfortable with, uh, you know, basically managing your personality and you know, whoever you are, you just put yourself on the microphone, and that's who you are. That's who you get. You're getting Daniel Jalkut today. 9:00 am for me, 11:00 pm for you. We're I guess each probably groggy in our own way, but the uh, this is, this is how I roll now. Martin Feld 06:10 Well, that is a brilliant summary of your story—well, not really a summary, like a detailed account in great chronological order, so thank you for that. And you're right, I mean, maybe slightly groggy, but I'm way worse in the morning, so you're probably getting peak Martin at the microphone right now, at least in the evening. Daniel Jalkut 06:27 Oh, good! Oh, perfect! Martin Feld 06:29 I've set the expectations now; I shouldn't have done that! Yeah, there's a lot there that you said that was very interesting to me and a great account of how you went from listening to producing and some of the things that you've done. Early on, in that experience that you were just detailing, a word jumped out to me that I thought was very interesting, and that was that it was an intellectual endeavour to be consuming this stuff when you were commuting to and from Apple or doing various different physical tasks. When you say it's an intellectual endeavour, what kinds of thing or feeling were you getting out of consuming this stuff early on? And can you speak a little bit about maybe the technological interest and how that was linked to podcasting as a medium for you? Daniel Jalkut 07:12 Yeah, I really felt early on that the things I was listening to early on, were either stimulating in a non-technical way, like political, science, whatever, kind of like general interest. Um, I really like the um, I used to listen a lot more, but like the fresh-air format of just interviewing anybody who has had an impact on the world, and so getting a little glimpse into something new, you know, I think I have one of those personalities that is novelty-oriented, like I'm always seeking out novel experiences, to either learn a little bit about some random thing. I never think it's a waste of time to have learned a little bit about something. You know, as opposed to people who, some people I think, are dedicated to learning in great depth about something, and for them, it might be that any time spent outside of that is like a waste of time to them. So, like somebody who wants to be an expert on the history of Germany, let's say, they might find listening to a CNET tech podcast to be a complete waste of time, because they're not adding to their depth of understanding of the history of Germany, typically, by listening to that show. But for me, it was, I mean, when I when I remembered walking around the streets of Cambridge, I remember, you know, shows like the Buzz Out Loud show, were keeping me apprised of general tech news that I wasn't going to get from talking to my Mac developer friends talking to you know, nobody else in my family is as much of a tech nerd as I am. So, it was just kind of like an opportunity to stay tuned into the broader tech world. Daniel Jalkut 09:04 And as a Mac developer, I was getting plenty of Apple-related stuff from my friends, but I remember really just enjoying, like, learning about what people were talking about in the PC world and in other, the web-based world. And um, I kind of want to—I think related to that novelty thing—I kind of want to have a little bit of an understanding of everything that's going on. And you know, that that does apply to all fields. It's like I want to know a little bit about, you know, science and medicine and politics and art and kind of the general: how does the world work? And one of the wonderful things about podcasts (especially now) is: there is no topic that you can't go out and you know, subscribe to. I, you know, fancy myself eventually becoming fluent in Spanish. And it's like I've been learning Spanish my whole life, but I'm not fluent. So I have sometimes listen to this Spanish-language podcast on slow mode, you know, or use the um, Overcast app has a like play it three quarters speed, so I can listen to a podcast in another language at my chosen (sort of) slowed-down speed, something I never could have done on the radio. And uh, but it's just a way to never, you know, there's almost like a certain fear of boredom, and it's like, there's no fear of boredom if I have like a packed iPhone with podcasts that I've chosen to ensure my interest in something. Martin Feld 10:52 That's a great point that you make: that podcasting in general, aside from topic, is very inviting to just about any interest. And I know that we're both here because I invited you because of some shared tech interest, we've, you know, crossed in kind of tech-podcast circles, which have naturally built up since those early days that you mentioned of Mac developers you can share those ideas with. I'm interested in what you just said there about time-shifting, and also the ability to slow down or speed up dialogue in an app like Overcast. Whether it's the tech genre itself, or other genres, if we think about podcasting as a medium, there are various digital affordances there that you've distinguished from radio; building on that idea, what are some of the most positive or interesting experiences—in fact, it could be negative—what are some of the most interesting experiences that you think you've had with podcasting as a medium that cements it for you, as a way of getting information or being entertained? Daniel Jalkut 11:52 I don't know that... that doesn't really spark anything, in my mind, specifically. Martin Feld 11:57 Mmm... Daniel Jalkut 11:57 I think just the ubiquity of it is is, is everything to me, and having my own personal supply of entertainment, stimulation... I guess that's, it's sort of like the medium itself is what's, what makes it so, have such a profound impact. I don't know that... There's something to it but I think the the fact, ultimately podcasting is 99 per cent, the same as radio, because um, there's something unique and special about radio that it's because it only engages one sense, you know, your, your, your hearing. It enables you to remain tuned into other things with your other senses. And so like, the very fact that radio came about, and then suddenly, people could drive a car—one of the most dangerous, potentially dangerous things you can do in, in life—while engaged in another pursuit. And I think, whatever it is about radio, that's why radio is still around. And like, you know, I said, I almost never listen to the radio, but a lot of people do. And until everybody, and until and unless everybody has their own personal supply of audio, I think there's just something special, you know, taking a step back: it's not podcasts, per se, but the idea that you can do something, while you're doing something else, you know, you you, you'll see, like, plumbers working while listening to a baseball game, you know, they can have an entertainment, literally while they're earning their living. And there's no way I don't think there's any way you can like really engage with another medium, like, you can't read a book while you're fixing, uh, the pipes; and you can't watch a TV show while you're doing another job. I mean, there might be exceptions, I guess, but generally, there's something about the way you can be totally engaged in an audio stream, while I think more or less without compromise, pursuing something else, you know? Daniel Jalkut 14:14 When I'm running, for example, there's no compromise (to my mind) of my exercise, the, the fitness objective I meet while running. There's no compromise because I'm listening to, you know, a long, deliberate audio stream and that's just kind of fascinating that it gives us the power to sort of like, break up, to split our our pursuits, you know, that there's this sort of like famously, there's like anti-multitasking rhetoric that is famously like, you know, that that'll say like, 'You can't really multitask', and so people who claim to be multitasking are just doing the job poorly, uh, several jobs poorly. And I just don't know that that's true when it comes to this sort of special. I, I, other other examples come to mind, like um: you could take a hot shower and think really in-depth about something; and people often do this, it's like that's a form of multitasking, you're stimulating one sensory input, while focused on something else. And so there's a kind of something to that idea of multitasking, by splitting up the senses, that I think we need to give multitasking, some credit for being valuable in that sense, you know, even if it's, you know, I think there's something to the idea that like, you can't effectively multitask reading five books at the same time. But, you can effectively multitask, taking a hot shower, and even listening to a podcast, for example. Um, you can have your, you know, hot temperature sense, engaged, while your audio sense is engaged, and possibly your physical, you know, actual cleaning yourself is also engaged, and you're doing all these things at once. Um... so, I think that's the magic of podcasting: it's just a place to put your brain when you don't need all of your brain doing whatever else it is you're doing. Martin Feld 16:27 Well, that was a perfect example to bring up because I'm a real shower daydreamer, so I can really relate to that. Honestly! Ooh, time passed! You said that nothing sparked in your mind with that, but you actually gave some very interesting points there about: I liked the word 'personal' and what you were just saying about multitasking there. Turning personally to you with podcasting as a personal endeavour: can you tell me the kind of story about how you came to meet some of the people you've met through tech podcasting (through listening or production), and how you've essentially come to multitask with podcasting alongside the other things you do in your life, whether hobbies or paid work? Daniel Jalkut 17:07 You know, there's this whole social, for me being in part of tech is a whole social thing that started way back with chat systems like IRC, and a lot of my social circle—well, first of all, like as a as a, as a member of the tech community, I was really not part of the larger tech community in my early career, when I worked for Apple. I was part of the Apple tech community. Um, and so it was kind of fascinating for me to realise that there was this broader community out there. I wasn't looking for a community when I first worked at Apple in like late 90s, early 2000s. And then once I left Apple, I think I was sort of thirsty for a community; I couldn't be part of the Apple community, at least not in the level I had been as an employee at Apple. And so then, I was kind of looking for other people to hang out with; I was looking for that like, virtual water cooler, break room, so to speak. And way back then, I got involved with this small group of developers that were part of a Yahoo! mailing list group. It was called the Mac Software Business Group. And then that became like, an IRC channel that went with that. And I think ultimately, that is how I was part of a chat community that ultimately—it's funny, I try to think back specifically to like, how did I meet Manton Reece who is my co host on Core Intuition? And it's so funny to think that I can't, I can't really remember how we met, or why we decided to start the podcast, but he was one of the people in one of these chats, probably going back to IRC days. And somehow this like, it's like this, I'm still in chats today—nowadays, mostly on Slack—but I'm on chats today that have a lineage that goes back to IRC chats in the 90s, or in the early 2000s. Daniel Jalkut 19:28 Um, and my community of like, developer friends, it continued to grow with podcasting. So, there's people I know, and I'll credit things like Twitter too, like this whole virtual community, started for me with IRC and then having some of those connections, I think, for example, one of the very first podcasts I was on, was um, Scotty from the NS Conference. He um, is also, was also (to my mind) pretty well known for a very early podcast called Late Night Cocoa, I think it was called. So, he was one of the first podcasts I was on. And then, from that maybe that relationship led to me speaking at his conference, NS Conference. And I met people at NS conference, and every time for me, I think it's kind of fascinating, uh, I meet a lot of people online, and then I meet them in person, and it sort of solidifies that relationship in a way that like, now you have like a, it's more like, you're more likely to... be on each other's podcasts or um, you know, once you meet somebody in person, they just somehow they're, they're more real. And I think, for example, that's true to some extent with podcasting. Having met Scotty on that podcast, chatting with him in person, you know, we didn't have video streams at that time. So like, right now I'm chatting with you: this is audio, but I'm looking at your face, so it's, it's kind of like we're getting to know each other here, quote, unquote, in person, even though we're halfway around the world from each other. But there's something about that. Daniel Jalkut 21:14 I think there's something to the podcasting format, the way that it is... it lends itself to conversational, informal types of communication that I think a lot of us like listening to podcasts, because they're not super well-produced. So for example, Manton and I on the Core Intuition podcast, we have never strictly ordained like, what are we going to talk about on any given day, and we go into the show, really, we used to go into the show, literally just saying, you know, I think that episode one was called 'Two Voices'. And I think we went into it with that, as our sort of, you know, the rallying cry for: what is this show about? Well, it's just about two voices and we'll see where it goes from there. And so we used to start every show with this just like, 'Start recording and see what's on our mind', and it got a little, it's evolved over the years, so that now, we usually try to go into a show with very rough scaffolding of, 'First, we're going to talk about this, and then if we have time, we're going to talk about this'. And then you know, maybe 50 per cent of the time you actually get to the second topic, and 50 per cent of the time, you don't, and sometimes you get to two other topics you didn't plan on. But as a listener, for example, I really like that format compared to, um... Daniel Jalkut 22:46 I've listened to some valuable tech podcasts over the years that were valuable in spite of being boring, because they were too, um... prescribed. it was like you could tell that the people who produced the podcast had sat down and outlined the entire show. And you knew that they were sort of reading from their cue card the whole time. And, you have to be like really good at producing content to pull that off. Uh, this is reminding me of um, you know, advice for public speaking: I heard or read or saw somewhere once that, you know, if you're if you're invited to speak publicly, you should. (almost all of us) should plan on speaking extemporaneously with a plan. That is to say, not to rehearse line by line what you're going to say; there's sort of like this uncanny valley of naturalness that 99 per cent of us can't achieve that magical feeling of authenticity, that the most professional speakers can lend to a perfectly rehearsed talk. I think it was in the context of um, the TED talks, whoever it was that I was, I was hearing or reading about talking about this was saying: basically, like TED talks, are both totally rehearsed, but come across as like totally authentic and off the cuff. And nobody, you know, to a rough approximation, nobody can pull that off. Daniel Jalkut 24:27 And so, most of us, we do best by just having a rough idea what we're going to do and then meandering, like I'm doing now. And um, as a participant, and as a listener, that is so interesting; I think it's one of the things that makes listening to podcasts so fun. You know, I listen to some of these famously long podcasts like the Accidental Tech Podcast or John Gruber's The Talk Show... sometimes they break three hours and some people say, 'How could you possibly struggle through listening to three hours of other people just rambling?!' And it's because it's just a ramble. If it was three hours of prescribed like, 'OK, now we're going to talk about this', it wouldn't be fun! It's because you're sort of like getting the opportunity to hang out with other people that it sounds that it is fun. And there's, we all have this experience, I think, of um sort of feeling like we know people from listening to their podcasts; it's a little bit of a, of a myth, like we don't know them. But then there's this crossover, where we kind of do know them, depending on how long we've listened, and how much we've engaged, like I, for one, have, you know, messaged people privately and publicly, after listening to their podcasts, to the point that some of the people whose podcasts I listened to know me only because I've listened to their podcast for years, and I get in touch with them and I say this, that or the other thing. I know them and they know me, even though it's this ostensibly one-way communication medium of, of podcasting. Daniel Jalkut 26:15 So, there, there you go, there's a very meandering take on how I've met people, what the whole... what is podcasting, in the context of this community? It's also I want to say very closely connected to blogging, because blogging used to play a much bigger role in my community, my sense of community, and um it's because, you know, used to be a tonne of people, myself included, viewed blogging as sort of the default communication engagement with this whole, this, to some extent, Twitter has like famously taken it over. And to some extent, I think podcasting is taking it over: this idea that this is how I'm going to like, roughly engage with the world. I'm going to put my ideas out there, see what people think about them. Anyone who wants to can listen to them or not. They can give me feedback about it. But podcasting in that sense, is really just an audio blog. Um, what we're doing right now is a long, unrehearsed audio blog post. And, I don't know, I guess it's just sort of that is all part of the community. We get to know each other through these voluntary self-expressions that, like I said, people can either tune into or tune out of, but I guess that is, it's kind of like the Speakers’ Corner, right? Like, you know, the classic times you'd have like these parts of towns where if you wanted to engage with somebody who had something to say, you would just go to this spot in town, and there would be somebody standing on the corner, sharing their thoughts. And I guess now, we just have a billion Speakers’ Corners, and podcasting is one of them. You know, that podcasting is one of the venues for these people standing up on the soapbox and saying what they have to say. Martin Feld 28:09 I've got about three or four or five different questions swirling in my brain to ask you after that, and meandering is good. I suppose the point that I'll pick up on, that idea of this technology bringing people together, whether you know them from your community or not, or you've used it to get in touch with them. You said that podcasting is kind of like if not exactly the same as radio, but it's also this extension or audio version of blogging. Now blogging and radio, when you look at them side by side are actually very different, but podcasting appears to be, from what you've described to me, this kind of nexus, which is similar to both. And as the underlying technology for podcasting, at least today, or up until this point, has been RSS, um is that something that plays a big role for you? Or do you think that's the kind of thing that makes podcasting something different from radio? What do you think the technology's role is there? Daniel Jalkut 29:05 Yeah, the whole idea of a feed, that's obviously hugely powerful: the idea that it's a scaffolding, the technology is a scaffolding that gives both the broadcaster and the listener the power to organise and time-shift... used to be if you wanted to time-shift the radio, you'd have to literally, like, get ready with your boombox with a cassette tape, put it in and wait for the moment when you thought, you know, your song was going to come on, and then press record and hope that you got it and then you could time-shift that. And if you compare that to the idea that, you know, imagine that back in the 80s, or whatever, you know, along with the stream of songs coming off of the radio, was a stream of information describing in detail the names of the songs, the artists, who all of the performers were, maybe notes about each song with the history of how they made the song was... how much that would have empowered you as a listener, back then to just like radio songs. And and we have that luxury with almost all podcast content. It's sort of like a technical coincidence that we have it, like, it was the only way to get the information out to people at the time. Uh, you know, you could imagine a history of podcasting, that evolved more just like a digital version of radio, and didn't have this, this idea of a feed. And there are services out there, I think, trying to get back to a more controlled, like not, not a feed-based system, something that, you know, for example, like, I get, essentially the equivalent of a feed of content from a service like Netflix, but I don't have power over, I don't, at least I don't think I have power over, you know, I don't have the technology there is proprietary, and it doesn't put into my hands the ability to easily archive or organise or selectively preload all of the content where and when I want it. And I think, like I said, sort of a historical accident that podcasting turned out this way, but it's extremely empowering to individuals, the same way that blogging was with RSS. Daniel Jalkut 31:47 Uh, and it was controversial too! And the big companies, the media companies historically do not like anything about the way that uh, feeds empower users to individually archive and collect what they consider to be their intellectual property. So, um there was a lot a lot of controversy back in the early days of RSS from companies like, I think if I'm remembering correctly, companies like The New York Times, who didn't want you to have the power to save off a bunch of copies of their posts or their articles. I mean, you know, anybody with a little ambition could have (back in the day) saved off a copy, a paper copy of The New York Times, cut out the articles they're interested in, paste them into scrapbooks, and have a permanent collection of all their favourite articles from The New York Times. Like so many things that, you know, the media companies, big companies don't like about the way things have evolved, it's, it's um, it's not that it's something new you can do now, but it's something that has become so easy to automate, and to just do by default, that I can see why they wouldn't like that, like, I wouldn't like it if it was really easy for somebody to automatically subscribe to all of my software work for free. Martin Feld 33:21 Mm-hmmm, yep. Daniel Jalkut 33:21 You know, like, because, because then I wouldn't make any money. And so I can see why there's a kind of conundrum here, but the fact is, this incredible, incredibly vital... like it also continues to surprise me how powerful podcasting has become, because it's, I've been listening to podcasts since before they were called podcasts and well before anybody thought there was any massive social impact from them. They were, it's hard to, you know, they're so common now. You'd be hard-pressed to find somebody in any like, I guess, quote, unquote, first-world country at least, who had no idea what a podcast is. And if you think about like the least technologically-savvy person, in your family or community, if you ask them: 'Do you know what a podcast is?', the chances now are extremely high that they will know what a podcast is, even if they've never engaged in listening to one. And the fact is: chances of the average person now of listening, having listened to a podcast, I think is probably about as, as high as, you know, people listening to the radio or anything else. Daniel Jalkut 34:47 It's a, it's a huge thing and the fact that it does, you know, you asked this question starting on, I am fascinated by the fact that it's all based on feeds still, and we get back to that, those of us who are interested in and love RSS and feeds and the technology, just to put a finer point on it, the technology of an open format that facilitates arbitrary clients taking and managing and downloading, parsing, etc., that's getting back to the thing I said about Netflix, you can't easily go download a third-party Netflix app. Netflix is famously restrictive about like, you can run a Netflix app on your iPad or your iPhone, but you know, they've, they've sort of semi-famously don't have a Mac app, because a lot of people would like to be able to run a Mac Netflix app, so they can download a movie and watch it on the plane, let's say. if Netflix were an open, non-proprietary format, there would be a million Netflix apps, you know?! And that's kind of the way it is with podcasting. There are not a million, but there are hundreds (I'm sure) of podcasting apps, including like proprietary apps that happen to use the underlying, same underlying format—not because they want to, but because they have to. Daniel Jalkut 36:17 It's like... imagine like um, The New York Times or any other newspaper back before all of this, before technology and the Web; there might have been a technology besides printing on paper that was more proprietary and allowed, you know, the company to avoid, for example, like they sell one copy of The New York Times, to me for a dollar. And I can hand that off to 10 other people after I'm done reading it, who don't pay the dollar. And you can imagine that like The New York Times, if they knew another technology that would prevent that from happening, like disappearing ink, like you can, you know, you can print on this paper that only one person can read it and then it disappears. They would be probably pretty excited about that prospect, but even if they were excited about it, they wouldn't really have the, the option of using it if they wanted to participate in this like global market of standard printed-on-paper media. And I think there's something to that with podcasts that has become a standard that you don't have a choice of: if you, if you create audio content, you kind of don't have a choice, you, you are so incentivised to participate in the podcast system, because it's where everybody expects to get their information. And similarly to the idea that if you had this magical read-once newspaper, you still wouldn't have any choice but to print on regular, you can share it, you can copy it, you can cut it out and paste it into scrapbook paper, because that's just the standard everybody expects. Daniel Jalkut 38:08 And so we're really lucky that audio podcasting has turned out to be based on this open format, as compared with for example, video podcasting. There's no reason it couldn't have evolved with open formats based on RSS. And to some extent it did, you know, there were people who were doing video podcasts via RSS. But as it happens, it's mostly evolved into a proprietary system based on YouTube, you know, most things you would call video podcasts, or you could compare to an audio podcast, YouTube is the standard, the de facto standard for distributing and it's fairly open, and uh, but it's not open. It's open in the sense that they haven't locked it down as much as Netflix, say, for example. So, you will find tools like YouTube DL to download content from YouTube, from YouTube. And for all I know, they may let you download from Netflix as well, I don't know, but the fact is: we didn't happen to end up with an open, non-proprietary system for mass dissemination of video, and that's sort of too bad. But we have the technology of podcasting happening to turn out this way. And I think some credit to Apple for being like the de facto standard hub of podcasts and choosing not to try to make it proprietary, that we ended up with this weird system where there's this dominant media that is thankfully just like totally stuck—to the chagrin of anybody who wishes it wasn't totally stuck in an open format that empowers users and app makers to have complete control over how people consume the media. Martin Feld 39:57 I think 'chagrin' is a great word there, because you're right, you can kind of see this, this desire that it were otherwise, that perhaps it were more like the YouTube or the Netflix model that you mentioned. And that word 'open' that you mentioned is a great one and kind of difficult sometimes to define or really understand where openness ends or what it means. When I think about what you've been saying and your participation in this open podcasting area, and everything you've said up until now, it reminds me also of your involvement in other areas, if I can bring it up and ask you about it. For example, MarsEdit... Daniel Jalkut 40:37 Mm-hmmm... yep. Martin Feld 40:38 ...your blogging software, you've also got Black Ink, which I was also reminded of, by your mention of The New York Times and... Daniel Jalkut 40:44 Right... Martin Feld 40:44 ...things like crosswords. You also mentioned in one of your earlier responses, the idea of having a personality or bringing yourself very naturally with this podcasting experience that you have. How do you think about yourself in the various roles or personas that you play across podcasting, and the blogging software that you do and the other independent development that you do? Like, who is Daniel Jalkut? Daniel Jalkut 41:11 Yeah, that's interesting, um... so, for folks who don't know, the first thing that jumps to mind when you ask that is this sort of dichotomy of personalities. For folks who don't know, my Twitter persona is me, but you know, I have this long-standing Twitter name: @danielpunkass. And it inspires people to make assumptions about my personality, which are sort of understandable. And I sort of take licence with having that being my um, my Twitter ID, I sort of take some licence being a little bit of a punkass, so to speak, and that means being provocative; it means occasional profanity; it means, you know, sort of some it means some things that, you know, when I go to meet my in-laws or something, it wouldn't be the first thing I said, 'Hi, I'm Daniel Punkass', right? So, we all have these personas that... I sort of treat some of the outlets I have online as a slice of my personality, and the slice you get sort of depends on what you've opted into. And when you subscribe to my Twitter feed, that's named @danielpunkass, it's sort of sort of my assumption that you understand that you're not getting the for-the-benefit-of-in-laws, like, kind of personality. Daniel Jalkut 42:41 So by contrast, for example, I do engage in some social networks like Facebook, where I'm Daniel Jalkut, and I can sometimes be a little saucy there, but it's more of like, this is my family personality. And um, you know, doing the Core Intuition podcast with Manton, you know, we sometimes can't resist it, but for example, we almost never talk about politics on the Core Intuition podcast, because, not because Manton and I aren't interested in politics. We are so interested in politics, that we know it's not appropriate to, to that slice of our personality, and it would change the show; it would be for... you know, it's not that it's not that we don't think the the political discussions we might have would, wouldn't, aren't important to have, but that that's just not the slice of us. You know, the slice of us that that people get on the Core Intuition podcast is the entrepreneurial, technical businessy, sort of like 'How do you try to make it as a software developer?' slice of our personalities. The reason I said I jumped to the whole @danielpunkass thing was one of the phenomena that I've experienced over the years is having people meet me in person, for example. One of the things I kind of find amusing is more than a few people have commented on being surprised that I was quote, unquote, so nice. Martin Feld 44:24 Really, ha?! Daniel Jalkut 44:25 I said, 'What do you mean? What do you expect?' They expect something 'punkass', right? And well, I'm pretty nice on Twitter too, even though I have this provocative, you know, sort of persona to some extent, but just goes to show how much people sort of imbue what they expect you to be like, based on a specific slice that you've offered online. Um, so, I suppose you know, it's like, you take a famous like broadcaster on the news, and are people surprised when Dan Rather, for example—famous American news broadcaster, he's also kind of gotten a little bit of a Twitter resurgence lately—but are they surprised when they meet Dan Rather, in real life, and he's not wearing a suit, and he's wearing shorts and a t-shirt? Well, they probably are surprised but they shouldn't be, right? Because like, you're always getting a slice of somebody, when you view them through some format that they've decided is the version of them that they're giving you. And getting back to the whole thing I said earlier about, you know, a lot of us have this, have this shared experience of feeling like we quote unquote, know people from listening to their podcasts. And you really do only know that little slice of them that they've chosen to share with you on that podcast. So, like on the Core Intuition show, people really know Manton and I, with respect to how we feel about: Apple; Twitter; programming parad-..., you know, paradigms; what we think about Swift; what we think about, the way Apple runs its software business; and they know very little about, what we think about: politics; they know very little about: like, you know, there are aspects of my personality that that I'm a vegetarian, for example, or that I make pizza (like you've noted), uh, that you don't get from listening to Core Intuition. You get that from my Micro.blog, or my Twitter, or my regular blogs or me being on other podcasts like this. Daniel Jalkut 46:30 And, so I don't know, I think um, I don't even remember how I got down this path, but uh, the the fact that people are surprised when they meet me, for, there's always something—not, I wouldn't shouldn't say 'always'—but there's often something about me in person, that I guess is not a component of any of the slices of my personality that I share publicly online. There's always something that um, people are like, 'I didn't expect this! I didn't expect you to look like this! I didn't expect you to talk like this! I didn't expect you to use—I don't know—respectful language!' It's um, it's always something that defies people's expectations. And so I guess it's good, it's a good reminder. I mean, in real life, too, you're always getting a slice of somebody. Um, the whole, like, code-switching thing is, I think, pretty powerful that, you know, like I was saying, when you meet the in-laws, you're a different version of yourself than when you're out for a drink with your friends. Daniel Jalkut 47:35 But, the whole like idea that, I guess I do kind of like being able to have different personalities online. I like the fact that I can, oh, here's another good example! So um, I adopt a sort of professorial tone with my blogging; I know I do this, and it's just for whatever reason, I like authoritative blogging, and not all my blogging does this. But for example, if I'm writing a blog post about, you know, some argument about Apple's behaviour, it's almost like a journalistic style of authoritative-sounding... and and I've gotten pushback from that, that people say, like, I sound like an... trying to be a know-it-all, or whatever. I'm trying to be trying to come off, like, smarter than I am, like, 'You know, that's just the that's just the tone that I think tells people you care about what you're saying'. I could say, like, 'Whatevs!', you know? 'Here's my take! But it's like the format fits the way you want to be understood. I don't know. There's something fun about the fact that you can, you can invent... you know, like I said earlier, I also did this Bitsplitting podcast and my persona on that... it was really hard for me because as you're noticing, interviewing me, now, I don't have a problem going off on a tangent and speaking extemporaneously for long periods of time. I always tell people this when, when um, when they're interviewing me for a podcast, I say, 'You just need...', because because for folks who don't know, like, before this podcast, I was encouraged to go speaking extemporaneously, um, and I always have to say, 'Listen, if anything, you're gonna have to stop me from talking, because I will get going on something'. In other words, like, interviewers who are worried that I might clam up and not speak, they don't really have to worry about that. Daniel Jalkut 49:35 Oh, where was I going to...? But then I get myself into these little holes where I don't remember why I went down this path, but um, anyway, I just liked the fact that um, we can. Oh, I know what I was gonna say! On the Bitsplitting podcast, I had a different persona, which was interesting for me because I had to explicitly turn off the rambling, go-on-forever, make-it-all-about-me kind of like, part of my personality, because I was interviewing other people the same way you're interviewing me now and you want me to go off extemporaneously, I wanted other people to do that. And I knew that if I was just my normal Core Intuition, slash, you know, friend-at-a-bar slash, whatever personality, I would just go off, and I wouldn't give the guest any time to speak. And so I remember having this, I might have even put it in my show notes, like every time like, just shut up, like stop talking, let the person talk! And I had to be careful, even if I thought I had something interesting to say about a subject, I had to be careful to try to keep it concise. And so it's kind of fun, though, that you can, like if I have a, a whim to have another format of podcast, I can just make it! I can make, um... and I've had this thought too, like uh, you know, speaking of Manton Reece, my co-, co-host, he does (or I haven't noticed if he's done it much lately), but he has periodically done sort of a short format, like two or three minutes every day, or whenever he feels like it, kind of podcast. And that's like a whole different format. That's just like a diary almost, and I've thought about doing something like that. Daniel Jalkut 51:23 Um, I thought about doing things like live streaming, live streaming, me programming. And I'm like, you know, who would want to watch that? Well, it turns out, somebody would, and you have the opportunity, because of all these open formats and all the technology that's out there, like, you can engage in the world community, however you want to, you know? Like I said earlier, and I come into this interview with no jitters, really, because I'm so used to it. Other people are terrified of public speaking and this would count as that. They're terrified that they would say something they'd regret. And for those people, maybe the way they engage is Instagram, where they can just post photos that they've decided in advance that they like, and that they are comfortable sharing. And so there's kind of like a different format for everybody, depending on what you're comfortable with. And I just think when we get down to the the crux of it, podcasting is one component of this massive, you know, blogging, photo sharing, audio sharing, video sharing—the fact that you can share and that it became a huge business to share with other people, you playing a video game, uh, you know, Twitch being a multi-billion-dollar enterprise based on somebody not being satisfied with, um: you can blog, you can podcast, you can video-stream; we need to take that to another level and have it be streaming me playing a video game specifically. And people are going to keep, I think, inventing new ways to share a component of their personality. And you know, when when you watch somebody play a video game, that's really a narrow component of somebody's personality. It's like, what they do on Minecraft is a very slim peek at somebody. Um, but that's I guess, that's my, my open thinking on this subject is, just that it's, we're always inventing new ways to share a little bit of ourselves with other people and that's exciting! Martin Feld 53:29 That's fantastic. And yeah, certainly don't worry about speaking extemporaneously. As you hinted, that is precisely what I like... Daniel Jalkut 53:36 Yeah! Martin Feld 53:36 ...and what I'm enjoying about doing this entire interview series. And look, I'm going to note the time because I know that you're entering your working day, whereas I get to toddle off to go to sleep, but unless there's something else that you wanted to mention specifically, I wanted to ask you a final question here—and feel free to go on if something else sparks in your mind, as you said—but that idea of trying new ways of expressing yourself or speaking or communicating on the Web, is there something that maybe you've held back on or you've considered trying or would like to do in expressing your own personality or thoughts on the Web, then you might not have done before? Daniel Jalkut 54:14 I think there are, I think there are tonnes of them. It's funny, I have done a lot. And when I think back at it, you know, I have a lot of interests, uh, I have a lot of blogs, I haven't been as engaged or active with all of them. But you know, I have musical interests, for example. And I think, well, I'd like to do more musical stuff, and engage with the world more musically. And then I think, well, you know, I did do, I have a whole blog where I made musical renditions of Twitter posts. It's called TwitPOP. Martin Feld 54:25 Wow! Daniel Jalkut 54:25 I have so many different venues. Um, so if anyone's interested in that you can go to punkitup.com—let me see, let me make sure that that's right—punkitup.com/twitpop! And that's just an example of, of something that... my last post was 2016, but that's an example where I said, 'You know, what would be funny? Is if I made musical renditions of Twitter posts, and then posted them on the Web', and I decided to do that, and I did it! And I did it! And then I got tired of it, I guess. And I'm not committ-..., I'm not committing to ever doing another one or not doing another one. But this, just the fact that I could do that is, it's just amazing. And I don't know that there are, I mean, other aspects of my personality include things like my interest in music and cooking, and sailing and running, exercise, I kind of do get my thoughts on those things out there, to some extent, one way or another, but I could see, I could imagine going deeper on any of those subjects, and maybe others: DIY, home improvement, things like this. Um, I do sometimes think when I when I watch a YouTube video about like, how to fix a faucet, I do sometimes think I could do a better video than that! And so who knows? Maybe I'll have a maybe I'll have a YouTube channel at some point. Uh, but like I said earlier, the fact that it's not an open format, and it gives me a little pause. I imagine, I, if I did something like that I would probably have a blog to go with it. That would be the opening up of that, of that format to some extent. Um, but yeah, I don't know! I kind of enjoy, I enjoy when other people share something about themselves that's humane and authentic. And I tried to model that for other people. And so um, I think whatever I'm doing, if it's my punkass persona, or if it's my Core Intuition, or my blogging, you're getting some authentic slice of me and I, I really value and try to reward other people doing that as well. So, that's about it; that's my final thought. I don't think I have any, 'Mic drop! I'm out of here!' Martin Feld 57:06 No, that's fantastic, and look, you brought it back to a wonderful spot, discussing openness, blogging as an open area to share ideas and also just that idea that you are many different people. Daniel Jalkut 57:17 Yeah. Martin Feld 57:17 I think a lot of people can relate to that: we all present different parts of ourselves. So, as you say, if that's the mic drop, and you're happy to stop there. I wanna say 'Thank you', Daniel, for an excellent conversation... Daniel Jalkut 57:27 Yep! Martin Feld 57:28 ...and really appreciate you joining Really Specific Stories. Daniel Jalkut 57:30 I really had fun joining you. I commend you on the project; I hope everything goes (continues) to go well with it! Thanks for having me.