Welcome to the After-On podcast. I'm your host, Rob Reed.

And this is a series of conversations with thinkers, founders, and scientists.

Take a little time and stretch out because these talks are unhurry and meant to bring you

to a top percentile understanding of something important.

So whether you're into start-up, score ideas, a techie, or a lit major, take your time,

engage your mind, and you'll be glad you did.

Especially this week when we'll be talking to...

January LeVoy, Patrick Rothfuss, and me.

Kind of.

Some context.

A few weeks back over the Thanksgiving week, I produced a special and kind of fun episode,

which consisted mainly of an excerpt from the audiobook of my first novel, Year Zero,

as well as some commentary about my adventures in founding the company that created the

Rhapsody Music Service, and the opinions I formed about media industry lobbying, copyright

law, and some other things as a result of that.

We're now getting into the year-end holiday season here in the U.S., as well as many

of the 143 other countries where this podcast is downloaded, so I'm going to do something

similar, only this time with a novel that this podcast takes its name from, which is, of

course, after on.

As regular listeners will know from previous quick summaries, after on the novel is set

in present-day San Francisco and tells the tale of an imaginary startup, a rather diabolical

social network that embodies everything that's wrong with social media today, dialed up by

...