Ep. 06: "String Art Owls, Copper Pipe, and Bono's Boss"
Roderick on the Line
Merlin Mann
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2011
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Vimeo: “John Roderick on String Art Owls, Copper Pipe, and Bono’s Boss”
We weren’t able to record a new episode for this week, but we couldn’t leave you guys empty-handed. So, here’s a special little treat from the John and Merlin archives.
Videotaped in the verdant, bucolic, and phlegmatic chaos of his back yard in San Francisco, here’s Merlin’s 2007 interview with John for The Merlin Show.
Then, as now, we cover the waterfront in this one. From playing guitar to advertising on the web to the evil work of promoters, to the ongoing problem of everyone always trying to shortchange everyone on copper pipe. We also discuss Bono’s Boss.
Tech note: In the interest of not killing your bandwidth, we’re dropping this interview into our podcast feed as an audio file.
But, to get the full effect, we encourage you to enjoy the actual video, which you can watch embedded here on the show notes page for this episode. Or, you can also hop over to Merlin’s Vimeo site, where, if you have a Vimeo login, you can download the (589 MB .m4v) file to peruse at your offline leisure.
Anyhow, we hope you enjoy the show. See you next week, and—please—keep moving and get out of the way.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Are there commercials? No. You mean like you know like standard like TV commercials? |
| 0:16.0 | Or like yeah, some kind of maybe even fake commercials? |
| 0:19.0 | Pick commercials? |
| 0:20.0 | You mean like Sanka or? |
| 0:22.0 | This episode brought to you by Merlin Sava. |
| 0:25.0 | No, I haven't sought sponsorship. |
| 0:30.0 | It's not that I would turn the money away. I haven't sought sponsorship. |
| 0:32.8 | It's not that I would turn the money away, but I... |
| 0:36.2 | Well, now my impression of how you web people made your money |
| 0:40.4 | was that you made something and then you sold advertising space all around it |
| 0:46.0 | until the thing itself was the size of a can of tuna. |
| 0:49.5 | Virtually obscured. |
| 0:50.4 | And then there was advertising, you know, flashing at you and offering you |
| 0:54.2 | click here and you get a million dollars, click here and your dick will be twice as big. |
| 0:59.0 | Yes. Isn't that what so why why should this show be any different? |
| 1:02.3 | That first of all to answer your question that is a that is a very popular model for making money on the web and it's one that was one that I've employed |
| 1:09.7 | Some people go with subscription models. That's where you pay a certain amount of money |
| 1:13.7 | and you get a certain amount of stuff. |
| 1:15.4 | But that doesn't really work. |
| 1:16.4 | Nobody subscribes to stuff on the web, do they? |
| 1:18.6 | Yeah, some people do. |
| 1:19.6 | I think one problem is that people get, you know, there's a phenomenon that happens on the web |
... |
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