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Hey, you are listening to Recode Media with Peter Kafka.

That's me.

We're going to talk about media and technology and what happens when those things collide.

Sometimes you get awesome television shows like the one made by Peter Gould.

Peter, welcome.

Thanks for joining us from Los Angeles. I don't think there's anyone who would listen to this podcast who doesn't know about Breaking Bad, hasn't watched Breaking Bad. A smaller number, probably familiar with a better call Saul, but let's just briefly explain what that show is and how it came to be. It's a prequel based on a character from an enormously popular show. Is that a fair way to sum it up?

That's absolutely fair.

So it's Bob Odenkirk's character, Saul, who in this show is Jimmy McGill.

Do I have that right?

That's right.

We started off and we had this character of Saul Goodman, who we loved and were fascinated by.

And we decided to do, maybe it was crazy, but we decided to do maybe it was crazy but we decided to do a

spin-off centered around that character and in the spin-off we find out that

he wasn't always Saul Goodman he was in fact started off as Jimmy McGill and

Bob is getting to play and he's playing beautifully Jimmy McGill in several different parts of his life, all in the same show. Yeah, you go back and forth in time. It's a really great show. We're going to go back and forth in time here because I think by the time this thing comes out, we'll be four episodes in. We're three episodes in right now. Obviously, we're not going to do spoilers. And I want to ask you about how the show started and all that. But I want to talk to you about your career as well. Prior to Breaking Bad, you didn't have a tremendously high profile in Hollywood. Do you want to sort of fill in some gaps for us? Absolutely. No, I was a struggling screenwriter. I was a struggling writer. I came out to go to USC film school, and I had a great time there, and then

I taught there for quite a few years. And while I was teaching there, I directed an independent

movie, and I co-wrote some movies, and nothing was really clicking for me. And you made,

you get paid to, like a lot of folks in Hollywood, you got paid to make stuff that never got made,

...