Acquired
03:40:44 · David Rosenthal
[03:40:44] S1: Has made an appearance before on acquired in the Ferrari episode because Giulia's grandfather was one of Enzo Ferrari's first clients and raced his privately owned Ferrari one sixty six, like the, you know, the first cars that Enzo made in Le Mans at the, you know, beginning of Ferrari. Amazing. Alright. That's number two. Number three, NBC had a corporate relationship with Nike. And so any of the stars of any NBC sitcoms could just go to the Nike warehouse in LA and get all the swag they wanted. So how do you think Jerry Seinfeld started wearing Nikes Oh. On Seinfeld episodes. Freebies. But, yeah, we talked about this on the Nike episode that, like, you know, they had their athlete strategy, and then they got into entertainment. And this was part of it. Jerry Seinfeld was one of the first, you know, the... Or big parts of Nike's, get into entertainment strategy. Alright. Alright. That's what I got for trivia. Carve outs? Carve outs. So I decided for this one appropriately enough, I gotta just do Seidfeld episode recommendations. Perfect. So the marine biologist, number one, by far, it's it's just the most, like, masterful piece of twenty two minute episode crafting I've ever seen. It's great. Couple deep cuts that I'm partial to. One, the jacket, which I already mentioned. And two, the first Seinfeld episode I ever watched, I vividly remember this like it was yesterday. I was nine years old when this episode came out. I saw it air live on TV. I had a babysitter for the night. My parents were out. I got to stay up late, and I had the TV on. It was the dinner party airing live, which is the episode with the black and white cookie. I will always, always remember Jerry eats a black and white cookie. He's talking to Elaine, he's like, Elaine, the world needs to look to the cookie. Racial harmony here in the cookie. We... What we can learn from the black and white cookie. And then in the end of the episode, he throws up due to food poisoning from the cookie.
03:42:56 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:42:56] S0: Oh, Jerry. [03:42:57] S1: Oh, Jerry. Alright. What you got? For me, [03:43:00] S0: I have, another Seinfeld related one. Everyone, if you have a browser open right now, go to seinfeld.visualizingdata.com. There is the most insane web project I've ever seen called The An Unnecessary Data Exploration by Andy Kirk. This is a book that... It's a coffee table book that the author then put online that is a full data visualization of a zillion different ways you could slice and dice Seinfeld. What laughs happen when in each episode? What do the patterns look like? How do they accrue to each character? It goes episode by episode. The thing's a 121 pages showing when various characters got screen time. It walks through why he thinks the show worked, what makes it unique. But the the most wild thing to notice, it's all hand labeled. So it was him watching episodes on his couch with a spreadsheet open, granularly every five seconds, pausing and labeling who's on screen, who's getting laughs. I mean, the whole thing is is astonishing that a human did this manually before AI. [03:44:20] S1: Wow. So I have the marine biologist up right now. There are 23 scenes in the marine biologist. [03:44:26] S0: Yeah. It's crazy. [03:44:26] S1: There you go. Seinfeld and the Internet made for each other. [03:44:31] S0: My second carve out is Buck's in Woodside. [03:44:34] S1: Oh, yeah.
03:44:34 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:44:34] S1: Oh, yeah. [03:44:35] S0: Incredible restaurant. David and I just went there for a meeting this week, and, I was reminded of just how special that place is, especially if you like Silicon Valley lore and ephemera. And, I mean, they've got an Apple one up on the wall. They've got a signed Jensen jacket, the first one he ever wore on stage. It's like you just tour around the place and get a history of, of the tech industry, which is very fun. [03:44:57] S1: It's like a, Silicon Valley version of Monks Cafe, you might say. [03:45:01] S0: Yes. And my last carve out is a company called Tin Can. My son is obsessed with it. He's three, but it's more for, like, five to 12 year olds. It is a phone. It's a landline with no screen that uses Wi Fi that is built for kids. So they can call preprogrammed numbers, and if they need to call 911 or an emergency contact or something, it stays, you know, plugged in in your house. It's like exactly the type of phones that we had when we were kids and just got to call other kids without all the smartphone stuff. The weird coda to this one is somehow I ended up being the first investor in this company because it was a completely different company first. It's like my last check when I was a professional [03:45:49] S1: You're like the NBC network executive. [03:45:52] S0: Like, it accidentally pivoted, turned into this company [03:45:54] S1: Yeah.
03:45:54 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:45:54] S1: Yeah. [03:45:55] S0: Became this, like, massive viral hit. They're on Good Morning America. It's the face of this movement around great ways for kids to communicate without screens, and my son is loving it. So forever, I was just sort of sitting on, like, at some point, I should carve out tin can, but I don't wanna be, like, too self promotional and promote a company I invested in. But this thing is just really fun watching all these kids use it. [03:46:17] S1: So good. [03:46:19] S0: Alright. Well, listeners, if you wanna listen to any other acquired episodes, you can do so on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And we've got some thank yous. [03:46:28] S1: Yes. We do. Thank you [03:46:30] S0: so much to our partners this season, Sierra. Sierra helps the great companies of the world build better, more human customer experiences. Sierra.ai/ acquired. WorkOS, start selling to enterprise customers with just a few lines of code and build authentication in minutes instead of months, workos.com, to Anthropic. Claude thought with me a lot while I was researching this episode, and it can think a lot with you too. Claude.ai/ acquired to Sentry, application monitoring software considered not bad by millions of developers. Sentry.io/acquired. You can click the link in the show notes to learn more about any of the sources, the several dozen that David and I have between us, the books that we read, especially Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keesian. [03:47:16] S1: Yep. [03:47:16] S0: Great, great book. All of that is linked in the show notes. And a few people to thank in particular.
03:47:16 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:47:16] S0: Great, great book. All of that is linked in the show notes. And a few people to thank in particular. [03:47:22] S1: Yes. [03:47:23] S0: David, what you got? [03:47:24] S1: Yes. Research. Thank you as well. Speaking of books for the show, first and foremost to Warren Littlefield, NBC executive, responsible for the decision to officially pick up Seinfeld. Warren spent a a great amount of time with us, which was wonderful. He also wrote a fantastic oral history memoir of his time at NBC called Top of the Rock, which is well worth reading about Seinfeld, Friends, Mad About You, Cheers, all all the great stuff from NBC from this era. Famously, right after Seinfeld ended, Warren got fired at NBC and went on to have an amazing second career as a producer. So he executive produced Fargo, The Handmaid's Tale, Dopesick, and now The Testaments, which is doing incredibly well. So great to talk to him. Alec Berg, Dave Mandel, and Jeff Schafer, three of the writers behind some of the most legendary episodes on Seinfeld, especially the second half of the show, to Jeremy Zimmer, former head of the UTA talent agency, to Michael Lynton, former chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, to our friend Ravi Nandan at a twenty four, and Brian McAndrews, longtime television executive, first at ABC Capital Cities and then at Disney. And to our friend Jeremy Jaffaun for helping inspire this episode with his original recommendation that I made a carve out on our last episode of Jerry Seinfeld's movie comedian.
03:48:54 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:48:54] S0: Thank you, Jeremy. I've got a couple. One to Arvind Navaratnam at Worldly Partners for his great mini study this episode on Seinfeld, is linked in the show notes. And then also to good friend of the show, Danny Passman, an entertainment lawyer who has spent his whole career around deals in this industry. If you like this episode, go check out other episodes on TV and entertainment. Taylor Swift, Oprah way back in the day. More recently, much higher quality episode because we got better over time. Disney part one and part two. Yep. And, for a tie in on Coca Cola. [03:49:31] S1: That's [03:49:31] S0: right. You can visit library.acquire.fm to get access to all the visuals associated with this episode, charts, tables, and illustrations. You can join the email list at acquired dot f m slash email. That's where we will send out behind the scenes photos from research, episode corrections, and vote on future episode topics. And come talk about this episode with us and the whole community in Slack after you listen. Acquired.fm/slack. [03:49:55] S1: With that listeners, we'll see you next time. [03:49:58] S0: We'll see you next time.