We are just going to talk a little bit about the book and then we will take some questions from you which words the end. I think first you wanted to read a little bit from the book, right . How many people have already started reading wax debate could is my microphone on . Yes. So, it opens with a quote from wolf blitzer so this is the preface of the book and then we will talk to you guys and then the interview ralph nader in the bathtub. There were many points that Security Code and in retrospect should have stopped us from entering msnbc. We were both covered in tattoos. Neither as sophisticated in the case. She had an accidental death stare into mistakes creepy for charming. We may have had the sweaty demeanor of the liberated pod casters recently escaped from the Internet Radio network that had taken on the fake business sponsors. Something that we have sworn off. They had aspirations of being pristine independent media untouched by the corporate cash. We would be the peoples media. That was the name he hides the show citizen radio. There was also the sponsor in their mind with a touch or show that its the first way that they just feel better about ourselves. That concept of being sponsor free flowing with the people we were supposed to be making money for say our former boss. The career until that point essentially been managers come agents and others saying we love you because you are political. Then when they saw that the nightmare actually entails they said did you not see political or edgy but Everything Else we loved. The case in point during the time that we were covering the controversy in 2007 from our former boss asked us to take on at t as a sponsor. Mind you that the time they were being sued over allegations providing in the nsa with its customers and Internet Communications as a part of the data mining operation. So, to us it seemed a little bit like a conflict of interest. This is citizen radio saying if you were going to be spied on, be spied on by the best. At t, they are always listening. So, new sale is the book that you wrote. It is a fantastic work of fiction, but none of this could ever actually happen, right . So tony what was the process of writing this book for you . Dave joked a little bit. What was the process like for you . Spinnaker lead down army down to one microphone clicks isnt working . I would be like and this is why nothing in washington gets a gun and done and then i would hifi if everybody. Do you mean the actual writing process . We would determine the theme as we wanted to write about and then make a bullet point checklist to hit abcd. Like a chalkboard. Then i would make the first pass and then jamie would go through and fill it out a little bit more. Then we would run back through together. Write stories, personal anecdotes, stuff like that, maybe add more jokes together in my come up with stuff on the fly. And then editing was all allison because anybody that has received a text message or email from me knows i can barely spell so she did get stuck. So it wasnt that far off. But it was really easy. We just talked about we did an interview the other day where we thought someone was in the writing. [applause] [inaudible] you should because we went into every meeting before this because we were desperate. We were really poor and no one had offered us anything. The only one with conan and i hadnt been invited back so this is the thing that will save us but before they were just really dumb middleoftheroad. They wanted us to write a take back of glenn beck. Thats all you have to do. It was out of being relevant. We dont want to do that so we would walk away. Should we have done it. And sarah who was the biggest publisher was the only meeting that we totally fell and then when we walked in i had a suitcase because i was going to North Carolina to help my brother are trained for a fight. Allison was in . We realized what we had to have been as these suits had to get out of our way. Sarah was like thats a great idea. Why dont you write about the suits and the media. Not only that, but the controversial topics we covered from palestine, feminism not just being about prochoice and we just, i dont know we just went in and we were like we want to write about all of this and we are going to critique the media that are the only people who would have us on their show to promote this book and we are just going to take a all over them. So at cspan, cool. She said sure. We did it and we didnt censor ourselves while writing. I think thats why we didnt fight. The reason we had an amazing experiences we had an allfemale team so they are all amazing and super supportive. Or was no one like i like the chapter on factory farms. Thats probably the first time that was set on cspan. Im going to go with yes. Do you see them scrambling, shut it down. [laughter] so yes we never did. Even when we were living out of our car giving gigs, we were just doing what he loved and we were so much happier than we were when we were like working day jobs and being too tired to perform a were right. So even when we were feeling because we were writing the stuff we wanted to write and we were doing the comedy journalism that we wanted to do, there was no point that we were like miserable. When we try to pander to people it was miserable because we were still failing and we were pandering. I feel like this was the best experience because we were writing for us. Which is great because it is the only book that we will ever be allowed again. One thing you mentioned that i think is so great about the book is that there is a nice mixture of Public Expenditure mullahs and personal memoir that you talk about in your story of creating citizen radio alongside the stuff that you talk about on citizen radio. Is that something you went into citing this is something that we want to duplex they are sort of from the invasion of iraq and the rise of alternative media. And when we met at borders bookstore, went on the road, so those resorted followed the book. And the stories i think that they are funny. Some of them are political about the field meetings that we had at mtv or cnn or before i get my ray and on conan and i had the clothes in my pocket and i thought that it was claimed to be like the big moments that im discovered and instead i just got a lot of hate mail. We talk about this stuff which is political but also i think what makes the show different is we try to be humble and selfaware and because of that we seen and we are more accessible. When you watch tv, you eventually see the same people that are wrong about everything. Confidently wrong about more stuff and journalists and canadians comedians have had where they cannot admit that they are wrong because its interpreted as weakness and then you lose your authority. So everyone is in this game to win and you never admit that you are wrong. Do you think thats why the news gets it wrong so much . Label these news outlets get it wrong so much . Everybody is in a rush to maintain that inside access and how you do that is to not rock the boat. So, to not save any controversial ideas. And to sort of reinforce the same tie platitudes that are brought out every single time that we discuss a major story. I think that is is perfect reason that we are still discussing the third rail issues like treating samesex marriage as though it is controversial in any sort of way even though every poll that has come out has shown that young people including young republicans support it so we are still debating it. In the media, claiming, claim its changed my thinking. We are still debating it for some reason. But they want to seem fair and balanced. So, something that we have said before is that you watch a debate on Climate Change and you will have conservatives be like x. X. And then the liberals say x. Equals y. And then the host says i guess we will never know. You have over a thousand computers behind you. Just look at up. We are still debating the same things over and over again. Leaves office in the president ial race. It recently said he supported samesex marriage because joe biden cant keep his mouth shut. They were likely have to appeal. Do you . You dont. It doesnt even make sense politically at this point. One of the interesting things that you mentioned in the book is constantly having to revise sections of the book like we have a chapter on shootings in the nra. The gun massacre was hard to keep up to date and was depressing that the same thing in the samesex marriage for the buck in a good way. A lot of specialties. A couple of the states have rules that the ban is unconstitutional. So, yes, the chapter sadly right up until last minute i was editing i think we are the real victims. There was like a good 30 seconds there. But its kind of funny. So, there is also, you know, just certain they are only as left as you can go. What the right does really well is they will frame moderate liberalism as extremism. If barack obama put in place universal health care, he would have been called a socialist. Succumb. His account is put together this compromise is still a giveaway. What was it called . A socialist. You might as well give us Free Health Care if they are going to call you a socialist anyway. If msnbc is as left as you can get. If they do a great job of painting the radical, and then rachel or the 18 hours of Joe Scarborough say that we need to invade these other countries, smart people who dont have time to watch democracy now like we do will watch it and be like this is as left as we can get and even they are saying we have to invade iraq again. Or even they are saying whatever. Then people believe it. So, what we try to do it would have been really easy and on a ton of news shows with hash tag fox news fails. But thats not fair. Even when they talk about samesex marriage its like talking up the rights, talk about equal pay. When they talk about Climate Change, turn the lights off that but they will never talk about factory farms. So, we try to cover the stories and they really arent getting any play at all. To say fox news is extremist, we all know that. I get it. Theyve done really good work in other areas but its sort of a challenge. Like you are liberals and you can do better. Where should we be getting our news from or what should we be doing to be more informed and to avoid all of this . Answer to the second question is back in the days they thought that the answer was to match fox news, so we would get asked how much corporate money and try to match them in the ratings and we could just get smashed every single time. Its not going to happen. It runs counter to what we are trying to do. I think what its going to look like his girl of warfare gorilla warfare. Multiple outlets rarely online just because thats how most people get their information if they have internet access. If you all look under your seats there is a free cocktail. We will never have the money cnn has. I go home at night and i play with my tax break. [laughter] anyone that is here that has been on our show, we have a 10dollar table that we offer people their tech because if we let the cats out, they are going to make a real stick about it and so yelling and we dont want our guests to sneeze coming into that kind of as far as we go. So you do feel helpless but if you take a story, the wall but it has been covered with covered the way that was if it wasnt for the independent journalist. Ferguson wouldnt have been covered the way that it was on the ground. She jumped from the bushes. People took photographs of the area and there are no bushes. Anything but politically the best things in life take a while. They are hard and they need more perseverance and dedication. It really sucks sometimes. You feel so fucking alone. Whether it is you have a blog or a phone to videotape a cause, whatever we are finally having access to pick our own shows and writing and i think that is really the plaintiff neutrality is important. If we can control the internet we are in trouble. Ridicule or not covering that as a journalist click i was one of the first journalists at the park. So, i was watching, you know, then grabbing from the first day. And it was just really amazing. That was my first experience, seeing the reality and then seeing how the media interpret the reality and it was a betting because you had him saying is untrue and very easily disproven if you got off your ass and went to the park ass that is how out of touch for cnn is where you have one of the Largest Movement in most of our lifetimes happening with at least billboard advertising literally straight from wall street and i like where are you. Then you had andrew at the New York Times and the only reason he went to the park is because the ceo called him and said im very concerned about this occupied wall street business. So, andrew walked down in his report said Something Like it doesnt seem like they are violent get. And he didnt even cover it up and tell you that because he uncovered secret emails. He just wrote about that in the New York Times. He gave me a call and i was like whatever you need. Thats where the New York Times was at. There was another chilean bellefonte that wrote about the movement and claimed its that the Leaderless Movement and then she found the ambassador for the movement. So basic facts. If they have a leader, did they not have a leader and that was just very easy to afford if he went there and spoke to people that didnt have the leader. But it really did use the 60s and the democrats ass while you didnt hear obama talk about class until occupied wall street. If you understand the ark of the movements there were groups before occupied wall street and there will be groups after occupied wall street. The ad and flow. But it was definitely a big moment. I think it will be called a revolution in the history books. A fairly small revolution. But thats what us. So you built it from nothing. Having these weird building a huge internationally successful dalia radio show having this book managing to land me. So much money. Pull your self up by your bootstraps. I didnt just make money by asking people for if i needed by taking people. The idea of someone whos never seen us watching tv and being like that guy knows what hes talking about. [laughter] i dont know what the other kids are talking about. This is why i see cspan. The fans are citizens ass it is a break of asylum. Being an independent journalist, some of your favorite outlets do not pay living salaries. They probably dont pay their interns, which is a problem because then they also report on the living wage of stuff. How many of those have you quit now . Four. Sometimes that is the principle. Its really frustrating. Anything without citizen radio. You do what youre supposed to do. Im going to go on msnbc, we technically have succeeded and we have been living in squalor because that is how they treat at least journalists who dont sell out you have to work up a major publication but if you are trying to do the right thing, stay with the independent media it is better if you are a trust fund kid because you cant survive. What i will say, not to be too sappy, but there were so many times i think rational people would have quit. I dont want to speak for you but for me personally, dropped out of high school, we met at the bookstore, failed comic out of the car for a year and a half because the comedy club ass i was playing at coffeehouses in des moines where they literally passed the hat and people would throw change and then the same with the show its not because we were cuttingedge Technology People because we are not getting the gigs, the podcast we will be able to talk. He was like you should do this podcast thing. I feel like again especially in this economy. We thought if we are going to fail by not fail doing what we want to do and that is the way that we wrote the book. We told sarah we want to write about these issues, but we didnt censor ourselves we just sent it to her and stuff we would have said to her thinking she would say no, she didnt and that was just us following our debt. Shes like shut up. Shut up. My boss is watching. But its true. And the same thing with standup. When i stop trying to be somebody else, thats when i succeeded. Same with the podcast we were going to lose so many listeners when we started having you on and doing these weird bits just like that. People loved it and we didnt care. I feel like so many times if you do it for you instead of doing what you think people want, people will gravitate towards that because no one is doing it and only you can do ass dont say only you can do u. But thats true. No one else can replicate that. Im going to go to college to study something youre not interested in to segue into a job that you hate to pay off the debt . A lot of people do that and its nothing against you. A lot of people go to college for Different Reasons and they still get screwed over. The traditional means of how it used to be successful are no longer. If you go to college it is no longer safe. I read the book to my tax break. They loved it. They fell asleep to it. Not a lot of celebrity dishing. It seems to be completely void of that. Our sql called she did what . [laughter] it is going to be bad. What do you want people to take from the buck when they read the book . You spent a lot of time making those. We did an interview where someone was like what you like to see the hash tag come absolutely. But this interview is better, right . So people will think critically about the media and support the media and maybe if youre interested in journalism or going into the media and consider pursuing that instead of going to cnn or msnbc. You are more powerful than you think you are. These sort of revolutionary acts we talked about but weve all seen it takes one person nowadays, one cell phone, one blog. They did it better than the New York Times when it came to torture. The people on the ground in ferguson, the movement for Treyvon Martin. I feel like we are finally making some progress. And what i will say i feel like if you see Treyvon Martin it doesnt get said enough in our circle but you have to take care of yourself. We did this like weird interview that got aggressive where we get emails from you all the time, whether it is structured like an ally and your high school were started in the occupied chapter or whatever. We also get emails that talk about citizen radio kids helping you get of her depression and stuff like that. And i am starting to learn as i get older thats a political act, too staying alive and staying active and staying brave and just even if your f