Transcripts For KNTV Press Here 20150830 : vimarsana.com

Scott mcgrew good morning, everyone, im scott mcgrew. I hope you are a longtime watcher of press here. If you are, you know each week, my team of reporters and i talk to various ceos and newsmakers. This is a serious show. Its not a sunday morning infomercial, but that said, let me talk to you about toothpaste. We have for you this morning a revolutionary new toothpaste created in Silicon Valley, gets teeth 260 cleaner than the leading brand, but thats not all. It cuts your risk of gingivitis and leaves your mouth minty fresh. Or so claims amit goswamy. He is the guy trying to disrupt the toothpaste industry with livionex, a 20 toothpaste. Joined by john swartz of usa today and alice truong, of course. Let me ask you about this 250 claim. People say its twice as good as brand x. Yours ishow is something 250 better . Amit goswamy well, first, we got to take a look at what people do today, scott. Scott brush their teeth. Amit yes, and you brush it the way your ancestor brushed it 4,000 years ago, with scrubbing them. Then, they used to scrub with twigs. Now, you scrub with scott its got some detergents in there, and something to make it rough, and some fluoride. I can make toothpaste. Amit absolutely you can. And thats the reason why up to 90 of all American Adults have gum inflammation and bleeding. And according to the us cdc, 47 of American Adults, thats 66 million adults scott you like your statistics. How is that 250 better . What did you do to toothpaste to make that 250 better . Amit what we did is we started to look at it Silicon Valley style. We said scrubbing aint enough. How would you do it if you were really go design it from scratch . And we said, lets figure out how to rig the molecular bond between dental plaque, which is an oral biofilmbiofilms are the way bacteria protect themselves and make themselves into a lean, mean fighting machine. How can you break it in a way that it disperses, rather than just scrubbing it away as much as you can . John swartz so, you call this dental gel. It looks like skin lotion, actually. Can i try it . Amit absolutely. John so, while im trying it, can youim going to see if its minty fresh. Amit it is edible. Scott well, now the rest of us cant try it. John this is my tube now. Scott okay, well, tell us. John it tastes like mouthwash. But i mean, im drinking it. Im not brushing it. Scott do you have to brush it . Would you have to brush it . Amit you do, you do. What happens is this is designed in a very scientific way. We want to deliver the gel right into the teeth, right into the plaque, so the pressure of the brush actually releases it right into the teeth when you brush it. John so i did, i had a gum graft a long time ago. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. Thats why i brush my teeth twice a day, i go to the dentist twice a year. Alice truong these are normal things. John i know, before i wasnt quite as good about that. But im wondering, how much does this cost . And im wondering what the investment would be for Something Like this tube, which is fairly small. Amit four cups of starbucks coffee. Scott per what . Amit per 6 weeks of use brushing twice a day. Alice per year, what does that come to . Amit well, if you take a look, it will last you 6 weeks, so you need about 8 tubes to last you a year. We even offer packages. Most of our customers will buy one tube because they think its too good to be true. Then they all come back and buy the six pack, which drops the price to 15. Scott i can see how you think that people buy toothpaste for their health. People dont buy toothpaste for their health. Based on commercials, right . I mean, surely Procter Gamble has done some research into this. In toothpaste commercials, people kiss. Or i mean, its about sparkle, right . If you told me that that would prevent some sort of gum disease down the road, but this one over here would make my teeth sparklier, id buy the sparklier toothpaste. You know what i mean . I dont think we make that decision in the drugstore based on Overall Health or we wouldnt buy cigarettes and vodka at the same time. Amit well, the question is, you buy cigarettes and vodka, but can you make your trip to the dentist an easier one . What people are doing is theyre buying product, i used to buy product before i got into this business, which i thought i was doing a good job. America is a developed country. I thought i was buying something which was good for my teeth. I didnt realize what it did and what it did not do. When you have been told you have gum disease, youre looking for a solution. I dont have to market this. I have 66 Million People asking for it because they know a cleaner mouth means less disease. Alice sixtysix million, is that like people who have purchased, are on a waiting list, or what is that . Amit no because these people have been diagnosed with gum disease. Their doctor has told them, the dentist has told them that you got gum disease and were going to try to prevent its progression. So, these people are looking for solutions. John have the instances of gum disease been rising over the years . Is that why you see a need for a product like this . Amit well, last year was the first year that us cdc actually said gum disease is a serious problem. This is one of those epidemics, 66 Million People, you have never heard of because, yes, its not like diabetes. But on the other hand, it really affects your lifestyle. This is a lifestyle product. If you use this, people understand at a very basic level that if you have a clean mouth, you will have less disease. Scott amit, did you approach this as, i am going to change the world of toothpaste, and revolutionize and disrupt the toothpaste industry, or did you say, i want to disrupt some kind of industry. What industries are out there . Amit well, with all these things, serendipity helps. We had bleeding gums. I have beeni and my partners have been researching the role of metals in inflammation and biofilm since 2002 with the university of Texas Medical Branch galveston and uc irvine since 2002, as i said. Scott so, it started with dental healthcare. Amit no, we have products in ophthalmology and dermatology that were going through the fda and various clinical trials. We all had bleeding gums back in 2009 and we said, knowing what we know of this scott this is the worst startup story ever, by the way. Its not, you know, we were trying to sell pez dispensers. We all had bleeding gums. Its never going to sell with usa today. Amit well, the funny part of this one john it might, actually, when i think about it, worst experience. Amit when our bleeding stopped, we went to a clinical practice in milpitas and said, lets do a double blind study. The results were so good that we looked at it and we said, yeah, this is all legal. Scott and much of this is backed up. I should say when i started this, i said 250 better based on materials that i had read, but also in published scientific papers. Amit yes, so, when we did the milpitas study, we looked at the data ourselves. And this was pristine. But we looked at each other and we laughed. One, we were happy. Number two, we said, nobodys going to believe this because who thinks of toothpaste like this . So, we said, lets go to an American University and let them do the study because theyre the gold standard. And thats the data you see. John but how do you compete . Theres so many different brands of toothpaste. Theres so much advertising. Alice i feel like this is one of those things where people are really price sensitive, right . You just choose whats on sale or the brand that youre loyal to. Amit well, i mean, when you for a commodity, youre absolutely right, its all packaging and taste. Thats how you look at it. But when youre starting to sayimagine yourself in an aisle where theres one toothpaste for sale, two and a half times better than anything in this aisle for cleaning your teeth. Now, its up to you whether you want to pick it up or not. But the reality is we are not advertising in the traditional way. Of our over 100,000 customers are our brand ambassadors. They tell their friends. We have people who will buy 40 tubes. Theyll tell their friends, theyll tell their relatives, theyll tell their dentists. Dentists call us. We dont call them, they call us because theyre curious. Its that support from dentists and hygienists, who buy it for their own families. Scott now, i got to stop you there, alice, but amit goswamy, the first person on this show to ever try to revolutionize toothpaste. Were rather impressed. And hopefully, you have some other tubes that john hasnt licked. Amit absolutely. Scott thanks for being with us this morning. Up next, author of the bestselling book turned movie, the martian when press here continues. [music] scott welcome back to press here. Lots of people have thought about writing a book. Im going to write a novel. Itll go to number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and then some famous director, ridley scott, will make it into a movie. That is exactly what andy weir accomplished, starting with giving away chapters of his book for free on his website. He ended up first with one of the most popular books of the year. In fact, it did go to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. And then this happened. Teddy sanders at 4 30 a. M. , our satellites detected a storm approaching the ares 3 mission site on mars. The storm had escalated to severe and we had no choice but to abort the mission. But during the evacuation, astronaut mark watney was killed. Mark watney im entering this log for the record. This is mark watney and im still alive, obviously. I have no way to contact nasa or my crewmates, but even if i could, it would take 4 years for another manned mission to reach me. And im in a hab designed to last 31 days. So, in the face of overwhelming odds, i am left with only one option. Im going to have to science the hell out of this. Scott andy weir is the author of the martian, a great book turned matt damon movie premiering this october. Wired magazine says in its review of the book, quote, its the most riveting math problem youll ever read. Thanks for being with us. I enjoyed the book. I am equally fascinated with how it started. But first, i want to talk about just it must be surreal to see what was in your head out on a screen. That must be bizarre. Andy weir oh, its likeits like you said in your intro, like everybody fantasizes about this stuff when youre writing a book, but you never really think itll happen. And now its just like, oh my god. Scott so, i mean, you gave away your book on the website. And then you tried to do it with kindle withyou were just going to give it away on kindle. And amazon said no, you got to charge something for it. And it turns out to be this blockbuster success. Andy yeah, yeah, and ilike it was a hobby that i was doing. I was just posting it chapter by chapter on my website. And then my readers said, well, can you make an ebook version . And then i did that and they said, well, i dont know how to download an ebook version. Can you put it up on Amazon Kindle . So, i did that and kindle said, you have to charge a buck, so i did that. And then it got up to the amazon bestseller list. And that caught the attention of random house and then fox. And it just kind of, like, snowballed. And i have no idea what i did right. John this was your third book, right . Andy yeah, its the third book i wrote. Its the first book that i ever published. And so, yeah, the earlier two books, not so great. John what were they about . Are they related . I mean, were they related to this at all . Scott can we get the movie rights . John thats what im thinking about, yeah. Andy well, the first one was a dystopian future kind of story. And it was, like, so bad that, fortunately, i wrote it before the era of the internet, so there are no digital copies. No one will ever find it. Ive destroyed all copies except for one that my mother has, and she wont tell me where it is. And then the otherthe second one was okay. It was sort of a space opera kind of thing. And it just wasnt well written. It had a decent plot. Alice when were you able to quit your day job as a Software Engineer . Andy that was april of last year, so its been about a year and a half. I didnt quit my job as an engineer until it was clear that the martian was going to make enough money to support me. Scott well, and alice brings up an interesting point. Youre a Software Engineer. You are not a Rocket Scientist in any way, and were not a writer. In that way, it reminds me a bit of tom clancy, who writes this book, i mean the first one, about the hunt for red october. He was an insurance salesman who did a lot of research about submarines. And in your case, the same thing, right . You did a ton of research about, okay, i got to get this guy to mars. Hes got to be on mars. You just researched it all. Andy yeah, well, also, a lifetime interest and hobby of, like space travel. And so, its easy to learn about things that youre passionate about, right . So, its been an interest of mine all along. John so, now you learn theyre going to make this movie. Ridley scott is going to direct it, i cant think of a better person to direct Something Like this, right . And it looks a little bit like alien in some of the trailers. What is your input . Or how are you involved in the making of the movie, if at all . Andy mostly my job is to cash the check. Once they acquire the film rightsand unless youre j. K. Rowling or stephen king or Something Like that, you dont get to make any demands. Theyre just like, here, were going to buy the film rights. Take it or leave it. But they chose to involve me. So, they didnt have to, but they chose to. And so, i got to give feedback on the screenplay. John so youre on theare you on the set too . Andy they invited me to the set. They finished filming a while ago. They invited me to the set, but i didnt go because it was all the way over in budapest is where they did principal photography. Scott since when did budapest look like mars . I havent been to budapest. Andy they did the studio work in budapest, and then they did the onlocation stuff, the stuff that looks like mars, outdoors in wadi rum, jordan, which really does look like mars. Scott andy, im going to be honest with you, if they were making a movie of something i wrote, id probably go to budapest to see it. Andy im not a very comfortable flyer. Scott thats ironic. Andy i know, its very ironic. John yet you write about space travel, but you dont like flying . Andy i know, theres irony there. Scott well, look what happened to mark watney. Andy i write about brave people; im not one of them. Alice you wouldnt volunteer to be one of the first, like, colonists on mars . Andy lord no. Lord no. Scott what do you think of matt damon . Is that the mark watney you had in your head . Andy well, you know whats weird is, like, i dont have a firm visual image of my characters when im writing them. Theyre just kind of a blob. I couldnt have evenlike before they cast matt damon, i couldnt have even told you marks hair color or eyes or even his ethnicity for sure. But yeah, im thrilled to have matt damon. John its so weird because matt damon was in interstellar and he plays a character whos stranded on anotherthat was serendipity. Andy yeah, and Jessica Chastain is also in interstellar. A lot of people have pointed that out. Its kind of irritating because they go, oh, this looks like an interstellar prequel or Something Like that, matt damon stranded on a planet. Trust me, its very different. Scott oh, it is. The book is wildly different. John and i love the idea of kind of the maker fair. Scott thats the fascinating part of the book is, what if i were stuck on mars with a single potato and i got to survive . What could i do . And you walk them through it. Now, im not sure, does that necessarily make an entertaining movie . Is the pure science that you go throughi mean, thats what makes the book so interesting. Is there some science lost . I mean, there almost have to be. Andy well, the extreme detail with which its described is lost, but the accuracy is still there. They just dont give you all the details, right . Theyre like, okay, hes going to i mean, you could see it in the trailer. Okay, hes growing potatoes. And its like, well, they dont give you all the facts and figures and numbers of like, okay, this is the crop yield and stuff like that. Scott which you do, by the way, in the book. I mean, it is that detailed. Alice did you experiment yourself with, you know, like growing crops . Andy no actual experiments, but tons and tons of research onyou know, i got all the numbers right as well as i could. There are some errors in the book here and there, and a couple of places where i sacrificed accuracy for dramatic license. But for the most part, i tried really hard to be accurate. Scott you really sacrificed accuracy for dramatici mean, of all the books, its like the penultimate scientific book. Andy no, nobodys innocent of it. So, the biggest handwave is the sandstorm at the beginning that stands him there. In real life, mars atmosphere is way too thin to knock anything over, even with the fastest sandstorms that happen there. But most people dont know that. Alice so, the entire premise of the book is based on a lie. John thats what i was going to say. Andy elon musk called me out on that. He was in an interview recently and they said, what did you think of the martian . hes like, well, good, but the sandstorm wouldnt scott you know, andy, you know when youre really successful is when elon musk calls you out on a scientific detail. Andy well, i had an alternate beginning in mind, but i ditched it because i wantedits a man versus nature story. I wanted nature to get the first punch in. Alice what was the alternate beginning . Andy it was going to be they were doing an engine tests on their ascent vehicle and there was an explosion that causes all the problem. And then the ascent vehicle is starting to tip, so they have to launch, and theyre pretty sure watneys dead, same as in the novel. Scott eh, sandstorm is better. What does elon know about rockets anyway . Andy he knows a little. Scott andy weir, we wish you the best of luck with the movie. The book is extraordinary, the martian, i highly recommend it. Its a great read. Thanks for being with us this morning. Andy thanks for having me. Scott well, here is a thought. If housing is too expensive, build more houses. Can you even debate that idea . Were going to try when press here continues. [music] scott welcome back to press here. Recently, i saw on the news a reporter talking about a protest. In the Mission Neighborhood of San Francisco, in which activists complain the cost of housing in the city was too high. And as a result, they were standing in opposition to new development. No new big high rises, they said, so long as people were struggling to make rent. They even delivered petitions to slow development. Now, i was an english major, but that struck me that the slowing of development of new homes would not improve the housing situation. You want to build more, not fewer homes, to make rent go down. Sonja trauss agrees with my math. Shes a math teacher who recently moved to the bay area and was so startled by the backwards approach to housing, she started a housing protest group of her own called San Francisco bay area renters foundation, or sfbarf for short, which i assume youd realized when you named that. All right, fair enough. Who becomes a prodevelopmenti mean, everybodys always antisomething. Nobodys ever prosomething in San Francisco. And youre pro big business development, build towers, all that stuff, genuinely. Sonja trauss yeah, i mean, i came from a placei came from philadelphia, where we have tons of housing, plenty of housing. And philadelphia was built for two and a half Million People, and now we have one and a half Million People, you know . Yeah, so its veryso, our problem was we had to tear stuff down. But the upside is that you have plenty of room. You know, and you have real power with respect to your landlord. If youre there and you pay rent every month and youre not ruining the house, and the landlord says, well, i want to raise your rent 100, you can say, do it, im leaving. And thats a real negotiation, you know . And so, landlords kind ofyou keep themyou keep your renters because its the devil you know, and on both sides. And the general rent level is sort of the same no matter where you are. And thats, like, the real power with respect to landlords that, ultimately, we need and we dont have here because were in a shortage. Scott you probably cant build enough high rises in San Francisco to absorb every Single Person coming in, but at least you could start. Sonja yeah, thats the other thing too is that actually, the price aspect of this argument is a little bit of a distraction. Like really, i like to describe the organization as the increased capacity arm of the antidisplacement movement. Every single time you build a new unit, you reduce displacement by however many people move into it. You know, we have way more people than houses. And every time you build houses, youre able to, yeah, accommodate however many people you build houses for. Alice now, does your organization, you know, advocate on behalf of the folks who want affordable housing, like low income people . Sonja that is not our mainthats likethere are other people already doing that. And this is actually the mission alice counter to your organization, right . Sonja ironically, it is. Its like actually very astonishing. So, there are there are always going to be people who cant afford their own housing. You know, like if youre not working at all, if youre elderly, if theres alice but there are plenty of middle class people in San Francisco who have a lot of trouble. Sonja exactly, and thats whats so astonishing about this situation. Like, its appropriate for there to be social service agencies, you know, that help people who are really low income or have no income, you know, and give them subsidy. But what we see is that, as like hud disappeared from funding that type of housing, the state, you know, shut down redevelopment, those kind of organizers are now interfering with the ability of people who can buy their housing to do it. You know, like yeah, a lot of people do have jobs, they make good wages. John the irony in San Francisco, as you know, is that theres construction everywhere, usually for tech startups, so theres plenty of room for them to develop and grow and move around and get tax breaks from the city. Sonja you mean office . John yeah, office space. Yet, when it comes to housing, theres a lack of it across the board. I mean, we have this homeless issue thats festering, that keeps growing in stature in San Francisco. There was a report just recently. Meanwhile, middle class cant afford it because of the costs. I mean, beyond high rises, are there any other types of options . Sonja yeah, definitely. I mean, thats the thing is that, yeah, buildingthis is a bay area wide problem, you know, so we have all differenttheres all kinds of suburbia that can use infill. Theres parking lots everywhere. Scott an entry level house, according to the mercury news in san jose, 833,000. Thats insane. Theres plenty of room to grow in san jose. People really get upset at you. Now, let me point out you also have a masters degree in economics. You have worked for housing nonprofits in the past. But people get angry at you because youre proposing that we build houses. Sonja yeah, thats because since we stoppedsince it went out of style to develop greenfields, now when you build a new house, inevitably youre near someone else. So, theres always someone nearby the new house to have a complaint about it. Scott well, and im not proposing, you know, we level the presidio or anything. Sonja no, thats a park. Scott right, there is some logic to this idea that, you know, were going to have to get taller. Or we do nothing, but we then understand that San Francisco is going to become unaffordable to most people, including myself. I dont live inyou dont live in San Francisco. Sonja no, i live in west oakland because San Francisco was full. And west oakland is a good example. John no vacancy. Sonja yeah. You know, people ask all the time, like, how does building expensive housing do anything for lower income people . The vast majority of low income people do not live in subsidized, like, programmed housing. Most of usive never made more than 35,000 a year and ive never lived in subsidized housing. Im always living in old housing in an unfashionable neighborhood, which right now, or was 4 years ago when i moved there, is west oakland or east oakland. But prices are rising in west oakland because when they dont build in San Francisco, but people move to the bay area because they have a job there, they notice that west oakland is 8 minutes away from the Central Business district. And so, prices are rising. But if we put those higher income people in new, expensive housing, then i dont have to compete with them. Scott sonja trauss, with about 30 seconds left, give me the message you would just like politicians to understand. Sonja oh, politicians are on our side. Scott all right, whoevers your detractor. Sonja its regularits regular people. I want people to really start to think about the bay area is going to have to double, right . So, go around your community, find some lot. Be like, i think this is a lot where i could see 25 units. And then email your representative and be like, hey, guess what . Heres where i want to see this built. Scott sonja trauss, housing in an era of we dont have enough houses. Logical enough. Thanks for being with us. Sonja thanks so much. [music] my thanks to my guests. Im scott mcgrew and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. Announcer press here is sponsored in part by barracuda networks, Cloud Connected security and Storage Solutions that simplify it. City national bank, providing loans and lines of credit to help Northern California businesses grow. American pharoah has won the triple crown announcer this is a presentation of nbc sports. Welcome to the honda nbc sports desk. Hi, everybody. Im dave price. Coming up in a few minutes the 2015 dew tour continues from downtown los angeles, first, week three in the nfl preseason. Tensions running high. Theyre ready for the regular season. It got ugly last night in baltimore between the redskins and the ravens with baltimore up