[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's uh, looks unbelievable, as well as Slick's expert, uh, you know, correspondent analysis of what Microsoft could do to save Windows 9 to actually appeal to every customer. Have you read it? I have read it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, oh yeah, my watermark. Where's my watermark?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, don't worry, we're gonna run the intro. We just finished doing the intro. Diesel's afraid that I'll forget to run his awesome intro that we hardcore love long time and BOOM! Cue it! I missed it. I'm gonna try that one more time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so there is the intro. Someone says they hate it, someone says best intro of all time, so we're gonna go ahead and call that. It's alright.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My brain just exploded. So guys, remember as always, The WAN Show is brought to you by Razer comms, the voice chat client that is actually optimized for gaming and isn't Skype but also doesn't require you to set up a dedicated server or any of the issues that you might have.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, Mumble on the other hand is outstanding. The only issue with Mumble is that when I used to use it for my, I would say Tuesday night gaming sessions, but it was more like every night at that point in my life, uh, for, for gaming sessions, uh, there were some issues with, um, with secure channels and with the authentication keys and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So use that bit.ly link, guys. Remember, that helps us out a great deal. If you're gonna download Razer comms and try it or you're gonna get your friends to download and try it, please do use that link. As I said before, it helps us out a great deal. So I would like to go to the Twitter boards. That's what I'm gonna call them from now on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or I wanna see what people think. I would pee on another person's car. Looking straight in their eyes, not losing eye contact the whole time. Come on! If you're like 9, I don't think so. I'd rather let it go out the window. Own your body, man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then Brian seems to be unrelated. You're going to make me get Instagram, aren't you? Uhm, I am going to continue using Instagram, so, so that's kind of a thing. And for some reason I'm not getting any tweets. So, uh, huh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There you go. There's two. Watching from Texas. Love the WAN Show, guys. What should I get? Two GTX. Wow, that went fast all of a sudden. Two GTX 760s or one 780 also tells Slick I love his little beard. I don't think that's an intentional beard, is it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hard to say no to that. Play modern games on Afterparty. We'll see if we can even figure out playing games on the Afterparty. Should I buy a 7950 now or wait for new AMD cards? No idea. Uh, we don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, going to upgrade to 4770K. Is there any motherboard you'd recommend, especially what is overclocking noob friendly for up to 300 US dollars? Honestly, for 300 US dollars, you can buy pretty much whatever you want. And we have a very exciting video coming soon, where we are going to take two Z70, uh, Z87 boards. Uh, do you remember which two they are?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maximus Six. Extreme. So we uh, we overclock them both, we run some benchmarks, we find out actually in our experience


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What difference does it actually make? Uh, versus, I mean, there's always the features that are added by Betterboard. So example, for example, the Maximus 6 formula has much better onboard audio.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which can save you buying a sound card with that said, I've always believed that buying a very high quality sound card, because of the way audio equipment doesn't really change much over time, uh, a good quality sound card from three years ago, four years ago, something like an Osintec X Meridian or something like that, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Still a good sound card if you can find a PCI slot to put it in. So I recommend, rather than investing in a better board that has better sound, grab a great sound card and put it in whatever board you happen to buy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's very, very exciting. He's a really great guy. We've actually met in person in the past and, uh, enjoyed some, uh, pretty, actually it was some pretty suspect, like, barbecue, make-it-yourself food that, uh, yeaah, we were hanging out with Logan as well, so there's some pictures from that trip, but, uh, it was pretty great, actually. So, let's do our first topic of the day, shall we? Sure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Anontac has one of the first reviews out there of the PQ321Q Ultra HD monitor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Living with a 31.5 inch 4K desktop display. So guys, I do highly recommend taking a complete sort of, you know, probably only take about 15 minutes, 20 minutes. It's not that long. Read through the review.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the first 4K desktop monitors that is actually intended to be hooked up to a computer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was almost 100% of sRGB, if I recall correctly, but some of it was... in the wrong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, I mean, I could have told, I think Chris, Chris is the reviewer over there that did this particular write-up, and I could have told him a 4K monitor was going to make a very, very big difference, but for me to invest $3,500, I mean, I had talked about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Especially then, mind you I'm back on my bike for this season and I'm kind of questioning how I could have ever been crazy enough to think about that. But...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, the flip side of that, but the other hand of that discussion is yeaah, it's expensive. Would I be willing to drop the money? Maybe, but there's still some problems. Yep. So the display standards...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Aren't really ready yet for the most part. HDMI is not gonna be ready until HDMI 2.0. When we're gonna be able to drive 4K at 60Hz off of a single interface. When I was talking to the ASUS guys that were at LANCOUVER.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, they were saying that part of the reason that they didn't have games running on the one that was there was that they needed some driver hook'em, hook'em, whatever word you want to use for it in order to have the two display interfaces


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that to me is a big concern as well as what happens to this weird niche product that Asus sells however many they sell.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like I'm not gonna say ten, but I'm also not gonna say ten thousand in North America anyway.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's the danger, is what happens to weird niche products that lead the charge on some kind of a new technology, and then ultimately get abandoned. Look at the X25M from Intel, of all, of all companies, and the X25E. People invested a ton of money into those early gen SSDs, they never got trim.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They never got proper, they never, they never got proper garbage collection if I recall correctly. I think so. Like, they just kinda got abandoned. Because they didn't sell enough for it to be worth the R&D time of fixing it after the fact.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 30 inches is already, like, I used 30 inch for quite a while, and I got used to it, but then what happened was I recently switched back to 24.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And even though it was noticeable, I don't really miss that huge, I miss the resolution.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Love to have the resolution back, but exactly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And DisplayPort is a much better solution than, you know, dual HDMI in. But there's all those early growing pains. I mean, early 2560x1600 monitors, none of them had on-screen displays. Because the processing chips required to, uhm, to, none of them had scalers. So the, cause the processing required to do all this stuff was just out of reach.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you just had to drive it natively. Uhm, and so the on-screen display ain't great on this thing, but one thing that's cool about the, uh, about the PQ321Q is that the input lag isn't bad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's outstanding. It's about the same as the PB278, which I have two of them incoming when they finally get in stock at the place I've ordered them. Uhm, and I've gamed on that monitor. Not bad. It's not a CRT, but it's not bad. So, uh, that I find really exciting, how close we are from that perspective. But, uh, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, in, in ifinity, off of a 7970, uh, matrix or whatever from masseuse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just kind of marching in and being like, yo guys, this doesn't cost that much. Not a great TV. But still. In fact, the reviews are terrible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're basically saying, don't bother, just go get a 1080p TV. But uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, I'm waiting for someone other than freaking sharp to have something other than a 32 inch panel. I mean, that's a professional geared product in the first place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, uh, it was a leak in the soundbar manual, because their soundbar, I don't know if you're familiar with it, is usually cross-compatible with multiple Dell monitors. So, here are the leaked models, the UP3214Q,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I still have- Oh! Oh, just an FYI guys, this IP is not the IP of the poster. I forgot again to, uh, log into a different account. Guys, if you-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you were to watch our streams over sort of a longer period of time, you'd notice that IPs repeat themselves a fair bit. Because they are the IPs that have to do with the security system for our forum. Not to do with the actual members of our forum, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There you go, just throwing that out there. Let's go ahead and, uh, move on to our next topic, shall we? Nvidia has a new Quadro video card. So they just recently unveiled


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 12 gigs of GDDR5 memory, and that makes it pretty much when it comes to 3D rendering, animation, simulation applications, pretty much the fastest possible GPU that can exist right now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, Vice President of Software R&D, the Kepler features are key to our next generation real-time lighting and geometry handling. If you guys have seen Monsters U yet, you may have noticed that there's a completely different look to that film compared to previous Pixar films because instead of manually, uhm, programming lighting, they're actually having the lighting


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In like, realistic, lifelike realism to, you know, look at things and tinker with it and all that kind of stuff. And then they have another one from Apache.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would like to settle once and for all that just because a graphics card costs five thousand dollars versus something like a titan that costs a thousand dollars and is actually built on the same architecture


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These cards are NOT gaming cards.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They have the full capability of their double precision calculations that they need to do. They have software features that are not enabled on desktop parts. They are binned to a higher degree of quality. They are expected to last longer, run under lower thermal


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On the desktop side, or for the, for the graphic side, the G4 side, was a dual slot cooler. His is a single slot cooler because it's a better binned part, and they were able to achieve that with that particular card. So guys,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm so tired of seeing, uh, builds on, uh, PC part picker that are like, yeah, I did an ultimate build, I put in four quadra- No you didn't!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, why don't we do a quick twitter blitz and, uh, I'll do this blitz while you get, uh, Lu on the line. Sure, sure. Do you have the snowball set up? Uh, yep. Oh. Oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, cool. Actually, uh, I've got, I've got coms, uh, I've got coms up here is, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's in the channel already. He's in the channel already, so we should be ready to go pretty quick after this Twitter blitz here, guys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But uhm, you know what? I guess what I'd probably do is 3770k for you, because you don't want to change your board, and uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you're going to get, you're going to be able to take advantage of hyperthreading as well as potentially overclocking that CPU. Can you run games in multi-monitor across? Uhm, oh, okay, yeah, Unbox Therapy is ready to go, but we're not quite ready for him just yet. So, uh, I'm going to finish this Blitz. There you go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, you guys really need to look at the camera more rather than talking just to yourselves. Thank you Mohammed for the feedback. Uhm, there's only so much we can do. Someone asks after party. Yes, there will be an after party.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I made a video about the Asus 4K display. They used AMD iFINITY for merging two halves of the display. Oh, PCPer made a video about it. Cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep, on the air-cooling side, uhm, I love the Silver Arrow, NH-D14.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just outright wastes of money. You know what, we should do a video on like just how utterly asinine it is to buy a low end graphics card. We'd have to get one. Well just buy it. They only cost like $20, so who cares.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so let's go ahead and have Lou join us then at this point, cause apparently things have gotten a little bit silly. So I'm gonna go ahead and add a media file where we have, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He will be connected in a second. He'll be connected in a second? Yup. Oh, alright. He's gotta turn on his mic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so, you are our very second special guest, and, uh, we are extremely excited to have you join us. Do you wanna take just a brief moment, and, uh, sort of introduce yourself to the audience, those of you who aren't familiar?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can't hear us apparently. Oh, okay, okay. Well in that case...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'll say a little bit about what, uh, oh, hold on, I wonder if it's our fault.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, Lou's gonna try reconnecting. So I'm gonna give you guys a little bit of a brief history of unbox therapy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Unbox Therapy is a channel that as you may or may not have deduced at this point is centered around the concept of unboxing as a way to clearly demonstrate a product and to really give people that hands on experience.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so if you close that one, is it possible that'll address it? I guess it's possible. It shouldn't really, but... Okay, I'm gonna turn it off and start it again. Lou, can you hear me?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We did test this before the show, so uhm. It worked totally fine. Worked 100% correctly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh boy. Okay, can the stream hear us now?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And apparently Lou broke the uh, the entire internet. So uhm, hold on a second. Let's go ahead and try, try something here. Oh boy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I really do. We're both in very unique positions where we have these huge established audiences and it gives the flexibility to try things and to experiment and to start to have some fun with it. Now, I wanted to talk to you about this before we really dive into some of our regular WAN Show topics.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I get asked this all the time, and I have my sort of standard response that I usually say, but people ask me, how do I get started on this?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Absolutely, I think that's a very good point and the, the, the funny thing about that is that was one of the things that made me notice you and what you were doing because up until then, as far as tech unboxings went, there was only


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe a handful of guys who were my size or bigger or even close.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And what I noticed about the approach that you had was it was completely different from what anyone else was doing, where you were taking on boxing and you were putting your own spin on it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think a lot of people, I mean a lot of people send me their gameplay videos or their, uh, let's plays. Hey Linus, can you check this out and give me your feedback? And I kind of look at it and I go, well, what have you done that's different? And I think that might be the solution.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Absolutely, and you know what? I think this leads into one of our discussion topics really well. Small interaction versus big interaction. So things like Twitter, Vine, Instagram, versus Facebook, Google+, YouTube.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How do you, how do you feel that these things complement each other or compete with each other?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Absolutely, and I mean, I think, uh, one of the strengths of Twitter leading into our next discussion topic, which is why is the YouTube subscription feed always broken?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Absolutely, this is very true, and this is one of the reasons that for the longest time I completely ignored Twitter, Facebook, and all of that stuff, partly because it didn't really matter to me, because I was working at a retailer, I had my day job, YouTube was a side project for me, but also partly because uhm, or not that, well that's why I ignored it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and then the reason I started paying attention to it was because of needing to own the audience in a way that goes beyond, uhm, you know, Google's divine will.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And how they've decided that you should be allowed to interact. I mean there's so many things on YouTube that you look at that look like they're broken on purpose. Things like the subscription feed. Things like the inbox. This is the creator of Gmail and the conversation thread concept. YouTube has the worst inbox in the world. It's true.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Absolutely. And there are other things that are exactly the same. Looking at, like, uh, they don't want you to have access directly to your audience. They want to control that. So things like how you used to be able to, back in the day, this is maybe before your time, but you used to be able to go through a list of every single one of your subscribers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think for me, if I look at the analytics numbers, because we can see where views come from.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think when I look at it, on the videos that do really well, where it's a hot topic, something like the Razer Blade 14 that we launched a couple of days ago,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I'll get probably around 40,000 views from subscribers, which is exactly right there in that 10% of my total subscriber number, which is obviously a fabrication.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, what it started to feel like to me, because I'm looking, because one of the, one of the metrics, I remember talking to you about this, uh, we, we ended up talking on the phone for like four hours or something stupid like that. This was back when I first met Lou.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think the conversation then was the metric that I look at for how strong a channel is, is the new subscriber growth rate. How many new people click that button every single day?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I've been looking at the numbers and I go, okay, every day, a thousand new people click the button for both you and me. Sort of that 800 to 1000 range.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it surprises me that YouTube let it happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ah yes, I'd like to, I'd like to play this for the audience. This is, uh, this is kinda hilarious.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is what allowed new media to come and basically start eating their lunch. But now is this, is this it then? Is the answer somewhere in the middle? Where obviously, like obviously, shows like Breaking Bad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are gonna exist. You need high production values. People have an appetite for high production values. But they've also demonstrated they have an appetite for this like weird indie content that's like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Guys opening boxes or, you know, guys running around in sort of, you know, box armor hitting each other or whatever else it happens to be was the answer somewhere in the middle where we take that new media creativity and that old media money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And is that what YouTube will be in five years? Sure, or even just a mix.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where it was crowdfunded and actually I want to transition into some of our crowdfunding topics coming very soon. So it was crowdfunded and it is exactly what we're talking about where it's the creativity of these, and I'm not taking anything away from Freddie Wong, but relatively amateur folks. They had some talent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But if they took the creativity, the mind, that is Freddy Wong, and they gave him the money, and the actors, and the resources, maybe he's the kind of guy who can take that and really find that middle ground, and maybe video game high school season 6, or whatever his next major project is, is that thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now I've been saying this since I saw the first Smart TV. Smart TV was dead on arrival. It was, it never stood a chance. We already had things like Patriot Box Office and things like the ASUS Oplay or WDE Live or MyTVLive or whatever they called that thing. We already had these things which were already better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then, the Smart TV implementations that we have now, all these years later, and now Google's coming along and saying, $35, don't worry about that Smart TV, it's over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is another example of their thinking 10 steps ahead and like they're doing something completely brazankers and let's find out where they're going.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I missed out on it entirely, so I found someone on Twitter who follows me who ordered two right away. So I'm gonna buy one of them off him and hopefully I'll get to play with it pretty soon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wanted to talk about a couple of things. So number one is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes. They want to break every record from every crowdfunding project ever. They want 32 million by August 21st.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the problem is will you tear my Android device away from me or someone else's iOS device away from them with this?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 40,000 units is the planned run and they will cost around 800 and something dollars each. Uh, the first few that got in got them for 600. Yea, it's 830 dollars now. Uh, one of the other things that seems a little bit crazy to me is what they're committing right now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're committing, uhm, I believe it was a sapphire screen, uh, dual 4G, so it's like a world 4G phone. They're committing 128 gigs of storage. They're committing an, uhm, undisclosed processor, four and a half inch screen, all these things, except the ship date.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You look at even someone like Samsung. They are now the world's most profitable consumer electronics company. Above Apple. You look at their first iteration of anything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's terrible. Their first TVs, terrible. Their first optical drives, terrible. Their first phones, terrible. Their first friggin' compliances were terrible. All terrible. This is going to be Canonical's first attempt at a super premium high end phone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they're only, they're only spending a maximum of 32 million dollars on something that I can tell you right now. Samsung is spending


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are we ready yet for a phone that is more than a phone and will people care?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But my point with Samsung was that it doesn't matter how much funding they're pulling from whatever part of their company, because they're not as big as Samsung, and Samsung's first attempt at anything usually sucks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I'm saying it might suck. Unless they're better than Samsung at hardware.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, moving on to our next, uh, crowdsourcing topic, uh, what happens when these things fail?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the Doom that came to Atlantic City by the Forking Path Co. Ahem. This is not an easy update to write. The short version. The project is over. The game is cancelled. And there's a bunch of angry comments from backers. So these are backers only. The problem is we weren't kept in the loop. We've been giving false information.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The problem is that, you know, why did we pay for him to move? Why did we pay for these things? Why was there this ambitious goal with


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, like a $35,000 or why was there this ambitious project that had a $35,000 goal that clearly isn't enough money to do anything and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, maybe this isn't even the worst case scenario. I mean, Lou, you were talking about Kickstarter or Indiegogo or crowdfunded projects that maybe they actually make it to market, but they totally suck. How much faith are you putting into this stuff?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's exactly it, is right now, I've seen good ideas.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I sorta, I sorta hate to call these guys out, but it's a, it's a phone case that has, uhm, earbuds that like retract into it. And I'm just like, it, it, it beat its target, and I'm looking at this going like, are you friggin' serious?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, it's gonna be the crappiest earbuds in the world. We already know this, because they don't know a bloody thing about earbuds. It's going to be a cellphone case, which shouldn't be worth more than about four dollars.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they, I think they wanted 30 bucks or 40 bucks for it or something stupid like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. I've only backed one thing so far. Star Citizen. That was it. And it was only because Chris Roberts has a long time tradition of success and he had a great idea and concept and he had enough


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, tell me something as a business owner. So I really liked your, your thought about somewhere in between private investment and going IPO, full blown. What about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A crowd investment that's not an investment in the product because that's another one of the things I agree with you 100%. That's absolutely ridiculous. I'm not giving my money up front so that I can...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Have a spot in line. That's, that's absurd. I mean, it's illegal in the USA.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To charge- Actually, this is kind of funny. It's illegal in the USA to charge someone's credit card for a backorder before you ship it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But if I'm giving you my money, I want something besides a spot in Lime. And is that potentially the future of this? Where if Unbox Therapy, you know, LLC or Linus Media Group Inc. decides to get investment, we could crowdfund investment in terms of an actual ownership in the company.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's actually a very good point because that's one of the reasons that Linus Media Group, Inc. doesn't have any private investors. Uh, we had offers, we had people who wanted to throw some funding at us at the beginning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Basically the problem was, do I want to work with this person? And if you did a crowdfunded type of initiative like this,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, I think I had one more topic that I really wanted to discuss with Lou here before we, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeaah, the plastic iPhone! So I'm gonna go ahead, I'm gonna fire this up, and I'm going to just, uh, let the viewers check out the video a little bit here, if they haven't already.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know, I don't know how much more there is to say about it than that. It's a little bit thicker than an iPhone 5. It's obviously going to be cheaper than an iPhone 5. How, how many times has Steve Jobs spun in his grave at this point in the very short time that he's been passed away?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, but they move beyond that, and I don't think Jobs ever believed in moving backwards. The original iMac was a plastic CRT. After that, did he ever go back to a plastic iMac? No.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Later on in the product cycle. Or later on in the product development. And I mean the reason I think they're doing this is pure dick measuring.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For lack of a better word. You look at Samsung's smartphone shipments versus Apple's iPhone shipments for Q2, Samsung sold about double what Apple does. Is that because they're selling a bajillion in 1S4s? Okay, partially yes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In that measuring contest, that is how many units of phones are you selling? And number two is I think they want to maintain iOS as the premier development mobile platform for developers to really be attracted to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and I wonder if either of those are the right approach, because you look at what brought about the success of OS X, and it wasn't Apple being afraid of having 6% market share.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were content to have 6% market share, but they did what they believed was right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whether it was right or not is a whole other conversation, but they did what they believed and it looks like that's turning around now with the iPhone where instead of doing what they believe is right and what they believe is correct, they're doing what investors are demanding or what, you know, Yahoo's that email them are telling them that they think they should do. I don't think Cook has the balls.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, we don't give any cares about Android because we're not convinced any of those users will give us any money. Whereas we have a very healthy business supporting iOS, developing this iOS app that we believe is the best in the market and it really is. It's so much better than anything else. It's smooth, it's perfect.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and we're gonna stick with that because this is the horse that got us here. Do you think that creating a cheapo iPhone or like a value iPhone will erode that premium mentality that an iOS user has and that willingness to pay?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, well that's, uh, that's a very interesting take on it, and I don't, I don't disagree, actually. Yeah. I guess we'll have to see what happens, because the reality of it is, iPhone 4 has been available as a value option for zero dollars with contract, at least here in Canada, for a while.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Still a great phone. I'm, you know, I love the HTC One, but if I had to go back to using my iPhone 4 today, I wouldn't die. I'd be fine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, well, thank you so much for joining us. Uhm, do you wanna do a quick plug for your channel before you go?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyone who thinks we're competitors, guys, that is totally ridiculous. We even cover the same products sometimes, but it's a very different style from what we do here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, I think he's gone, so guys remember, our live guests every week are brought to you by RazorComs. Go ahead and click the link that I'm leaning down here next to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, oh, oh, I went into Dexplit, got no idea where the link is. Right there, that link, if you wanna, whoop, right there. If you wanna try Razor comms for yourself, remember guys, if you use this particular bit.ly link, it helps us out a great deal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the original Madden programmer wins 11 million in a lawsuit against EA, and the worst part is, oh yeaah. This is just the tip of the iceberg.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On derivative works. Which basically amounts to anything with Madden in the title.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The court's ruling also gives Antonik the ability to pursue the same claims against EA for games released after 1996, where revenues exceed $3 billion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So maybe that is the answer. Maybe the trick is find your an employer who's stupid enough to sign a royalty deal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Build something for them with a clause about derivative works. I mean honestly, the fact that EA signed anything to do with royalties for derivative works is insane. They probably forgot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The fact that anyone at EA was ever stupid enough to sign anything, like royalties for derivative works, is just- That's not that surprising.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so they just kinda signed whatever they did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, some of the best movie deals have been on ones where the film wasn't expected to do very well. So the, you know, principal actor says, okay, we'll just give me 1% of the revenue. And it's like, yay, pay time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, but now he gets to not work and sit on a boat, sort of like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah. It's like a pool full of ladies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, what are yours and Split's opinions on the Cooler Master Quickfire TK?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, okay. In that case, it's fine. It's a Cooler Master Mechanical Keyboard. It's a, uh, I don't really need it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, your opinion on the Razer Hammerheads? Uh, I haven't tried them yet. Mine actually arrived in the mail like two, three days ago. So it's much to my embarrassment that I haven't had a chance to try them yet, but I'm extremely stoked to check them out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, I've heard that they're quite basey, so I can already say that they're probably not my favourite thing in the world. But, my understanding is for $49.99, they're actually not bad. The, uh, the overview on Anantek was pretty positive. Cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, David Fitzpatricks, have you ever considered delidding a processor? I was actually the first one to ever delid an X6800. Extreme edition. So there you go, yes I have. I don't really recommend it though.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I haven't used the Audioengine A5 Plus speakers, unfortunately.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Apple equals new EA? No. Nothing Apple does is as stupid as anything that EA does.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Get into Samsung being the largest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Consumer or most profitable consumer electronics company now. So where did that go?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That, that is news and that's fascinating. So 71 million units of smartphones compared to Apple's 31 million. But what I want to launch into with this is are we really gonna start calling Apple a new EA when they're making 6.9 billion in a quarter?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, this is where that mentality, that if a business isn't growing exponentially, you know, like that, uh, that curve or that, or that hockey stick, if a business isn't doing that, then it's a failure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they still will have a cult-like following of people somewhere that will continue to buy their products so they will continue to exist even if they're much smaller and much more niche. Remember they've done this before. They've become niche.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Appease your professional users because they advocate for you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People are moving over to Adobe and Premiere ain't perfect, but Final Cut's a total disaster and Adobe has figured out how to get people to pay for Creative Cloud.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, PowerPoint and Excel. See, I can hardly even remember what those programs are called if I don't call them Word, Excel, and PowerPoint anymore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that is what it looks like Adobe's doing with this suite of products. That's gonna be getting more and more tightly integrated with every generational improvement, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, am I using Chrome Remote Desktop on your laptop? No, I'm not. I'm using an HDMI capture device. But that would be a phenomenally cool way of doing this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, about YouTube subs, I couldn't even find that Twitch was running until I actually checked the webpage. Can one of you explain what a gaming keys are used for?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What monitors do you each use? I'm using some ancient BenQ thing, but I have two Asus PB278s, so 27 inch, 2560 by 1440s, inbound.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, 7970 Matrix Edition versus GTX 780, GTX 780. Uh, Tasty PC has actually declined. I haven't reached out to Corsair George yet, but that's a great idea, and I really wanna do that. And JJ will be joining us next week. Yep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I love the new format of the livestream, seems much more professional and fluid except for that bit where we couldn't get Lou's, uh, mic going thanks to Windows automatically adjusting the settings.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so he has no choice but to send us a Maximus 6 formula. Uh, those won't fit in my case? Okay. Then get something else. NHD 14.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or Silver Era. What are some cool things I can fill my PCI slots with?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what? There's not much to put in an expansion slot these days. I have a sound card and a raid card. Sound raid video. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] USB expansion. Ah yes, so this is for the system for Mr. Wizard, one of our administrators on the Linus Tech Tips forum. Uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We, uh, we arranged for him to get a 6-core Extreme Edition 980X system. The one problem with that system is it didn't have an internal USB 3 header to run to the USB 3 front panel ports, so we picked up this Silverstone card. What was it, 30 bucks?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wish they would market them. It's like what Lou was saying, where at the end of the day, this can be the best USB expansion card on the market, and if Silverstone doesn't figure out how to make people desire it, whether it's a flashy campaign or whatever else,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, well, we should probably do Build of the Week because we've been streaming for an hour and a half already. Over. Sure. So bring it on, Builds of the Week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So just so you guys know, Builds of the Week are in the Build Log section of the forum, you can check them out there, and in the Linus News and Ramblings or whatever section, I'm gonna post our entire WAN Show document, so you can click any of the links of any of the articles that we were discussing and all that good stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So let's switch over here and boom! Arc underwater!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Interesting, so he's gone with a saber tooth, or rather a tough series AMD board by the look of things. Is that what that is? Or no, has he colored the heat sinks? What is this?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also kinda window related, someone did, uh, do you remember the P182SE?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That mirror finish. Antec case. Someone got a two way mirror.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wow, that is just unbelievable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nice straight runs always look so much better than curved runs. It's just the truth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright guys, I think that pretty much wraps it up. Thank you for tuning into the LAN show this week. Guys, uh, stay tuned for the after party, although it might be a bit of a shorter version of the after party. And... Is that it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, hopefully I didn't embarrass myself too badly with that story at the beginning. Do we have to do a outro?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, and like with dead aim, right on the wall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's been, it's been good. Little, uh, little guy will be, uh, six weeks on, on Sunday. Last night, he slept for about five hours, which seems like wow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But yeaah, so it's been, it's been exciting. It's been, uh, the biggest adventure, uhm, of, of my life so far. But it's been, it's been awesome. I, uh, I'm excited for new reasons to come home every day. That is awesome. So this is your first then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is number one star, our first, our first baby, uh, baby boy, uh, Nathan. That is so exciting. You know what?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dude, I am trying. Honestly, I feel like I am, uh, like a high school transfer student, like sophomore year, just trying to keep my head down. You know, and like just make it through the day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I hope she's not listening to the show, but yea, I've definitely, uh, pulled, pulled out, like, I'm sorry, like, like the well, the well's dry here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so yeaah, I was not surprised that it, uh, that it sold out. And first impressions are it sold out for a reason. It's a really great phone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, the price point's killer. I'm actually, I can't see, but I'm holding it in my hand. I'm holding it up to my webcam that you can't see, uh, in homage. 349 bucks is a killer price point. You figure on contract, two-year deal, you know, this would probably be about 150 to 200 dollar phone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So for an extra 150 bucks, you know, you don't have to sign a two year contract.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is awesome, I mean you don't want it, sell it. The Nexus devices, you know, hold their value similar to Apple's. Uhm, you know, so sell it in a year. It's, it's a pretty,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A nice phone, uh, you know, I want to put it through its paces before I do a review. We always sort of take a long hour with our reviews and we'll tell the audience how long we used the device before we just sort of rushed to get best SEO and put up a review like four minutes later.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, thank you, thank you very much. It's a dirty secret in our industry that folks from other sites that I won't mention, uh, you know, will rush to get a review up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, we've handed it a phone and other publications have handed it a phone. You know, exact same time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I could not, could not agree with you more, uh, on that. I mean, you can't just make up numbers. You can't say the battery sucks because we tried to play a video for 14 hours and died after 8. It's not how people use their phones. Exactly!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I wanna know if I can get through a full day with, you know, being on Wi-Fi for 8 hours and an hour of phone call. Can I get through a full day? I'm not gonna spend most of my day watching, you know, 12 hours of video on my phone. Like, give me this fat stuff that matter. You just don't know a device until you actually use it. And rushing to get stuff out, I think, makes our whole industry look bad. It's dishonest to the audience.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know that, yea, absolutely. But one that I really serve high in high esteem. Two of the people in our office are using Moto X's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If that tells me, and they're using it as their regular phone, when they have access to anything else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so if that tells you anything about the perception of the device, it just works, it works well. Uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you don't have to have quad cord have a good experience on a phone. I mean, just don't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's yes and no. So yes for the technology that's out there right now, it's no until the next SSD comes out. It's no until everybody's rushing to have flexible displays and flexible batteries. It's no until people are trying to get near fields


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, cameras built into devices. Um, until the next big thing hits, then yeah, I absolutely think so. But until there's that next, whatever rush it's gonna be, whatever sort of fake rush they make the consumer think they have to have, um, you know, I, uh, I think it's only a matter of maybe months and not years before that, uh, that next thing shows its face.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, people are maybe not smarter, but take closer attention with their wallet, cause those are real dollars. I mean, you're talking thousands and thousands of dollars.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, so I think people aren't at ease as easily duped. Look at 3D, like 3D is supposed to be the giant thing, everybody's gotta have 3D, 3D, 3D, 3D, and really not many people cared that much about 3D.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And when it comes to the mobile world, I think customers are more easily duped. And it's such a weird world in mobile. People feel entitled to things. You know, I signed a two-year contract two years ago for my phone. Where's my KitKat update?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, or, or so loyal to an operating system, you know, if you like Apple and I like Android, we're mortal enemies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Strange world. As much as I try, I still don't understand it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that's my, that's my one job. I'm like, I'm like, I cannot figure you guys out. Like, I love the audience. They're incredible. They put food on my table. They give me a chance to live my dream. But some of them, I just don't understand their mentality. Like if that translated to anything else, it would just, it wouldn't work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I think as annoyed as consumers are with Android fragmentations, I think Google is more annoyed with Android fragmentation. I think they're trying to have more control over the operating system. There's a big misconception that Android is open source. Android is not truly open source. They release the source code.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it's not open-sourced. Uh, so I think they're trying to limit fragmentation, and they've done a credible job of memory management, uh, with Android 4.4. So hopefully they're saying, okay, 4.4 can run on more devices, and app developers can be able to support more devices, and they can make more money because more apps can be purchased.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, on those older devices. So it boils down to a dollars, uhm, decision for, for Google, but certainly helps the consumer in the long run as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that's the big one. I think it's necessarily starting from here on out. But I think it's a two-pronged attack. I think it's gearing up for wearables, uhm, you know, smartwatch and whatever, you know, Google Glass 2, whatever they decide to call their second iteration of it. But beyond that, I think it's also a clear shot for emerging markets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think they're looking at, uh, India in particular, South America.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where maybe the lower spec Android devices, uh, can get some market penetration, um, you know, and also that potential, um, you know, dollar from the Play Store.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's so funny you mention that our, um, our managing editor, uh, Roy Choi is Korean and we were talking about the difference of technology from country to country. He was talking about, he said exactly that same thing. He says he went to Korea and he couldn't believe how many people have these gigantic smartphones and how many women.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, so, if there's ever been anything more Sony than good design, it's really loving proprietary formats. Like, really love, like, really love wanting to marry and make babies with proprietary formats. I mean, this is the company that brought us Betamax, Minidisc, um, whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What was a little bit surprising was the external hard drives. And Sony said that they're limiting it to try and reduce piracy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which, okay, I can, I can understand, uhm, you know, they all probably felt that was a big issue with the PS3. They placated people a little bit by letting their internal hard drive be replaceable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which, it still seems a little bit silly, you just get the, you know, connector and you can throw an external hard drive anyway that it thinks is internal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It seems like a very silly thing that I think will very quickly be rectified. Uhm, I would say come like half a year down, external hardware will be allowed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I agree, I give Microsoft credit as well for backtracking. They could have run a marathon backwards for as quickly as they retreated on that. Uhm, I do however think Sony is really trying to be what they're calling, considering the anti-Xbox this time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so I think they're gonna take a different approach to PS4, and I really think that's something that's gonna be rectified if the community wants it to be rectified very, very quickly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had a chance to take a look at the update, you know, a few days before it got pushed. So there are a few things I see, and I actually agree wholeheartedly with everything you just said. I think the big difficulty for developers is getting those games on television sets. About things like the Ouya, and I think the Shield


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Nvidia nailed it with the control mapping. Yes. So being able to take a game like NBA Jam, you know, that's an awesome game, but it's kind of tough to play with touch and being able to just have that already be mapped.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that's a very astute observation actually. Uhm, I completely agree.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With that, with that statement, you are absolutely right. I'd be curious, you know, and they say piracy, what they really mean is we're not making enough money. I mean, that's sort of the, that's the between the lines, is we don't care if you're playing our game for free, we care that you're not giving us money to play our game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and, and that's the issue. I wonder though, how much money these manufacturers, Sony and Microsoft, are paying to developers to get exclusives? Microsoft obviously opened up their wallets like crazy to get exclusive titles.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What if, what if they both agreed to stop doing that? That okay, let's stop with the exclusive deal, uh, you know, if we own a studio, so whatever, if it was formerly Bungie or whatever it might be, then you know, we'll make our own games. But if we stop doing that, and we stop pushing this


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How that would change sales numbers and how that would change, you know, their end of day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, exactly the same. And they're still sort of like backhand fighting each other. You know, I'm sure Sony paid Activision to make Call of Duty Ghost 1080p only on the PS4.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, so people can think, oh, the Xbox wasn't as powerful last generation, it's probably not as powerful this generation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, I would bet that money changed hands. I would say I can't back that up. But I would bet that money changed hands.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, I mean the shields for sure. I should say though that the shield is 300 bucks if you want to buy it on it's own. Yes, that's important.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a really cutting, I thought for sure they were never going to release this. I thought it was going to be a reference hardware for Tegra 4. Uhm, and I went on record and said that I was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clearly wrong. Uhm, I really give them, I really give them credit. I know the folks at Nvidia very well. They are committed to this platform and they like you to see the future. And they've done that same.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, that same pitch. Okay, what are you gonna keep in your living room? And if we stick with this, and we educate the consumer to know what Shield does, not just look at it as an Android tablet or controller,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, so we had before this over the air update came out, you know, we had a


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think bloggers for some reason don't either get it or just don't care.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I actually agree with you. I could not have said that better myself. I completely agree with that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Always weird to talk about yourself. I'm a geek. I'm just, I'm a geek who somehow managed to win the lottery and got the opportunity to do this for a living.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you can, you can check me out on YouTube, uh, youtube.com slash techno buffalo. Uh, I'm on, on Twitter at, uh, John John number four Lakers, which is an awful Twitter handle. I totally understand that. Or you can check, check out, you know, all of our, all of our content.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, at uh, at Technobuffalo.com and we just talk about tech, we're fans of technology.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, we have our passion that we get the opportunity to share with everybody.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, we do a podcast, we used to do live shows, we've toured at live shows, we really want to do more live shows, it's just a matter of trying to find the bandwidth to do them, but it's definitely, like I say things every year, but it's definitely on our radar.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Appreciate that. I'm awful reading from a teleprompter. I'm not an actor. I'm really, really bad. So I mean all my videos are all done just whatever weird stuff comes out of my head.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, not really knowing how business worked. I love technology. I used to go to Best Buy and walk around.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, at the end of a long day. My biggest thing was when I first launched TechnoBuffalo, I didn't know about how to create a website. I didn't know about code. I had gotten a little bit of startup funds from friends and family. I bootstrapped it all the way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and I hired a developer, I said build the site, he built it and said okay, it's ready to launch, so I figured great, let's launch it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and the site crashed in, I think it was less than a minute, it was like 43 seconds. It didn't crash because of the crazy traffic, it crashed because of god awful code.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we had to burn through 40% of our startup capital. I had just left my job, this is 2009, in a bad economy to make videos for a living. I had no income for essentially three months. So the best long story short.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was so like, blindly ignorant. I mean, I look back and I just wanna smack myself in the face. Uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Know your industry before you get into anything. Uhm, I had the benefit of being, sort of just by dumb luck, first to market, so it was easier to get noticed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Much harder now, and it's a much more crowded field. So if you want to get into YouTube or tech world, find your own voice. Let your personality come through. Don't be a robot. Don't copy anybody else's style. Find your own. Uhm, and uh, fight through all the hate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Absolutely, and don't fall in the trap of selling yourself for reviews. You know, don't think you have to give good reviews because it's going to set you a product the audience knows. Be yourself on camera, be genuine, and uhm, you know, I think you guys will find success if you just follow that path.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you sit at home, you don't know. I don't even know how to answer that question.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, no better phone for the price. Nexus 5 for sure. Yeaah, that's an easy one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Though we do, funny you should mention that, we actually just finished writing and filming a full test of the video and still camera quality, uh, on the next live. So if you want to see that, we'll have the post up actually tomorrow, Saturday on technobuffalo.com. Can we get a short teaser? But I will give you a sneak preview. It's good, it's good, it's not great. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Listen, I would love to be back, and it's internet, I don't do well with compliments, so you do much better to just like yell at me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sounds good. Thank you guys very much for having me. It was really a good time. I look forward to doing it again hopefully sometime soon. Alright, take care. Thanks a lot. Bye bye.


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[Assistant] Dads can be impossible to shop for, and you don't want to get another tie or pair of socks that he's never going to wear, but you also don't want to get something really practical that doesn't feel special enough to be a gift.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, Harry's has got you covered. While supplies last, Harry's is offering a special limited edition shave set for Father's Day. Get one for Dad, and get one for yourself too.


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[Assistant] Focused on providing a great shaving experience for a fraction of the price of the competition, Harry's Razors offers high quality blades engineered in their very own German factory and shipped directly to your home.


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[Assistant] Harry's right now is offering a limited edition Father's Day shave set that includes a matte black razor handle, chrome razor stand, Harry's moisturizing foaming gel, three of Harry's handcrafted blade cartridges, and a travel cover, all for just 40 bucks.


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[Assistant] Plus it comes in a sleek giftable box with the option to add custom engraving and a personalized cart.


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[Assistant] So when you're done with this episode, go to Harrys.com and redeem the special offer for fans of the show. Harrys will give you $5 off your first purchase using the promo code REVOLUTIONS.


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[Assistant] Do not wait. An economy shipping deal for Father's Day ends on Thursday, June the 9th, so act now.


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[Assistant] Use the promo code REVOLUTIONS at checkout to get $5 off and get Dad something he'll actually use this Father's Day.


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[Assistant] We begin now our fifth cycle of episodes. The story of Spanish American independence. A story that is inextricably linked to the revolutions we've already covered.


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[Assistant] Because, as you may have noticed, though I am narrating these revolutions in discrete units, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, this is all really one unfolding event, rolling back and forth across the Atlantic as the modern world is slowly, painfully, and oh-so-chaotically born.


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[Assistant] But trying to cover all of Spanish American independence would be logistically insane.


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[Assistant] On the eve of Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1807, the Spanish Empire in the Western Hemisphere stretched from the southern tip of South America to as far north as like San Francisco.


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[Assistant] That enormous empire had cracked apart into fully 16 new nations. Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Mexico.


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[Assistant] To say nothing of the chunks that will wind up inside the United States. I estimate that it would take me at least 100 episodes to cover it all in full, and we are not going to do that. So what are we going to do?


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[Assistant] Well, when you pull back to 10,000 feet and unfocus your eyes a little bit, you can really make out three principal theaters of action in the Spanish American Wars of Independence. In the far north, you have Mexico.


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[Assistant] In the far south, you have a connected axis that links Argentina and Chile that includes Paraguay and Uruguay, and then in the middle you have a big blob that will briefly become Gran Colombia and then devolve into modern Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama.


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[Assistant] Now I'm not gonna worry about Mexico right now. Partly because it was geographically, politically, and militarily distinct from the South American liberation movements, and partly because I'll be happy to tell you all about it when we get to the Mexican Revolution, whenever we get to the Mexican Revolution.


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[Assistant] So that leaves us with events in South America, where things are geographically, politically, and militarily connected. And indeed, when the armies of José de Samartín march north from Chile to Peru, they will arrive just ahead of the armies of Simón Bolívar, who will be marching south out of Colombia.


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[Assistant] The two great generals would famously meet at a summit in July 1822, and you can't get much more connected than that.


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[Assistant] But of the two big South American theaters, there is no one who more personifies the liberation of South America than the liberator himself, Simone Bolivar.


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[Assistant] And no theater that better encapsulates the contentious and occasionally fratricidal process of Spanish-American independence than the region that was once the Spanish viceroyalty of New Granada and became through Bolivar's sheer force of will an independent nation that historians call Gran Colombia.


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[Assistant] And so, it is Bolivar and Gran Colombia that I will focus on.


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[Assistant] So this run of episodes, then, is gonna be like a series of concentric circles. The really detailed center will be Bolivar himself, and the two principal nations he liberated, Colombia and Venezuela.


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[Assistant] Then the next circle of detail will cover the other Bolivarian states, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Panama is also in there, but Panama remains a part of Columbia until Theodore Roosevelt comes down with his big stick in the 20th century.


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[Assistant] Then the next circle will be Argentina and Chile, which I plan to cover enough so that you know what's happening without getting bogged down in the nitty gritty details.


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[Assistant] And then the widest circle will bring in a few mentions of events up in Mexico, mostly to remind you just how vast the problem facing Spain was in the 1810s and 1820s.


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[Assistant] So having said all that, I am actually now going to spend the rest of today's episode on the widest circle you're ever going to get. An expansive overview of the Spanish Empire. How it got started, how it functioned, and who lived in it.


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[Assistant] ...covering its development through the so-called Spanish Golden Age until the Habsburg dynasty collapsed into a heap with the death of King Charles II in November 1700.


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[Assistant] Then next week, we'll transition into a more detailed accounting of the viceroyalty of New Granada, which will be the principal stage upon which the rest of our series will take place, and which was created amidst the enlightened bourbon reforms that sought to strengthen and modernize the empire, and in the process help grease the wheels of revolution. After that, it will be off to the races.


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[Assistant] And one last thing, of course, is my standard disclaimer, that though I feel like I've got a pretty okay handle on Spanish pronunciation, I'll more than likely botch a few things along the way, and even the stuff I get right is never gonna be perfect and will always contain a hefty dose of Anglo-American ineptitude.


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[Assistant] So to get things started here, we're gonna go back into the misty fog of post-Roman Iberia, that is, modern Spain and Portugal, which as you may or may not know was invaded by North African Muslims in the early 700s.


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[Assistant] Most, but not all, of the Iberian Peninsula then became a Muslim-ruled territory called Al-Andalus, and over the next few centuries became a front in the wider Mediterranean conflict between Islam and Christendom.


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[Assistant] Over the centuries, Christendom slowly pushed its way back into Iberia in a process later dubbed the Reconquista, or the Reconquest.


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[Assistant] As Reconquista progressed, a patchwork of kingdoms took root in Christian Iberia. Castile, León, Aragon, Portugal, Navarre, Valencia, Catalonia, plus some other smaller feudal units thrown in for good measure.


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[Assistant] By the 1400s, all that was left of Al-Andalus was a rump Muslim territory called the Emirate of Granada down on the southwest coast.


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[Assistant] These Christian kingdoms are separate kingdoms, and rivalries and alliances between the Iberian monarchies help define what is of actual interest to us here. The expansion of those Iberian monarchies off the peninsula, and the subsequent creation of the first global empires.


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[Assistant] Now it was coastal Portugal who first started wandering out into the Atlantic in the late 1300s. They focused first on navigating south along the African coast, in part looking for trade routes to the Indies that did not require them to go through the Islamic territories that dominated most of the eastern Mediterranean.


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[Assistant] A following close behind them, though, was the Kingdom of Castile, the largest and richest of the Iberian monarchies. In the early 1400s, Castile staked a claim to the Canary Islands, which lay off the west coast of Morocco, a claim naturally disputed by the Portuguese.


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[Assistant] And by the late 1400s, big changes in the balance of power in Iberia were afoot, as an incredibly complicated game of marriage, intrigue, and revolt played out.


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[Assistant] To keep things simple, let's just say that in 1474, King Henry IV of Castile died, and a struggle immediately broke out called the War of Castilian Succession.


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[Assistant] This conflict pitted Henry's sister, Isabella, against Henry's daughter, Joanna, both of whom claimed the crown of Castile.


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[Assistant] Now the future direction of Iberia was at stake here, because Isabella was married to Ferdinand, heir to the neighboring kingdom of Aragon, while Joana was married to Alfonso V, the king of Portugal.


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[Assistant] But by 1476, Isabella had pretty much won the fight, at which point the War of Internal Succession segued into a war of external conflict between Castile, now linked to Aragon, and the jilted Portugal.


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[Assistant] In 1478, Isabella then authorized a major push against Portuguese hegemony in the Atlantic. She initiated the conquest of the remaining Canary Islands, but more importantly, she wanted to move in on the recently discovered and highly lucrative Gulf of Guinea on the African coast.


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[Assistant] To handle what they hoped would be a major haul of goodies, the Castilians established a receiver of customs in the port of Seville.


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[Assistant] Merchants were able to obtain a royal license to take part in the expedition that obligated them to turn over 20% of their profits to the Crown, this establishing what became a standard feature of Spanish imperialism, the Royal Fifth.


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[Assistant] But while the Castilian fleet sat anchored off the coast of Africa with a fortune in their holds, 11 Portuguese ships launched a surprise attack and captured the entire Castilian fleet without losing a man.


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[Assistant] Okay, so why am I telling you all this? Where's Bolivar?


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[Assistant] I'm telling you all this because as a direct result of this battle of Guinea, the Castilians and Portuguese signed the Treaty of Alcasavas in 1479, which did two really important things.


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[Assistant] First, it recognized Isabella and Ferdinand's claim to the Castilian throne, and second, it established Portuguese hegemony over like the entire Atlantic Ocean.


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[Assistant] A latitudinal line was drawn just south of the Canary Islands, which the Portuguese agreed to let the Castilians keep, beyond which the Portuguese would have a sole and undisputed claim to navigation and trade.


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[Assistant] All of this was then duly ratified by the Pope, who among other things was basically Europe's notary public.


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[Assistant] That same year, 1479, Ferdinand's father died, and Ferdinand became king of Aragon. And then he and Isabella ruled Castile and Aragon together as co-monarchs. But critically, the two realms were not otherwise united.


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[Assistant] Now most of the Iberian kingdoms and principalities had by this point developed permanent political councils called Cortes that functioned a lot like the French estates general. They were convocations of the lords and clergy and various knights of the realm.


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[Assistant] These councils served as the guardians of the kingdom's own laws and rights and privileges, and so as the kingdoms of Spain became more unified under the coming Habsburg dynasty, the Habsburg monarchs are ruling a hodgepodge of territories, all of them with their own separate list of rights and duties.


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[Assistant] It's a long time before you get anyone talking about the Kingdom of Spain singular. It's always the Kingdoms of Spain plural.


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[Assistant] And important for our purposes is that if a monarch was killed or incapacitated, sovereignty of his individual realm would devolve to the councils, a principle that would play a huge role in events after Napoleon overthrows the Spanish monarchy in 1807, which is the trigger for everything.


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[Assistant] Okay, so with Castile and Aragon united, and now at peace with Portugal, Isabella and Ferdinand then focused on completing Reconquista, and in 1482 began what turned out to be a decade-long offensive against the Emirate of Granada.


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[Assistant] And while they did so, an ambitious navigator from the Italian city of Genoa named Christopher Columbus started making the rounds trying to gin up support for his plan to find a trade route to the Indies by sailing west.


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[Assistant] He nearly convinced the King of Portugal to back him, but the King's advisors told him that Columbus had no idea what he was talking about.


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[Assistant] Contrary to the old myth, it's not because they believed the world was flat. I mean, no thinking person thought that. But they had run the math, and determined, quite correctly, that Columbus's estimate of the distance to the Indies was wildly off the mark.


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[Assistant] Then in 1488 came the fantastic news that a Portuguese explorer had finally rounded the Cape of Good Hope, establishing that there was indeed a sea route to the Indies around Africa. So no need for wild ass adventures off into the West.


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[Assistant] So Columbus then turned to Isabella and Ferdinand, but they too repeatedly turned him down.


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[Assistant] And it wasn't until just before completing Reconquista that they had a change of heart.


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[Assistant] And so it is by sheer historical coincidence that 1492 marks both the end of Reconquista and the beginning of La Conquista. The Conquest.


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[Assistant] Because it was shortly after the fall of Granada that Isabella and Ferdinand finally approved Columbus's scheme.


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[Assistant] The final rationale for backing him being that the cost of failure was negligible, I mean what, the guy just disappears over the horizon and never comes back, big deal.


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[Assistant] But the possible profits of success were enormous.


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[Assistant] So they signed a document in April 1492, called the Capitulations of Santa Fe, that among other things made Columbus viceroy and governor of any territory he might happen to discover, and Admiral of the Ocean Sea.


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[Assistant] He also got to keep for himself 10% of any future riches acquired.


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[Assistant] And when, surprisingly enough, Columbus's voyage turned out to be a success, Isabella and Ferdinand would come to regret signing such an expansive document.


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[Assistant] Okay, so that gets us basically to where we began our cycle of episodes on the Haitian Revolution. Columbus makes his first voyage in 1492, discovering, among other things, the island of Hispaniola.


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[Assistant] Well, last time we stayed fixed on Hispaniola to follow the story through as it became a colonial backwater, eventually allowing French buccaneers to occupy the western third of the island and then everything that follows from it.


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[Assistant] Well this time, we're gonna stick with the Spanish as they abandon Hispaniola and turn their attention to, well, everything that we're about to now talk about.


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[Assistant] So as I mentioned, Columbus had once pitched his project to the King of Portugal, and when he returned from his first voyage, he stopped in Lisbon and told the King all about what he had found.


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[Assistant] Which naturally led the king to get all riled up, pull out his copy of the Treaty of Alcosavos, and write an angry letter to Isabella and Ferdinand claiming legal title to Columbus' discoveries.


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[Assistant] This led to a furious round of diplomatic negotiations that culminated in June 1494 with the signing of the pivotal Treaty of Tordesillas. Once again, of course, notarized by the Pope.


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[Assistant] Now this was a mighty fateful treaty to say the least.


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[Assistant] Portugal was mostly focused on protecting their claim to the African coast, and they demanded the latitudinal demarcation line south of the Canary Islands not be disturbed.


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[Assistant] In exchange, they agreed to a longitudinal line ultimately drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, Portuguese possessions off the west coast of Africa.


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[Assistant] This new north-south running line confirmed Portuguese hegemony over the African coast.


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[Assistant] But what no one realized at the time was that it left all of North America and all but the Brazilian bulge of South America on the Spanish side of the line.


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[Assistant] So yes, the Treaty of Tordesillas sets up everything that comes next, and also yes, there are a few maps up at RevolutionsPodcast.com to help you make sense of all this.


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[Assistant] So while those negotiations were still underway, Columbus went ahead and took his second voyage in 1493.


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[Assistant] And this one was a full-blown colonization project. 17 ships carrying about 1200 men of various means and trades who were then deposited on Hispaniola.


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[Assistant] Columbus' third voyage then came in 1498, which was one part supply run for the beleaguered and angry colonists of Hispaniola, and one part voyage of further exploration.


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[Assistant] And here we do get to a turning point in the history of the Spanish Empire, because on the third voyage, Columbus hit mainland South America, specifically the northeast coast of Venezuela.


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[Assistant] Now the other turning point here is that when Columbus finally arrived in Hispaniola, he found the inhabitants there totally hated his guts, and the longer he stayed there, the more they hated his guts. Accusations of mismanagement and cruelty had already filtered back to Isabella and Ferdinand,


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[Assistant] In 1499, they sent a new governor to Hispaniola to investigate the charges against Columbus, and in 1500, Columbus was heading back across the Atlantic in chains.


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[Assistant] Now he's gonna get out from under this cloud and make one more voyage in 1502 that was quite a disaster before finally dying in 1506. His heirs would then spend the next 30 years suing the Crown of Castile to force them to honor the capitulations of Santa Fe, but let's not fall down that rabbit hole.


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[Assistant] As Columbus was being pushed out of the picture, Isabella and Ferdinand then handed the future management of their new world territories to a bishop named Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca.


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[Assistant] Fonseca helped organize Columbus' second voyage, and from that point on, so 1493, until his death in 1524, Fonseca was essentially the supreme authority over what was then being called the West Indies.


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[Assistant] Under his direction, some of the mainstays of Spanish imperial policy were born.


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[Assistant] In 1503, for example, the Casa de Contratacion was born, literally the House of Trade, and established in Seville, giving them a monopoly over the incoming and outgoing trade with the New World.


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[Assistant] The House of Trade took over the licensing of expeditions, collected colonial taxes, maintained all the charts and maps and records and claims, and most importantly, made sure the Crown always got the Royal Fifth.


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[Assistant] Then in 1511, Bishop Fonseca established a permanent standing committee of the Indies that was nested inside the Council of Castile.


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[Assistant] Because to be really clear here, the voyages of Columbus were chartered through the Crown of Castile, and so Castile's council claimed jurisdiction over the West Indies.


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[Assistant] So over the next 30 or 40 years, you get the heyday of the Spanish conquistador.


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[Assistant] Now conquistador is kind of a catch-all label, but it does refer to a very specific system of private individuals acquiring a royal license to explore, conquer, occupy, and exploit lands in the Spanish West Indies.


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[Assistant] These guys would underwrite their own expeditions and recruit men by offering profit sharing contracts. One-fifth, as always, reserved to the crown.


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[Assistant] At the moment though, very little thought was given to like, establishing a thriving global trade network or making peaceful contact with existing civilizations for the mutual benefit of yada yada yada.


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[Assistant] The point was to find gold, silver, pearls, riches. The conquistadors were treasure hunters. Ruthless, cold-blooded, vicious treasure hunters. And every further expansion of their efforts inevitably begins with a rumor that just over the horizon is a city made of pure gold.


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[Assistant] So we're not gonna get into a play-by-play of the various conquistador expeditions, although they are infinitely fascinating.


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[Assistant] But as they fanned out across North, Central, and South America, the island of Hispaniola went from principal capital of the Spanish West Indies to forgotten ghost town.


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[Assistant] I mean how Vasco Nunez de Balboa stumbled onto the Pacific Ocean in 1513 and claimed the whole damn thing for Spain.


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[Assistant] The Spanish officially had bigger fish to fry. The conquest was underway.


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[Assistant] The two most important conquests were those in Mexico and Peru.


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[Assistant] In 1519, Hernan Cortes landed on the coast of Mexico and made contact with the thriving Aztec Empire that ruled central Mexico.


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[Assistant] And though Cortez only led a few hundred guys, by 1521 the densely populated inner Aztec realms lay prostrate at his feet, thanks to a combination of treachery, gunpowder, smallpox, and measles.


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[Assistant] Then, a few years later, Francisco Pizarro got permission to start exploring the west coast of South America. And in 1532, he made contact with the thriving Inca Empire that ruled most of the Andes Mountains.


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[Assistant] Following the same playbook as Cortez, Pizarro employed a deadly combination of treachery, gumpowder, smallpox, and measles to overthrow the Inca and take control of their territory. Though technically the conquest of the Inca would take until 1570 to complete.


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[Assistant] Now all of this, not just the conquest of Mexico and Peru, but all of it taken together, came at a devastating human cost.


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[Assistant] Everything we know about the existing population of the Amerindians. And for simplicity's sake, I'm going to use the term Amerindian, even though it is terribly inadequate, as a term to describe all the native inhabitants of what becomes the Spanish Empire.


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[Assistant] Anyway, everything we know about their population numbers is guesswork, but it was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 million people.


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[Assistant] After Columbus arrived, that population collapsed with estimates of the brutal reduction running as high as 90% thanks to that poisonous cocktail of treachery, gunpowder, smallpox, and measles.


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[Assistant] Now the reason Mexico and Peru are so important was of course because of the silver mines that they contained.


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[Assistant] From the beginning of the conquest, conquistadors were shipping loads of treasure back home, but it was mostly extracted from crafted items they had either traded for, or as often as not outright stolen from the native communities that they then destroyed.


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[Assistant] Anything of remarkable beauty might be kept in its original form, but most of it was melted down into bars or coins.


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[Assistant] But Mexico and Peru both held massive silver deposits that once discovered fundamentally changed the shape of the global economy.


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[Assistant] By the 1540s, the great Mexican silver mine Zacatecas had been identified and was fully operational by the late 1580s.


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[Assistant] And then down in Peru, the great silver mine at Potosi was opened in 1545. And these were just the two biggest mines. Smaller operations augmented Spanish silver mining across the empire.


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[Assistant] The Spanish American mines absolutely flooded the world market and wound up producing something like 85% of the world's silver.


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[Assistant] And the ironic thing here is that all this silver produced what's known as the Spanish Golden Age, an age that coincides with the arrival of the Habsburg dynasty and their unification of the Spanish crown, which ruled now the kingdoms of Spain.


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[Assistant] So the Habsburgs were of course one of the most important royal houses in the history of Europe, who had come to dominate the Holy Roman Empire through their Austrian branch.


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[Assistant] Well, their Spanish branch is being formed right here, right now, in the early 1500s.


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[Assistant] Isabella and Ferdinand's daughter, Joanna, married a Habsburg prince named Philip the Fair, and in 1500 they had a son named Charles.


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[Assistant] Then some murky convulsions unfold, what with Joanna suffering from some kind of undiagnosed mental illness.


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[Assistant] But long story short, Isabella died in 1504, Philip the Fair died in 1506, and then Ferdinand died in 1516, and 16 year old Charles inherited their claims to everything.


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[Assistant] So in his own right, he now had claims to sovereignty almost the entire Iberian peninsula, save principally for Portugal, unifying what was now being called the Spanish crown.


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[Assistant] But this Charles was not just the grandson of Isabella and Ferdinand. He was also the grandson of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I.


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[Assistant] And when Maximilian kicked off in 1519, now 19-year-old Charles spread out some massive bribes and got himself elected Holy Roman Emperor.


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[Assistant] Which is why he is principally referred to in history books as Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.


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[Assistant] Now Charles V is a hugely important figure in European history, thanks in part to the great heaping loads of silver now coming in from his growing empire in the New World, which he controlled thanks to his direct claim to the throne of Castile.


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[Assistant] That Royal Fifth was now gob-smackingly enormous, and it was all his to do with as he liked, and mostly what he liked to do was fight wars against the French.


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[Assistant] Now we're not gonna get lost in all that. Instead, we're gonna head back over to the growing Spanish Empire, and get an idea of how it functioned, and how it propped up the Spanish Golden Age. Which, I mean, really ought to be called the Spanish Silver Age.


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[Assistant] In 1524, Charles officially peeled the Indies out from being a subsidiary committee of the Council of Castile and made it its own sovereign unit.


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[Assistant] So, from the King's administrative perspective, his American empire was now run through a Council of the Indies, who themselves ran things through the Casa de Contratacion, the House of Trade, located in Seville.


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[Assistant] Now from the time of Columbus's arrival, local administration in the West Indies was overseen by the governor of Hispaniola.


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[Assistant] But in 1511, the crown had exported an institution of longstanding tradition in Iberia to help him govern, the Audiencia.


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[Assistant] The Audiencia is a super important institution. A small governing council of leaders who wielded combined legislative, judicial, and executive authority.


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[Assistant] Now though the Audiencias are about to become technically subordinate to the viceroys,


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[Assistant] More of them will be planted over the years, and this network of audiencias became the political and administrative backbone of the Spanish Empire.


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[Assistant] Does those sound familiar? They should. They are today the capitals of Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. And they became the capitals because that's where the Audiencias were.


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[Assistant] But the Council of the Indies decided that direct rule by the Audiencias, basically government by committee, was too unwieldy to be the final, final authority. And so they reformulated things again.


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[Assistant] The Viceroyalty of New Spain had jurisdiction over all the territory in North America down into Central America, and then also including the Philippines, which were charted and acquired in the 1540s.


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[Assistant] The viceroyalty of Peru, then, had jurisdiction over the whole of Spanish South America.


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[Assistant] Now the viceroy was, like it sounds, a royal emissary exercising royal sovereignty. And one thing worth noting here is that New Spain and Peru were referred to as kingdoms rather than colonies.


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[Assistant] Nothing was called a colony, at least not until the Bourbon reforms that we're gonna talk about next week.


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[Assistant] Now along with the state, of course comes the church. And wherever the conquistadors went, they brought with them Catholic missionaries, who saw it as their duty to convert the heathen natives to the true faith.


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[Assistant] Now at first, this process went great. At least, that's what the missionaries thought.


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[Assistant] But then it turned out that the Amerindians were just incorporating the Christian god into their broader pantheon of deities, and that wouldn't do it all.


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[Assistant] So, a process of slow cultural annihilation was undertaken by the dual power of the Church and the State, which, given the strong Catholic nature of the Spanish monarchy, were often represented in one and the same man.


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[Assistant] Now in the first stage of the conquest, this process manifested in the encomienda system, which we talked about very briefly in episode 4.1. That's where native groups would be placed under the protection of a Spaniard, usually as a reward for his service on some expedition or another.


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[Assistant] And then he would protect them by forcing them to work and make him rich.


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[Assistant] Now these guys were supposed to see to the religious education of their charges, but the encomiendos weren't generally too troubled with what god these people worshipped as long as they got to work.


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[Assistant] Because although these unfortunate Amerindians were not technically owned, this was de facto slavery.


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[Assistant] And as I also mentioned in episode 4.1, a priest named Bartolome de las Casas, who had himself once been an encomiendo, grew progressively distressed about what he was witnessing, and he started to petition the crown to protect the Indians, as a father would protect his children,


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[Assistant] Delas Casas finally succeeded with his long campaign on behalf of the Amerindians, and in 1542, Charles V and the Council of Indies promulgated new laws that they called the New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians.


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[Assistant] Now thanks to these new laws, the scope and power of the Encomienda system was severely curtailed.


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[Assistant] It took a while to implement in full, but the new laws do mark the end of the most exploitive era of the encomiendas.