female announcer: "press:here" is sponsored in part by barracuda networks, cloud connected security and storage solutions that simplify it. city national bank, providing loans and lines of credit to help northern california businesses grow. male announcer: it's a bestselling book, and now "the martian" becomes a movie. author andy weir on his out of this world success, and whether he thinks matt damon is the right man for the job. silicon valley has disrupted just about every industry, so why not toothpaste? amit goswamy explains his plan. and here's an idea. if there aren't enough places to live in san francisco, build more houses. our reporters alice truong of quartz and john swartz of usa today, this week on "press:here."

scott mcgrew: good morning, everyone, i'm scott mcgrew. i hope you are a long-time watcher of "press:here." if you are, you know each week, my team of reporters and i talk to various ceos and newsmakers. this is a serious show. it's not a sunday morning infomercial, but that said, let me talk to you about toothpaste. we have for you this morning a revolutionary new toothpaste created in silicon valley, gets teeth 260% cleaner than the leading brand, but that's not all. it cuts your risk of gingivitis and leaves your mouth minty fresh. or so claims amit goswamy. he is the guy trying to disrupt the toothpaste industry with livionex, a $20 toothpaste. joined by john swartz of usa today and alice truong, of course. let me ask you about this 250% claim. people say it's twice as good as brand x. yours is--how is something 250% better?

amit goswamy: well, first, we got to take a look at what people do today, scott. scott: brush their teeth. amit: yes, and you brush it the way your ancestor brushed it 4,000 years ago, with scrubbing them. then, they used to scrub with twigs. now, you scrub with-- scott: it's got some detergents in there, and something to make it rough, and some fluoride. i can make toothpaste. amit: absolutely you can. and that's the reason why up to 90% of all american adults have gum inflammation and bleeding. and according to the us cdc, 47% of american adults, that's 66 million adults-- scott: you like your statistics. how is that 250% better? what did you do to toothpaste to make that 250% better? amit: what we did is we started to look at it silicon valley style. we said scrubbing ain't enough. how would you do it if you were really go design it from scratch? and we said, let's figure out how to rig the molecular bond between dental plaque, which is an oral biofilm--biofilms are

the way bacteria protect themselves and make themselves into a lean, mean fighting machine. how can you break it in a way that it disperses, rather than just scrubbing it away as much as you can? john swartz: so, you call this dental gel. it looks like skin lotion, actually. can i try it? amit: absolutely. john: so, while i'm trying it, can you--i'm going to see if it's minty fresh. amit: it is edible. scott: well, now the rest of us can't try it. john: this is my tube now. scott: okay, well, tell us. john: it tastes like mouthwash. but i mean, i'm drinking it. i'm not brushing it. scott: do you have to brush it? would you have to brush it? amit: you do, you do. what happens is this is designed in a very scientific way. we want to deliver the gel right into the teeth, right into the plaque, so the pressure of the brush actually releases it right into the teeth when you brush it. john: so i did, i had a gum graft a long time ago. it was one of the worst experiences of my life. that's why i brush my teeth twice a day, i go to the dentist twice a year. alice truong: these are normal things. john: i know, before i wasn't quite as good about that.

but i'm wondering, how much does this cost? and i'm wondering what the investment would be for something like this tube, which is fairly small. amit: four cups of starbucks coffee. scott: per what? amit: per 6 weeks of use brushing twice a day. alice: per year, what does that come to? amit: well, if you take a look, it will last you 6 weeks, so you need about 8 tubes to last you a year. we even offer packages. most of our customers will buy one tube because they think it's too good to be true. then they all come back and buy the six pack, which drops the price to $15. scott: i can see how you think that people buy toothpaste for their health. people don't buy toothpaste for their health. based on commercials, right? i mean, surely procter & gamble has done some research into this. in toothpaste commercials, people kiss. or i mean, it's about sparkle, right? if you told me that that would prevent some sort of gum disease down the road, but this one over here would make my teeth sparklier, i'd buy the sparklier toothpaste. you know what i mean? i don't think we make that decision in the drugstore based

on overall health or we wouldn't buy cigarettes and vodka at the same time. amit: well, the question is, you buy cigarettes and vodka, but can you make your trip to the dentist an easier one? what people are doing is they're buying product, i used to buy product before i got into this business, which i thought i was doing a good job. america is a developed country. i thought i was buying something which was good for my teeth. i didn't realize what it did and what it did not do. when you have been told you have gum disease, you're looking for a solution. i don't have to market this. i have 66 million people asking for it because they know a cleaner mouth means less disease. alice: sixty-six million, is that like people who have purchased, are on a waiting list, or what is that? amit: no because these people have been diagnosed with gum disease. their doctor has told them, the dentist has told them that you got gum disease and we're going to try to prevent its progression. so, these people are looking for solutions. john: have the instances of gum disease been rising over the years? is that why you see a need for a product like this?

amit: well, last year was the first year that us cdc actually said gum disease is a serious problem. this is one of those epidemics, 66 million people, you have never heard of because, yes, it's not like diabetes. but on the other hand, it really affects your lifestyle. this is a lifestyle product. if you use this, people understand at a very basic level that if you have a clean mouth, you will have less disease. scott: amit, did you approach this as, "i am going to change the world of toothpaste, and revolutionize and disrupt the toothpaste industry, or did you say, "i want to disrupt some kind of industry. what industries are out there?" amit: well, with all these things, serendipity helps. we had bleeding gums. i have been--i and my partners have been researching the role of metals in inflammation and biofilm since 2002 with the university of texas medical branch galveston and uc irvine since 2002, as i said. scott: so, it started with dental healthcare. amit: no, we have products in ophthalmology and dermatology that we're going through the fda and various clinical trials. we all had bleeding gums back in 2009 and we said,

"knowing what we know of this--" scott: this is the worst startup story ever, by the way. it's not, "you know, we were trying to sell pez dispensers." we all had bleeding gums. it's never going to sell with usa today. amit: well, the funny part of this one-- john: it might, actually, when i think about it, worst experience. amit: when our bleeding stopped, we went to a clinical practice in milpitas and said, "let's do a double blind study." the results were so good that we looked at it and we said, "yeah, this is all legal." scott: and much of this is backed up. i should say when i started this, i said 250% better based on materials that i had read, but also in published scientific papers. amit: yes, so, when we did the milpitas study, we looked at the data ourselves. and this was pristine. but we looked at each other and we laughed. one, we were happy. number two, we said, "nobody's going to believe this because who thinks of toothpaste like this?" so, we said, "let's go to an american university and let them do the study because they're the gold standard." and that's the data you see. john: but how do you compete?

there's so many different brands of toothpaste. there's so much advertising. alice: i feel like this is one of those things where people are really price sensitive, right? you just choose what's on sale or the brand that you're loyal to. amit: well, i mean, when you for a commodity, you're absolutely right, it's all packaging and taste. that's how you look at it. but when you're starting to say--imagine yourself in an aisle where there's one toothpaste for sale, two and a half times better than anything in this aisle for cleaning your teeth. now, it's up to you whether you want to pick it up or not. but the reality is we are not advertising in the traditional way. of our over 100,000 customers are our brand ambassadors. they tell their friends. we have people who will buy 40 tubes. they'll tell their friends, they'll tell their relatives, they'll tell their dentists. dentists call us. we don't call them, they call us because they're curious. it's that support from dentists and hygienists, who buy it for their own families. scott: now, i got to stop you there, alice, but amit goswamy, the first person on this show to ever try to revolutionize toothpaste.

we're rather impressed. and hopefully, you have some other tubes that john hasn't licked. amit: absolutely. scott: thanks for being with us this morning. up next, author of the bestselling book turned movie, "the martian" when "press:here" continues. [music]

scott: welcome back to "press:here." lots of people have thought about writing a book. "i'm going to write a novel. it'll go to number one on the new york times bestseller list,

and then some famous director, ridley scott, will make it into a movie." that is exactly what andy weir accomplished, starting with giving away chapters of his book for free on his website. he ended up first with one of the most popular books of the year. in fact, it did go to number one on the new york times bestseller list. and then this happened. teddy sanders: at 4:30 a.m., our satellites detected a storm approaching the ares 3 mission site on mars. the storm had escalated to severe and we had no choice but to abort the mission. but during the evacuation, astronaut mark watney was killed. mark watney: i'm entering this log for the record.

this is mark watney and i'm still alive, obviously. i have no way to contact nasa or my crewmates, but even if i could, it would take 4 years for another manned mission to reach me. and i'm in a hab designed to last 31 days. so, in the face of overwhelming odds, i am left with only one option. i'm going to have to science the hell out of this. scott: andy weir is the author of "the martian, a great book turned matt damon movie premiering this october. wired magazine says in its review of the book, quote, "it's the most riveting math problem you'll ever read." thanks for being with us. i enjoyed the book. i am equally fascinated with how it started. but first, i want to talk about just it must be surreal to see what was in your head out on a screen. that must be bizarre. andy weir: oh, it's like--it's like you said in your intro, like everybody fantasizes about this stuff when you're writing a book, but you never really think it'll happen. and now it's just like, "oh my god."

scott: so, i mean, you gave away your book on the website. and then you tried to do it with kindle with--you were just going to give it away on kindle. and amazon said no, you got to charge something for it. and it turns out to be this blockbuster success. andy: yeah, yeah, and i--like it was a hobby that i was doing. i was just posting it chapter by chapter on my website. and then my readers said, "well, can you make an ebook version?" and then i did that and they said, "well, i don't know how to download an ebook version. can you put it up on amazon kindle?" so, i did that and kindle said, "you have to charge a buck, so i did that. and then it got up to the amazon bestseller list. and that caught the attention of random house and then fox. and it just kind of, like, snowballed. and i have no idea what i did right. john: this was your third book, right? andy: yeah, it's the third book i wrote. it's the first book that i ever published. and so, yeah, the earlier two books, not so great. john: what were they about? are they related? i mean, were they related to this at all? scott: can we get the movie rights? john: that's what i'm thinking about, yeah. andy: well, the first one was a dystopian future kind of story. and it was, like, so bad that, fortunately,

i wrote it before the era of the internet, so there are no digital copies. no one will ever find it. i've destroyed all copies except for one that my mother has, and she won't tell me where it is. and then the other--the second one was okay. it was sort of a space opera kind of thing. and it just wasn't well written. it had a decent plot. alice: when were you able to quit your day job as a software engineer? andy: that was april of last year, so it's been about a year and a half. i didn't quit my job as an engineer until it was clear that "the martian" was going to make enough money to support me. scott: well, and alice brings up an interesting point. you're a software engineer. you are not a rocket scientist in any way, and were not a writer. in that way, it reminds me a bit of tom clancy, who writes this book, i mean the first one, about the hunt for red october. he was an insurance salesman who did a lot of research about submarines. and in your case, the same thing, right? you did a ton of research about, "okay, i got to get this guy to mars. he's got to be on mars." you just researched it all. andy: yeah, well, also, a lifetime interest and hobby

of, like space travel. and so, it's easy to learn about things that you're passionate about, right? so, it's been an interest of mine all along. john: so, now you learn they're going to make this movie. ridley scott is going to direct it, i can't think of a better person to direct something like this, right? and it looks a little bit like "alien" in some of the trailers. what is your input? or how are you involved in the making of the movie, if at all? andy: mostly my job is to cash the check. once they acquire the film rights--and unless you're j.k. rowling or stephen king or something like that, you don't get to make any demands. they're just like, "here, we're going to buy the film rights. take it or leave it." but they chose to involve me. so, they didn't have to, but they chose to. and so, i got to give feedback on the screenplay. john: so you're on the--are you on the set too? andy: they invited me to the set. they finished filming a while ago. they invited me to the set, but i didn't go because it was all the way over in budapest is where they did principal photography. scott: since when did budapest look like mars? i haven't been to budapest. andy: they did the studio work in budapest,

and then they did the on-location stuff, the stuff that looks like mars, outdoors in wadi rum, jordan, which really does look like mars. scott: andy, i'm going to be honest with you, if they were making a movie of something i wrote, i'd probably go to budapest to see it. andy: i'm not a very comfortable flyer. scott: that's ironic. andy: i know, it's very ironic. john: yet you write about space travel, but you don't like flying? andy: i know, there's irony there. scott: well, look what happened to mark watney. andy: i write about brave people; i'm not one of them. alice: you wouldn't volunteer to be one of the first, like, colonists on mars? andy: lord no. lord no. scott: what do you think of matt damon? is that the mark watney you had in your head? andy: well, you know what's weird is, like, i don't have a firm visual image of my characters when i'm writing them. they're just kind of a blob. i couldn't have even--like before they cast matt damon, i couldn't have even told you mark's hair color or eyes or even his ethnicity for sure. but yeah, i'm thrilled to have matt damon. john: it's so weird because matt damon was in "interstellar" and he plays a character who's stranded on another--that was serendipity.

andy: yeah, and jessica chastain is also in "interstellar." a lot of people have pointed that out. it's kind of irritating because they go, "oh, this looks like an 'interstellar' prequel or something like that, matt damon stranded on a planet." trust me, it's very different. scott: oh, it is. the book is wildly different. john: and i love the idea of kind of the maker fair. scott: that's the fascinating part of the book is, what if i were stuck on mars with a single potato and i got to survive? what could i do? and you walk them through it. now, i'm not sure, does that necessarily make an entertaining movie? is the pure science that you go through--i mean, that's what makes the book so interesting. is there some science lost? i mean, there almost have to be. andy: well, the extreme detail with which it's described is lost, but the accuracy is still there. they just don't give you all the details, right? they're like, "okay, he's going to--" i mean, you could see it in the trailer. "okay, he's growing potatoes." and it's like, well, they don't give you all the facts and figures and numbers of like, okay, this is the crop yield and stuff like that. scott: which you do, by the way, in the book. i mean, it is that detailed. alice: did you experiment yourself with,

you know, like growing crops? andy: no actual experiments, but tons and tons of research on--you know, i got all the numbers right as well as i could. there are some errors in the book here and there, and a couple of places where i sacrificed accuracy for dramatic license. but for the most part, i tried really hard to be accurate. scott: you really sacrificed accuracy for dramatic--i mean, of all the books, it's like the penultimate scientific book. andy: no, nobody's innocent of it. so, the biggest handwave is the sandstorm at the beginning that stands him there. in real life, mars' atmosphere is way too thin to knock anything over, even with the fastest sandstorms that happen there. but most people don't know that. alice: so, the entire premise of the book is based on a lie. john: that's what i was going to say. andy: elon musk called me out on that. he was in an interview recently and they said, "what did you think of 'the martian?'" he's like, "well, good, but the sandstorm wouldn't--" scott: you know, andy, you know when you're really successful is when elon musk calls you out on a scientific detail. andy: well, i had an alternate beginning in mind, but i ditched it because i wanted--it's a man

versus nature story. i wanted nature to get the first punch in. alice: what was the alternate beginning? andy: it was going to be they were doing an engine tests on their ascent vehicle and there was an explosion that causes all the problem. and then the ascent vehicle is starting to tip, so they have to launch, and they're pretty sure watney's dead, same as in the novel. scott: eh, sandstorm is better. what does elon know about rockets anyway? andy: he knows a little. scott: andy weir, we wish you the best of luck with the movie. the book is extraordinary, "the martian, i highly recommend it. it's a great read. thanks for being with us this morning. andy: thanks for having me. scott: well, here is a thought. if housing is too expensive, build more houses. can you even debate that idea? we're going to try when "press:here" continues. [music]

scott: welcome back to "press:here." recently, i saw on the news a reporter talking about a protest. in the mission neighborhood of san francisco, in which activists complain the cost of housing in the city was too high. and as a result, they were standing in opposition to new development. no new big high rises, they said, so long as people were struggling to make rent. they even delivered petitions to slow development. now, i was an english major, but that struck me that the slowing of development of new homes would not improve the housing situation. you want to build more, not fewer homes, to make rent go down. sonja trauss agrees with my math. she's a math teacher who recently moved to the bay area

and was so startled by the backwards approach to housing, she started a housing protest group of her own called san francisco bay area renters foundation, or sfbarf for short, which i assume you'd realized when you named that. all right, fair enough. who becomes a pro-development--i mean, everybody's always anti-something. nobody's ever pro-something in san francisco. and you're pro big business development, build towers, all that stuff, genuinely. sonja trauss: yeah, i mean, i came from a place--i came from philadelphia, where we have tons of housing, plenty of housing. and philadelphia was built for two and a half million people, and now we have one and a half million people, you know? yeah, so it's very--so, our problem was we had to tear stuff down. but the upside is that you have plenty of room. you know, and you have real power with respect to your landlord. if you're there and you pay rent every month and you're not ruining the house, and the landlord says, "well, i want to raise your rent $100,

you can say, "do it, i'm leaving." and that's a real negotiation, you know? and so, landlords kind of--you keep them--you keep your renters because it's the devil you know, and on both sides. and the general rent level is sort of the same no matter where you are. and that's, like, the real power with respect to landlords that, ultimately, we need and we don't have here because we're in a shortage. scott: you probably can't build enough high rises in san francisco to absorb every single person coming in, but at least you could start. sonja: yeah, that's the other thing too is that actually, the price aspect of this argument is a little bit of a distraction. like really, i like to describe the organization as the increased capacity arm of the anti-displacement movement. every single time you build a new unit, you reduce displacement by however many people move into it. you know, we have way more people than houses. and every time you build houses, you're able to, yeah, accommodate however many people you build houses for.

alice: now, does your organization, you know, advocate on behalf of the folks who want affordable housing, like low income people? sonja: that is not our main--that's like--there are other people already doing that. and this is actually the mission-- alice: counter to your organization, right? sonja: ironically, it is. it's like actually very astonishing. so, there are-- there are always going to be people who can't afford their own housing. you know, like if you're not working at all, if you're elderly, if there's-- alice: but there are plenty of middle class people in san francisco who have a lot of trouble. sonja: exactly, and that's what's so astonishing about this situation. like, it's appropriate for there to be social service agencies, you know, that help people who are really low income or have no income, you know, and give them subsidy. but what we see is that, as like hud disappeared from funding that type of housing, the state, you know, shut down redevelopment, those kind of organizers are now interfering with the ability of people who can buy their housing to do it. you know, like yeah, a lot of people do have jobs, they make good wages. john: the irony in san francisco, as you know,

is that there's construction everywhere, usually for tech startups, so there's plenty of room for them to develop and grow and move around and get tax breaks from the city. sonja: you mean office? john: yeah, office space. yet, when it comes to housing, there's a lack of it across the board. i mean, we have this homeless issue that's festering, that keeps growing in stature in san francisco. there was a report just recently. meanwhile, middle class can't afford it because of the costs. i mean, beyond high rises, are there any other types of options? sonja: yeah, definitely. i mean, that's the thing is that, yeah, building--this is a bay area wide problem, you know, so we have all different--there's all kinds of suburbia that can use infill. there's parking lots everywhere. scott: an entry level house, according to the mercury news in san jose, $833,000. that's insane. there's plenty of room to grow in san jose. people really get upset at you. now, let me point out you also have a master's degree in economics. you have worked for housing nonprofits in the past.

but people get angry at you because you're proposing that we build houses. sonja: yeah, that's because since we stopped--since it went out of style to develop greenfields, now when you build a new house, inevitably you're near someone else. so, there's always someone nearby the new house to have a complaint about it. scott: well, and i'm not proposing, you know, we level the presidio or anything. sonja: no, that's a park. scott: right, there is some logic to this idea that, you know, we're going to have to get taller. or we do nothing, but we then understand that san francisco is going to become unaffordable to most people, including myself. i don't live in--you don't live in san francisco. sonja: no, i live in west oakland because san francisco was full. and west oakland is a good example. john: no vacancy. sonja: yeah. you know, people ask all the time, like, "how does building expensive housing do anything for lower income people?" the vast majority of low income people do not live in subsidized, like, programmed housing. most of us--i've never made more than $35,000 a year and i've never lived in subsidized housing.

i'm always living in old housing in an unfashionable neighborhood, which right now, or was 4 years ago when i moved there, is west oakland or east oakland. but prices are rising in west oakland because when they don't build in san francisco, but people move to the bay area because they have a job there, they notice that west oakland is 8 minutes away from the central business district. and so, prices are rising. but if we put those higher income people in new, expensive housing, then i don't have to compete with them. scott: sonja trauss, with about 30 seconds left, give me the message you would just like politicians to understand. sonja: oh, politicians are on our side. scott: all right, whoever's your detractor. sonja: it's regular--it's regular people. i want people to really start to think about the bay area is going to have to double, right? so, go around your community, find some lot. be like, "i think this is a lot where i could see 25 units." and then email your representative and be like, "hey, guess what? here's where i want to see this built."

scott: sonja trauss, housing in an era of we don't have enough houses. logical enough. thanks for being with us. sonja: thanks so much. [music]

my thanks to my guests. i'm scott mcgrew and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. announcer: "press:here" is sponsored in part by barracuda networks, cloud connected security and storage solutions that simplify it. city national bank, providing loans and lines of credit to help northern california businesses grow.

american pharoah has won the triple crown! >> announcer: this is a presentation of nbc sports. welcome to the honda nbc sports desk. hi, everybody. i'm dave price. coming up in a few minutes the 2015 dew tour continues from downtown los angeles, first, week three in the nfl preseason. tensions running high. they're ready for the regular season. it got ugly last night in baltimore between the redskins and the ravens with baltimore up