h. call or go on line today. part by barracuda networks, cloud-connected security and storage solutions that simplify it. scott mcgrew: this week, a political activist searches for a twitter user who may not exist. andy weir, author of "the martian," is back with a new book. and a job interview where you bring your spouse. thoughtspot's ajeet singh will explain why. our reporters, jon swartz now with barron's, and heather somerville of reuters this week on "press:here." ♪ scott: good morning, everyone, i'm scott mcgrew. i appreciate all of you watching, but i really have one person in mind this morning, amy mek. good morning, amy. how are you? amy has a twitter account, there she is. she posts largely anti-islamic messages and she tweets a lot,

on average 24 tweets a day. she also indicates she's part of the rair foundation, that's resistance against islamic radicals. now, here's the thing. it is hard to find evidence amy mek exists. if you do exist, amy, please let us know. we have direct-messaged you, we have tried to contact the foundation that doesn't seem to exist either, and we've run your name through all kinds of powerful software that journalists use looking for you. now, general michael flint seems to think you exist. he's copied you in on a number of tweets, and the new york times quoted your tweet in an article titled "women who like donald trump." maureen erwin is a liberal political consultant who started the hunt for amy and wrote about it in the san francisco examiner online, joined by heather somerville of reuters, and jon swartz now of barron's. thanks for being with us this morning. let's make it really clear off the top amy mek,

assuming she exists in the first place, hasn't really done anything illegal or anything, right? she hasn't done anything wrong. maureen erwin: no, not that i'm aware of, no. as far as i can tell, she's--she or whoever is behind this account just tweets all day. scott: right, and terribly distasteful tweets. and i've had her--i've had her twitter in my timeline for about a week, so i could just watch. i can hardly wait till the end of the show because now i can stop following her. i find that they're distasteful tweets. maureen: they're vile. it's some of the most racist anti-muslim hatred i've ever seen. and it's been going on for a long time, and it continues to-- scott: but so what? what led you on this path of, "therefore, i'm going to track down who she is"? maureen: sure. it was actually started, i was in a car accident a year ago and laid up in bed for a couple of months, and i had some time on my hands. and so, i was looking around on twitter and looking at some of the various profiles of people who were followers of donald trump, and i came across this profile. and in her bio section, it was just sort of this pastiche of, "i'm a vegan, but i'm part of the nra, and i like animals."

and it just looked odd and the picture looked odd. she also said she was a psychotherapist. so, i googled her, and the only thing i found was that new york times article from may of last year about the women who liked donald trump. she was quoted in there. i couldn't find any other information about her, i couldn't find any other profiles on social media. and i just thought it was odd. so, because my late father was a therapist, i know that they have to be licensed. so, i actually went through the state boards for every state looking for her name, not there. ran her profile through an algorithm which detects, you know, bots or likely bots, likely bot. so, i thought, "well, this is--this is interesting." so, i reached out via direct message, i said, "i'd like to contact you for some background information." she did not reply. and of course, i wrote my article. and at the bottom of my article, at the end i said, you know, "if you're out there, post a selfie with today's newspaper and just, like, put this all to bed." and that's where it started.

scott: yes? jon swartz: in the--during your investigation of this, you did a lot of detective work. did you find other people similar to her, male and female, who had similar viewpoints, in a sense almost like a coordinated effort to spread their-- maureen: unquestionably, yeah. it's interesting there is--you know, there's these bot networks, right? we know that there's tons and tons of fake accounts on twitter. and amongst the make america great again, the pro twitter folks, you know, the women are disproportionately blonde, tend to look like, you know, grandmas or centerfolds, and have lots of flags and different things in their--in their bios. and so, i came across a lot. so, i think there's a lot of it going on. heather somerville: i'm curious if you brought this to twitter yet. and if so, what did they say? maureen: i've brought it to twitter's attention several times, and i've written about it, and they've never actually responded to me. heather: they've never responded to you directly? maureen: never. jon: that's the one thing i was interested in. if she's spouting hatred, is she being punished by twitter even though she's a fake? i mean, there's this whole kind of argument over trump and what

he says, and the consequences. maureen: so, it's fascinating. her account is suspended in france and germany. so, those two countries have taken some sort of action and told twitter they have to take her down. so-- scott: i saw somebody online who said, "hey, could you treat me as if i were tweeting in, you know, in germany? 'cause then i'd be protected because germany has such strict laws about that." you wrote an article about this. i mean, 'cause somebody might be watching and say, "oh my goodness, there's a fake person on twitter, so what?" but you wrote an article that walked everybody through what you had done, and it was a really good one because you used reverse google image search on her picture to see if, well, maybe she shows up in other places, et cetera. it was very instructive as to how to figure out how somebody is real or not. okay, she's not real. why do you think people then shared your article so much? you very much went viral, that's when i got--paid attention to it. what do you think struck a nerve there? maureen: i think there's this growing awareness of fake news

and the involvement particularly of russia in our election last year, and in international politics, and people are sort of waking up over the last year to the magnitude of the problem, and trying to think about ways as news organizations how to deal with it. jon: are you looking for other people similar to her speaking out? in this instance, i guess i'm thinking political parties, maybe liberal causes might say, you know, these people who you've been hearing from, regardless of what they speak about, are trying to manipulate you in a certain way. i mean, you're probably looking in other areas, other topics. maureen: i am. there have been a number of accounts that have been exposed as fake. for example, one was tenn_gop, which was supposedly the tennessee republican party, and that was exposed as a fake. so, other people are finding it too. scott: but the astonishing thing about tenn_gop is lots of people assumed it wasn't fake. they assumed it was the official tennessee republican party twitter, and they would re-tweet, they would comment to it. it doesn't take--it begins to look legitimate very quickly.

maureen: it does, it does. scott: do these surface during certain times during election timeframes, or do they crop up at certain times if there's a--you know, some sort of referendum or something? maureen: absolutely. you know, it is topical. so, if something's coming up, if there's been--for example, take france's election earlier this year. all of a sudden, amy started--"amy" started tweeting about macron. jon: do we know if amy's a man or a woman? do we even know that? maureen: we don't, we don't. so, you know, that came up. and you know-- scott: you say, is amy a man or a woman? we're assuming it's one person at all. i mean-- maureen: it could be several people. scott: twenty-four tweets a day with video, et cetera. that sounds like that's a lot of people. jon: that sounds like a committee. maureen: i think it's a--yeah, i think it's a group of people. heather: i think this really illustrates how, you know, what has been coined, you know, certain alt-right or other sort of cohorts with political and ideological views that many find distasteful have really

leveraged silicon valley platforms in a way that we haven't seen before, in a way that is tremendously successful. i mean, some have had to move to alternative platforms that really embrace hate speech. but in cases like twitter, no, they haven't had to leave because there's not policies in place, there's not enough human intervention. have you seen any ability to leverage silicon valley platforms like this in other elections, or in other cases, or is this really just brand new? maureen: well, recently, the senate intelligence committee held hearings and had representatives, had lawyers from google and facebook and twitter around this issue, and just trying to get a better sense of what happened and how those platforms were used last year towards the election, and are still being used for propaganda. scott: maureen, let me squeeze in one last question, we've got about a minute to go. and that is, okay, so let's say amy mek says, "yeah, you know, i'm a real person, and i see you're in the san francisco bay area,

let's have lunch." what sort of conversation do you have with the woman that you have been hunting down for more than a year? maureen: well, she says she's a vegan nra member-- scott: so, a vegan lunch? maureen: yeah, we would go vegan, and i would ask her, you know, does she shoot tofu? i mean, i don't know. so yeah, i would just have a ton of questions for her. you know, what's her background in psychotherapy? you know, does she know about transactional analysis? you know, i would really like to hear about her background. scott: maureen, you know what's a good--a good vegan lunch? maureen: what is? scott: borscht. maureen: i love it. scott: we'll leave with that. thanks. andy weir, author of "the martian," returns to the show with a new book when "press:here" comes back. ♪

scott: welcome back to "press:here." my next guest wrote a blockbuster science fiction novel that turned into a blockbuster science fiction movie. mark watney: i'm entering this log for the record. this is mark watney, and i'm still alive, obviously. scott: "the martian," both the movie and the book, follow the adventures of an american astronaut stranded on mars. the work was praised for both its action and its fidelity to science. the big question this morning, can andy weir do it again? can he follow up his debut novel with another success?

andy, his new book is "artemis," the story of a small-time space smuggler on a lunar colony. now, usa today, which used to have some pretty good writers, calls "artemis" an action-packed techno thriller of the first order. andy weir joins us this morning. andy weir: thank you for that. thanks for having me. jon: needed the ego boost. scott: joined by jon swartz of barron's. and heather somerville, yes, of reuters formerly. so, i mean, honestly that has to have gone through your head. i mean, "the martian" wasn't your first book or your first story, but it was so big. andy: it was just this ludicrous success that, like, no writer has a right to have, right? it's like the daydream that you have when you're fantasizing about what it would be like. and then--and then, so then i had to follow that up with another book. scott: and what do you think? andy: well, i mean, it's--the general consensus is, "oh, it's not as good as 'the martian,' but it's still good." i'll take it, i'll take it. scott: is that on the blurb, is that on the inside?

"it's not as good as 'the martian'"? andy: look, let's keep our feet on the ground. no. yeah, i'm really happy with how it's turned out. and between "the martian" and "artemis," i was 70,000 words into a different book that i'd written. yeah, originally i was writing a different book called "zhek," z-h-e-k, and i got 70,000 words into that. for reference, the entire book "the martian" is 100,000 words. so, it's like three-quarters of a book. and, i go to edit one day, and i went, "oh no, this sucks." and so, i shelved the whole project and started anew with a new book, and i'm really glad i did. although it hurt, you know, to do that. jon: did you ever resuscitate that 70,000-- andy: no, i don't think it's salvageable. the plot and characters are just fighting me too much. jon: what was it about? andy: it was about--it had aliens, and faster-than-light travel, and telepathy, and it sounds great on paper, but in practice it was just too disjointed. but it had a couple of really cool concepts, and one really cool character in it that i might pluck out for-- jon: yeah, i was going to ask you,

could you could just pluck-- andy: yeah, basically i'll use it for parts. heather: now, correct me if i'm wrong, but you've said before that you had more fun writing "the martian." is that 'cause there was no pressure then, and all the pressure is on now? scott: yeah, i think that's a lot of it. i've found that the southwest corner of my office is the best one for cowering and whimpering. but the northwest corner does get good light in the morning, so i don't know. yeah, no, it's such a huge amount of pressure. and there's a saying in writing, "give a man a book, you entertain him for a night. teach a man to write, you give him crippling self-doubt for life." i mean, it's the imposter syndrome, it's strong, and just like, "oh god, they're going to find out that i'm not really a writer, that i just had one lucky--you know, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while," kind of thing. and, i was talking to a writer friend of mine, and he said, "yeah, that never goes away. you'll be working on your 28th book and you'll still feel that way, so make your peace with it." scott: andy, we often have very successful people. well, we always have very successful people andy: you often have very successful people.

not this segment, but in general. scott: and so, the reason i bring that up is i think it's terribly gauche to talk about money because--but are you so successful with "the martian" that you can continue to follow your creative side for a good period of time to come? andy: yes, yes. "the martian," pardon me being gauche, but yeah, "the martian," i made a whole buttload of money off of that. and i can kind of do whatever i want. but i still don't want to publicly suck at writing, right? it's a matter of--it's a matter of pride. and i want to do a good job, and i've always been--i've always been kind of a--i was a software engineer for 25 years. i've always been really kind of job-focused. i always want to do a good job at what i'm doing. it's not about the earnings, it's about doing my job well. and so, i really want to make books that people enjoy reading, whether--you know, regardless of the money that they bring, so. jon: do you think is there interest in this new book in terms of bringing this to the screen?

andy: oh yeah, absolutely. jon: absolutely. and would you have more influence, or did you have a lot of influence on "the martian"? andy: i had none, no. heather: but they still brought you in, right? i mean, they couldn't have shut you out totally. andy: they chose to, they didn't have to. but as the novelist, your only job on the film is to cash the check really. but for "artemis," fox has bought the movie rights, like bought outright, not just optioned, which is nice. and they've attached the directing duo of phil lord and chris miller to direct. and they're working on--i think the next step would be to find a screenplay writer to adapt it. scott: sure. i mean, yeah, i get the movie poster, you know, "from the person who brought you 'the martian,'" i'd go see it in a heartbeat, absolutely. is there--you were talking about not going and seeing "the martian." when you were on, we had you on earlier a couple of years ago talking about "the martian," you said something about the film where you said, "you know, once they've made it a film, it's not yours anymore." and it was a very mature statement because a lot

of people go and they say, "oh, it wasn't exactly like the book," et cetera. you're the book's author, and it wasn't exactly like the book, but you took this mature approach of, "listen, you know, i make something, i hand it off to somebody else, and they make something." andy: yeah, they paid me, they paid me for the rights, they get to do whatever they want, you know? it's as simple as that. and, but in the case of "the martian," you couldn't have asked for a better, more, like, more direct adaptation. scott: it's very close. andy: very, very closely follows the book. scott: mark watney is a little less smartass in the-- andy: a little, yes, and a lot better-looking than i imagined. jon: did you do as much research in "artemis" as you did for "the martian"? andy: oh, absolutely. jon: does it get easier or not? andy: i mean, it is--it is fun for me. so, it's not a thing that i think of as being onerous or hard. the hard part is the actual writing writing. and "artemis" is, i would say, even more scientifically accurate than "the martian." jon: is there--is there like a phrase or concept to use for the type of books you write, like a scientifically accurate fiction or something? andy: the industry term is hard sci-fi. jon: okay.

heather: now, you said before, i think, that it's a great time to self-publish. you have random house calling you now, so you don't have to worry about that. but i'm curious about your view on kind of the spectrum of ways to self-publish, the digital age. is there--is there more ways to do it than just, you know, post it out there in kindle, maybe have people pay a buck, whatever it is? i mean, what sort of options are there for people to self-publish that might be more prosperous? andy: well, the main platforms are obviously there's amazon. barnes & noble also has their own platform for self-publishing that you can do. and there are smaller ones. and of course, you can always just sell content any way you want. what you're selling is data, right? so, just like anything else that sells data, you can sell that data yourself. you could start your own self-publishing company if you wanted. yeah, and so it's a good time to self-publish, though, because the old boy network between you and the reader is now gone. scott: andy, speaking of selling, i have to do a commercial, but andy weir's new book is "artemis," it's awesome, it's in bookstores now.

thank you for being here. up next, the most unusual job interview you'll ever see when "press:here" continues. ♪

scott: welcome back to "press:here." some companies say they are a family, it seems like fewer and fewer these days, but few companies actually take it to the extreme that thoughtspot does. at thoughtspot, the spouse and family members of a potential

candidate are invited into the interview process. here, we see the spouse of thoughtspot's candidate for cmo. family members get to ask hard questions of the company to make sure the company is a good fit for their family. ajeet singh is the founder and ceo of thoughtspot, his second startup. he also co-founded nutanix and took it public. thanks for being with us this morning. so, you know, the funny thing is you're not supposed to ask if somebody has a family in a job interview. how do you then invite that family to come to the job interview? ajeet singh: yes. so, this typically happens after we have agreed that there's a good fit between the candidate and the job. then it is more like the family having an opportunity to get to know the company. particularly when you're doing a startup, oftentimes there's a lot of preconceived notions about what it is like to work at a startup, particularly for people that have not done that before. they think that, you know, you have to live under a table, you get to eat only cold pizza, and you never go home, and things like that.

so, i would offer that if the family would like, they can actually interview us and see if--what it is like to be here, and to work with us, and what kind of opportunities we provide to candidates with families. jon: what are some of the questions the family members want to know on behalf of their spouses getting the job? what are they most interested in, like time requirements? ajeet: yeah, yeah. so, mostly it comes down to time and being able to do what they need to do for the family. because working at a startup, it's a lot of hard work. and don't get me wrong, it is a lot of hard work-- jon: so, you're kind of setting expectations for the family so they have going in eyes wide open what's going to--they're going to encounter. ajeet: yeah, yeah. actually, they need to know that they will actually have life after working at a startup. it's not like they're signing their life away to a startup. and there is, you know, a lot of startups in the valley, and i shouldn't say that thoughtspot is the only one that cares about families, there are many that do. jon: do companies lose a lot of--is there are a high churn

rate when somebody goes into a job without going through this process, and they find out that the time commitment is beyond what they can handle? i mean, are companies losing employees because of family pressure? ajeet: yeah, i mean, it can happen occasionally. we don't have stats on how much of churn happens because of this one reason, but i've heard of cases where people have gone through divorces because they were working too hard at a startup. and we take a different approach because we want to create a very diverse workforce, and we want to get students coming out of college who are all-in with their career. at the same time, we also need experienced people who have families, spouses and kids with them, and we need to create an environment where they can also flourish, and they can obviously do great things for the company. but when they need to be with their family, if a child is sick or if the school is off and there's no babysitter at home, they can be at home, or sometimes even see people bring their kids to work because they didn't have a babysitter at home. heather: has there ever been a situation where, after getting to know the family, you had second thoughts about offering a job?

ajeet: yeah, no, i have never had second thoughts personally because for us it's not about, you know, what their family is like, but family sometimes might decide that, "this may not be the right fit for us." and we have to be very open and transparent with them if they're a family, let's say, that lives 2 hours away from where we are based, palo alto, and they don't think that they can be doing the balance that is required for the job, the commute, and what they need to do for their kids. then they can opt out. jon: is this becoming more common among startups, this whole idea of having a family member as part of the final interview? ajeet: i have not heard that as a sort of formal structure. but i have definitely heard of other--you know, my fellow entrepreneurs that would sometimes take the family out for a dinner or something like that. scott: i had that same question that jon did, although i was going to phrase it slightly differently, and that is you were very successful with nutanix. this allows you some freedom, doesn't it?

i mean, some people think, "if i were ever to go to do something, i would do it this way." you have that freedom, i mean, because you do not need to create a--i mean, i'm sure you want to create a successful company, your investors want you to, you don't need to. you can do it the way you want to do it, can't you? ajeet: yes and no because when you are starting a company, you are passionate about solving a problem in a big way. but as you want to solve it, you bring a lot of people along with you who are making commitments to you, whether it's investors, employees, and their families, you know? we have great engineers from google, facebook, linkedin. and they could be at those companies and be making a lot of money and be very successful. if they have come to work with us and their families have made that commitment, it's my responsibility to make sure that they end up in a good place, so. scott: but have you ever laid anybody off? ajeet: sometimes, you have to do that. scott: okay. that seems like that would make it harder. you know, i've met your kid, i've met your husband,

i've met your--that would just make it more difficult. it's already horribly painful. ajeet: those are always very, very difficult decisions. but you know, that's where there's a difference between a family and a company, you know? a company is a professional team. there is a lot of commonalities between families and a company. scott: but we've just watched you blur that line. i mean, you're blurring the line more than, say, netflix does. ajeet: sure, sure. yeah, and the question, is a company a family? there is--there is a lot of commonalities, but there are some differences as well. and a company has to be professionally successful, and for the right reasons. sometimes, you have to make decisions that you don't want to be making because you have responsibility for the whole company, not just one individual. and you have to make the whole company, and the employees, and their families successful. scott: i have about a minute left, and i'm going to hog the last question. that is, at thoughtspot, what is it that you're excited you're now able to do? what are you able to do for people that makes you excited?

ajeet: for me, it's about having the opportunity to create a platform where people can come and realize their potential. i have been very fortunate in the valley, i've been here 10 years, and i've worked at a startup, i have started a company that became successful. i really get excited by the opportunity that i can create for other people so that they can come and do the best work of their life, and that's extremely rewarding for me. scott: ajeet, the ceo of thoughtspot, thank you for being with us this morning. ajeet: thank you. scott: "press:here" will be back in just a minute. ♪

scott: that's our show for this week. my thanks to my guests. now, we talked to andy weir about his new book "artemis," but we also mentioned that we talked about "martian" as well, his first book. andy was here with that interview. you can find it at pressheretv.com. 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.

damian trujillo: hello, a"comunidad del valle." i'm damian trujillo, and today, we honor 25 years since the passing of cesar chavez. that'll be 25 years ago tomorrow. we'll take you back on your "comunidad del valle." male announcer: nbc bay area presents "comunidad del valle" with damian trujillo. damian: we begin today with may day activities all across the south bay. with me on "comunidad del valle" from the student group sahe out of san jose state is carlos amaya. welcome to the show, carlos. carlos amaya: thank you very much. damian: all right, so tell us first about sahe. i know you all have been around for a few years now, but tell us who sahe and what you all do. carlos: sahe stands for student advocates for higher education. it was founded in 2004 by a student who, realizing that there were really minimal opportunities for students who