The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Cyan Banister: A master class in curiosity--Risk, Resilience and Betting on the Future

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

As promised we are extremely excited to release our newest podcast, with acclaimed angel investor and silicon valley visionary, Cyan Banister. As I described in my last substack post, she is actually so much more. She found herself homeless in Northern Arizona at the age of 13, and undaunted, eventually became a self taught software engineer, and then moved on to become a legend in Silicon Valley.We did a deep dive into her origins, from her early childhood, through abandonment at 13, homelessness as a teenager, the key developments that led her to become a self-taught software engineer, and eventually to have the opportunity to become an angel investor, leading her to become among the first investors in SpaceX, Uber, and many more companies, and then to her thoughts about nature, technology and the future. It was a remarkable discussion with a remarkable individual. Cyan defies any stereotype and we are very pleased that she regarded our 3.5 hr discussion as the most comprehensive and enlightening podcast she has done. We even made several discoveries together about how developments when she was young affected her approach to business and life today, and also how what she views as her purposes in life perhaps reflect key gifts that helped raise her up in her own story. And, in the true spirit of connecting science and culture that is at the heart of the Origins Podcast, we also explored how she actually approaches both life and business with a true scientific attitude—exploring, experimenting, letting nature and experience guide her, and a willingness to change her mind. Everyone who has heard anything about Cyan’s story has been inspired. We feel that our dialogue, which takes her story to a whole new level, will touch anyone who has faced what seem to be insurmountable challenges, and inspire people to think more creatively about their own futures, and how what we can do to help people better achieve their aspirations, and of course better address the challenges of the 21st Century. If it isn’t clear already, I think this podcast could, in the long run, be one of the most significant discussions we have ever done. Enjoy. As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

Sayan Bannister, I am so happy to do this podcast with you here in this wonderful studio, a rare thing for us to do actually, but it's for a rare guest. And I wanted to have you on the podcast for so long, as you know. And it's for the standard viewership or listenership, this slightly different topic and context than we normally talk about. So for people who aren't familiar with you, I want to give them a little bit of a primer. First thing to know is that you were one of the first investors.

in Uber, Niantic, Postmates, Deep Mind, SpaceX, and a lot of other companies. And we'll talk about that. But there's some things I've been reading about you, which are interesting, and I think describe you nicely. So I want to read them. First of all, you credit your success to incrementalism, capitalism, capitalism, individualism, mentorship, and endless curiosity. Something I've learned about you is that you are indeed endlessly curious, which is

wonderful. You also said capitalism saved your life, which is something we may want to get to. And some things that have been written about you, the Founders Fund partner Brian Singerman said, our team has known Sion for years, and we've been continually impressed by her ability to identify some of the most impactful technology companies in the world at the earliest stages. Again, something that I want to get to. Someone else, Paulina Maranova said, it is difficult to describe Bannister as she does not fit in perfectly in any box, which I just think is wonderful.

She likes to invest in weird things, sees things super early, and just gets it. And then a personal note that you made for another bio that I saw. He said, it says she spends, and you were talking the third person about yourself, a wonderful thing,

she spends much time dreaming about what the future could look like and investing in magically weird people do the same and are creating it. When I read those things, two things came to mind. A quote from Arthur C. Clark, which you may or may not know of, which was that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I love that quote.

I bet you love that quote because I think that's what really where you're at. You really are at the edge of turning magic into reality, I think. And you talked about magically weird and everything else. So I think it gets you very well. But one of the reasons I'm excited to have you on, besides the fact that I admire you tremendously, is that the descriptions that you've given or that were described by you capture what I think is the essence of science.

And since it's a program about science and culture, I think it's particularly appropriate to have you on this program because I want to try and describe as we go through areas where you talk about things. I say that's exactly the way a scientist would think of things. or that's the approach that makes science possible. And I found it fascinating to see that kind of mentality in someone who basically had a very different background and who's involved in a world, which is far apart from anything I know much about.

But the more I've come to know you, the more amazing I find you, and that's really true. So while we've discussed being on the podcast for a while, you've been on a bunch of other podcasts in the interim, and I don't hold that against you. But I want to try and examine things that I don't think we're examined elsewhere or possible. We'll go over some similar material for those who've heard some of those other podcasts. But I want to explore deeper in a different sort of way. And because the Origins podcast leads the mission of the Origins Foundation is to basically talk to people who are changing the view of ourselves and our cosmos, which I really think you are,

and addressing the problems of the 21st century by creating the future. future and exactly that's what you really are doing by investing is creating in the future and you even talk about it. And because it's an origins podcast and I don't know how many you may have watched, what I like to do is begin by trying to understand how you became the person you are today, as we do with all our guests. How does one become the person that's doing amazing things today? And then we'll talk about the amazing things. And I have to tell you, I've never quoted this before. But what I think about when I prepare, for these things. It's a quote from a poet, Louise Bogan. I use this quote in one of my books,

but I love it. It says the initial mystery that attends any journey is how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place? And that's really what I want to get to. So, let's start. The first thing we can't help mention is that you had a difficult childhood. Yeah. And, but you also said it was also empowering. It gave you a unique, unique education. And so it began on Navajo reservation. Why were you there? Well, I mean, actually it began in Tucson, Arizona. Okay.

How far do we want to go back? We want to go all the way back. All the way back. So Tucson. So I was born at University of Arizona Hospital to two parents who were artists and students there. While they were students? Yes, while they were students. Okay.

And they were woefully unprepared to have children. They were undergraduates students. How old were they, do you know? Oh, I probably 20, 22. Okay, really? Roughly around that age. Yeah. And my mother had already had a child before me, and so I was the second.

And how old, how much older was it? It's your sister. My sister, my older sister's five years older than me. Five years older, okay. We'll get to her in a second. I'm intrigued by her. Anyway, so you're born in Tucson, and then when did you move to Navajo Reservation? I moved when I was about four years old, about four or five.

So do you have any memories of Tucson beforehand or the first memories really? I have maybe two memories that stick out of my father because I didn't meet my father again until I was 18. And so those memories are pretty. So when did he depart from the scene? He left around the time that I was a year old. A year old? Yeah. Your biological father.

Yeah. And then I met him a couple more times after that. But okay, so he basically played no role in your upbringing. No role. Except you knew about him. Oh, yes. He was, but I thought he was a scientist, or am I not right? No, my mother is a scientist.

I know, well, get there. But I thought your father was too. No, artist. Artists for you. Yeah, an artist. Well, you know, you've got this ying yang, art and science. It's perfect. Well, they're both artists and she becomes a scientist later.

Yeah, well, it's interesting. Well, I would say that may be true about you, too, actually, from what I know about you. So, now, why did you move to the Navajo Reservation when you were for? So when it goes back to my grandparents. My grandparents taught in a one-room classroom in Oklahoma, and that's where my mother was born. And they caught wind that there were these teaching jobs on the Navajo Reservation that paid really well more than the national average of any teacher. And so my grandfather was a brilliant business person, in my opinion, and in his own way. And so he packed up the whole family and moved to the Navajo Reservation.

and they taught there their entire lives and retired there. This is your grandfather. My grandfather and grandmother were both teachers. Of what? My grandfather taught math and wood shop. Oh, neat. And then my grandmother was a home-ex teacher, home economics, which I don't even think they have anymore. And what we may get back to?

So you lived with them? I live with them later. We'll get to that in the story, but I lived with them one year in high school. But I spent every summer with them. I spent every Christmas with them, and we would go from Arizona back to Oklahoma. So it's a little confusing when you're following my story because it spans Oklahoma and Arizona. Okay, okay. Well, you know, it's no secret, and we'll talk about it, that your mother abandoned you to be homeless at the age of 13.

And I want to get there later. But I'm more intrigued by you are one of the most, I would say, truthfully, getting to know you, one of the most scientifically minded non-scientists I know of. You're the first person who's ever pointed that out. Well, I mean, I call myself scientist. Yeah, I know. Well, I was just going to say, you beat me to it. What I love is that your Twitter handle is Scientist.

But the point is, I don't think you realize how appropriate it is. It is really, you are, in my mind, you have all the characteristics of a scientist, one of the things that I think makes me so fascinated by. Not just the intense curiosity, but the dog, it's all. to experiment the the interest, the craving of knowledge. And so I want to know,

I'm kind of interested in where that came from. I sense, you know, your mother gets trashed a lot because of abandoning you and rightfully so perhaps. But I want to try and understand who might have played a formative role in your life.

So let's talk about your mother first. Okay, yeah. I would say that she probably played a very important role in that. She really, really instilled in my sister and I that being intelligent and smart was important. That looks don't get you very far. And she went even so far as to say we were ugly so that we would internalize that. And then the other thing is growing up on the reservation, we didn't have cable television for the longest time.

And so you really were left to your own devices. You had to figure out how to have fun. You had to figure out the world around you. and we didn't have libraries. So, you know, we had whatever books my mother have to have on the shelf. I was going to ask, I mean, I know you like reading and writing, and it's true of most people I talk to, successful people. And I'm fascinated by who, if anyone had a role model.

Did you innately get interested in reading where there are a lot of books in the house? Did your mother go out of the way and get you books? Or where did they come from? And did you read them when you were younger? So no, I didn't read, actually. This is an interesting thing. I was unable to read until I was about seven or eight years old. I was nonverbal until I was five.

Wow. And when I started reading, it was very late, and I was very nervous about it. And so I avoided books. I'm a very visual learner. And I really like lectures. I really like shadowing people looking over their shoulder or experimenting. Yeah. And it's probably where that comes from is I just learn by doing.

and but books were not something that I really studied or did much of. Okay. That's fascinating. I'm very poorly read actually. Well, I'm not so. I mean, you. I'm catching up. Yeah, you are catching up.

And it's interesting to me to hear that. So, but there were books around, but you just didn't because, and your mother didn't, who was, even though she was interested in your, obviously at some level, your education, didn't encourage, didn't provide you a lot of reading material to expand your knowledge of the world? No, not really. I mean, they were around. I just didn't have a lot of interest in them other than the art books. I really loved pouring through her art books. And I mean, she had an amazing collection of those. And at some point I did ask her, like, what's the meaning of life? Why are we here? I had this existential period in like my teen years, as a lot of people do. And she pointed to the bookshelf. And she said, the answers are over there. She's like, I can't tell you. but I never looked. But you were a teenager. And I was rebelling.

I was like, okay. If they're over there, I want to go over here. Exactly. I don't want to be there. Yeah, yeah. Okay, it's a little too late. But most of my education came from just going to school and learning at school. Well, I want to talk about that because I haven't heard much about school.

But before that, I want to ask your grandparents were teachers. Did they provide a different kind of mentorship of you? Did they encourage learning in a different way than your mother since you spent time with them? Yeah. My grandfather was very stoic and quiet. And I would go after school and sit in his math class, which I really love doing and watching him teach. And he, I learned a lot from him just by observing him. I really admired him.

And I really loved, it's hard to explain, but just how he viewed the world and how hard he worked. You know, he never had a victim mindset. He never, he, you know, he was always just. you know, the quality of your work ethic was incredibly important. And he instilled that in me. And then my grandmother was the perfect homemaker. I mean, she could bake any pie. She could cook anything.

She made my grandfather a pie every single day. Wow. Up until he died. So every day. Wow. And it was pretty incredible. And she, I mean, she could make any pie. She could cook anything.

And so to have them in my life, they were incredibly influential to me. They were very stabilized. It's interesting because I don't hear anyone talk about that. But in that sense, you had a kind of, that part of your childhood was almost idyllic then. Oh, for sure. I saw them as, I mean, they could do no wrong in my world until I got older. But when I was younger, they were incredibly stable. They were perfect, in my opinion.

Well, I want to ask whether they were really perfect. Did they, were they around when you became homeless? They were not around when I was homeless. Okay. Then I give them credit. I thought if they let you be humble, However, you know, if I, we can get to this, but had I shown up at their doorstep and said, you know, please take me in, I'm sure that they would have, they would have returned me back to my mother. Because my grandfather had a pretty strong beliefs that children belonged with their parents.

But I did live with them for a year and a half and went to high school and part of junior high with them. And that was great because it was a very formative period of my life. And I don't think I would have made it without it. Okay. That's great. I mean, I love hearing these new things because I think it's important to try and understand all these backgrounds. You know, because, I mean, the conventional narrative view is he became homeless and you were, I mean, but, you know, there's so much more to it. And clearly that made you the person you are, these interesting people. Yeah, I think my grandfather probably shaped me more than anybody. Yeah, that's wonderful. And did you admire, did you want to bake? Did you want to learn? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I loved, I mean, we didn't have a choice. So when you went, So when we got out of school, we would road trip from Arizona all the way to Oklahoma going through Texas. My grandfather wouldn't let us stay in hotels. So we had to do it all in one continuous drive.

So if you can imagine how horrific that is. And my grandmother couldn't drive. Oh, so he did all the driving? He did all the driving. Wow. We weren't allowed to listen to music. We weren't allowed to talk. And this was you and your sister?

Yes. But by the time we got there, then it was you had to get to work. So there were no idle summer days. Like you were out digging, you know, post holes for potatoes. You were picking plants, canning food, shelling peas out in the orchard, chopping wood, mowing. Like, there was never a day we didn't work. And so I'd get back from summer break and all my friends would, you know, we went and rode our bike and did all this fun stuff. And I'm like, yeah, well, I now have a pantry full of canned food.

In the long run, they may have served you better. It actually did serve me. I still use those skills today. Yeah, no, I think that's, it's fascinating. Okay, good. Now, okay, so that's interesting to me about the grandfather is one form of influence. Father is no influence at all. But one of the people that I've heard you talk about, but I've never, you said you were very

close, but I've never heard you talk about her as your sister. If you have a sibling who's five years older, they can be very influential in your life and teaching you as role models. Were they? Where's your sister that way? My sister was very influential. She was removed from the house when my brother was born. I was 10 years old when my brother was born.

And again, this is a child memory. I don't know if it happened this way. But my brother was born on Halloween in 1986. And the way I remember it, I went out trick-or-treating and then I went to his room, or sorry, my sister's room, and it was his room. And so my sister had disappeared. I was told that she ran away from home and I lost connection to my sister. This was someone who was a rock in my life who I, you know, was basically her shadow just disappeared overnight.

And then there was a little baby in her place. And it was like, so weird. It was very strange. Okay, but I want to go before. I want to go back. In what way was she rock? Did she, did you play games with it? Did she teach you things?

What aspect of being a big sister, you know, did you emulate or that you think carried with you today that you got from her? I'm just because I've never heard anything about my sister is very different than me she read thousands of books wow she read so many books that I think like she has these very we always used to joke her glasses were so thick from all the books she read she would never leave the house because she was always reading interesting and she was really particularly interested in biology and science fiction and she was a super nerd and so that definitely rubbed off I was going to say that I was glad you said it but the most important thing that my sister is sister said to me my entire life, because I've thought about this, is I used to tell her I was bored.

I'd come and tell her, I'm so bored. And she's like, you're too smart to be bored. It's an insult to your intelligence. Figure it out. Wow. And that really hit me hard because I was like, wow, she's calling me smart. She says I can do better than this. So I really applied myself after that. And I really think that was helpful. Oh, yeah. Sure. And to hear from her, that's great. Now, did she read to you? Allow? No. No. No, my sister did not read to me. My sister liked to beat me up. Okay.

Pull rugs out from, you know, sibling stuff. Sips, yeah. It happens. But no, we were very close until she started. Until puberty? Puberty. And then at that point, it was like little sister tagging along. Not very cool.

So I would watch from the sidelines as she grew up. My brother's, and my brother was three years older me. It was the same. We were very close until, you know, he became a teenager. So you understand. Yeah, yeah. But I did, you know, but I think I did emulate certain things. things of his that I wouldn't have otherwise.

But it's interesting, when you were close and she read a lot, but you didn't try and emulate that. That was interesting. No, not at all. As a matter of fact, I had no interest in her books or what she would talk about in them. They did not resonate with me at all. What did she do today? Do you know?

My sister works at an insurance company. So she does Fannie Mae and all those sort of reimbursement type things. I don't quite understand it. But she was interested in younger in biology. and what were the two things she read? Science fiction and biology. But she didn't become a scientist. No.

What a shame. I know. It really is a shame because I think she was cut out for it for sure. We'll see. We'll see. There's still time. I was going to ask you the question. Well, we'll get to it later, but I think I know why in your case.

I've always asked people who are doing other things. Why didn't you become a scientist? Because it's so obviously the best thing to do. But anyway, you're, okay, so you quit school at 15, but I want to know about your teachers. Another thing I've never heard about. Teachers can be very influential in one's. life or not. I've been amazed to discover how for some people they just never had any teachers who were getting good. It shocked me because in my life, teachers were influential. And so in your

case, your teachers were teachers on the Navajo Reservation, at least for a while. Predominantly, yeah. I think Flagstaff, I went to school in Flagstaff for a little bit, and then in Oklahoma I had some teachers, but only two really stick out to me. Who? So there's Miss Haney, who was my gifted teacher. And we- Was that she was gifted or you were a gifted student? I was a gifted student. Okay, that's nice. I remember.

So twice a week they would haul us out of class and we would go to this segregated village, which I hated actually. I hated the segregation. What do you mean segregated village? Oh, it just feels weird when you're like getting plucked out of class and you have to go to these trailers. Yeah, okay. And everybody looks at you and they're like, where are you going? Why do you get to get out of class?

It's like, oh, we're special, you know? I don't really ever feel special. And so that part was weird But Miss Haney had a way of making the world really interesting In a way that no other teacher had before For example, there was a whole year that we studied clipper ships And, you know, navigating the globe by pretending that we were Clippership.

Oh, wow. Captains. And then we had to learn what kind of food that they ate on the boats. We had to make it, replicate it. And then learn about every stopping point. We would interestingly roll dice to figure out where we would. would land. Oh, we'll get back to that. I never made that connection before now, but we would roll dice to where we landed, and I really, really loved learning because of it. And I really wish that

more teachers would incorporate gaming and, you know, that sort of method to teaching. And she also had these things called Think Lab. Did you ever hear of Think Lab? There were these cool cards that you would pull out and you had to solve all these puzzles. Oh, mean. Like a trolley car type problems. Yeah, yeah. That's basically what they were. And so I loved getting into those. And then my other teacher, which is going to make you laugh, that I really loved was a nun. And I loved her because I know this is going to sound weird because she hit us. And I know that's going to sound really weird.

That sounds like what nuns do, but it does sound weird. But you love, you like being, well, I won't put words in your mouth. Why did you like it? It's really strange to want corporal punishment. But she didn't, she used it very sparingly and only when you got completely out of hand. And so it was this weird guardrail. Did you feel like you were just too free at home? were no constraints and you just needed someone to rain a little bit.

So that's none at school rained me in. And for whatever reason, because of her methods, I would show up 100% at her class ready to go. I always wanted to impress her. And I always wanted to be the kid that was never hit. And I never was. You never were. I never was.

Wow. And so I really, really loved her. But, you know, that's, okay, I'm so happy we're getting to this stuff because it's helping me understand you better and hopefully the people watching. But the love people would love being hit by their teacher. No, not the not the loving being hit part but the, but but sometimes needing to be reined in, you know, especially most kids nowadays are too reigned in and need the freedom. I mean it's the exact opposite. Kids are coddled as we may talk about but but also the love of learning though through games, which is so important and exploring.

I mean you that's what you're doing. You're exploring and most people don't treat education as an exploration, which it said it's a rote return of things. But I've often said that each time a kid learned something first time, for them, it's the first time in the history of the world that has been understood. It's a moment of discovery, and we should treat everything as an exploration. And that's what you're doing with the clipper ships you were exploring. Oh, yeah. But I really, that helps me understand a lot. And it's great. And it's important. I mean, I admire teachers at that levels, they can have such a profound effect on kids' lives. And it's nice to know that you have that because, again, I often hear the narrative of, you know, quitting going out of school and being on

your own. But these are formative people that really affect your ability later on. Well, you could tell when they really care. And, you know, Miss Haney cared. She would come and she would spend hours pouring into these stories. And I don't know if the magic school bus was probably the closest thing. I've read that, you know, book to my children. And I really, I really feel like she was like, I forget Ms. Frizzle, or what is her name? Anyway, but she was like the magic school bus teacher. And she, I just wanted to show up every day. And she also, she let us play on her computer, and it was where I learned computer programming. Okay, so what grade, I should have asked. What age were you then? What grade was it? Fourth grade, third and fourth grade.

Oh, and you'd learn starting to program computers. So logo. That was when they introduced logo to schools. Third and fourth grade. Third and fourth grade. Great. Okay, well, that's wonderful. Now, you, I don't know, well, it's indicated because, partly because you were brought up at Navajo Reservation and you weren't in Navajo, you recognized you were different. I thought I was an albino Navajo. You thought you were at a Bino Navajo. I thought I just lost my melanin. It fell off somewhere. But you also said, you felt like you didn't belong. And that's, and that's important to you. In fact, I think it was one of the reasons I read that quote at the beginning was when she said it's it's

it's really hard to she doesn't really fit in you know and and it you can't fit her in a box and for your whole life you felt like you didn't belong my whole life that's correct but for you that's a positive yeah it's a positive because I think it gives you an interesting perspective it allows you to see other people's experiences that you might not otherwise have lived you know, growing up on the Navajo Reservation being one of seven or eight children with their melanin gone, really, really, really makes you understand kind of what's going on in the world today and how some people feel the way they do or behaving the way they are. And, you know, it gives me a certain level of empathy and sympathy as well as resilience, I think. Well, the resilient,

the interesting thing here is that is this resilience, that the fact that you view it it as sort of something that's enhanced your life rather than detracted from it. And nowadays, we have this sense of victimization so much. And I know you sort of, I know from having talked to you, you, that's not something you resonate with or are particularly supportive of. But in particular, what one hears a lot of the time now from people is that they feel like somehow their problems in life are in part, and I don't want to stereotype things too much, but are in part due to the fact that they never had mentors who looked like themselves

and they need, and they're disadvantaged, they're victimized because throughout their life, they've had people who look different or act different. And that's, and that's something that they need to be, that that not only explains it, but people owe them and it society owes them. And it seems to me that you have sort of the opposite attitude. And I wonder if you could address that prevalent view nowadays, that you need, it's absolutely impossible to succeed unless there's someone who looks and sounds like you. I never had a mentor that looked like me ever. And I never looked for it because to me that was the least important aspect of any conversation

you have with another human being and what you're able to learn from them. you know, how they show up, how they model themselves in the world, their accomplishments are far more important than how they look. What you can't see is far more interesting than what you can. And I think that being on the reservation was the first instance of that. Getting into engineering and being in the tech world was the second. And so I've always been in a male dominated field. And I got to say, the restroom line's pretty short. It has its perks. But I never thought to myself that a man can't be my mentors.

As a matter of fact, some of my greatest mentors in my life and people I look up to who've helped me along the way have been men are people that look nothing like me. I think that's a really important thing. I mean, and even as Martin Luther King said, judged by the content of your character. Exactly. Exactly. Your character matters far more. It's something that I'm particularly tuned to because I see it in academia now, this sense.

that somehow because, well, in STEM, for example, you know, they're traditionally having in physics and math, there haven't been a lot of women, and that somehow that is an automatic obstacle. Now I understand sometimes a difficulty of standing apart, but on the other hand, as you say, it builds a kind of resilience and it doesn't always have to be a recipe for failure. I think that's the point. Okay. Now, we have to tell the story of how you became homeless. So why don't you, We don't have to dwell on it, but why don't you just tell the story? Yeah, so I'm trying to figure out where to begin here. So we left the Navajo Reservation because of a contentious divorce between my mother and my stepfather.

And my brother was removed second. Hold on. Stepfather. Yeah, I have a stepfather. We didn't get to your stepfather. I have several stepfathers. Yeah, I know, but was it your stepfather who was a scientist? Yeah, my stepfather was a biologist. Okay, okay, was what?

A biologist. And he was a, was he a teacher biology? He was a teacher. And he, was he someone, let's hope, before we get there, was he someone who had much of an impact on you? Oh, for sure. His name is Mansour. He's Persian, Muslim. And so that introduced, you know, that faith into my world. I was surrounded by all sorts of different faiths. And so that was a little bizarre. But what was interesting with him was he declared from the moment he met me, he'd never be my father. He said, I'll be in your life, I'll take care of you. I'll make sure there's a roof over your. head but I am not your father. Interesting. And so he was more of a friend. Okay, well,

that's something else. And yeah, so that's my little brother's dad, my brother's half Persian. And when my brother was about three years old, they fought constantly. There was just, I don't even know if we want to get into how bad it was, but it was bad. And your parents fought. Yeah, they fought all the time. It was very violent. Did you, it was violent physically? Physically. Who was doing the violence? Mother. My mother was doing the violent one.

And I'm noticing you've talked about that. I thought it was verbally, but physically as well. Physically violent towards her partners. And so, you know, we were always subjected to that. And around age three was when my brother was removed from the house. And leading up to that was about two years of psychological evaluations and court hearings and all sorts of things. and my mother moved us to Northern Arizona University,

and that's when we moved to Flagstaff. Flagstaff, okay. But we actually fled, and she was hiding from my stepfather. So she was hiding, she'd taken me away? She basically abducted his child. Okay. And he was still on the reservation? Correct.

Still teaching on the reservation. And so I was asked by my mother to commit perjury and testify against my stepfather in court. accusing him of doing horrific things to me that he never did. And I remember, this is important because I remember feeling that this is a moment in my life where I have to do the right thing. Yeah, that's amazing. And if I don't do the right thing, an innocent man is going to go to jail potentially

for life. And I couldn't live with that. How old were you? I was about, let's see, my brother was three as 13. Wow. 12, 13. That's still that's quite something for a 13 year old to recognize. Yeah, I just, I'll never forget the moment because we were in a car and it was moving.

And my mother said, you don't understand. You have to do this. And I was like, I can't, I can't. And a form of panic, I don't know how else to describe it came over me and I jumped out of the truck. And I ran and I ran and I ran until I could find a phone. And I called the number that I had for a psychologist that was. was, I didn't realize was court appointed. I thought it was just our family psychologist. And I told him what she had done. And the next thing I knew, my brother was removed from the house permanently

as a result of this. Wow. And she lost custody, which is very difficult for a woman to do. Yeah. What's really curious for me is that I didn't get removed. Yeah. You know, they left me there. But he was gone from that point forward. And so I didn't have a very close relationship with my brother. And I didn't reunite with him again until he was an adult. Wow. Wow. Wow. So, okay, now we haven't gotten to you're being homeless yet, but that was a traumatic episode. Your father was trying to get you. Did you want it? Would you prefer to live with your father?

Oh, no. My father didn't was not going to get me. My stepfather also didn't want me because he very much declared I'm not your dad. Your dad, okay. And I don't want to digress too much about it, but he was a biology teacher. Did he spend any time teaching you or anything you got from him versus your mom? You know, he really, really wanted me constantly. to dissect animals. So he was constantly picking up roadkill on the side of the road, which was very

controversial to Navajos. And he was always in trouble for dissecting animals with the tribe. Did you enjoy that? Or did you? I, you know, begrudgingly, I guess. I would sit around and I had really, again, no choice. When you get out of school, you go to your parents' classroom and you have to learn everything that they're teaching. And so I witnessed a lot of it. And I'm sure I absorbed some of it. But it didn't make you want to emulate it. No. No, I had no interest in biology. Okay, just want to know. Okay, good. Now, come back. So your brother's been removed from the house. You obviously have, and not just antagonized, but alienated your mother.

Your mother is aware that this is because of what you, of your testimony, that the son has, your brother's been removed. But you still were in the house. After that, it became very antagonistic. Like, I became enemy number one. Yeah. And I was constantly kicked out of the home or I ran away because it became intolerable. and the police got to know me on a first name basis there in Flagstaff. So you kept continually ran away from home? Yeah, and I would live either on playgrounds or under my friend's beds.

You know, I would sleep in alleyways. I would, you know, go any place where I could get away. You found any place, no matter how seemingly dangerous, safer than being at home. It was always safer than being at home. Interesting. Okay. Your mother was studying at... Microbiology.

So interestingly, she had an MFA, and she's an artist, and I think, and I don't know for sure, but, you know, she's very smart. Yeah. You know, I want to try to say some kind things about my mother because I've been thinking about that. Well, I think it's, I mean, yeah, that's why I tried to do earlier. She clearly had a formative influence on you, and you come out pretty well. So, anytime I think of something kind to say about her, I write it down in a book because I try to find all those moments where there was something.

Well, she gave you resiliency in it. And obviously her intelligence had a big impact on you. I've heard you say about how intelligent she is. Very smart woman. So she went back to school to study genetics and microbiology, and she did quite well. And I believe she may have gotten her second degree, but I'm not positive she ever finished. And then she worked at Los Alamos for a period of time. And I suspect that she wanted to show him that she could do it to.

I want to find out what she did Los Alamos, but again, you say you've never seen it, but I can't help but see that you're the same mixture of art and science. You don't think of yourself as a scientist. But I've seen the artistic side, and you have all of the characteristics of a scientist as well. Try and demonstrate to you in the next five or six hours. Okay, we'll see how long it is. So what did she do at Lawrence at Los Alamos? You have no idea?

I have no idea. I have no idea. because by then you were alienated from her. Yeah. I mean, she would come back and she did really funny things. So this is a funny thing that she would do. She would test what was in our sink and then tell me what was in our sink over dinner. So, but you were still living with her at this point.

Hold on. So I don't understand. She worked to Los Alamos, but you didn't live there? Or did you live? No, I didn't live at Los Alamos. She left me for the summer. Oh, and what did you for the summer? Ah, very good question.

So this summer where she went to Los Alamos, she left a $20 bill on. the counter and said good luck. Wow. So that's what I did that summer. And I went downtown and Flagstaff and I sat on the corner and I just, I cried. I didn't know what else to do. And this lady named Ellen Davis, who I found now, pulled up in a car and her daughter, Becky, was in band with me. We were both French horn players. And she pulled over the car and she said, get in. I don't know what's going on, but get in. And she took me home and she took me in for the whole summer. She actually tried to get custody of me. She really tried. But my mother got back from Los Alamos and she lived in family housing in NAU and in order to live in family housing, you must have a child. It's kind of a

prerequisite. So she got me back and then that lasted maybe three months. Okay. So effectively you were homeless for that, that was your first home. Real homeless experience was that. Well, it wasn't quite homeless because you quickly found a home. I quickly found a home. I quickly found a home. that time. Most of the homeless stuff was often on probably between age 13 to 16. And then I had a very big stint of homelessness for about six months. Well, I want to get there. But one of the things you said, and Becky's mom was Ellen, is her name? Ellen. Ellen. Shout out to Ellen. Thank you. Yes, Ellen is amazing. But you've said that your life has been full of miraculous people being there at the at the right time and she's one.

She's one of many. Yeah, well, I know, and I don't want to talk about a few of them. And why don't you give some examples? I know some of this I've heard before, but I think it's really some of the examples what people do, I think is really important. I think what Ellen did was pretty heroic. I mean, if you see a child on the side of the street crying

and you pull your car over and you bring a stranger kid into your home and give them shelter and food and unconditional love, I mean, I was a turd I mean, I'm just going to straight up saying I was a punk rock kid who had no boundaries who was very feral because I was left alone a lot My mother went to school and work jobs

So even if she was home She was usually sleeping and just wasn't even around Who cooked? Did you? No one cooked. Okay There was no cooking The school lunch was food My friend's house was food

Leftovers were food Soup kitchens were food but my mother worked pretty much around the clock and was never around. But Ellen was remarkable. I think Officer Pratt is another person who was really great, which will get to him at some point. We will. But he is responsible for my emancipation from the situation. Mr. Chadwick, who was my school counselor, who tried to get me through school to graduation,

is another hero who would pick me up on the weekends and take me to weekend school and summer school. That whole summer in Los Alamos, where she was there, I tried to catch up on school so that I could stand a chance at graduating. But didn't? No, I never graduated. I'm a dropout. I have no GED. No GED. Nothing.

Okay. Well, yeah, we'll get to Officer Pratt because, I mean, that story is neat. But now I want to, I've tried to make connection sometimes, maybe new to you. And I'm happy to see we've discovered a long history. Yeah, we're discovering some things. Yeah, including dice history, but we'll get back. But here's something that you said later on, after we, relatively late in your life

after you sort of became more spiritual, which we'll get to. You said your purpose. Three things. And I see all of these reflected in knowing you, as I do now. Three purposes. One, to spread joy. two to lift others up and three to end poverty yes now when i read this and when i heard it and discussed later in life the first thing that came to my mind is don't these reflect exactly

what was done for you to make you survive the experience you had as a child to spend joy in your life in a life that didn't have much joy to lift you up in ways that you wouldn't have been able to do otherwise to lucky these miraculous people who were there at the right time to end your property. So I'm wondering whether your purpose really doesn't reflect what, I mean, or if it doesn't really reflect exactly what allowed you to be here today. I think that's correct. I actually, you know, no one's ever pointed it out. So thank you.

I think that I do a lot of self-reflection. I'm called a scientist, and I jokingly call myself scientist because I study myself more than anything. And when I think back about the people I admire, those were quality. and traits that they had that I want to emulate. So I think that's correct. You know, I've never put two and two together, but... Well, that's great.

I think that's right. No, I mean, and we'll come back to it, but I think it's really important that those things allowed you to be... You know, and people say I'm self-made and people will describe me that way, but that's not true. No one is. No one is. But, but, you know, but what, but not everyone remembers it. I mean, I think one of the things that makes you unique is that you remember it.

And really, that's what characterizes the interest in what you do now, which is why we're having this conversation. If you weren't so remarkable, not sure you've been very successful in companies, but the purpose is to, is, those purposes are to spread joy to lift others up and end poverty is what makes it so special. I think the fact that those things that helped you is what you're doing for the rest of humanity is what makes you, one of the things that makes you such a remarkable human being, in my opinion, just so you know. Okay. Now, I want to touch on this. It's a touch of point, but your experience with your mother and her wanting to to accuse your stepfather things, brought you face to face with false accusations.

Yes. And I'm wondering if that's made you in the current sort of climate of the world of the Me Too world and all the rest, if it's kind of made you skeptical of this. Oh, without a doubt, it's made me skeptical. I remember when the movement of trust all women came out and I was, I thought back to my experience and I said, well, I know that that's not true. you know you and also we can be very very clever so you can't trust us all the time um we're very smart and very clever very socially adept more than men and very socially adept yes and and so i i watched

that and wondered how it would play out and it played out how i would i suspected it would in you know you end up with elizabeth holmes who i don't know if you know who she is but you know these are people were supposed to look at as heroes who really, really, in my opinion, because we had to trust all women, let women down. And because we artificially prop people up who don't deserve it, as well as give people too much faith when it's not earned. I've actually said something that people are shocked at, and most people, I think it's demeaning for women to say trust all women. It is demeaning. Because it suggests they don't have the intelligence to lie. Yes, it's very demeaning. Yeah, yeah. It's incredibly demeaning to assume that we're incapable of a harm or that we're

children or that we need protecting or a variety of the different things that I've heard along the way. And I feel kind of oddly blessed, I guess, if you will, because of what happened with my mother, mostly just because I had that panic attack and the wherewithal to stand up against her, even though it cost me everything. And I have absolutely carried that into adulthood and everything that I do. Okay. And I did, by the way, I wonder if it makes you skeptical, not just a women. I mean, you know, we don't have to pick a woman here. I'm kind of skeptical of a lot of things. Well, that's, see, you know what that is? That's called science. Science. Okay, I want to convince you. Skepticism is a central part of science. So being skeptical of people's claims, regardless of

sex or gender, is, is, is, would you say that's a characteristic of you? Oh, for sure, without a I think the other thing is my mother was a very religious person. And so we tried on religions about every year. So I've gone through all of them. Which is good, because then you see that they can't all be right. Exactly. They can't all be right. And then I also realized they provide amazing child care.

So that was one of the reasons why we were all of them. But at the same time, you know, it made me very, very skeptical of anything that adults were telling me because they would say it was such certainty. You know, and I learned, I'm like, when somebody says something with such certainty like that, then maybe it's not true. Yeah, okay. Well, in fact, yeah, you know, you may not know, but I think the exact opposite is what parents and teachers need to do is be so much more willing to say I don't know.

Yeah, it would be so much better. That's an invitation to discover. And that's one thing that my mother did do right. You know, I asked when I asked her about why am I here, what is the purpose of this, what is the meaning of any of it? You know, she said, I don't know. And that is a remarkable thing that she did do. Good. See, we're tacking them up. That's great.

We're going to have a list here. We're going to, yeah, okay. Now, I'll come back to this issue of safety, but I want to touch it now. You were a single, obviously, young girl, 13, 15, 16, homeless. It's terrifying. Did you ever, did you feel unsafe constantly? Sometimes. Yeah, I mean, you can't help but not feel safe.

And what do you do? I still wear clothing to bed because I feel like I need to run. And it's something that I would like to change about my life. But it's very difficult because I feel very uncomfortable. And I feel like at any moment, I'm going to need to put on my shoes and get out of here. And that's part of, you know, being homeless and finding places to sleep is you need to know how to vacate those places when you're discovered. It's a good thing for a lot of people. know how to make a quick exit.

Not many people learned that enough, actually. But I was very fortunate when I was a teenager. I fell into a group of squatterpunk kids, and I don't know if you've seen these kids. They're usually in Hate Ashbury in San Francisco or in Phoenix. They were down by Mill Avenue hanging out in front of record stores, and these were homeless punk kids. And we were a bit of a tribe, and they looked out for me.

I never felt like they were ever trying to hurt me or harm me or do anything to me. As a matter of fact, if anybody spoke ill of me or tried to physically touch me or harm me, they would always protect me. And so I think I was extraordinarily fortunate. I don't think everyone else would have had that experience. But I fell into a pretty good group of homeless kids. Pretty good group of homeless kids. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it's not. I mean, there was some bad things that happened.

You know, they used heroin and all sorts of things. And luckily, I never fell into any of that. You know, I managed to avoid it. That's okay. Well, but there's one thing you said, which I found interesting, you once said, once you're homeless, you can never be non-homeless. That's correct. Why to elaborate on that a little bit?

It's kind of delightful, actually. But every time I see, like, for example, a conference and there's food, and I walk past it in a hotel, I'm like, man, if I were homeless, I could just walk in there and I could make myself a sandwich. Every time I'm in a coffee shop, I see creamer and honey and all the various things that could give you calories. because I was very thin and pretty much malnourished. And to this day, I still see excess everywhere.

And you can't unsee it. Yeah. It's just something that is part of you. I even think of places I could sleep. Like I go to IKEA and I imagine like, oh, I could just sort of live here and no one would notice. Well, you know, that's not only amusing, but it's interesting and useful. I think the fact that, I think, I mean, now that you've achieved some wealth, the fact that you still know what excess is, I think is an important. Yeah.

I do have one problem that has carried over, which is my fridge always has to have food in it. Always. Okay. I don't feel safe if there isn't food in there. Well, that's not good. As soon as I go any place, if I travel to an Airbnb, that fridge will be, there will be a grocery delivery within 24 hours. There has to be some food in there. Okay.

I should say, by the way, when you were talking me, maybe there's a lot of similarities between being homeless and being a graduate student. But when I was a graduate student, I had the same attitude. When I was in a, when I was at places where there were conferences, if there was a conference that had food, it was different than the one I was at. I was over there because you're over there because you know how to get free. There's nothing like getting free food. Right?

If you're a graduate student. Yeah, absolutely. It's very similar. Okay. Well, you know, there's another impact that I want to talk about that I think is really important. and it relates to your experiences surviving as you said creamer sugar honey the kind of things that would get you through the day yeah and the minimal amount you needed to make it to get through the day I think you once said two dollars would do it right two dollars was generous yeah a buck 25 would

get it done so I when I was in Timpe and I was homeless I used to sleep next to the train track so I don't know where pizza or Gasmica is. I think I do, yeah. Okay, there used to be a co-op. I think the co-op now is a bank on Mill Avenue and University. And so I was homeless near there. And every day I would get up in the morning and I would head over to this co-op, which had a 25-cent bagel and cream cheese.

So that was the first meal of the day. And then you would get a coffee, which was bottomless. And of course, there's the creamer and the sugar and the honey and all the good stuff that you can put inside of it. after that you would have to come up with a dollar because then you could get a whopper because there's a burger king across the street and if you could get more than a dollar if you got to two dollars or three dollars then you could actually get rice and some veggies at the vietnamese store further down the street so that was my day every day was just trying to figure out how to make that much money and you know i started out by spare changing but i spare changed a father who had a little child with him and I was I just remember feeling so guilty because he turned around and he told me he's like, I'm sorry, but every penny I have has to go to my kid. And one, I thought lucky kid, but then I thought I've got to figure something else out because I can't live with this guilt.

I can't sit here and beg from people and expect them to take care of me. And so that's when I think, for the most part, that I've identified in my life where capitalism started playing a very important role. Oh, okay. This is good. this is very insightful. This is great. Yeah.

But, and in that regard, I want to relate your experience. I've heard you talk obliquely about this. And I know you and I have talked about it. But I think it's really, it's been illuminating for me to learn this. As someone I think we both admire now, was the economist Thomas Sol. I love Thomas Sol. And he's always argued that elites tend to think they know what's best for people. Of course.

They always think that. And for, and I've, this realization has occurred to me in the last year or two, partly from knowing people like you and also, um, recently having had a dialogue, uh, podcast that'll come out in a while with a young woman who was, uh, who was studying, um, undocumented, uh, immigrants, migrant laborers. Um, I always thought, for instance, I was an at, you know, I grew up in Canada where there's a big minimum wage and it's a, it's a, it's more, much more socialized than the United States. And I couldn't imagine. I've, always been upset at how low the minimum wage seemed to be in the United States. Soil points out,

and it was the first time, it was a new realization for me. And I think I've heard you talk about it too, that having a minimum wage is often impediment. I mean, you want people to be able to, of course, have enough to live on. So that's the one side. It sounds good to have a certain, that you want people to have a living wage. You want to be able to everyone in the world you hope would have, be able to live and be able to feed themselves and house themselves. And so it sounds nice that everyone should have, who's working, should have a wage that allows them to do that. But why do you go into what the negative side of that is?

Yeah, I mean, we can discuss UBI versus minimum wage. And I think there's merits to UBI. Universal basic income. Yeah, universal basic income. I think that minimum wage creates a line that you can't cross if you don't have a high school education, which I didn't have. And you are unqualified for jobs. jobs. So you can't do things that take basic skills. For example, when I was, and then of course,

I was underage too, so that that didn't help either. But I couldn't clean a toilet. And I would have done that. I would, if you would have paid me 50 cents to clean a toilet, if I only need a dollar 25 a day, think about what kind of dent that makes in my life. I was not allowed to do that. And that was the very first thing I started thinking about what was wrong with the world. and one of many things. I've always hated minimum wage and I get into arguments with people about this, but most of the time it's because they've never actually

had to live through the circumstances that I lived in, and so they don't know what they don't know. Yeah. But their minimum wage never helped me. It just hurt me. And, you know, I've heard Thomas Sol say more or less that. The difference being that he would say elites think they know what's best but i've heard you say and you just sort of more or less

did here that when you're when you're homeless or when you're extremely poor you at that instant know what know what's best for you to survive throughout the day other people don't yeah every penny every penny counts if you find a penny on a sidewalk it counts and so if you had the ability to do a very simple task and think about how many restrooms out there we'll just start with toilets like if we could have cleaned toilets, then every restaurant didn't need to be staffed by employees of the restaurants. You know, I could have sat in there. I could have given you five-star service.

It had been great. And then you get a skill after that that you can then parlayed into something else. I mean, that's where incrementalism when I talk about that comes from, is everything is a step of little baby steps, you know. And I was denied that. And I think that a lot of elites think, well, you know, you need to have some sort of barrier to entry, but that's based off of, again, you know, it feels good, it sounds good, but in reality it's not good.

Yeah, that's the thing. Often, at a priori, from a distance it sounds good. And there's a lot of things in our society. Yeah, and there's a lot of things we'll hear in society, but, you know, well-intentioned, but nevertheless not good. And this is, I was, as I say, for me to realize this was a revelation until I heard, you know, of cases like yours and others, the similar. thing, and you just mentioned you were underage, when I talked to this woman who studied undocumented

children who come in from Mexico or Central America, the United States, and if they can't get a job, they can't live. But of course, we have anti-child. Again, it sounds good to have anti-child labor laws, but for them, that loss could kill them. I actually think if I were able to take a test and demonstrate that I was able to work and wanted to work and was willing to work and it would have changed my life, they should have let me. I was not able to do that. And so I worked under the table. I did things that were illegal.

And we shouldn't have to be turned into criminals in order to live. And you weren't. And it's even worse, frankly, for these undocumented kids, because it's not that people say they should be in school, but they can't, they're not allowed to be in school. They have no alternative. They're not allowed to be in school and they're supposed to live. And so it's a, it's, you know, you wish that this situation it exists. And also, does anybody bother to ask us? That was the thing, like, all these rules get made and that they'd never ever have a conversation with the people that it matters to. And, you know, having a high school diploma is another barrier, right? So you see this in, luckily, Google and various companies have dropped the requirement for accreditation in many

roles, but the minimum requirement of a high school diploma in a food service job makes zero sense. Like, why should you have to go to high school and finish a diploma in order to fry some fries? I mean, that really makes zero sense. But we use it as a filtering mechanism to say, I don't like you. Okay, interesting. You don't have a high school diploma is a great excuse. Yeah, to say it only. I don't like you.

By the way, you'd be amused that I was just at a conference. in Los Angeles remotely because of the fires. And the last speaker said that it's a great thing and he thinks it's very important that because of his concerns about what's going and mine of what's going on in higher education

that a college diploma should not be a, you know, well, especially not today. Because not today because so many kids are not getting educated are getting de-educated by college. And so... The landscape of schools that matter is changing because of the EI. Yeah.

You know, I will get to what I do for a living, but I invest on behalf of institutions and I look at the fire ratings. I look to see how they're behaving with what's going on in the world and whether or not they promote free speech and inquiry. And if they don't, then I don't want to make money for them. And so I have boycotted universities

and will continue to do so. if they don't do the right thing. That's great. And fire writing is foundation for individual rights and expression. Correct. Yeah. Know what that means. Before we leave the topic, you, me again, when I was hearing about this experience,

I tried to connect that to your present life as we're trying to do now. And we'll get to your present life and future. Don't worry. Eventually, but this is, for me, this is a fascinating. I suspect it is for people listening. You are described, I think you describe yourself as a libertarian now. Yeah, I think I've always been. And I assume it's precisely this reason that other people, that you, that you, that you recognize that external imposition of what other people thinking they know what's best for you may not, in fact, be what's best for you, or are there other reasons why you're libertarian?

I mean, Arizona rubs off on you. I mean, I am a product of my environment to some degree in Arizona is a more liberal, or at least was a more libertarian-leaning state. Like they have open carry, you know, they've had a lot of Republican leadership. and even in the liberal pockets you have people joke they call it the guns and dope party they're very freedom oriented and so I think some of that definitely had an impact on me but what I really thought about my life and how it was impacted by government and by authority figures and by the rules you know that's probably what was the early formation of those ideas for me I wouldn't have called myself a libertarian until I found Reason magazine that's when

I finally had a word to describe how I felt internally anyway. Oh, I see. Okay. Okay, good. Okay. Now, I want to jump back to one thing because I want to provide people who may have heard you talk about this before with an addendum. You mentioned Officer Pratt.

Yeah. And Officer Pratt was a person, as you say, was incredibly instrumental in your life. He, why do you talk about him? I am so excited to talk about Officer Pratt. Because I think it's really important that we give a shout out to him. Yeah. So Officer Pratt was. was a bicycle police officer in Flagstaff, Arizona, and he was our nemesis.

So when we would ditch school or we were smoking cigarettes or, you know, doing things we weren't supposed to be doing, we were almost always caught by Officer Pratt. And you cannot outrun a bicycle cop. By the way, he reminded me of Officer Krupsky in West Side Store. I don't know if you ever saw that. No, I haven't. You have to see it. Anyway, go on.

Yeah, so you could never outrun this guy. I tried. He would always get you. But the thing that I really admired about him was when he would apprehend you, he was very civil and respectful and inquisitive. He wanted to know why we were doing what we were doing. How did we get to where we were? He wasn't like other adults in my life who called me a deadbeat, a loser, a washed up person. Okay.

You know, he actually looked at us with potential. And to have somebody who was the law who would do that was pretty remarkable. I would say Officer Pratt probably arrested me at least 20 times. Wow. We got to know each other very well. And, you know, a lot of the times it was for truancy. I was very known for not going to school. And I would hang out at a bridge and he pretty much always knew where to find me.

But he would also find me at the Greyhound bus station trying to flee town, a variety of different situations. But the last time he arrested me was different. he basically took me to the courthouse. And on the way of the courthouse, he stopped by Dairy Queen and he got me some ice cream. And he let me sit up in front of his car. So he doesn't normally drive. So we had to walk to the station, get in a car, drive to Dairy Queen.

And he's like, do you want a Sunday? And I was like, what is going on? This is going very different than all the previous times. Because normally you get brought to juvenile. They have you disrobe. You know, you have to literally be hosed down naked. It's a horrible experience. And this time was very different.

He took me to the courtroom and he was being very calm. And he said, today things are going to be a little different. I'm going to let you sit in the judge's chair. Have you ever sat at a judge's bench? And I was like, no, this sounds fun. So I get up there and he brings me a plate of spaghetti. And then he had one parting sentence for me and I hadn't talked to him since. And recently I reconnected with him, which I think is the most interesting part of the story.

We'll get to that. but yeah he brought me up to the judge's bench he gave me a plate of spaghetti and he said everything's going to be all right it's all going to work out he's like don't worry it's going to be okay and i was like what's going to be okay what's going on i've just eaten my spaghetti have the time of my life and then this woman comes in and she says hi cyan i'm your public defender and i'm you know i was thinking to myself why does the public need to be defended by me or from me like why do i need you. So she said, well, this is going to happen very, very fast when the judge comes in, I'm going to move you to the other side of the room. When they say, I'll rise, you're going to rise. When he speaks

to you, you say, yes, your honor, you answer his questions truthfully and honestly, and we'll get through this pretty quickly, but it's going to happen very fast. I'm like, what's happening? No one would explain it. Wow. And so I went on the left-hand side of the courtroom, and then that's when I saw my mother come in, and she went on the other side of the courtroom. And I remember looking at her, we never made eye contact. Wow. And the judge came in. All rise, you know, yes, your honor. And he held up some book, and I still to this day, don't know what this book was. But he said, Sayan, is there anything in this book that says that you're above the law?

And I said, no, your honor. And he said, do you want to be homeless and live in a box the rest of your life? No, your honor. And he looked at me and he said, okay. And then he looked at my mother, and he said, do you want this child anymore? No, your honor. Wow. That's good.

And then the gavel went down. And he said, you know, by his powers, I became a ward of the state. and I was then, I had a probation officer who became my parent. And so after that, they, they ushered me out. I met my probation officer. And then they just sort of shoved me out the door. They were like, you have 24 hours to find a place to live, because if you don't find a place to live,

you're going to live in a group home. That's what being awarded of the state was. You had to find your own place. You have to find your own place. Not much reward. Well, what they do is they have a curfew where you have to be in at 9 o'clock. You're not allowed to have any drugs or anything. They do drug tests weekly.

They show up at your house randomly. They take a little vacuum cleaner and they vacuum your carpet looking for marijuana seeds. I'm not joking. And then the weirdest requirement of all is you had to have a gallon of milk in your fridge. That's how you proved you were adulting. No. Is you could afford and stock a perishable item. But, you know, I guess it doesn't compute to me because you think being a ward of the state means the state

is taking care of you. They were not taking care of me. They were just award a statement. They're making sure that you can try and live on your own and survive. And making it difficult for you. And make it difficult at the same time. So you're free, sort of.

Sort of. So I went out and I sat on the curb and I remember looking up at the sky and I just said, what do I do? What do I do? And I just took stock of what I have, which is what I normally do in any situation where things

rough is like what do I have? And I was like, I must have an adult friend. Well, I did have an adult friend. So I walked to her house across town and I knocked on her door. Her name's Pam. And I said, I told her what happened. I said, can I live here?

And she says, well, there's a corner over there. You can take it and here's a blanket and a pillow, but I suggest you get your own. And that was that. You know, within 24 hours, there's another person who remarkably helped me and she was 19, 20 at the time. And in college, and she moved out promptly after and left me with the house. Wow.

So I had my very first house. Wow. As a result of this. And the woman who rented to her was an elderly woman who didn't understand contract law. And so she signed a lease agreement with me. Well, even though you were. Yeah, I wasn't of age. Yeah.

Wow. So it was pretty great. I really, really, really lucked out. And I did not see Officer Pratt again after this. I made it a goal. I remember when I walked out of that courtroom, went outside. I said to myself, I want to make office. your proud. I want to be worthy of this belief that he had in me because clearly he did something.

Yeah. He stood up for me and did something. And I don't know what that something was, but he did it. Wow. So I went on a podcast recently and a fan. Before we get, I want to, I'm going to suspend. I want people to be, want to find what's happened in a second and be the suspense to build up. But, But I have to interrupt as I do because, again, I keep trying to think of connections within then and now, which is one of the reasons we're having this protracted discussion of then as well now. What he showed you, which you said was the exact difference of everyone else, is respect for you and interest in you as a human being, which other people just assigned you as a deadbeat. Which is why I think people, you shouldn't assume that because someone is homeless or has

mental health issues or struggling that they're a horrible person or to say those things about them you know exactly but it's not just what I was going to say about you is it's not just talk action that seems to me to be reflected again it seems to me that when I see you every individual even it no matter how weird or whatever they seem is given the same kind of interest and respect, fascination, interest, respect, and everyone around you. Again, do you think that came from the example of how Officer Pratt raised your feeling of yourself? Or do you think that was a natural part of you anyway? Again, I emulate what I see and what I experience and I take the good and bad from everything interaction I have in life. You can learn every single person you interact,

whether it be someone who works a counter at a grocery store to a gas station person, to a nurse, has the opportunity to be your mentor. You know, a lot of people seem to think that you have to go get permission from somebody for them to be your mentor. And really what you need to be as a good observer. You don't need to ask any questions.

You just need to look. The answers are right in front of you. Now, what would you call that? I would call that science. But anyway. Okay, that's another part of it. But anyway, we'll get there. You see, you really are.

You've renamed yourself perfectly. But now we can release the tension and the suspense. Tell us what's happened with. Yeah, so I just went on a podcast that I had no idea how big its reach was. It was kind of nuts. But one of the fans of this podcast heard the Officer Pratt story because I told it there. And I made a call out to the fans. Like if anyone knows this man, I would like to find him.

Because from that day forward, when I went out and I stood there and tried to figure out what I was going to do, I made a pledge to Officer Pat and to myself that I would. never ever let him down, that I would do everything in my power to succeed and to not look back and to never end up in a courtroom again or arrested or on the other side of the law. And I always wanted to find him. And I was afraid I'd never would. And so this fan from the podcast reached out to the Flagstaff PD. Flagstaff PD found him. And we had the most remarkable phone call. And he's not a police officer anymore. He's a soccer coach and he volunteers a lot of his time and from what I can tell he was a good man then

and is a very good man now and I think that it was very healing for both of us because he has never been called or recognized for the work he did as a police officer and for what he did for me was a normal day for him did he remember you specifically or he remembers pieces of it he remembers picking me up at the Greyhound station. He remembers the boyfriend I had at the time. He remembers hanging out at the record store and the kids. He did not remember me specifically. Yeah. But he did remember pieces and more of the memories are coming back. Yeah, of course. The more we communicate, the more he's starting to understand. But what was really interesting was he thought to himself when he became a police officer, I want to change the world.

and I want to make the world a better place. But then he realized he was in the small town of Flagstaff, Arizona, and he realized his world was very small. So he said, I'm just going to make this little town the best place I can. And he came up with the idea of becoming a bicycle officer because he was out in a patrol car, and he noticed that someone had a really cool lawn, and he wanted to stop and talk to them.

But he realized it would be super awkward if he pulled up in his police car, and he wouldn't have the same type of interaction. So one day he was on a bicycle, his own bicycle, and he went by the same yard and he sees the guy out in the yard and he goes over and starts talking and he's still in his uniform. Yeah. And he has a really frank conversation with this person heart to heart as a community member. And that's when he went back and he said, I want to start this bicycle police program so that I can be around kids, so I can be around the high schoolers so I can have an impact in our community. And it was because of that that he met me.

And I wanted him to know that he had a huge impact in the world. That he does no idea. idea what he's done. Because I mean, he may not like this. I don't know. I mean, I don't know how he feels about it, but I view him as a father figure. And as someone who was very special to me, again, I tend to like people who have weird authority, kind of like the school teacher who would get the kids.

But I realize that sometimes you need stability and you need those guardrails and he definitely provided them for us. If you talk to any of the kids from my era of Flagstaff, we all know who Officer Pratt is. And we all knew that if we fucked up too much, he was going to show up. So in many senses, he was a father figure and a very special person. I just think it's so wonderful you reached out. And he now knows what a, because people don't, you know, as you say, they don't get the feedback of how much, they don't realize how much, as I think my wife has in our house

on our stairs, a single kind effort one day can change someone's life. Exactly. And that was a single kind effort to him was a routine day where he did a routine thing for a kid and spoke up for me just like he did for all of us with no expectation of reward whatsoever. He put himself in danger every day for us. And it's remarkable. And so one of the things he and I are working on is I wanted to thank him in a big way. And I was hoping that he would allow me to. Because that's the other thing is sometimes you want to go back and thank people who have been a part of your life. some way. And so we're still trying to figure out what to do, but he has some dreams of helping more kids like me. And not going back to policing, but trying to figure out, he used to be in the big brother, big sister program, and he was a big brother. And so there might be something around that that he and I can work on so we can reach more kids like me. Wonderful. Well, I'm so happy we get up there. It's a great. It's a great outcome. It's a great outcome. And I wanted

him to be able to hear it too. He's going to love it. He's definitely going to listen to this. Okay, well, that'll be great. And I think people should hear it, but it's wonderful. But it also gives us a great chance for another segue to the next step. We're actually making progress. The two things, let's talk capitalism. Okay? Yes, my favorite subject.

Well, you pointed out that it was one of the things was meeting that father who wanted, you know, you didn't want to beg. You realized it was demeaning to you and demeaning of the people had to say no, probably, or at least it was. Yeah, you had to inconvenience them and they had to stop. you also said you want to make Officer Pratt proud, which meant you wanted to do something that, that, you know, showed you had the value that he assigned to you, or at least he trusted you had. So I know that at some point you moved from sort of just being a street kid to beginning to be a young capitalist, making, making jewelry and T-shirts. I'm not certain of the time frame of that. And I want to, I want to know. So,

was it far long after that you would move that that was up in flagstaff you were you somehow and i don't know why you moved down to phoenix yeah so i've gone back and forth between there is during that homeless period the six month stretch i was telling you about i ended up in timpee and then ended up on a road trip where i was trying to get to new york i had this fantasy that all my dreams would come true in new york because as a kid i thought yeah you really made it in life when you can walk down Fifth Avenue with a cup of coffee in your hand and not spill a drop. And so I was going to go to New York. But I didn't make it to New York. I made it to him as Springs, New Mexico, where I lived with a bunch of hippies in a commune and then basically had to to high tail it back to Arizona and

hitchhike back. But during that time is when that... I said to answer my question, why Tempe? How did you end up? It was just a cool place to be. It's just a cool place to be in Arizona. I mean, you know, I know. I mean, that's where I work. a lot going on in Arizona. Yeah, yeah. I know. I was there. I lived there. But at least there were college kids there. There was a really cool punk rock store there called East Side Records. But one of the first hustles I had was going, there's a store called the Free Store. And you could go in and you could pick out three free things and sign your name to a little logbook. And I would go in and try to find things that I could resell. So I would go across the street to

Buffalo Exchange. I'd go to the bookstore down the street and I developed this economy doing that. And then I would use the money that I got from that to buy materials to make necklaces. And then I made these hemp necklaces and these things and I would go from table to table selling them to people. And then from there, it just built and built and built. Did that, okay, so that's your first young entrepreneur experience. But did that come naturally or did other people suggest you do that? I mean, you know, it seems to me, an interesting and innovative approach to changing your life. I've always been interested in business if I really want to be honest.

Well, I want you. I mean, it's just I've always loved it. I, my first stint as a business person actually was my grandparents would send us pecans every season. We would shell pecans and then we would get baggies of them. But we couldn't make enough pecan pies. Like our freezer was filled with them. And so I decided that they would go bad and we would just throw them out.

So I put them in little baggies and I started going door to door and I did something to try to figure out the price of the optimal price of a bag of pecans. So I would start by selling them for $3. And if they sold too quickly, I went up to five. And if they sold too quickly, I would go to seven. Basic economics. Yes. And so eventually you get a good amount of yes, no, and you realize what the price should be. And I landed on about $5 a bag for these pecans.

And that's what got me hooked. was you can take something that people value and bring it to them in some way and then you can mark it up and granted my cost of goods was nothing which is cheating but it it still taught me that skill and and I took that with me into homelessness wow okay that's it and then and so it was natural for you to look at ways to do exactly that then yeah and some people it's a lemonade stand some people it's baseball card collections and mine was pecan as one might say to make something from nothing. Yeah.

I like to talk about as a scientist. But anyway, okay, good. And you were doing that. So that was when you were already then a teenager. You already moved down now. You're 15, 16 or something like that at that time. Yeah. Okay.

Now, had you, I know, in full of Scotians, I met your Polo-O-Hong new mother who may be watching this. She's very instrumental. I'm not guarantee you she's going to watch this. Yeah, okay. She was there in Phoenix. Yeah. So one of the, I got a boyfriend when I was homeless and he was one of the, he was the person that I hitchhiked trying to go to New York with and it was her son.

And I hadn't met her yet. But at some point he brought me home. He was homeless, but it was more of a Jack Kerouac, you know, romanticized homelessness. You've met Karen. He had no reason to be out on the street. Yeah. And he brought me home and I was 14 years old. and he was 19.

And she was like, oh boy, this is terrible. This cannot be happening. But she saw my situation and she, the first time I met her, I didn't see her again for quite some time. But the second time, she decided to take me in as a child and basically become my parent. And I really, really credit her for the ability to even look you in the eye. You know, when she got me, I was a shaking leaf. I was a nervous wreck. I could not hold a conversation with anyone.

I would hide. She would yell at me, but in a good way, she's like, look at me when I'm talking to you. I know you value that. And I value it. She made fun of my clothing to the point so I could dress better, you know. And she did all of the things that I didn't have in my life. And she really, really helped in so many ways. But the most important thing was she encouraged me to keep trying and keep doing things that

were unnatural to me, including rejection. You know, she's the one who pushed me out the door to go try different jobs. And then she was around when I became interested in technology and she really encouraged that. Oh, okay. Oh, great. Okay. So that was happening at that time. Yeah, I dated her son for seven years.

For seven years. Wow. So you would really grow up. I mean, you were 14 to 21. That's quite a point of age. It was awkward. It's controversial now, but it's awkward to walk around with your boyfriend and calling his mom, our mom, holding hands. It's kind of weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It is what it is. It sounds like it's your brother. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I get you. Weird. One of the things that was characteristic when you talked about hitchhiking, that struck me then, and again, that struck me then, and again, numerous times in your life and is your willingness to, sort of you weren't risk averse. Let me put it that way.

Which again is a good characteristic, I suppose, to someone who's going to become an investor. I mean, at some level of risk averse is a good thing. You have to be in my industry, yeah. Yeah, but you did take risk. You have to be willing to take risks. And that was certainly a characteristic of you. But I think you'd seen you'd survived and the risk could pay off. The willingness to basically explore saying, okay, I mean, you've talked about various times

your life where someone says, come over and just do this. And I think, my God, it's a terrifying thing to do. Just come over. I want to, you know, come over to my place. I'll talk to you or come over to our commune or whatever and you just do it. Yes, I pretty much always just do it. I, I guess maybe I, had I worried about risk all of the time, I would have missed out on so many opportunities. And I'm sure there was plenty of risk around. I just was oblivious to it. And, But no, I've always had a sense of adventure. I've always loved to figure out when you don't know what tomorrow brings and the day that's in front of you is all that you have, you can take more risks.

And there's something beautiful about that. And I think people ought to try it when they're not in those circumstances. And well, and what I was particularly interested in is that you didn't know where it would go. Never knew where we'd go. And you let the circumstances take you to, you let you, you didn't presume in advance what was going to happen, but you let reality and experience teach you what was going to happen. Exactly. And you know why I'm saying that?

Because guess what? That's science. It really is. It really is. It's an idea of not letting your belief, the evidence of reality conform to your beliefs, but letting your beliefs conform to the evidence reality, going to where the data takes you. if it's not where you wanted to go or where you plan to go. That's also part of being an entrepreneur, clearly too,

is finding out you're going in a direction that was totally different than where you went. But you're willing to go there because that's what's, rather than saying, no, I really, that's where I should be going, or I, you know, but the data is telling you go here. And that's a, that's one of the hardest things for people to appreciate in science and to learn

is, you know, you have an idea of how things should be and the beauty of science and the beauty of your experience. It's the one I mean you're a scientist. The beauty of that is learning that your idea of how things should be may be wrong. And in fact, you're willing to go to where it really is. And that can often lead in a wonderful new direction. And in your life, it has many, many, many times. I mean, when you don't expect things, magical things happen.

Exactly. Okay. Good. I'm just trying to convince you if I hadn't already. Now, and we're now about to get to where I think is the segue in your life, which I don't know much about, and I haven't heard talked about sufficiently, and I really think it's important. But anyway, and I, yeah, anyway, but there's one other thing that I want to mention, I know you've told me that one of the things, and it's obvious, and in the stories we'll talk about investing in certain companies like Uber and other things, that you can pick a C, CEO. You can, you can, you can see when someone's the right person to be a CEO and not just picking ideas and stuff like that, but you can read people. I'm better at the ideas than the

reading people. I'm good at reading people, but I, either my colleagues are better. So, okay, so you don't think you, because I know the story about Travis and Travis is an exception. It's an exception. Because I was wondering whether your experience selling in restaurants and other things was a way to read people. But maybe not, you say then. Yeah, one of the things I like to do, and maybe again, this makes me a scientist, is to question the beliefs I hold about myself. And a lot of times when I think that I'm really good at something, if I really examine myself closely and look at all the warts and ugliness that's involved with it, I discover I'm not as good as I think I am. Well, that's a wonderful thing to know and acknowledge, and we'll talk about over and over again. I'll bring up Richard Feynman in a while, you know, the easiest person to fool is yourself.

Yes. And we'll talk about that. But I want to get, now I want to get, so you've started being a little, you know, you're make enough to live and survive and, and, and you're not really on the street at this point because you have a mother. But, but at some point, there's one thing you have to talk about one, you haven't, but you, you, you were selling T-shirts and a guy named Chris Collins, I think, changed your life there. So you want to, you want to go into that?

Absolutely. So one of the things I figured out how to do was to create stencils and cardboard and you go buy spray paint and just spray paint logos on things and then sell them on the street. And at the time I was listening to punk rock music from the UK. And a lot of those artists couldn't afford to make their own t-shirts anyway. So the whole DIY movement was important for their marketing. They didn't care if we sold their designs. They actually encouraged it.

Which was a beautiful thing actually for that time period. And then I got into silk screening because I discovered you could get emulsion, you could get frame. You could burn, you know, you could go to someone's house and you could burn in an image into a screen. And then you could screen 20, 30 shirts, go put them at East Side Records or Zia records, put them on consignment or sell them on street corners and make a lot more money. And I was having a lot more fun with it because I was promoting bands I really cared about and I was making a type of art that really resonated with me. What I really didn't know, though, is that my father is a graphic artist and he was a T-shirt maker. And I was just following in

footsteps and had no idea. You didn't know that? When you discovered that? When I was adult and I found him. So I found him when I was 18. Wow. And I had no idea about this and it was very shocking to me when I discovered he also was a silk screener. Wow. And no one had ever explained that to me. I just figured it out on my own. But one remarkable thing happened one day. I was sitting on the street as I often did because I would just sit there and think and I still sit on streets. You'll find me sometimes just sitting on the ground because I don't care and I'll just sit there and think. But this guy walked by and he was wearing a patch that I'd made and it was sewn on the back of his jumpsuit and I'd never seen my product out in the wild And even to this day if I see a company that I've invested in have a billboard or I see someone using something I invested in I get so excited

Yeah And so I stopped him. I said hey you And he turned around and he goes what and I said I made that patch and he said prove it And I said well you bought it either Eastside Records or Zia and he goes oh wow So he came over and he sat next to me and he said what's your story and so I told him and His mother had a sign shop. And so he said, well, you should come over and you should make stickers at my mother's sign shop.

And he gave me his phone number. But he was really nice. And when you're homeless or on the streets, people are really nice to you in that way. You kind of avoid them. I don't know how else to explain it, but you've got to get stranger danger to some degree. And so I never called him because I thought he's the happiest person I've ever met. And he's a little too eager to help me. So not going to call him.

Yeah, you have to be safety minded. So about, I want to say like four or five months later, I saw him, there used to be this coffee shop called Java Road. I think it became a bank. And he was sitting out there in the dark and he was on a laptop and I saw the glowing of the screen on his face. And I didn't even notice it was him at first. And I ran over there and I just said, what is that?

And he's like, oh, it's a laptop. And I'm like, oh, it's you. And he's like, you never called me. And I'm like, yeah, sorry. But can we talk about this computer thing you got going on here? And he showed it to me and he was showing me some really now would be very crude art. It was like ASCY art and some anime stuff that he had on there. And I was like, can you get online with that?

And he's like, yeah, I'm like, where? And he's like, well, we got to find some kind of phone jack. And he's like, do you have one? So the first task we had was to find a phone jack. We finally found one. And I remember hearing the modem for the first time. Oh, wow. Now, here's what's really interesting is my sister and I had been separated.

I told you the story about how she was removed from the home. I was told that she ran away. she was actually living with my grandparents. And one of the things she had told me in passing when she was in college was that she was on this thing called IRC. And so I said, can you get on something called IRC? And he's like, yeah. So we got on, I found my sister that night.

What's IRC? Internet relay chat. Okay. So it was a text-based. At the time there was no gooey for it. It was just like a text-based chat thing that you would run out of Unix. And I got online and I found her. and I was talking to my sister for the first time.

Wow. And that's when I realized I had this epiphany. I don't care what it takes. I'm going to do something in IT and I'm going to do something with technology. And from this day forward, I'm going to learn about this. And then I was hooked. And that's when I started reading books. I could not stop reading technical manuals.

I would go to the library. I would go to the store. I would borrow books. And then luckily Unix has this thing called Manpages. so you can just sit there and read about every single command. You can go to the Etsy directory or any directory, find anything and read about it. And it was endless. Yeah, it was endless.

And so I never looked back. I mean, that was the end of it for me. Well, you once told me the story or an episode and I wanted to, that you were at some point in the midst of all this, maybe after you'd learn Unix, you got in the customer, well, you talked, you got in the customer relations area or customer service. Yeah. And, well, maybe talk about that. And then I was going to, there was again, an epiphany or at least a key moment of your life,

which I wanted to ask about when someone said to you, are you just going to sit and like read, you know, look at the internet or you're going to, well, why do you sell the stories? Another magical person we should gush about, Lee Burton, who's unfortunately deceased. So I wanted a job in tech and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't go to college easily. I didn't have a high school diploma. And so I looked to my hacker friends. So I should back up a little bit.

Because of meeting Chris, I stopped hanging out with the punk kids that I was hanging out with for the most part. I only kept the ones around that were interested in learning. Oh, okay. We're going someplace. And if they weren't interested in learning, I really didn't have any time for them.

Okay. So the ones that were interested would take me to these 2,600 meetings, which is a hacker magazine at the time. It's still around, actually. And we would have these meetups and we would get together and talk about all the various things we had discovered that week. Oh, wow. And that's when one of them told me, you know, you could probably do dial up tech support. It's not that hard.

And I was like, well, what do we do? And they're like, let's go role play. So we went over to their house and I would call and I would pretend to be a customer and they would pretend to be tech support. And they would walk me through what it took to set up. At the time, it was Windows 3.1, Windows 95 was the predominant operating system. And so there was something like 13, maybe even more than 13 discs to get even just the operating system installed at the time. And then to get trumpet windsock and all that going with Windows 3.1 was an ordeal. But we roleplayed enough that I went and applied to a place called Extreme Internet, which is over in Scottsdale.

And I interviewed there and got the job. And it was my first tech job. And it also not only was my first tech job, it was my first sit-down job. And so when you go from a standing position to a seated position, I mean, that's a big step up. Was it for your first job interview, too, or no? It was my first job interview. Wow. Real one.

Real job interview. Other than like retail and stuff like that. How old were you then? I think I was 18, 18 or 19. Okay. And so I started working there and this place was really interesting. It was an ISP that was run by Lee Burton and his business partner who was blind. And so they hired mostly blind tech support people. Wow.

So a majority of our employees were vision impaired, and that was really fun, getting to learn how to make things accessible to them, how they even dealt with questions on the phone and described things like a blue screen to someone, you know, was a really fascinating thing to me. And I was happy just taking calls and helping people get online, but one day, and I would register domains. So this is where this happened is I started figuring out you could register domains. At the time, they were free.

and so I registered thousands of them. Oh, really? And then Ican came along and decided that they were going to charge, I think it was like $100 for them. And so these bills started showing up. And they showed up by the trash bag full because I had so many domains. Oh, my God. But I didn't have any money.

Yeah. You know, because I was making at the time above minimum wage. Yeah. But that was because it was a tech job and they pay more. I still couldn't afford these things. Yeah. So my boss came over to me and he threw a book on my lap. one day. And he said, you know, you could make something of yourself if you stopped registering

domains and chatted on IRC all day and learned a thing or two. Wow. And I looked at him like, whatever, crazy person, you know, I'm not going to listen to you. So the book sat on the corner of my desk and started collecting dust. And one day, I was like, what the heck? I'm going to open it up. So I open it up and I start looking through it. And by the eighth page, I'm going to frame this page because this one of the most important pages that ever changed my life in a book. There's this thing called a shell escape for if you run a command as root, but you're pseudoing in as root. So basically you're not a super user,

but you're using a command as of your root. You can escape out of it. When you escape out of it, you type, who am I? You have the permissions of root. You are a super user at that point. So the first thing I did was change his password.

And so I escaped. What I did was actually, let me back up. What I figured out was what programs does he have? What code has he written for us where we're behaving like Root, doing something for the customer, but we are not root? And that was password changes for our customers. Because often they would forget their password. And we would have to do it over the phone because there was no manual way for them to do it.

And so I figured that out, changed his password and I went in and handed it to him. I said, Lee, I said, here's the new password to your server. And he's like, not possible. And I'm like, oh, that book you gave me is great. It's so great. I'm like, try it. So he tried to log in, couldn't log in. And he's like, what the?

I remember he was cursing. Yeah. And I thought for sure I was going to lose my job. I thought this is it. I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to have a story to tell. Yeah. And so he tries the password.

And I remember he just sat there dumbfounded for, it must have been five minutes. And then finally he took a deep breath and he said, go get your chair. You're going to sit next to me now. And he's like, and you now make $13 an hour. Wow. Thanks for reading the book.

Wow. So he could have fired me. I was insubordinate. You know, I could have done a lot of things that were wrong, but he instead, he took it as I'm going to make her my Patawan. And he took me under his wing and he mentored me for a couple of years. And because of that, I was able to come out to Silicon Valley and get my first. Well, that's what I want. I mean, this is a transition that's so mysterious.

I've never heard of disgust that I think it's important. Yeah. So you learned from that. Mostly, was it around IT security? No, we ran an internet service provider. So he taught me everything from provisioning DSL to T1s, FRAQT1s, network engineering, DNS management, Unix stuff. I maintained all the Unix servers, the web hosting, everything there. And so basically I was a junior assistantman and I helped run the ISP.

So that's a whole bunch of skills that are really useful. They're very useful. Now, so how then did you go out to Silicon Valley? What was a transition? Yeah. So I started seeing all these remarkable things happening in Silicon Valley that were not happening in Arizona. Arizona now has more tech companies, but back then we didn't have much of anything.

We had Motorola, Intel, American Express, and then these ISPs, these law and paa ISPs, and then AOL pretty much wiped us all out. But Google launched. And I remember somebody calling me and they're like, go to Google.com and hit button, I'm feeling lucky. Oh, yeah, yeah. You remember that? Of course.

And so at that point, there was Alta Vista, and then Excite might have been a thing. There was like these search engines. And I remember pre-search engines when you had to submit links to these things called, like, submit it. Yeah. Interestingly, it was my husband's company. And I used to use it back then. But there was no search engine. So this was the first time there was a search engine that actually gave relevant results and interesting results.

And then I started seeing these really interesting people on the, front pages of magazines that I read. And I was like, if I want to do anything in this world, I've got to move. So I had the saddest conversation I could ever have with Lee, where I had to tell him I was quitting and I was throwing everything in my car and heading out west. And he was supportive. He said, you know, I don't want to lose you. But luckily, Chris Collins, who's the person I met on the sidewalk, his now wife,

became my replacement. So I hired her in customer support and then she became his Padawan next. Oh. And then she became a computer programmer after that because of him. Oh. Well, it worked out. Yeah, it worked out great. So you just decided to pick up, again, this example of just, okay, I'm going to leave.

I'm going to go. I don't, you didn't have a job you were going to. I had no job. I had nothing lined up. I didn't have a really a stable place to live. But everyone told me there's this thing there called Craigslist when you get there. And at this time, Craigslist wasn't around the world. It was just San Francisco.

Everything you need is on Craigslist. And they weren't lying. I got my job there. I sold my car because I had a stick shift car. I had to get, that was the first thing I had to get rid of. I mean, that, I was on one hill and it was over. Yeah, it's a Francisco. Yeah, no, thank you.

You leave the car. I know what that's, yeah. So I applied for a job there. And then this is where my ISB skills came in. My first job was working at a company that did web design. And they needed someone technical who was also could talk to artists. And so my job was to go and talk to tech teams. at internet service provider equipment makers

who are making devices that they wanted to sell the consumers and then come back to the artist and explain what these things did so that they could render them and draw them appropriately and talk about them in the copy appropriately. So it was a great blend of the two worlds. Yeah, it was pretty great. It's right, it's come and we know where it's coming from. And interestingly, that company was in the basement of where Napster was started.

So Napster was started upstairs. Wow. Did you know what was going on then? Oh yeah, yeah, all of us knew about because all of us were pirating music and everyone was pirating music. We just didn't realize it was wrong. Yeah. And so I ran into Sean Fanning and a bunch of the people that worked at Napster there. And I used to wear this little backpack because I loved, I loved free merchandise from vendors. So I had this Java backpack for Java programming symbol on the back. And so one of them stopped me and invited me up. And then I made friends there that I still have to this day. And, and I and I've invested in at this point that I met there at that first job. Okay, so you've got a job. You're in Silicon Valley. How did you first come into money? Ah, well, a lot of grinding. So you work at a lot of startups that fail.

So that company was called Studio Graphics, and it sold to, I think, some company called Two Wire or something like that. And I refused. I moved from Arizona to San Francisco. I didn't want to move from Arizona to live in a place that looked like Arizona. So I was not going to work in Sunnyvale. Okay. You know, or San Jose. Okay.

So the company that acquired them was down there and I was like, no, I'm not moving. So I'm like, I'm just going to roll the dice again, go back on Craigslist and find something else. And I decided to go back to my roots and work in an ISP. So I worked at Slip.net. And I built out data centers and I did that for a while. And we were bought by this company called Front World. Now, this is a funny story. There was a lot of consolidation in the early days of the internet, like 97, 96,

97 and this was around the hype of the dot-com boom and so there was just crazy spending going on crazy waste all sorts of crazy things that were happening that have repeated in history but not as much it wasn't as exuberant as it was then but uh so i got a job working at this isp we got bought by a company and when they bought us they laid off everybody but us but they gave us nothing to do so we just sat there playing ping pong collecting paychecks and again I love to learn so I was like this is not going to work for me and so I went out and found another job but at that point I went and worked at a place called NBCI which was I think there was something called ABC Go at the time and this was NBC and GE's competitor that they built and so I used to run the websites for Sandrite Live

for all of the major TV shows and then my job was running the commercial breaks so if there a commercial break where they were running anybody to a website because load balancing back then was not something that was easy to do. So we had to make sure that we didn't overwhelm our servers. Now you have AWS. Basically AWS and Amazon has eliminated what job I had. But that's what I used to do for a living was server site availability stuff. And I worked there for a while, got more skills. Then the dot com crash came. And I decided to work in a nonprofit. And I was A lot of my friends gave up. They gave up on technology or left the field altogether.

I don't think people understand how bad that downturn was, but millions of jobs everywhere lost. It was very, very difficult if you were in technology, especially if you were at the bottom of the stack like someone like me to find a job. So I started doing training for women. It's called a welfare to work program where you trained women who basically either been in prison, or didn't have a high school diploma or anything like that, skills learning Cisco network routing. So I became a Cisco certified teacher and then did that for a year. That's probably the hardest job.

If you want to talk about the hardest job I ever had was that one. Why? When I got my first class from your teacher. So this was my first teaching, my only teaching role I've ever had. These women didn't know how to type. Where do you start? Yeah. And I'm supposed to teach them network engineering at the end.

end of it. So at the end, they're supposed to route packets and they're supposed to set up routers and they're supposed to get jobs at the time Pack Bell. I did not see how this was going to work. So I had to set up Mavis Beacon for them and like teach them how to type and then teach them binary math and teach them like all of the stuff that they had never been taught. And that took about a year and we had two graduates. And when I called Cisco, I was in tears and they were like, two, we thought you'd have none. Wow. So two was a good deal. And in the heart of down. downtown Oakland, you know, it was a very, very tough job. But that allowed me to weather the downturn. And then during that time I learned about, I got really, really interested in infosec and insecurity.

And so I started going back to my hacker routes, trying to figure out how I could help fight malware fishing and scams that people were getting on the internet. So I was like, I want to go be a fighter and protect people. And so I got a job working in standards and compliance for an e-eathing. email provider that was actually on the wrong side of things. They were sending the spam. Oh, okay. But my job was to try to reduce it. Okay. But that gave me skills that landed me at a company called Ironport, which interestingly,

I found that job because I set up a little mailing list to help people find jobs during the downturn. Wow. And a job popped up on my own job board. Wow. That sounded interesting to me. So I was like, I'm going to apply to that one. And I applied to be in customer service there.

and they actually took me out and had me run something else at that company. And I ended up at that company leaving as a senior manager managing 400 some odd people in it. Wow. And having the first financial windfall in my life. Because instead of accepting pay, I asked for equity. What made you do that? It just seemed like this company really other than all. I mean, I worked in a lot of companies at that point.

and I'd never seen the type of leadership that I saw at this place. Like I loved my CEO. I loved going to work there. I love the fact that I was surrounded by a player talent and people who are just, it's probably one of the best companies I've ever worked at, I will ever work at. And I was like, if there's a chance that this stock certificate that I have is going to be worth anything when all the other startups I worked out ended up being worth nothing,

this is the one. Okay. And that was probably my first hunch, you know, as an investor, investing my own time was this one is going to pan out into something. And it did. We sold to Cisco and I think 2007 or 2008 for $830 million. I was employee number 30. And then again, I got all my raises in equity.

So I got my first windfall. And at the time, I was married to Scott Bannister, who is an amazing another mentor, who I went to him and I said, what do I do with this? Do I put it into public stocks? Do I buy land? Do I get a house? And he said, no, you put it into high-risk startups because I'm going to show you what I really do. I don't start companies and work at companies.

He's like, I'm actually an angel investor. I'm like, what is that? So hold on a second. Yeah. So you presumably knew this. You'd married the guy. I did not know this. Wow.

Okay. No. I was a rank and file employee at I was an engineer. and I was happy being an engineer. I had zero idea that I would ever get into venture capital. No, but you didn't know what he did? No, I didn't understand it at all. You didn't understand at the time.

At all. To be fair, he presumably already had assembled some wealth. I presume so. You presumed so, but you were married, but you didn't quite know. No, this we don't talk about, I know this sounds really strange, and you've met us. Yeah. We don't talk about this stuff, or we didn't ever before then. and we lived a very, very Walmarty lifestyle,

had small homes, and we were never extravagant in any way. And so it just never occurred to me that he was doing any of this stuff. And not only that, but when he was doing it, we were illiquid. We never had any money. So basically my salary was paying for a lot of things.

Okay, because everything was vested. So there's many times where he say, Sam, we need to go dig in the couch for some change. Do you have any change? you know, I had to pick up side hustles and jobs. Which was an experience we won't go into, but you'd had a lot of experience that when you were younger. Yes. But change on the floor.

But anyway, but that kind of then answers. I was wondering, so you got a windfall and the next question was, why didn't you invest it? So it was the advice of becoming a high risk. Yeah, he was like, let me introduce you to my friends. And we're going to tell you how this is done. And I was like, there's no way I'm going to take what I slept under my desk for and worked so hard for. and put it into something that is, that's where my risk tolerance was like,

I really tested. I was like, I think I want to pick something safer than that. And so for a while, I was a very, the other thing is I'm an early adopter of many, many things, and he started to notice that.

Like, I was showing up and I'd be like, have you heard of this site called Twitter? Have you heard of this thing called Yelp? Have you heard of these things? And he was like, what is this? And he realized that was an amazing source of deal flow. And he didn't have to go out and meet anybody

because I was just finding these things and bringing them home. You were the house. And yeah, so I became the friend of house and he became back of house naturally because of that. But what really did it was he had a friend or has a friend

named Loop Nosek who and then one thing about my husband is he was the co-inventor of PayPal. So he invented the sending money over email payments as one of his many inventions. He's on the patent. And so, I mean, that's how he got started in investing.

He was the first investor in PayPal. He was on the board of PayPal. So that would brought in some. But he also started this company called Submit it that I had used. Had no idea that that was even his thing. You to mention, yeah, use it. That's kind of need. I had no idea.

But he brought over Luke Nosek, who was the co-founder of PayPal. They went to university together in Illinois. And Luke got on his knees. I'm not joking, on his knees. And he said, I need all the money you guys have because this guy Elon Musk is starting the space company. And we have no money. We're out of money.

Like, what do you guys have? And so Scott looks at me and he's like, this is an opportunity. Do you want to put it all here? And I was like, so I went and talked to a bunch of my friends who were at NASA, did any diligence I possibly could at the time, which was very admittedly little because I didn't have a lot of connections,

and then took a leap of faith in Elon and in that endeavor. And at that time, the rockets were blowing up still. Yeah. So it did not look good at the time. And this is why investors couldn't be rounded up. So my very first investment was in SpaceX. And yeah, I don't know if it's probably, I mean, it was a fair chunk. I mean, I don't know whether it's fair to ask how much. No, I mean, at that time, I think they're raising $30 million, compared to what they're raising now, you know, I guess it was a significant portion of that round. Okay. Wow.

It was a big leap. It was a big leap. And then afterwards watched the rockets blow up and was like, okay, what have I done? But it turns out it was probably the best investment I will ever make. Oh, come on. In my career. We'll see. We'll see.

So you're young yet. Yeah. Okay. It's really tough to find a SpaceX. Well, it doesn't come along every time. You found a few other things, which I want to go into, in fact. But before we get there, and it's really appropriate, you just talked about this, because one other characteristic that I think I would, that seems to be clear now, but I would have said it in advance anyway, is that you're fearless in some way.

And interestingly enough, I can't help, but I'm wondering of going back to something your childhood again. I sound like a psychiatrist, I know, but, but was an episode with that wolf. Oh, yes. And I mean, you were 11 years old and you were assigned a task to basically feed a wolf over the summer. Yeah, go ahead. Tell the story. I was, one of the jobs, the many jobs that I've had in my life was taking care of a wolf dog. And this dog was in the 90s something percentile wolf dog. I mean, it was, it didn't live in this guy's house. And I was supposed to take care of it for a summer. My job was to go over there, open up his door, go to the freezer, take out a steak, put it on the ground, microwave it, I guess, crack an egg on top, and wait for the wolf to show up.

And sometimes the wolf would show up right away. Sometimes the wolf would take an hour or two. And so you would sit there and wait for this wolf. And I was small, and this thing was huge. Yeah. And I'll never forget its eyes. But yeah. But you didn't, I didn't quit.

No. You didn't occur to you that he could kill you? No. Never occurred to me. Never occurred to me. Well, maybe I don't know whether fearless or silly is the word at that time. When you're 11, it's probably silly. But as you get older, I mean, fearless by the willingness to change your course in life.

Yes. And we've seen it. I mean, I don't have to, I don't have to say I believe that anyway. But hopefully, of the course of the discussion, people have seen a variety of times you've been willing to completely change the course in life, your life, which most people, maybe do once at best. That's the kind of fearlessness. I'm not talking about fearlessness about, you know, being beaten by a wolf.

Willingness to change your course in life. And I don't know how many times that's happened, but we've gone through them. I was going to ask how many times it's happened. But I think that is an important characteristic, a characteristic of once again forcing yourself to let the opportunities guide you, let nature guide you,

You don't know where you're going, but you're going to follow where it takes you, which, of course, is science. But once again, but, you know, science, this may sound like a weird segue. Maybe it is. But in science, we learn all these tools, which I extol for how to learn how not to get caught in a rut, not to keep doing the same type of thinking. And it's, that's what's so good about science. It's a set of techniques for learning, you know, doing experiments when they fail. learning how to use them, et cetera, et cetera. But the segue I want to make is, it seems to me,

one of the interesting things is you're wearing above your sweater right now some dice. Yes. And I want to talk about that a little bit. And it may not sound like it's related, but I think it is. And since I'm doing, that's questioning here. So why do you tell them that's what you do with those dice? Yeah, so I make decisions with these dice where any situation where I feel like there's decision paralysis.

So, you know, the safest way to do it is obviously choosing where to go to dinner. But I've done things from like where to travel to. I have not made financial decisions with other people's money. I think they would probably get upset with me. Yes. But I have made financial decisions with my own money. and I have to say that I have never been disappointed with the dice. So what I do is I will write a list of, you know, 12 things.

And whatever it lands on, I do them. It doesn't matter. I do not betray them. I don't question it. I just do it. And why that's important is sometimes we need to force ourselves to will ourselves towards something that's uncomfortable that we don't want to do. So a lot of times I'll put things on the list that are actually uncomfortable.

on purpose. I never put anything on the list like, you know, become a crazy maga person. Yeah. It's not on the list. Yeah. But I will put things on there for how to dress that day or, you know, I've even gone to flea markets and figured out which aisle to walk down or who, which person to talk to. And so I really love it because it, it has removed a lot of tension in my life and also

rewarded me over and over again with random. You know, and oftentimes random is way better than my own ego and the decisions that I would make. That's, it's interesting to me that you use that word ego because I've heard you talk about removing your ego from the process to things and whether your habits help or hinder you. And to overcome that, one can will oneself to, but it seems to me that in some sense you're using the dice as a way to force you to overcome that habit, which is, and that's why it intrigues me and interests me because that's, you know, as I say, science is a process. It's not a, it's not a bunch of facts. It's a process for learning how to make progress, how to discover about the

world, how make new discoveries, how to go in new directions. And it's a process that, you know, it's well-defined. It's worked out over 450 years to teach you some tools that do that. And I, I guess I see the dice in some sense as a similar version of that, forcing you to say, okay, I've got these habits of things I want to do. What can I do that's going to take my own ego preference, what I want to do out of the equation, and take me somewhere else and let nature in one way or another take me there? Yes. And so that requires a certain amount of fearlessness. And I am intrigued that we've made the connection of these dice. We may not know. I think it might have to do with the clipper ship at this hanging. I never made that connection before, but that's the very first memory of dice rolling.

You know, I already feel like my work is done. That made me happy. Yeah, no. But okay, let's, I want to talk about, you know, the fearlessness of investing, okay, and you've talked about the SpaceX, which paid off, but you've made other ones. And I want to talk about what you're were the guidelines. And maybe that was the first investment you ever made and that was sort of guided for you. One of the questions I had was how did you learn how to do this. But now I think I sort of see you as your husband and his and his friends and his friends. Because I wanted how you, you know, you've got a bunch of money. I've found a bunch of money. Great. How do I become an Asian investor? Most people on you're lucky you had that. Well to his credit. Well, I'm very lucky, very

fortunate in many ways. But he didn't just say here's a blank checkbook. Go write checks. Like he was just like, you've got to learn what all of these things mean and how this works. Yeah, it's great to have that schooling. It was really, really great. And I also started my own company and that around the same time. And starting my own company actually was the most important thing that I did as an angel investor because I wouldn't have been able to identify what it took to start a company, be a good leader, hire, fire, raise capital or any of the things that it was required of a CEO,

had I not done that myself. Oh, okay. Now, my company, I ran it for 10 years. I raised venture capital, returned the venture capital, and shut it down 10 years later. So it's technically a failure. But what I learned along the way, I've made investments in multiple categories based off of that. So, for example, you know, something that most people would think is really boring, and it is boring, is called cap table management, which is you manage the stock options for your employees, as well as your investors. And at the time that it was done with spreadsheets, along came a company called Carta.

that was automating this and actually coming up with a much more elegant solution. So I invested in them on the stage. A lot of people, as soon as they pitched, I said, I'm in. And everybody looked at me like, are you insane? And I was like, no, and that's a multi-billion dollar company now. And part of that is just this pattern recognition of what is needed in the world. I became a professional dreamer. You know, most of what I do is I dream and I talk with people about what the world could be,

or how it could be better, and then you recognize when someone is right in front of you with the solution. See, I mean, I'm smiling because when people ask me what I do as a theoretical physicist, and I always say I just get paid to hallucinate. I get paid to hallucinate. I mean, that's what I'm telling you. Thinking about the possibilities of the world is what science is one of the things that's you see what a scientist is. So there's a lot of times when people see me just sitting there for hours on end, I'm actually

thinking about, okay, you know, how, for example, right now, one of the, question, I'm not alone in this, but what's going to happen to all of the jobs because of AI? Yeah. You know, and you start thinking about how this plays out and where it goes. You know, I recently demoed the Orion glasses at Facebook, and so now I'm thinking about spatial computing and what are the next layers and when should I enter that? Should it be in two years, three years? When is it going to take off?

Because it's had a lot of false starts for AR and VR. Those are the types of things I like to think about and daydream about. And then, luckily, I don't have to build them anymore. I used to think that I had to do it all. Yeah. But now I have this amazing opportunity where I can make other people's dreams come true and I can be there at the very formative period of that inception point of that company and that's where I like to play and that's what I do for a living.

Oh, wow. You've gone through a lot of the future questions, but that's perfect, a perfect explanation. And the daydering part I particularly like. And so by the end of this, I want to convince you that you are, the scientist is the right thing. But, you know, the other thing, it's always about me. But anyway, no, not really, but I will at least say this. It's amusing to me that when I was a young professor, my daughter was five, I think, around there, five or six. And she was asked at school, what does your father do?

And she said, he sits and stares at a blank piece of paper. That's what I did for a living. Back in the days before computers, which I now spend my time on a lot, but, you know, which was thinking about as a theoretical physicist, what to do next, what the possibilities are. And I think it's a, it's unfortunately, in some sense, a skill that's disappearing in a little bit because of the busy work of computers and just being able to sit back and try and step back. I think it's so important.

I try to get my colleagues to have more unstructured time. I think that we structure our time and it's to buy a calendar for you to actually do good work thinking about the future. So my calendar does a little bit. look like anyone else's. But I'm going to back up a little bit because after SpaceX, I had to grind. It was not easy. I mean, granted, I had a step forward because I had made some money at Ironport before we sold it to Cisco.

Obviously, Scott had to. We now had to figure out how to deploy this capital and invest it. He's like, wow, this person over here is going to be a great investment partner. But I had to go to conference after conference after conference and take thousands of pitches. And that's where you really learn, which is you need breadth. You need to be able to see the entire landscape and try to figure out who's working on what, you know, because you can't, just because an idea comes to you and you're like, that's a great idea, you need to understand the competitive landscape and whether or not this person's the right person, et cetera.

And so that was probably the hardest part. And then it gets easier where I had to establish myself. I had to become a known name. I had to market myself and learn about marketing. and that, you know, to get on stage and start speaking, to be worthy of being on stage and speaking, you know, all of those things had to come. Wow. Because SpaceX was a non-enity. Everybody was, it was a laughing stock. It was a joke back then.

Like, just because I invested in, now you look back at it and you're like, wow, that's really great. Back then, it's always that way. It was a joke. It was a joke. But it's always that way with new ideas. Same thing was ever. It was a joke. It's, they're always, I tell physics students that.

It's like when you can't solve a problem, it's difficult. afterwards, it's like, oh, I've done that before. It's always, in hindsight, well, 2020, but it's always obvious after the fact. The hard part is the stuff in advance. And I was going to ask you, and it's probably further down the list here, one of the things as a successful scientist, when you ask what, there's two things, which is being able to have intuition about what's going to work. And the question I was going to ask you, it's an interesting question, you know, whether it's an innate talent or whether it comes just simply from experience. And, you know, again, it's interesting.

I'll bring up Feynman a lot in the next few minutes, I think, in different contexts, Richard Feynman, who, as you probably know, as a role model for many physicists, certainly for me. But he used to often, you know, appear to just come up with an amazing, you know, it was like magic. You know, he'd have the problem and he'd have magic. And he loved to make it look like magic. But after the fact, especially after you died, you saw that actually there were 20,000 pages of calculations.

He'd done so many things that he had this tool set from experience that built up an intuition about what might work. And it looked like magic. It sounds like that period for you was the building of the tool set. I was going to ask you, how much do you think is innate talent and how much? you think is experience in your success? I mean, I always call it an art form, what I do. So there are different tiers of investing just for the audience. I'm a seed stage investor.

I do early stage. So that often means I'm the first check-in. There are other investors who are downstream who have the benefit of data and have the benefit of what's called a data room. And you can get in there and kind of see if the business is working. Yeah. But I don't have that. I have very little to go off of.

And because of that, you have one hour usually, but it's such a competitive space to figure out in that one hour if someone is worthy of a check of a million dollars or so, which is a lot of money. And that part is definitely something that you can only learn through repetition and failure. And failure. We'll get to failure too often.

Because there's a lot of failure in this business. So on average, if you're worth your salt at all, nine out of the 10 companies you invest in are going to fail. It's a power law thing. You want one to carry the whole thing. And a lot of people don't even reach that one. So you've got to figure out how to spot people and talent quickly, how to recognize that someone is intelligent. You know, that's the first thing I look for. I look for the very first question I ask anyone in one of my interviews is, why are you here?

you could do anything anything why did you choose this what's your inception story kind of like where you're going through my origin story I start with their origin story and what I'm looking for is some level of hardship or adversity that they have overcome and ideally it ties to the problem

they're trying to solve so like let's say that they come from a family with tiger parents who are surgeons who cut off people's feet because of diabetes which is a true case and they tell you you've got to go become a doctor.

You have no other choice. And so this one entrepreneur said, you know, I'm not going to be a doctor. I'm actually going to invent a sock that has sensors in it that tell you whether or not you have ulcers. And if I can detect your ulcers, we can prevent your foot from being chopped off. So when I hear this story, I'm like, wow. Okay, you have a personal connection to the problem. You have knowledge of the problem.

You're trying to do something that has never been done before. And you're trying to save people's lives. so it's mission oriented. And then I have to think about how big the market is, whether or not people can pay for it, whether insurance will cover it and all that sort of stuff. But I can usually figure out within the first five minutes of I've even interested, and within about 15 minutes of I'm going to write a check.

That's how fast it is at this point. I mean, that's, again, amazing experiences. Well, this is great. And I was going to ask you in general about what were the, what were the guidelines from your first investment SpaceX was an accident

but when I wrote down some things that I'd sort of seen from as I've looked at things you've done and you know the first one first one I knew of was Uber and it came with you said you often start with a thesis yeah I always have a thesis and and also a question

I mean Uber started looking at medallions at cabs and asking why is it that I can't get a taxi why is it I can't and just ask asking the question, seeing the possibilities. I wrote these down, number them, looking for talent, looking for intelligence. So having a thesis, asking a question,

which again, by the way, is what you do in science, just in case you're wondering. And then looking for talent, again, if you're doing collaborations, which is what science really is. Most people think it's individual. It's not. You've got to look for the right people.

It takes a team off. It's not a solo operation. It's a social activity. Seeing possibilities, which is the hard, again, as you say it's an art. I often talk about, you know, science as an art. Alan Alda once said it was great that art, art requires precision, but science requires creativity, which is so beautiful because it, you know, it flipped things on its head. Most people think of your science as being precision and just doing the,

wrote thing, an art is something else. But seeing possibilities, it's a mixture of art and experience because the more possibilities you look at, often the easier it is then to extrapolate. in the future, looking for secrets, you said. Trying to find something that someone else hasn't known. What do you know that no one else knows? What do you know? Again, the tool of being a good scientist, by the way, is to try and look at those areas

where you can mine, where other people haven't already mine because there's so many people doing things. Okay. And you can elaborate on any of these things, but I've trying to write down what the things that I've sort of felt from reading and listening to you. And not getting cut in a rut of thinking. believe your own narrative. Oh, you can't. I mean, one of the biggest mistakes that investors, and I have made, is as the entrepreneur is pitching you, you get so excited about what they're

doing that you start to interject about what they could do with it. What happens when that is, you've become the narrative, you stop listening to them and you start believing yourself, actually. You're not even listening to them anymore. So you have to become a passive observer, and you have to ask questions where they lead you to the answers and they tell you where they're going to go. Because at the end of the day, you're not running the company. And I, I, all my failures, I do a post-mortem every time I have a company that fails. And I try to identify, was there anything that I could have done differently? Is there any question that I could ask differently?

Should I modify my process in any way? Or was it just they gave it everything and it was a timing issue and there was nothing that could be done? But usually there's something you can learn and you can adapt and then roll it into there and then become better and better and better. We'll talk about that, which is a key aspect of learning from failures. The last item I read them, by the way, was explore an experiment. It seems to me you love doing experiments.

I love exploring. I love doing experiments. By the way, guess what that is called? Science. And so, I mean, that's, I think, why I relate so much this. It's really, you sell yourself short for that. I call them games. You call them experiments.

But that's what science is just solving puzzles. I mean, for me, that's what it was. for me and all of my colleagues who enjoy it, especially, both experimental and theoretical physicists and any scientist, it's really solving puzzles. It's fun. It's for you. And if it wasn't, you wouldn't spend the long hours it takes to do it. Most people think scientists want to save the world, and some may, but that's not why they're doing it. They're doing it because they enjoy it. And it's a game, and it's a puzzle, and it's something that that exploration is exciting for them. And that's what drives and it's driven, I think every scientist who's ever made any significant progress and probably every businessman and every investor and everyone who's successful in anything is I tell people, you know, if you don't enjoy it, don't do it.

You really should enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah. But one of the things is the aspect of not getting caught in the right of your own thinking, of believing that you know the answers, it's something that I will now, the first reference to, real reference to Richard Feynman. who said that, and this is profoundly important, that the easiest person to fool is yourself. And that you have to learn techniques to question yourself, which is probably the hardest skill of all.

And I don't know how many times I've seen, and Feynman talks about this too, but in my career, scientists believing so much in an experiment is being done and there's a data point that's way off. and you can decide it's really significant when it's really an accident because you got a lot of data points and some of them are going to be off. But it's so enticing and so seductive to believe it has significance that he would say, you know, the easiest person to fool is yourself. And here's an example that he gives and it'll come back relevant to you.

Okay. He would say, okay, you have a, you have one day you're dreaming and you dream your friend is going to break their arm. and the next day they call you and they broke in their leg or even their arm and you go wow and his point was that's true but think of all the thousands and thousands and thousands of dreams you've had that don't I hear you're going I know you see where I'm going but I'm but but but it but I'm using his example right here but okay but all the times you've had these dreams about things that haven't mattered because everything we all take to ascribe significance to things that happened to us as if they're significant instead of being

an accident or a coincidence because when they happen to us, they mean something. And so we remember the things, we notice the things that are weird that happened to us. We forget and ascribe significance to them. And we therefore make nature conform to the evidence of our beliefs and ourselves instead of saying, hold on, step back. and and I think I guess part of the reason I'm mentioning here and I'll mention it again later obviously when we'll get to that is is there's a tendency as you say to get caught up when you hear an investor talking about something and that sounds exciting and and and

ascribing some whole significance to it when it may not be that significant correct or you're just like wouldn't it be cool if you could do this this this this and this and you're basically leading them to water. You know, you're not supposed to do that. You know, right around then, I noticed somewhere you'd said that you've got to question your narrative, that you've got to, you've got to factor your ego out of the narrative and that truth lies elsewhere. And when I read you, that's when I read or heard you say that, that's what made me think of the Feynman quote, because that's a different version of the Feynman quote. Get your ego out of it and the truth lies elsewhere. And what's the technique to go from A to B? And you've talked about it in your case.

He's talked about it in his case in the case of science. Well, I love to run experiments. So I used to think that, well, I used to think that a lot of my success was related to how I thought about the world. And I think some of it is. But I started removing myself from some of these things as an experiment. I run a lot of experiments. And this is where we're going to get into something a little woo. Yeah, yeah, but you do it, even your woo is experimental. It's experimental woo. Yes. I now think about what I want to happen. I visualize it and then I put a lot less effort into it to see what happens. And it's interesting because I think we have to, we think that we have to put so much effort into things or we think that our intelligence or our decision making abilities

are probably more important than they are, is what I've discovered with this experiment. And it's kind of been mind-blowing to me. I'll give you an example. So I was invited to this event. It was a firefighting event after the fires in Hawaii to raise money for firefighters. And normally when I go to these events,

I usually make one person that I want to meet. I never like to be one of those networkers. It's like, I'm going to meet 20 people. I'm like, I want to meet one person and I want to be friends with them. them and I want to develop a lifelong relationship with them because to me that's way more important. Okay, that's neat. And this one I just decided to do something different.

So for the past five or six years, I've been questioning everything about myself that I've held true. And I said, okay, if I go to this event and I sit still and I talk to no one, what happens? If I just sit there and I'm watching the band and I'm not networking, well, I meet somebody that that is doing something or curious about something that I'm thinking about. So at the time, I was really curious about film finance. And I was wondering, why is it that Francis Ford Coppola had to sell his winery in order to finance Megalopolis?

And I just read a story about it. So I was pondering like, how could we change the landscape of financing for film? Could it be done with NFTs? Could it be done with crypto? Could it be done with crowdfunding? Could it be done with crowd equity? and I went through all of these things I called one friend

and I said I would really like to figure this out because I do think a disruption needs to happen here if one of the best filmmakers of all time has to sell his winery which I know he's going to be fine but that's not the point the point is there's a problem and there's a downstream problem from that if he can't finance film that means that all these independent filmmakers also can't finance film that means that really good films are just not being made and when I get curious about these things I start

picking apart the whole industry. I started looking at everything from production, the studios, the writers, everything. So I was thinking about this problem. And I go to this event and granted, it's near Hollywood. So obviously there's going to be Hollywood people there. And I'm watching John Fogarty. He's playing. And a woman comes up to me and she says, you're watching the band. So she notices me doing something unusual. And I said, yeah, you're not schmoozing. Now she's like, I'm this, I'm, you know, not really in the industry. I used to be in the industry. And I'm just, you know, walking around when my husband does his thing.

And so she says, who are you? And I tell her who I am. And she's like, you should meet my husband. So she brings him over. And he tells me he's a director and a producer. And I'm like, ah, I've got a live one on the wire. Can I ask you a bunch of questions about the film industry? And he's like, sure.

So I start drilling him, which is what I do. I'm sure you've seen me do it. And I've hung out with me. And I'll just start asking people lots of questions. And then I tell him about Francis Ford Coppola. and he says, well, this is really interesting. Can I get your phone number? And about three months later, I don't hear from him.

He calls me up and he says, the thing I didn't tell you when I met you because I thought it was very odd was I'm best friends with Francis Ford Coppola and I have directed six of his films as an assistant director. Yeah. Oh, wow. Would you come down to L.A.

And would you talk to us about this stuff? So there's an example where I didn't have to go exert any effort to do that. And so I've been running this experiment over and over again, and it works all the time. Like, there'll always be someone who comes up who has something to add. Always?

Always. Always. I can show you this. Like, it's kind of nuts. Okay, but now the question, I see, okay, and you also know that I am, I hope, the ultimate skeptic. Of course. And which is a good thing.

But, so that's great. but but does that not reflect simply the fact that if you're open if you're open to possibilities you'll find possibilities that are interesting is nothing there's nothing sort of there's no overarching purpose or guidance to that it's well i mean there's no evidence that there need be that's what i would say is that you put yourself in a position where your places with interesting people. And if you just, if you're open enough, I wouldn't have run into her at the Starbucks is what you're saying. Obviously, I knew I was at an event that had some and not only that, but you, you, something about the way you made yourself, it was clear you were open. I mean, she did, I was open and

not. I was being antisocial. You were being antisocial, but in a way that was, that in, enticed her to come and ask you what you were doing. The one person I needed to talk to. Well, you know, but I guess the way I'm saying is, yes, that was the person you needed to talk to. But if she hadn't talked to you and someone else had come up to talk to you about something else, you'd be telling me today that that was the person that you needed to talk to. It's what I'm arguing. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But anytime I have set the intention and I have gone into a place and said, I'm running this experiment, because I'm actually logging this stuff. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm going to go. I know. And I'm impressed that you run these as experiments. I just am

I don't do that. And it is insane to me what comes of it. And I'm just like, me too. What does it mean? I don't know. Right now I'm just as a scientist observing and running experiments. Great. Okay.

That's the point. It's fascinating. Great. It's fascinating. And it's an experiment that you're running and yet to come to conclusions about. But right now it's good. As a matter of fact, I may never have a conclusion. But I just know that the only conclusion I have come to is I don't need to be as I can relax more.

Okay. You don't have to be pushing it. You can let things come to you. As a matter of fact, it takes very little effort. And that's the part that's blowing my mind. And I think the way you say it, I've heard you say it, is let the universe come to you. Yes, I let it come to me. Yeah, but that's okay. That's just a matter of being an observer and that's science. But anyway, or part of science, part of the empirical process. But nevertheless, at some point you have con now call, I want to push it the envelope a little further. you have called yourself spiritual. You now have a spirituality.

And I'm wondering, I'm going to ask whether. I don't know what the right word is for. Yeah, I know it's an overused word. And whenever I hear someone say it, and my mind glises over because it usually doesn't mean much. But in your case, I think I sort of, well, we'll explore what it means. But I'm wondering whether this is where you depart from your skepticism and questioning. So you have said that, that,

and we'll probably talk about that spiritual experience, but that there are two fundamental questions. Why are we here and what is our purpose, that have become profoundly important to you? Very important. And you've also described something which is interesting to me for someone who wasn't a reader initially, that basically you've gone down a rabbit hole of reading,

that trying to understand those questions has led you to read intensively, philosophers at a great level and I've heard you talk about that. And so I'm going to go backwards. I want to come back because I want you to give some examples. I'm basically a 13-year-old learning about philosophy right now. It's great. What we all are, but that's wonderful.

I mean, but it's great to be at this point of life and be able to more people should become 13-year-olds because that it's so hard to do and, you know, and to open yourself, say, this is totally new. I want to learn about it at this stage of my life. but I'm going to ask you a question that sounds nasty, but I don't mean it that way. Go for it. I'm used to nasty questions. But specifically because those two questions, why are we here?

What is our purpose? What if they are meaningless questions? Because, you know, in a scientist, I would say, I've always say any why question is really a how question. Because if you ask what is the purpose, you're assuming there's a purpose. but what if there's no purpose? Then it means nothing to ask that question. Richard Dawkins put it in a similar way. It's like, as he said, what's the color of jealousy?

We know it's green. But I mean, in the sense it's a question that may have no meaning. So you're assuming purpose. By asking what is our purpose or why you're here, you're assuming there's a cosmic purpose and you're assuming there's a why. So you're answering the question in some sense before you ask it. I live most of my life not assuming that.

And during the pandemic, I asked myself if I was being honest if I didn't try, the other questions that you allude to maybe being meaningless, is I asked myself, what is the one thing I've never tried in my life? And that was believing anything. And what does it take to actually get to that point if you've never done it? It was the first experiment I started running. Okay. And that was hard because no matter how much I got up in the morning, you can't just say, I believe in God because I woke up today and I'm like, today's the day. Yeah.

Some people do show up or she's going to show up. Some people do do that, by the way. Well, that never worked for me. Good. So there was no tricking myself into believing in God. It just was not going to happen. So I started asking lots of questions and I started going down rabbit holes, reading philosophers. I did experiment with psychedelics.

Pretty common when people have these questions. And I just started running experiment after experiment after experiment, and I got my answer. Now, you may or may not, you're a skeptic and you should be skeptical. And my answer is pretty simple, which is to spread joy. And the things that you identified, those three things are my purpose. Yes, right. But here's what I would argue.

But I got confirmation of it. Well, okay, let's hold on to that for a second because I want to argue that one doesn't have to be near. Those are three great purposes, and I'm glad they're your purposes. Yeah. But before we get there, I just want to, I want to give you the opportunity because to point out what, you know, you've had concrete experiences that have reinforced, dramatically reinforced your sense of something else out there and a whole. bunch of words you said and I don't know if you want to succinctly relate probably the I've heard you talk about it the this experience about the chills up your spine that convinced you there was something else I would love to I would and I think it's worth talking about

I think why I guess the question is why do I want a purpose because I was perfectly content for the most part of living without one for quite some time and my my everyday experience was just be a good person do good things and the world and do what's right by my standards of what was right and good, which is fairly universal. And that should be enough. We live, we die. That's the end. You turn to dust, whatever.

I was okay with that until I wasn't. I started to get really depressed. I started to get very unhappy. I was dealing with a lot of, how do I say it? There was a lot of trauma in my life that I'd never actually processed. Never really thought about. never really, I put it aside. I just went forward and just decided.

Most of us do. Yeah, just put it aside. And maybe that's fine. But at some point, it will catch up with you. So I had a stroke. And when I had the stroke, I realized, because everything stops when you have a health event, and you really put into perspective what matters.

And at that moment, what mattered was air, sunlight, very little. And then you start to take stock of everything in your life that you're grateful for and what's important. And you start to wonder, you know, when you nearly die, you start to wonder like, okay, was this it? Or is there more to it than this? And I felt like I owed it to myself to ask that question earnestly and as thoroughly as I

possibly could. Yeah, in a way that I respect tremendously. Most people wouldn't do, do, they'd either just say, oh, or, you know, and assume it. But you ask the question and decide you have to. explore it. Now, I've read a lot of things that make no sense because people say, well, you should practice radical self-love. What the fuck does that even mean? So I went and tried that. I was like, radical self-love is what, eating bonbons? Like going to movies whenever you feel like it, like taking a bubble bath? Like, what does it mean to radically love yourself? So I tried all the things.

I read all the blogs. I went to listen to all these influencers and none of it worked. And so it did not, things that are very, very simple on the surface will not integrate or make sense to people until they do. You know, you have the epiphany and you're like, oh, okay. So I realized I had a problem where I was escaping my problems by working and burying myself and all sorts of things and running away from the fear of abandonment, running away from what had happened to me rather than running towards it. And I needed to because if I was going to be a healthy and healthy and healthy, happy person and probably, now I can't say for certain that my stroke was caused by these things, but I certainly can't. I'm sure stress is a contributing factor. Nobody really knows why I had my

stroke. I was very young. Yeah. It was five years ago to have one. And not only did I want to understand why I had a stroke, but I wanted to understand how much of it was my own fault. And I discovered a lot of it was. And I made corrective changes to it and I became a much happier person. And that happiness happens to coincide with my pursuit of spirituality. And I shouldn't even say spirituality, my pursuit of my purpose. Of a purpose. Of a purpose. And the breakthrough I had was an interesting one.

I was watching a movie. And I'd read so many books and watched so many blogs and read so many blogs and There's so many things that I just nothing was clicking. This one movie had a had an interesting unlock and your mileage is going to vary if you watch a movie. If I tell you about this movie and you go watch it, you're not going to have some kind of epiphany necessarily. Like you have to be in the right place. But there's a moment of this. It's a very stoic moment where Larry, who is the main character of the movie, it's called the Razor's Edge, is confronted with a loss in his life.

And most people with this loss would cry or act out or do something that he didn't do. Instead, he asks the person that he's in dialogue with. She was an alcoholic. He said, I know how she died, but all I want to know is who gave her the first drink. And this woman said, I just wanted to show you that she was never going to change. You were going to marry this woman and she was always going to be an alcoholic. You were never going to save her. you just needed to know that.

And what I realized is that Larry person and the archetype was trying to save this woman not to save her, but to save himself. Okay. And then I realized that everything, all of the trauma that the one person he was talking about as well as the trauma that he had invented about this relationship with this person that had died was all a fiction. And that's when I had my first epiphany that had a spiritual experience. I realized that my mother, my experience with my mother, even as a child, is all a fiction. It's gone. It literally does not exist anymore. It happened.

It happened, but it's not. But it's not who I am today, nor does it need to be any part of who I am. Now, on the surface, that seems simple. It's like, oh, yeah, duh, but it wasn't. And so I was able to let go of this weird chunk. that was weighing me down, that was like a weight. And I didn't even realize. It's like if you have a rotten tooth and you go to a dentist and they drill it out and you're like,

ah, my mouth was hurting and I had no idea. Like I was in pain and I had no idea. And suddenly, I realized I'd never given my mother space to be who she is today. I'd never given her the opportunity. Now, she might just be the same person. But, and so a lot of people say don't ever forgive, don't go back, don't extend anybody grace. you know for the first time in my life I extended her grace and I said you know there could have been no other way like I love my life I love my friends that are in it I love being alive I love where I

ended up everything that was bad that had to happen in order for me to get to where I am so why do I care well as we've also tried to show today there's so many characteristics of you that I think have arisen from from that experience of your mother as well yeah yeah Beautiful things. Yeah. You know, so you have to take stock of that and realize, like, as bad as it was, as horrific as some of the things were, enormous beauty arose from it. And I've been able to accomplish amazing things. And she did give me a level of resiliency.

And some of the things that made me angry actually were lessons. Yeah. That molded me into who I am. And it took a piece of art to unlock that. But what happened after that, I did not expect. I wasn't praying. I wasn't looking for God. I was just looking for like something.

I had this weird feeling that I can only describe as a shock, um, energy. I don't know how else to describe it. We have poor words for these experiences that came from the base of my spine and shut out the top of my head. And the world never looked the same after that. And it's almost like there's a lens you're seeing the world through and then suddenly

you're given a new one. and everything became more beautiful. Jokes, some jokes started to make more sense. I know this is really strange, but I would look at signs on buildings, and I would like, oh, well, that never made sense before, but suddenly it makes sense. And I don't think we realize

that when we carry around trauma and we carry around grief and we carry around these things, it actually blinds us from realities we could see. You're incapable of even seeing them. Yeah. So that was fascinating to me. And then I started having a surge of serotonin.

I mean, it was massive. And it was like, okay, what is this? And of course, if you have a surge of serotonin, you're going to start experiencing things that people might call supernatural because your brain is out of whack. So I'm looking at this as a scientist too. I'm like, okay, I'm experiencing a chemical explosion right now. What is this? But then I started getting very strange visions. I never had these before.

Okay, this is weird. So I was like, well, I'm going to follow them. And one of the visions I had was a picture of a fighting Irish man. Probably like that. And for me, that meant either Notre Dame or at the time I went and looked in the news. And I'm like, what is Irish? And the Celtics were playing. Now, I hate basketball.

But I was like, you know what? Fuck it. Let's go to a Celtics game. This makes no sense. And so I went in and told my husband, I said, I need to go see a Celtics game. He thought I'd lost my mind because I kind of was losing my mind. And he said, you've never asked to do this. What on earth is going on?

I'm like, can you please just buy me a ticket to a Celtics game? And I said, I don't want to buy the ticket. I don't even want to know where I'm sitting. I just want to see what happens. Because something weird is happening to me. I just want to know. So on the way to Boston, I decided to run another experiment. I said, I'm not going to bring anything with me.

I'm not going to bring any luggage. I'm just going to be my wallet and my phone. everything I need I think is going to be given to me. Uh-huh. I'm going to stop there because I've heard, because I've heard you talk at length about that particular experience, which was crazy. It's crazy.

It's crazy. And continues to happen. I'll hear people to other podcasts to hear about that because I want to talk about some other experiences, but I want to, so people are probably very disappointed now because they want to hear what's going to happen. That's okay. You can seek her out and find it. But, I mean, you could talk up.

I'd be happy, well, I've heard from you as a friend, many experiences that have been interesting. The one thing that I heard you say at some point somewhere that this particular spiritual experience, the epiphany that you had with the bolt shooting out from your spine, it felt like a veil had been lifted and you suspected something beyond us. There must be more than we can see. And there must be an energy life for it. that doesn't disappear. Those all came out of that moment. Now, I guess the question I want to ask, and then I want to, so I'm going to sound skeptical and whatever, and then I want to talk about some of

the, at least another one or two of the examples of what you've had. But is it not, have you thought, and I'm sure you have, but my first reaction is, well, that's a psychological experience. It's not a supernatural experience. I mean, love is a psychological experience. Love is, all of these things are, but, and they're quite natural. They're wonderful. They feel divine, but they don't necessarily have to be. And that this was a wonderful psychological experience by burden, literally being lifted from your psyche and therefore feeling a oneness with the world and a wonderfulness about life

and that maybe things have to, you know, there's something beyond us. And science certainly tells us there's something beyond us. us, okay? But when you say there's a life force, then I jump back that has to, that doesn't disappear. I don't know uncertainty. I just, I feel something. I suspect something. Yeah, I understand you suspect something, but my counter argument would be, and I'm sorry to disappoint people, I'm sure, because I love going with this, is that there's no evidence. There's not a single piece of evidence that there is, when you say life force, what does one even mean? That doesn't disappear when we disappear. We can measure people when they die. We can measure the electromagnetic radiation,

you know, that, that, that, I could measure a light bulb on, on, on, on Jupiter if there was one with, with radio detectors we have now. So it's nice, it sounds good, but isn't, could that not just be wishful thinking? Sure. And all can be. You know, I talked to you either on the way here or somewhere else and I think it's worth relating to me, one of the most profound examples of someone asking themselves that question, instead of someone like me poo-pooing it, because I wasn't there. I wasn't part of your experience. I don't know. I can't, I can just ask questions. But someone, one of the reasons I admire Feynman so much was because he'd only ask questions like that about everyone else, but he had one of the most difficult moving experiences

himself. And he reacted in a way that was different than any of the human being. It was pretty remarkable with the clock. Yeah, yeah, the clock. And that. I've talked to you about that. So, and, and, and, and I'll just briefly related because it's, and, you know, it's in my book and other books, but, but, but, so Feyman had a, a, the love of his life, Arlene, and was an amazing woman. And she, she, she, she, she, she got, she was ill. And I guess it was TB probably. And, and, and while he was at Los Alamos working at the Tompom, she was in, in New Mexico and, and Albuquerque, I think, where they had a hospital. and he zipped back and forth every weekend, hitchhiking or taking other things.

Anyway, she was dying and eventually he made it there before she died. He was there when she died and he wrote her a very moving letter after she died. I mean, it was terrible. It was traumatic for him and she really was the love of his life. And it was almost been a horrific experience and difficult. But when he was there and she died and then afterwards it turned out the clock by her bed stopped. the moment she died. When they looked, you know, he looked at the time that the death was recorded by the doctors later on,

went to get the personal effects, saw the clock had stopped at that instant. And most people, many people, especially at a time of personal trauma like that, would say there was some divine cosmic significance to that. And that's fine. I mean, especially if it gives comfort. I don't know. But what he did, and this is a characteristic of him that I sure I, I, I, sure, I, would not be able to have myself.

I don't know if I could. Was to say, wow, this is strange. And then he said, well, oh, I think I can understand this. When she died, the doctor picked up the clock to look at the time. It was an old clock and record the time, put it back down. And obviously, you know, the mechanism got jarred and it stopped. And so that's the kind of self-questioning. that is really remarkable.

And we have to, I think, and, you know, maybe it's not for everyone, but I think we have to ask ourselves, do we want to believe in the sense of Fox Muldar? Are we all wired to want to believe? One of my favorite shows. Yeah. We all, I think we all want to want to award. I'm going to yes and you here because he wrote a letter to his wife

after she died. Yeah. That's one of the most beautiful letters I've ever read. And why would a scientist who is that logical about a clock, write a letter to a dead person. I mean, obviously you could just say it was grief and he didn't know what to do with this grief. But he also said, I would send this to your address, but I don't know your new address. I would send it to you, but I don't know your new address.

I know, but I think we can argue that he was, he was doing this for himself. He needed, he needed to reach out. He missed her so much. Didn't necessarily think that there was a, that if he could find the address that she'd be there to receive it. But you're right. It's one of the most beautiful letters. It's one of the most beautiful letters.

I don't know if you read it after. no point in writing. Did you read, I don't know if after I talked about the story, whether you read that. Yeah. Yeah, it's an amazing letter. But let me, but, but, but, and I can't help a probe a little bit more. And then we'll veer off in some other direction to, as we get close to the end, you'll be pleased to know. Okay. But, um, we're, we're only probably two or three hours away. Hey, I'm good. Yeah, I know. I'm having a good. No, but anyway, um, but one of the things you said is that, and, and in your own life that, about atheists versus sort of spiritual, is that they don't have a purpose.

They're rudderless, directionless. That's not true. Okay, I heard you say it. So, okay. Maybe you felt rudderless. I felt rudderless and directionless. But I know plenty of atheists who are beautiful, wonderful people that have rudders and have a sense of moral purpose. I like to, I hope I like to think.

Well, I don't know if I'm sure I have a rudder, but I like to think I have a sense of purpose. You have a rudder answer. But anyway, but the point is that I want to make is that you found purpose, which is wonderful. And your three purposes are purposes that define one of the reasons you are such a remarkable and wonderful human being, in my opinion. But I guess the point is, I would like to ask you, is they don't have to be, they're not cosmic purposes. They're your purposes. So we don't need anything. Maybe.

Well, maybe. That's the question. But it's not obvious that we need anything. That we, that people say, how can I be an atheist? and because there's no purpose in life. And the argument I always make is we all make our own purposes, and it's a wonderful thing. You don't need a God, you don't need anything external

to define those purposes that you can make your own and it's even more wonderful when you make your own purpose in life because it becomes more precious. And so I would argue that everyone, even if you don't believe there's any cosmic significance to yourself, and I certainly don't think there is. I see no evidence of cosmic significance to me or all of humanity. The world will be more or less the same when we're gone, the universe,

and no one will care and no one will know. But we know while we're alive, and we make our own purpose, and it becomes more precious, because we've made it, and we have a finite amount of time to utilize that purpose, to make our lives better, and presumably, hopefully, for some of us who believe this, the lives of other people around us better. I don't see that one needs a cosmic, you might call it spirituality, but I would argue it's,

it's the lack of spirit, in some sense, it's not a loss of faith. I hate the word. Not having faith, there's not a loss. It can be a gain. Anyway, I'm throwing that out to you. So I was, everything that you just said rings true for me because that's who I used to be. However, I didn't feel intellectually honest having such absolute conviction. in that, that I had not tried all of the things that I had admonished or basically said was that I vilified even. Because I vilified people who were, I called them charlatans. I was one of those people that said, you know, there's no truth to things that I couldn't

possibly know if there was no truth to them because I actually hadn't tried or actually explored them. And this stuff has not been, for the most part, because it's ridiculed, scientifically verified. So most people will look at it and it's heresy to even say like, I'm going to spend any time on this because people will be like, well, that's just crazy pants, pseudoscience, woo-woo shit. But what if we actually did try to figure out how many coincidences are normal? You know, I'm fascinated with this question. Yeah, but I do. But I think people, some people do. I think you're right. Look, I don't. People who, I think people who are, you

shouldn't be dogmatic about anything. My point was that it's not that there's not that there's no, that I can prove to you that there's no God. But I can ask the question, is it necessary? And is it obvious? Is there any obvious evidence that there is? And the answer is no. And therefore, in the absence, you know,

a workable assumption is that one doesn't need that or that it doesn't have to exist. But one can keep looking for it. And there are, I think people, you know, people do worry about coincidences. And it would be great to do some more research. I have to say, and that's why I want to say, I want to get to some of your coincidences, just to point out that, and I've known you, that they happen all the time. All the time. And that's fascinating to me.

And people always say it's because I'm a more open person. I'm more observant. I'm more all of these things. And maybe I notice them more. And that could be true. But I do want to come back, spreading joy, lifting others around you in any poverty, your purpose, your revealed purpose to you. It sounds patronizing to say it, but I'll say it.

No, because I said earlier, I see those as stemming from what saved you earlier in your life. So psychologically, it seems to me it's just as quite reasonable and wonderful and beautiful that these wonderful purposes in your life come from what saved you. I would even simplify it that I'm actually probably going to distill it down to one. it gets even simpler than that, but all that's required of me is my presence. Okay, yeah, but...

It's not even any of that. Not even any of that. Well, it's true. Your presence, being present helps being there. But I guess I was going to say is that it stems naturally. I don't see any... I don't, I, again, just because I think it's important to ask these questions,

not to be mean and not to be, not to demean anyone's ideas, but it's, but we owe it to our, ourselves and to others to ask the questions, can these just come naturally from the psychological experiences you've had? And if they can or if it's possible, then you have to say, well, okay, I'm still, I'm still, if you want to call agnostic about the whole process. Some people can and they're gifted with the ability to accept all of that and say this is my purpose and I made my purpose, I was not capable of it. And I had a deep, deep rooted unhappiness, deep depression,

physical, like, illness that nearly killed me. And at some point, you've got to wonder, you know, what changes do I need to make? How can I think differently to preserve myself and save myself. So to some extent, it's about my own preservation and happiness, sure. Well, I mean, all I can say is I'm really happy for that. Yeah. No, I'm happy that you're happier. I know you talked about a friend of ours, Ben Gillette, who when you told about this, would worry, be mad angry. Oh, I was, I was so worried. I thought, I don't, and I feel bad for for even projecting this on him. But part of it is because I've known him for so long, and I've seen his evolution over time as a person and his kindness increase over time.

And because he used to be fairly intolerant. Yeah. And so when I, it was like coming out as a gay person to your atheist friend. Aethias can be, and not him, but atheists can be very dogmatic, very closed, very cruel, very mean. Yeah. And unfortunately, that's who I surrounded myself by. and that was probably part of it.

Whereas now I'm in a much more open, curious space where I'm letting go of a lot of things and the things that I'm reading, the things I'm practicing, the mindfulness, the meditation, all of these things only serve to enhance my life and don't harm anybody else. Absolutely.

And that's what I look for. I'm like, if I'm not harming anybody, harming myself, if they're charging me money for it, then it's automatically, I'm skeptical. and it's harmful. So those are the things that I practice that I integrate into my life, and that's what I call spirituality.

That's great. And I think I would have the same, I assume Penn would have the same reaction, was if it makes you happier and better for the people around you, he's like, I've noticed you're happier. Yeah, I'm thrilled for you. And I'm never, I would never, you know, I want to ask these questions, but I'm just happy that it's worked for you. And I don't want to beat people up with it and tell them that they have to do what I do.

No. Because that's not at all the point of what I'm doing. Yeah, and as long as it, as you say, as long it doesn't hurt other people, I've had this discussion with Noam Chomsky and who said, I don't care what people believe it's what they do. And same way, I don't care what people. If it has a negative impact, what they do. And often, I would argue religious beliefs do unfortunately have a negative impact, I would argue. I'm trying to rid myself of the word belief. Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too.

I never use the word belief. Yeah, I'm trying. Well, I mean, I never, I try to never either. Try to never. scientist, which is what you are and what I am, I would argue, should ever use the word belief. Things are likely or unlikely. That's it. Yeah. For me, I run experiments and they're delightful. And I've never been happier in my life. And that's all I know. And so I'm going to stay the course. Keep going to keep going with it. Keep running the experiments. It's the game. It's the science.

And it's science. What you're doing is running the experiments. It may be in a weird area, but it's running experiments. And I don't know if for the purpose of completeness, it's worth mentioning just to show, I cut you off about your weird experience in Boston. But you want to mention, we were just talking to date with a friends of the unicorn experience. Do you want to just give. Oh, yeah. Yeah, give that as an example. That I've never told on a podcast.

I think it's very fascinating. Yeah. So I meditate a lot. And I'm not saying this because I'm trying to promote meditation. It's mostly just because I try different techniques. I record the results of them. I record, you know, I take note of all. of it.

And there's been this problem where I meditate to a point where I'm literally standing on what looks like a black hole and I feel like, and I can't describe it in any other way, there's an invitation to go through it. I never can. I get scared. I panic every single time and I'm never able to jump through. Now a lot of my friends who meditate say there's nothing on the other side and they start laughing. And I know that's true.

I know it's all a figment of my mind. I know that like I can jump through there and there's nothing on the other side and it's going to be fine. But I for whatever reason, can't do it. So one day I got close to that, failed and I said, fine, I'm going to use this time for something constructive. I'm going to try something different, a new experiment. I can't until recently, I had my first lucid dream. I've never been able to really lucid dream until recently. So I thought, well, what if I could lucid dream while awake?

Is that such a thing? So I daydream a lot, but I've never like really directed it like a dream the way. people described lucid dreams. So I spun up this world. It took a while of a mall. And I turned every store in the mall to a different color, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, brown, white. And then I started taking all my friends and putting them in individual stores

and watching their joy of when they went into the store built for them. It's like, these are the red people, the orange people. But I had this one friend who didn't fit. And I tried as I might. I mentally put him in every store. And I was like, wow, he really doesn't fit in any of these. Now this friend of mine is from Arkansas. You know, he is a Republican or libertarian.

Promotes gun usage. He's a stereotype. I mean, he just is. And, but there's this softness to him. There's this underside that I see, that apparently I can see and not very many people can't. And I was like, well, what happens if I put him in a rainbow store? Whoa. he fits there.

And I let him twirl around and he was happy and sparkles were flying out of his hands. And I was like, well, we should add unicorns. So I started adding unicorns. And I started laughing. I was having the time of my life. And then someone said, Sian, dinner time.

And then the whole world disappears. And your universe is gone. I was like, oh, okay. So I go downstairs and I get a text message from this very same friend that said, were you just thinking about unicorns? Oh, now we're cooking. Right? because I love it when the stuff, I run these experiments now all the time.

And I was like, why? And he said, well, I was watching television. And a couple years ago, you bought me a cookie cutter. Do you remember this? I had not remembered this. And he said, I said, yeah, you know, I bought it for you because I thought it would be really nice if you made cookies for people and handed them out. They might get to see, like, how wonderful you are.

Because people make assumptions about him because they assume he's MAGA. They assume all these things about him, that, you know, he's unlovable. There's a lot of things that people assume about him. But one of the things I know about him is he loves to cook. So this cookie cutter was a unicorn. And he said, I thought it was a crazy gift. I put it up on a shelf. I'd never used it.

Never made any cookies. It's still in its package. But it shot off from the shelf and landed on my feet. Today, at that instant. That instant. And he said, and I thought to myself, that's weird. Because there was no earthquake, he checked. There's no construction going on.

outside. He has no fan. He went through the checklist and he said the only thing that I can think of is Sion is into this woo. And I always say woo, not woo woo, one woo. Never go full woo-woo. All I can think of is that maybe you thought of something. And I don't know why I thought of that, but I just sent you this text message and I said, I happened to be, and I told them what I was doing. And again, coincidence. Who knows? It's remarkable. But I've repeated it again and again and again and it's very hard to spin up a world that you can sustain for a period of time that has lots of interactive parts that's a daydream that's like a movie yeah it's not easy some people it comes to them very easily for me it does not um but i have been able to see as long as somebody's

observant so this may leads me to believe okay believe i don't know how to use that word suspect yeah that maybe there's something about how people are connected that we don't understand that science will someday explain. But we should be open-minded about it. We should at least be curious about it and try to understand what that is. Yeah, absolutely. And so I think that's a great example of,

hey, there's something strange. I also love that there's another person involved. There's something strange. You're going to call. Because there's one thing when you experience it, it's another when two people are more experiencing. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, and in fact, we know,

because today associated with this podcast, something really strange happened to me. and I said my wife I said this is cyan weird and and and but I like to think that I my mentality is to think about how how could I mean how how is real how physical reality without being extended uh could explain it I'm I'm now convinced it I'm not convinced but it's plausible how could I could be convinced I don't know but I found a plausible solution that didn't require any anything uh beyond you know the standard stuff and so if I can find a plausible argument, to me, that's, that's the simple, that's Occam's Razor, I guess.

But, but, and in one of my books, I think beyond Star Trek, I talked about, we all suspect that we, you know, maybe there's some way we communicate. And we certainly communicate with pheromones and other, maybe, actually some people say it's overstated, pharmon communication. But, but there's no doubt that there are all sorts of unconscious signals we're giving each other when we communicate. That's true. But the interesting thing is we have, what I try to say is that if you look at modern science, we have the techniques to be able to detect any kind of communication, electromagnetic, or otherwise across galaxies. So if there were some kind of new signal given the laws of physics, that was beyond that, it's very difficult to imagine that our modern detectors who could detect a light bulb on Jupiter or Pluto, would not in some ways be able to detect some physical aspect of exchange of information and therefore

energy. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, I agree. It makes no sense to me. It makes no sense to anybody. But it's fascinating. And that kind of, and as you just said, that's one example. I know what happens to you a lot. Sometimes when I'm near you, these strange things happen to me. And but I think it may be. I'll join the club because there's many, many people that starting to, the list is getting long. people now call me and tell me their dreams just to see if they if they're yeah because there's been really strange things now where people dream about me wearing an outfit and it'll be the outfit that I'm wearing for Halloween you know that kind of thing I go back to find me once again in dreams but anyway I try to be okay so this was I want to I want to veer back I don't know what I was going to say I

want to rear back to reality but this is real go for it no but but but I want I want to there's a few questions I want to ask as we as we as we as we as a we as a we we we we're going to say we we we we're we head near the conclusion of things because I think they're relevant to people to understanding aspects of, because your experience is, given the situation you're in, I think is important for people. You've been canceled. You want to talk a little bit about that experience, about the experience of being canceled and what, and what, which time? Well, I know, a few times. But namely, I guess more of the lessons of why you think it's a, why it's a concern and why it's an appropriate.

Yeah, I've been canceled light. I've not been fully canceled. time was because I started a company called Ziviti, which today's sort of spiritual child of it is only fans. And when I started this company, it was around the time that MySpace was in its heyday and Facebook had just launched. And people would protest me. So if they found out that I was speaking, they would protest outside. They would do anything they could to get every single one of my talks canceled. They would obstruct everything when it came to promotion. of my company. So if I wanted to advertise any place, they would come after me. If I wanted to work,

I wanted to work at WeWork, for example, and the folks at WeWork wouldn't let me work there. I mean, the list just was long and long and long. And that was different because I was running an adult-oriented website. And so I thought it was just isolated to that and that some people were just kind of oddly crazy about that very specific thing. But when I worked at Founders Fund and people, Peter Thiel was my partner, which we didn't cover my period at Founders Fund. That's when there were calls for people for me to quit working with him, to disassociate from him, that I was guilty by association of just being in his orbit. The biggest thing now, guilt by association is wrong.

It is so incredibly wrong because you rob people of their individuality. You rob them of their decision-making ability and their kindness and their love. Yeah. Like when you isolate people and you drive them into the fringes, you are almost creating the very people that you're trying to fight. Because what happens is the far right or the far left says, hey, over here, we love you. Yeah. Come on over here. It's also that you're also denying the fact that people are people.

And whether you like Peter Thiel's politics or not, whether he's creating opportunities for people through his investments, which is while you're interacting with them, is totally. separate. Well, not only that, but what unlawful thing did he do? Yeah, exactly. And or, you know, but even if he did something unlawful that was unrelated to what you were doing and that, and that you had an experience that was positive for the world related to your interaction with him, you know, we are not responsible for the actions of all the people we know in the world. No, we're not. And, and, and we're responsible for our actions and, and trying to do good, I guess, if we want to say it that way. And if we, if our interactions, with them are doing both those things,

it doesn't matter whether they, you know, whether they're good parents, good neighbors, or law-abiding citizens necessarily. I mean, if you know of something happening, it's bad and you don't, but that's a different thing. Well, also to make someone, a moment in someone's life,

the totality of who they are as a human being is cruel. So sometimes people say something wrong in a moment. In order to get to the right answer, they have to say something wrong out loud and give them space so that you can correct them or give them dialogue or feedback, right? Instead of a life sentence. Instead of a life sentence.

But unfortunately, we live in a time, and I think it's starting, the pendulum is starting to swing the other way. But there's still a lot of aftermath of the period of time where people were, I don't think, I think people are, are grossly understating how bad it got.

Or how bad it still is. Or how bad it maybe even still be. I'm outstensive. Yeah. And, and, and, you're writing. Well, the book, I mean, The book you've actually read. Yes. Yes.

Anyway, go on. The War on Science. Am I allowed to talk about it? Yeah, we can mention it. It's a great book. Very sad. Very depressing. Anyway, but the harsh reality of what's going on in the world is this ideology that

it predates schools and education systems. I've been looking into the roots of it where it comes from. But it's so pervasive it went into every institution, including mine. and, you know, at first I saw it where university campuses weren't allowing Republicans to speak. And they started throwing milkshakes at them and concrete milkshakes and all these things and attacking them. And I remember speaking up about it and all of my colleagues were like, who cares? Fuck them. Fuck the Republicans.

They're evil. You know, they're demons, you know, like Nazis. And then it just became out of control because it was like, okay, well, if we don't stand up for speech, on campuses for these Republicans and who's next. Yeah, exactly. That's a speech is not to protect the people you like. Exactly. It's, you know, you have to protect speech you don't like.

And by the way, I've said this before, but it's worth in the context of this, not just because it's, we want to give them the freedom to say what they have, but the really important aspect is that you want to provide you the freedom to find out you were wrong. If you listen to them, you might find out that they have somebody to say. And if you always silence them, you never have the possibility of finding out you were wrong. So freedom of speech is really not just completely altruistic. It's actually selfish in a way because you're giving yourself the opportunity to find out you're wrong.

True, very true. So when I worked with Peter, I had speaking engagements while I was working with him. Yeah. But the moment that he endorsed Trump and spoke at the RNC, all of my speaking engagements dried up. I was okay with it. I mean, I was like, whew, I can't break for a while. But at the same time, it was so noticeable. Like, I got disinvited from parties, and there were people who wouldn't shake my hand, and there's people who unfollowed me on Twitter, and people who unfriended me, and people told me that they couldn't even be my friend or couldn't have dinner

with me or shit, you know, hug me. And I was like, what is this all about? And it's like, well, you're friends with Peter. Okay. Well, I'd rather be friends with Peter then. Yeah, exactly. It's a great litmus test of someone's heart and how ruthless and unkind they can be or how fair weather they can be or have no North Star. You know, I have friends who are communists and we get along. Yeah. And we love each other and we disagree deeply about ideology and everything in between. But we have a common mutual respect where we can talk and discuss things and debate things and disagree. And that's how it should be.

Yeah, it's a wonderful litmus test to get to be attacked. Yeah, it's a great litmus test. You know who your friends and friends are. It's one of the great blessings, one of the few ways. Okay, another, you know, I'm hitting a bunch of all of these, you know, not sore points, but, but, you know, another hot button issue I want to talk about is, I read in your Wikipedia page, by the way, which, of course, I have great, I'm not a big fan of Wikipedia, I should say, but lately, but anyway.

I know what you're going to say. But, no. I forgot this, for this was a canceled thing. No, no, no, no, no. Maybe it isn't. No, no, no, it's nothing good. It would cancel. I was, I read that you were the first woman partner in founder fund. Which is BS, by the I know, but with maybe BS, but it's the kind of thing I know. So it's women in investing. I know you don't like that. And I want, why don't you talk about that? Because I think that's also an important issue. This identity politics thing. Yeah, I thought you're going to bring up something else on Wikipedia,

which we could get to. But yeah, yeah. The identity politics thing deeply troubles me. So I actually was the second female at Founders Fund. The other one was Lauren Gross, but for whatever reason, people didn't want to give her any credit because she was the CEO or CFO kind of like person. Yeah. But she had checkwriting ability, but because she wasn't technically a partner, you know, it didn't fit in this umbrella and everybody wanted a story. So I had a real problem for a period of time where I know that I worked really hard to get to where I am. I know that I honed these skills and develop this art, to get a phone call where they're like, we want you to be on a panel because we need a woman,

is the most degrading thing to hear. Because what I hear, and I'm just going to be blunt, is I need a vagina. I mean, I've even joked with people. I'm like, oh, you need a vagina? I'm sorry, mine's not available. And then you could see their face. They're like, that's not what I was asking. I'm like, no, that's exactly what you were asking.

It's not I want a female perspective. or a woman's point of view. It's like, no, we have a checkbox. Yeah. And we have this checkbox because we've been given this initiative that we need to have enough women up here because we haven't done a good enough job. And this is how we're going to correct it, is we're going to marginalize you and make you feel like crap.

Like, I want to be on stage because I'm the best. I want to be on stage because of my track record and because I'm fucking good at what I do. And otherwise, I will accept no substitute. So I refuse covers of magazines. I've refused speaking engagements. I've refused podcasts. I've refused all sorts of things to the point where I even opted out of gender altogether. I was like, you know what?

I'm just an ex. I'm female, but I no longer have a gender. And that put an end to it until all of a sudden, all of this stuff started happening. They were like, now we need a trans person. And so I started getting all these calls. It was like, we need a trans person. I'm like, I'm not trans. And they were like, so you called the wrong person.

I opted out, stop calling me. That's basically what I did. I was just like, I opt out. I'm done with this. I'm so done with this. Yeah, no. And okay, thanks. It's interesting to see that from perspective.

It's, you know, and it's funny is people try to be sensitive. I know a friend of mine who's a well-known scientist who, I wanted to be on something. And he said, oh, I have a rule. I won't be on manals. And I felt like saying, well, you know, I'm trying to find that people appropriate for this particular subject, you know, and it's just, it's very demeaning and it's patronizing. also, as you point out, people might not realize how hard it is to break into Founders Fund.

Yeah. Okay, it is, there's only a few thousand investors in my category of investment in the world. And at these firms, it takes sometimes 10 to 15 years for a partner to leave to create an opening for you to join in the first place. I believe, or I believe,

I'm again trying to get rid of that word. I trust them when they tell me that they had a short list of names. They wrote a bunch of names on the board and I'm the one that they wanted. They never once mentioned female. They never once mentioned woman or that we have a criteria. And I don't ever suspect that anyone on that team would do that. And that's the only reason why I joined them is because other firms actually said, ah, we've got these diversity metrics and we needed to join.

And I was like, uh, no. Well, you know, and I think you hit the point there. It is ultimately, in my opinion, and I suspect you agree, demeaning and patronizing. So because if it's that way, there's always an asterisk next to your name. It's like, you know, because. You're always going to be questioned. It's always going to be questioned. And so the worst thing we do is having these quotas because it ultimately, it's maybe

seem good at the moment, but it always puts a stigma on the people who are given those positions because you're always going to, even if they deserved it, you'll never. Another one of my favorite stories I ever read was, his name is Shelby Steele I think and he wrote a essay called the age of white guilt and I was in a dentist office when I read it

and it talked about affirmative action and it was the first time that I'd ever seen anything written about affirmative action that just really made sense and it changed my life forever and I realized like exceptionalism doesn't come from rolling out red carpets and he states that very clearly.

He is an exceptional person. And he never wanted a door to be open for him because of some quality he was born with. Something of which he had no control. But he had no control. I mean, it's true. We may have no, ultimately have no free will. We may have no control.

But quality of character of something you've done, rather than something that was done for you or something that you're born in this place of this person is something. We don't get to fill out an application form when we're born, as someone pointed out. But anyway, okay, now we're getting,

there's another topic, which I think is really important. You brought it up. And again, getting back to the entrepreneurship aspect of your existence is the importance of failure. Yeah. I'll relate a little story because,

and I may have related it before, but when I was chairman of a physics department at Case Western Reserve, we created a new master's degree in physics entrepreneurship, which the head of our business school said was an oxymoron. But he was completely wrong because I would argue that scientists are entrepreneurs. Because all scientists are, you know, we work on a question. When it turns out it's the wrong question, we ask, what have we learned from that question we can apply to the other thing?

That's exactly an entrepreneurship. But what we didn't know anything. and so we create a seminar for a year. We invited physicists to become business people back to say, what aren't we teaching you? And almost universally, they said, you're not teaching, you didn't, in school, I didn't learn how to fail effectively.

Because we give you problem sets where you're guaranteed to know the answer. We give you a PhD where it's pretty well defined usually. But in life, it's never that way. And in particular, in business, it's not. Failure, as you point out, nine out of ten times, when you're an investment person. But if you're actually the entrepreneur, you've got it, you fail and you like, okay,

but this really didn't work for here, but it can work for that. And we were talking about the fact that that in certain places you're penalized for failure and I think you were talking about China. But do you want to talk about the importance of fire? I would say most places in the world, you're penalized for failure.

I was in Italy speaking at an entrepreneur conference and a lot of the business people came up to me and they were like, look, you know, in Italy, there's a culture that if you fail, you often will never receive funding again. In China, it's even worse, which is they have a social credit system that's electronic. And if you fail, your VCs could sue you. You could lose your right to travel. And in some instances, transact.

And it's very black mirror. It's terrible. America, for some of the things that are great or not great about us, is a culture that celebrates failure. And that's something that I love about America. And then some other countries have a little bit of it, but then, you know, not as much. One thing I will point out is if you go to a business section in a store,

you'll see hundreds of books on how to win and how to succeed. But you won't see a single book. I've yet to find one. I'm hoping someone will write one. On what happens when you have to shut down your company, the psychological effects of it. there is a problem that is pervasive in America, which is this sort of grinding attitude, hustle attitude of everything's up into the right and everything's looking great.

And they'll tell their investors that. Everything's great. When at home, everything's falling apart. They're going through a divorce. You know, things are bad. So when I built my firm, I now run my own venture firm. A lot of what I do is try to get very, very awesome. authentic and down to real human things with my founders where we discuss these things before they get out of control.

And learning, one of the best calls that I ever get is when a company actually tells me they've failed. Because I get the opportunity to be the best I can be in that moment and tell them it's going to be all right. And I get to tell them that let's go through what you learned. You know, what went wrong? Let's do a post-mortem here. why don't you go take a break come back again, try again. And if I really liked working with them,

I'll tell them I'll back your next thing. And those are the types of things that don't exist in other cultures. And I think in our culture that makes America specifically special. But I do think more books need to be written about it. More people need to talk about how to fail. And what kind of attitude

society needs to have towards those failures. I may not just be what makes Americans are special. It may be one of the things make you so special, I would argue. Maybe, but I think I'm allowed to do it because I'm in America. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And I think it's a really important point to make. It's that if there's one aspect of that culture, it's that you, you know, that you can fail and

succeed and fail, you know, ultimately and and and try, try again. And now speak a more optimistic question. And I think it's a really the important, almost penultimate question. And It is the penelope question, as it turns out. What excites you most about technological, the technological possibilities at the current time? I mean, I hate to ask people to make future predictions, but what are the things that you find most interesting to be thinking about now?

And maybe some of them are, you can't talk about. But, no, I can talk about. I love talking about this stuff. So did you finish your question? I'm sorry. No, that was my, no, no, don't worry. I don't mind being true. I think that, I mean, AI is on the top of everyone's mind right now.

It is shifting the landscape everywhere as far as things to invest in, as well as what sort of companies that exist today will be unseated as a result of the submerging technology. And one of the things I like to think about is one of my favorite books I've ever read is The Diamond Age by Neil Stevenson. I don't know if you've read it. No, I know Neil, Neil, but I don't know a book. Neil is probably one of the best futurists that I know of. I agree with there. Because he's a great historian. Yeah.

And he hates technology, which makes him extra special. But yet he's predicted. The best science fiction, by the way, isn't full of technological mumbo-jumbo. Yeah. But the interesting thing with him is that he has predicted a number of technological advancements that are pretty remarkable. So in Snow Crash, it was VR and meta. I think the concept of a metaverse even comes from Snow Crash.

And then in Diamond Age, it's the concept of an iPad that's intelligent because it has an AI that teaches a little girl. And it is a post-scarcity society where you can 3D print anything. So you might wonder what becomes valuable in this universe, which is handmade items, things that have flaws and imperfections. And so I've been thinking about that a lot about how diamond age is playing out in front of us. In a land where everything can be perfect, you can create art on demand now. What is going to become valuable?

And I actually think jobs are going to look very different in the future than they look today. And I actually think that we're going to have more artisans. We're going to have more bespoke crafty things. And those things are going to be the things that are like diamonds and have value. The things that are mass manufactured that are cookie cutter are going to become less valuable as the sort of cost of goods of those things goes down and it becomes easier and easier to implement them. And so I'm really fascinated with this. And it's interesting that science fiction is kind of informing my investment decisions there. But I'm also really interested in the unleashing of a dormant talent.

So there are millions upon millions of people out there who are creating. It is not limited to a select few people. So there are a select few people that have practiced skill and applied their creativity and have succeeded and are remarkable. But there are millions of people out there who have just as valid ideas, but no medium to get them out nor time or ability that now AI unleashes this for them. So they can write stories now. They can generate art. They can code. What does this do when you have?

all of these people suddenly contributing to creativity. It's like it's going to be worse than the printing press. It's going to be worse than all of these revolutions we've had where all of the entrenched people who believe that they can control this space. Because they're going to say, no, that's not art. Yeah. Well, you know, Adobe Photoshop was that art? You know, the camera is that art?

You know, you can go back through time and try to, all of these disruptions. There was somebody who was unconstrups. he was unseated. And anytime someone's unseated, it's uncomfortable because they think they control it. They control it until they're dead. And then that generation's gone. Yeah. They can't control it until they're dead.

This generation's gone. Right now, it's a Cambrian explosion. It's very, very difficult to figure out sort of what's going to emerge from it. So I've invested mostly in power, compute, data centers, and some inference models and things like that. But mostly what we call picks and shovels. And I have stayed out of the application layer of AI. So I'm thinking ahead two to three years from now of what is the next phase, because that's what I do. I don't invest.

If everyone's investing in something, that's the time not to invest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just is because the alpha isn't there. Like you're not going to find those 100x, 1,000 X opportunities by doing. just what everyone else is doing. So I've got to figure out what's next. I actually think spatial computing is going to have its moment, probably in the next three to six years. And there's been a lot of false starts. So there was this company called Magic Leap that came out that I think the amount of billions of dollars that were plowed into this company was kind of

unreal. And it's dead. The technology was sold off someplace. And they're not wandering around with magic leaps everywhere. And then VR was supposed to be the biggest thing. And the biggest application that came out of VR is something called beat saber, which is basically like Star Wars lightsabers where you're dancing around and something called guerrilla attack, which is an exercise game-ish. It's a cardio thing that kids play. But anyway, so not a lot of breakout success stories, nothing that's venture backable, right? Because when I look at these things, they have to be massive for me to be able to invest in them as I have to see a very big outcome. And I'm not seeing any big outcomes, but wearables where there are see-through lenses that look like glasses,

the battery technology, the compute that you can have alongside them is starting to get smaller and smaller and smaller to the point where, like it used to be inconceivable that we would carry around a computer in our pocket. Yeah. Well, eventually we're going to be carrying around a holographic universe on our eyes. And when you start doing that, things don't have to have 2D windows anymore. You can start thinking of this table, this microphone, all of these things are applications at that point. And like, if I touch this mug, it does something.

You know, it's going to get really interesting. And so I'm looking at that space intently and trying to figure out where I want to deploy money. And I don't know the answers yet because it is still very, it's just too soon. The hardware's not there yet. You've got to time it right. There's a problem in this world of what I do of being too early. I've been too early many times. I've been right, but wrong time.

Yeah. Right place wrong time. Yeah. To make quote a song. Yeah. Yeah, no. Okay. Well, I was going to ask what next.

You just said it beautifully. But you also said the answer. What I loved at the end, and another reason you have a scientific sensibility is you don't know. Not knowing and being recognizing that you don't know the answer. even if you've been very successful in the past is the key is the first step i can dream about it yes you can dream about it and and but recognize you don't know is a reason to learn to explore to experiment and to eventually in your case invest i i i you are i hope and i know i don't even hope i

expect i was going to say i believe but actually i know in this case that you are an amazing person in mire and i think that this discussion will make it clear to people and there's so many lessons but not just from your successes, but a discussion about so many things that I think, I think it's been fascinating. I wish you personal best. But I also sense that I was going to say it's a strange sense. I don't think it's very strange. I sense that what's going to be good for you is going to be good for the world.

And I know that that's one of your purposes. And so I thank you so much for being here. I thank you so much on behalf of everyone for what you're doing. It's been inspiring, Frank. all the things I knew would be insightful out of the box. I hope you never fit in. And I hope and I'm convinced that you will live those three wonderful purposes. And I thank you in every way I can.

Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Hi, it's Lawrence again. As the Origins podcast continues to reach millions of people around the world, I just wanted to say thank you. It's because of your support, whether you listen or watch,

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