David Sussillo (on foster care and neuroscience)

I'm Dan Shepherd, I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hi. Today we have David Sicilo.

“He is a neuroscientist, a technologist, and an author,”

but don't let that sway you. This is an attack heavy. No, it's a very personal story. Correct, I'm very moving one. Incredibly moving one about really growing up in a lot of

public housing or boy homes and homes. It's very connected to the episode we had on foster care. Yes. He mentions that a lot. He felt very seen by that episode.

And this is kind of like that episode, a personal story. Yes, mixed with turning out to be a neuroscientist. Yes. He has a book out. It's a memoir.

It's called Emergence, a memoir of boyhood, computation, and the mystery of mine.

It's a quite an incredible story.

I was riveted. It's very moving and touching. Please enjoy David Sicilo. This episode of Armchair Expert is presented by Apple TV. The new US home of Formula One.

Starting March 7th, you can watch complete all-access live coverage of every Grand Prix, including practice, qualifying, and sprints all in one place.

“Watch every race live, only on Apple TV.”

[MUSIC PLAYING] He's want to say, I watched that episode with Claudia Rauh. The Fox. Yeah, with the foster and what a great episode. So good you watched it because that's going to come up.

I felt so seen. I was like, you go, girl. Oh, good. No one had really just all put it in one place. I was like, wow, so props to you.

Thank you, no props to her. She is incredible and we're so happy that we were helpful in telling that story. Yeah, her two kind of novel things for me, that blew my mind, is one that poverty looks a lot like neglect. Half the kids by her count are in there, probably, when they're just poor.

So that's really troubling. That's really troubling. Yeah, great. And then what we know, yeah, about brain development, knowing we can't give the result we need.

With this system, just acknowledging that. It's a great framing. It's simple, too. It's a very straightforward thing to say. This is pathological because X, Y, Z.

Yeah.

“It almost can't get a different outcome.”

And if you do, it's going to be an anomaly. Uh, you, you. [LAUGHTER] So David, where do you live normally? I live in Bay Area.

I live right near Stanford University. How do you like it up there? How many years have you been there? I've been there since 2010. I moved out for postdoc at Stanford University.

My wife and I had been in New York City in Manhattan for the last 10 or 12 years. And she really didn't want to go. But we went out and you'd have to drag me kicking it out.

I love it. Yeah.

First off, it's California.

But you know, it's a place that's filled with innovation, filled with smart people. You don't have to apologize to be a nerd. It's multicultural and it's own sort of technical way. So I really like it there.

So you and I are both children of 1975. I saw that, yes, that's right. What month? March 26. You preceded me by two and a half years.

You're out there and I expect to be treated as well. You beat me on the height. How have you done with the turning fifth? I have to admit it hasn't been great for me. Psychologically.

Tell me. Well, just feeling like you see the end. And I want to be measured here because I'm not 70. But for all of that, you know the fantasy you live in about life going on forever. You can't have that if you do.

There's something really, really troubling about knowing in the best case scenario, which I doubt, I'll make it to a hundred or more than half of that. That's right. That's a bummer.

You were an agent professor. You're still an agent professor. An agent professor just means you're affiliated with the university. It's a credential, so in my case, there's a dean or even a provost that had to actually sign off on it. But you're not a tenure line professor.

So professors in today's academic world are largely leading research groups based off of money that get from the government through grants and also through private foundations. And so as an adjunct, I cannot lead those. Okay, I can be on them and I can participate and that's largely what I do. Everyone thinks I teach.

I don't teach. I lead research. Okay. So you'll join an existing grant. That's right.

And then your professional work was Google Brain and is now meta. That's right. Google Brain. This was like the early skunk works of neural networks. And it became deep learning.

And now it's called AI. Maybe we'll get into some of that. I'm not sure we want to take the conversation. But that was for about six years. And then I joined Meta Reality Labs.

You've seen these classes that they have. Huh? The new version has this wristband and that wristband reads out your muscle signals.

It's basically like controlling a device just by gesturing or like writing.

So you can text with your fingers. Exactly. Whoa, that's wild. That doesn't seem on prima facia.

Just to move the hands in some way.

“Conceptually, it doesn't seem that abstract.”

Conceptually, if the signals are there, you can machine learn them and pull it out.

There are reasons it's hard, but first let me meet you on the conceptually.

No, it's not. It's not like doing brain machine interfaces where you have no idea what's going on. Right. Because it's very like end of river. Exactly right.

It is true that your motor cortex projects to your spine, spine projects to your wrist. The muscle is driven by electricity when you move. And that's an aggregate signal of neurons. Those are the cells in your brain that fire electrically and cause you to be you. But to meet your point, what's coming down the line here is not your pancakes that you had for breakfast.

It's the stuff that you do to move your hands. And so in that sense, it's an applied problem. The body has simplified it quite a bit by the time we get to the wrist. That's right. The challenges of it are how do you get something to work on every single person when they

put it on the first time? That's a really hard application problem. Because it has been determined that people won't have the tolerance to let it learn from it for some period. The consumer doesn't want to learn in phase.

Yeah, we call that personalization.

So we so far have not gone down that road.

We've just have a general model. You put it on in it works.

“And what that means is you have to collect quite a bit of data.”

We wrote a paper actually published it in nature about some of this work. And so what we learned was that if you get a bunch of people come in and you have them do the gestures and you machine learn the hell out of it. Then with a lot of effort and clever engineering, you can make it work. So what probability like what percentage would you say?

It's accurate. For the things that we've released, it's very, very accurate. You have the 90 minds. Oh yes. I don't actually know what the numbers are.

But they're very high because you wouldn't have something out there that's quality. Yeah, when is this getting released? It is released. What? It was released in the fall.

So the Ray Band Meadows, the glasses that have been around a while. And the Meadow Ray Band displays, they actually have a little display in there, right? So you control that with a wristband that comes with it. I think it's sold out now, but I think it's out there. You landed in all these places and it's quite improbable.

And your story is heartbreaking and hopeful and wonderful. And I enjoyed it so much. When I was a scene, do you say it verbally? You were on some kind of a Zoom in 2022. That's right.

Yeah. Growing up in science lecture, Professor NYU Wagey Moss started this. And so lots of people are out there telling their stories about how they got in the science. And I was invited to do one of them. But okay, so mom and dad are both addicts.

Yes, that's right. So maybe I guess we start with you at probably five. At that point, they're still married. You guys live in Albuquerque. So my parents were both Christian hippies.

They may have actually lived on like a Christian commune. They took the only fun part out free loving. [LAUGHTER] It's just dirty. It's just all you got left is the dirt.

[LAUGHTER] By the time I'm coming online, I only know this in hindsight. They're using drugs regularly. They're crashing drugstores and stealing. Grab and run type of stuff.

If there's heroin, they're taking it. If there's painkillers, they're taking it. They were just legit addicts. And a pinch, they're making your older sister pretend she has a cough, so we can get a prescription for coating.

That's right.

“And is he second generation Albuquerque your mother is?”

My mother, she was actually born in Bakersfield. She grew up in Albuquerque. Her parents, your grandparents live there. My father is from Brooklyn. There's definitely tragedy on his side of the family.

My grandfather, I think he was a captain in the Navy. And he died in a plane accident over Phoenix in the 50s. My grandfather, on my father's side, and my grandmother is a serious practicing Catholics. So they had a family of five kids.

Very serious. He passes away, and now my grandmother is left with five kids, aged seven through three months. Oh, woof. Right home. Holy.

So she halls back to where she's from, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. And that's where my aunts and uncles in my father grew up. Father, the middle child, bigger pain. So basically what happened is the two oldest were sort of saddled with a, you need to help me raise this family.

And the two youngest were very young. And so my father's as middle kids do, fell through the cracks. Yeah. So, you know, my father was 100% messing around with heroin by the age of 13. Wow.

I am certain, based on talking to my aunts and uncles. He was addicted to heroin at 15. It's really early, right? And so I grew up in the 80s. There was this war on drugs.

We can talk about that from a political point of view, but it succeeded in helping me understand that there are places and things. You don't want to go and things you don't want to do. Yes. And I don't know if my father had access to that information.

And so he got busted with an aunts and marijuana at 17. They told him to go to Juvee, said screw that amount.

And he split to Mexico never to return.

Okay. So he was absconding from justice. That's right. When you're five, there's an incident. Yes. So, briefly with my mother, my mother's story is a mystery. I don't know why she ended up as she did.

The one story I have came from my sister was that they used to have a jar of pills at school. Keep in mind, this is the 60s. Well, I don't mean free love by that. I mean, a sense of ignorance about how powerful pharmaceutical drugs are. They just have a jar and they would go take them out of the jar.

That's crazy. So, to the degree that that story is true, you can point and hit something. But largely speaking, I don't know why my mother ended up with the problems that she had.

He threatens to set the place on fire and they department on fire. Brakes up bottles, bleeding out, cops have to come to ambulance. Can you remember it?

“I don't remember it well, but I have vague memories of it.”

And you have an older sister. You're not having an older sister, do you? Probably a member's mark. Yeah, exactly. So what happened there is the whole thing fell apart because my father is like, I'm going to burn the place down. My mother is like, uh, we're out.

And so that resulted in a divorce. So I ended up living alone with my mother and my grandparents for that year.

And I never really lived with my father again.

Although he would come in and out of my life here in there. Right. And mom decides she's going to start the nursing program up in Santa Fe. And then you guys up and move to Santa Fe. And you're in extreme poverty at this point.

The way I would say it is we weren't like Albania in the 60s poor, but for the United States, we were poor on a level that many people have a hard time relating to. Yeah. Where like there's a constant,

nine, corrosive worry about making ends meet, about eating. Yeah, and all day can soon buy this anxiety. Yeah, that's right. And then your buddy, Shiloh, they don't have water at all. Right. So I meet my buddy, Shiloh, who's like immediately my best friend

in the book, very briefly, I talk about my experiences in Santa Fe at some length, because it was this period of just pure, perfect childhood. I had one year of childhood, right? And that was this year when I'm in second grade. And I have this buddy, Shiloh, he's my best friend.

You can look at like all the things that happened in the United States. What are the interventions? It's a complicated question, but surely, making a best friend when I met such a young and shapeable age was one of the major things in my life that happened to me.

So, you know, we're out there just cutting up and just being crazy. Well, when I would argue, because I'm a big proponent of best friendship,

“because I think when you have that buddy and things are tough,”

the way that you can elicit joy and ride joy and how much that's a needed medicine. It's really a quintessential to, and you think you really learned to ring joy out of things in a very specific way. Yeah, I agree with that. And you're guys just was video games, yeah?

We were obsessed with video games. So, my age here is really relevant. I'm born in '75. So, I'm five years old. When Pac-Man is coming out.

Which means I'm seven years old. Roughly speaking, when Miss Pac-Man is coming out, Mario Brothers. Donkey Kong, all these absolute jam video games. We were poor, we couldn't afford them, but, you know, we'd scrounge up quarters and try to get quarters, just do crazy things.

But we were obsessed with video games, and as I talk about the book, video games became this escape from all the things that were happening in my life.

You know, and I could just always just space out and go,

try to strum up a quarter to go play video games. Yes, have you thought about what the appeal is? I know I'm sure you have a lot of connection between the technical aspect, which is, became enthralled with your whole life. But just the notion that in this little box, the rules were the same all the time.

Yes. They were immovable. I know the rules, and then if I'm clever enough, I can outsmart this. It's very satisfying in a world of a lot of variables. I totally agree with that when you're seven, you're not thinking that right.

Right. But it is still a thing. And so just to list it off air quickly, deep concentration, nothing else exists. You're right here for as long as you can make that quarter last. The fun of it, the challenge, ecstasy through sensory overload.

You know, I'm a researcher, right?

“Like I actually think, when did I start researching?”

How to play video games better? How to make a quarter last longer. That whole spectrum is how I think about it now when I was doing those things as a kid. Yeah.

Was your mom still struggling during this whole time with drugs? Yes, because of divorce. She went to try to get a nursing degree and really pull herself together. She really gave it a shot. And you know, the whole thing was sort of financed at a very low level by my grandparents.

She went there and it started off all right. It didn't really go very well. You know, honestly, she met Shialo's mother and they would just go get high together. It's just kind of fell apart. You moved back to Albuquerque.

No.

At seven or just before third grade.

So we moved back to Albuquerque. We moved to a neighborhood that is formerly on the map called the Lemissa. In the colloquial like rebranding, it's the international district. And everybody in Albuquerque calls it the war zone. Oh, boy.

We're talking about a very, very bad neighborhood. I don't even have a word. Yeah. It's dangerous. People are murdered there.

In fairness to Albuquerque, it's one of those large spread out towns where it just depends where you live. Yeah, it's also got wonderful and credible areas. I'm not in one of those wonderful and credible areas. And so it felt unsafe and it wasn't safe.

And during that time, my mother's mental health was really falling apart. It turns out she was really suffering from severe depression. It's so bad. She doesn't even enroll us for school. So we could these teachers come in.

You know, I got to enroll your kids in school. And so we ended up going to school. And that fall, we had somebody come take care of us. I think the name was Karen. Why isn't my mother here?

She's taking a break. Oh, boy. Yeah. So what happened was I was not used to Karen's care, which was frankly excellent. And I didn't know how to handle that.

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know how to handle it.

I legitimately believe both my parents loved me in my sister.

These people are serious drug users.

“And that comes with major spectrum of problems.”

I decide to run away after getting in trouble. I had no plans. I'm actually running away. I was just trying to piss this woman off. Yeah.

Right. But she freaks out and she calls my grandparents. And the next thing you know, both my sister and I. Esther are in a car or clothing and a trash bag going to the Albuquerque Christian Children's home. Oh, boy.

So I had a question here. What is your judgment of your grandparents when I read that they were called in their solution or their combined thought was well, let's get them in this home. And they lived in Albuquerque instead of taking you guys in. Yeah, I know.

It's hard not to look at their behavior as at the very least negligent. Abandoned man. Abandoned man. And if there are villains in that book, it's hard not to point at that.

Yeah. And then also maybe explains a bit of why mom had problems. So that's the vibe that existed at that point. That's right.

“The only thing I could say is when you retirees,”

I've shared this book now with the number of early readers, right? And like to a person, any woman of grandmotherly age has said, fuck that, I would have taken you in. Yeah, it's hard to swallow. So there's that.

That is my knee jerk. And I can imagine my children would have children and I would say, yes, and I'm off to a home. Also, I have means. Also, I've not been dealing with a troubled child

for 11 years, which they probably were. So I don't know what their fatigue and their capacity. Yeah, how overwhelmed they felt with just the first kid. And now this kid has got two other kids. It's hard to know where their mindset was at.

So was Karen a foster? Karen was just a friend of my mother who came to visit. And did the best she could. But I think David is honest admirably. So you were also a shithead.

Yeah, you had never had rules or anything.

Yeah, you were fair. Yeah, I was fair. Yeah, I do things can be true. I felt like I was good at heart and yet behaviorally speaking, a total piece of shit.

Well, I mean your context, how could you not me? One of the things I resonated in the conversation with Claudia Rao was these kids. I include myself here, maybe not to the same degree as some of the people she was talking about. They're coming with major, major problems. Yeah, they're not the easy kids to do.

No, but to say it that way isn't giving it the truth. When people sign up to do foster care, they're not signing up to have their daily lives induced with constant non-stop stress for 10 years. It's just very hard.

And so when I try to forgive my grandparents, it's in that light. Uh-huh. Yeah, that's a huge undertaking. Not a lot of you related it all to this. But I also think it a very young age.

As social primates, we are justice machines. We look around on why did they get that night and get this. That is how the whole system functions. Is your monitoring who's getting what? And my status entitles me to this.

“And so I think even when you're young and you're looking around like some kids have all this shit.”

And I don't. I think you feel deputized to get what yours. Yeah, so I was not blessed with that thing. And I should say I was not cursed with that thing. Because I just had my head down. I was just too young and dumb or too into the video games

or whatever it is that little boys of eight years old are. My sister, especially as we got a little bit older into middle school, we were going to a public middle school and she would look at these girls. And way before the word privilege became this weird, she was like these girls are privileged. Yeah.

They have these things. I want to be a pretty girl. I want to have these things. Yeah. And so for her, this constant comparison, this justice machine thing,

I think was a huge, a huge problem. I mean middle school is poor, but no. If you've got all this stuff. You have everything. Like, oh.

So yeah, you go to this Christian home.

You're making incredible analogy.

Try to remember the feeling of being lost at the mall as a kid. Yeah. And if that went on for an hour, how absolutely disregulating and uncomfortable that was. Now imagine that goes on for two days. That's right.

And imagine that goes on for a week and two weeks and two years. And you were there for five years? Is there for five years? Oh, man. David, I'm so sorry.

That's fucking rough to feel lost. I mean, that's a great word. You completely lonely and scared and who's coming. You didn't write about neglect. Because it's all the things that aren't happening.

It's all the things that didn't happen. Now you don't you still tend pages with. And then I stared at the wall. And then I stared at the wall again. So what happens is you deal.

And part of that is you work within the little social system that you have there. Which is you make friends if you can. Figure out what the house parents are all about. Part of it is your emotions begin to change in ways that even an adult, I don't think would fully understand what was happening to them.

The other thing that's hard to relate to is you are a child.

You have zero saying any of this. You can't construct a plan that's going to get you out of this. No, but we would though. I ended up meeting a kid named Omar. A few years older than me.

Mexican-American kid. He was Miguel, I want one. Yeah, so I got his permission. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Omar is from downtown Albuquerque.

He also a very bad neighborhood. As an adult, he would say, you know, I was just a scared 12-year-old. And I was doing the things that I was needed to do to survive. But the perception that I had of him was this like fucking gangster who would literally kick the shit out of me and happened many times.

But through all of that, we became friends. Speaking of being powerless or how do you think you can get out of it. We would think about this at this point. He's probably 13, I'm 10. I really planned my escape at 10 years old.

We would just sit down. Oh, you know, Dave, smart kid, maybe you could go to college. Like, college, no, no. What's college? And you can get money for college.

If anything about the ACCH or all interiors of in general, those people do it for short some amount of time. So for about a month, we had this karate instructor come and teach us a few moves of karate. He went to college on the GI Bill. That karate instructor had, yeah, you can get scholarships is the upshot.

And so from that moment on, the way I described it is like an Harry Potter, the Petronus spell. I had like a shield. Yeah. I did a future guide, a sense of self pride. Dare I say self love about this thing, my intelligence.

From that moment on, I was going to make it no matter what. Come hell, come high water. You know, this idea of like having a future or of thinking about what the future could mean for you.

“I think it's a big differentiation in some of the kids.”

This came up in that other interview. The frontal one is like, yes, this is exactly right. Like some inability to model the future seems to be the outcome. Why would you make its atrophy? Why model out the future?

Nothing's going to happen. I'm going to sit in this fucking Christian home for the next seven years. I'm not planning whether I start racing BMX or I try to do this with that. Just a quick caveat about the ACCH and also it goes the same way for our Milton Hershey School, which I was in in high school.

These institutions, if you read my story, they don't come off particularly well.

But these are basically practicing Christians doing very, very difficult work.

I would have known the street otherwise. So funded and voluntarily. Yeah, it's just a little bit of nuance there. What you need is a sense of permanence with a caregiver. There's one dude for 16 kids and one woman for 16 kids and three houses of 16 kids.

And the houseplants turn over. We thought, I don't know if it's true, but we had the idea that we would have loved to be in foster care. That we thought that was a better outcome in the situation that we were in. So 16 kids vary depending, but a lot. And the houseplants come and go because the job is in place to watch you.

It's too hard. Just built for failure. It's just built for failure. So when I was there, maybe seven or eight different sets of houseplants in five years. And so this sense of impermanence and the ACCH, I don't know what it's like now, but in the 80s, it was not meant to be a permanent living facility.

It was meant to be a transitory care. Well, mom got done resting. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. But for some of us, we were there longer than the admin staff was there. Nobody knows what your situation is.

Right. You literally know nobody knows that in the second grade, you freaked out in the

middle of the night because you thought some person was going to come kill you. And then in the third grade, you were going to fight nobody knows any of this.

“And I think deeper than no one knows, don't cares.”

That's the fear. That's the heartbreaking part. The people working their care. But I'm saying when they leave and you're not there, it's no one present. No, is anything about your history.

I think the conclusion you make is that kid is like, yeah, no one cares at all about me. And how is your sister fairing? She's passed away. Oh, she. Yeah, I'm sorry. You're asking the past tense, but so she sends past away. No, she's doing terribly at the time.

One of the major outcomes of the kind of neglect that she and I suffered from is emotional dysregulation. For me, that became anger for her. I saw her hot. She loves you or she hates you. That's very hard for her to regulate her emotions in and around other people.

Kind of like borderline personality type. Terrified, everyone's going to leave her overly attracted to people immediately. That's right, I saw all of that. I'm just not making the diagnosis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, leave that to me.

You were asked a tutor. I was, yeah. And it's insane what that can do to your life trajectory.

So basically through school in a number of different ways, I was invited to the gifted

and talented program. I was asked to be a tutor here and then I became known as the smart kid. And so I sort of have a simplistic psychology that all these kids and these circumstances have their survival strategy. Omar was the tough kid.

My sister Esther was like the pretty girl. And so on and so forth. And you know what ends up happening is you take those behaviors into adulthood. And some are more or less adaptive than others.

“Yes, you must have looked forward to going to school.”

Oh my God, yes. Right, like that's the sanctuary. I was good at it. I actually enjoy knowledge. It did not come hard to me.

I got to kick out of it.

Yeah, positive attention. Positive self-esteem.

And so I was one of these loud mouths who never shut up.

So I'm sure my teachers really couldn't stand me. But I was personally getting a lot out of it. Yeah, again, we should add, you have behavioral issues. I had major behavioral issues. How'd you get on with other boys?

Well, the way that usually worked was we'd have a fight. I would lose. [LAUGHTER] And then if we didn't be friends or I wouldn't be friends. I was not a fight in my life that I couldn't lose.

“And you were tall, so I got to imagine, like, were you always tall?”

No. Oh, you weren't? One of the great curses of my life. I didn't start growing till I was 17. Oh.

17? Wow. The math teacher in high school, he's the basketball coach. And I'm a senior in high school. It's like, if I had known you're going to be this tall,

I would have coached you in a nice, great way. Oh, yeah. So like, oh, man. Oh, man. Okay, so around this time, too.

Well, let's say seventh grade, your mom dies. That's right. You've gotten a God even now yet another round of some sense of permanent loneliness on your plate. My mother passes away.

It's a huge catastrophe for me. And what's interesting about that is, like, if you would ask me at that time, I don't give a shit about my mother. She's not my life. It doesn't mean my life for five years.

You ain't a senior. She would take us out on weekends here and there. There is a sense of connection there. It's a very thin tether, but it's a tether. And that has a couple of knock-on effects.

Number one is, turns out, I really love my mother.

“And so she dies, like, where's my emotional space at this point?”

I have no way of relating to this.

So I basically start having minor panic attacks.

I just don't even know what's going on. I have no one to talk to. Therapy would have been completely culturally untenable at the ACCH and the 80s, not that they could have afforded it. In the first place, I am just completely out of control.

You're now on an island by yourself. My sister and I didn't really get along. That possibility was not really there. But the only person I was talking to, though not about my mother, was Omar, my buddy, and my roommate.

So she passes away, and it's a good thing, in some sense. This is the tether. I have this phrase, some of my phrase, but I use it orphaned by the living. In any functional sense, my sister and I in many of the kids and the ACCH were orphans, except that our parents were alive.

Yeah. But functionally, they were unable to take care of us or unwilling to take care of us. Be it mental illness, drug addiction, incarceration, you name it, right? So she passes away all the sudden. My uncle's feel like they can get involved. These are my father's brothers and sisters.

Who didn't want to intervene with mom who expressed goal was to have them. But now she's out of the picture.

“In hindsight, I can't help but wonder again, I'm sort of casting shade on my grandparents.”

If the situation was reversed, if we were not kept around on the hopes of making my mother better. But one way or the other, there was a symbiosis there, that's severed. And so my aunt and uncle Elliott and Moira, they had come out a couple of years earlier. Some of the great is when my mother dies and backtracking to save fourth fifth grade. They come to check us out, they're like, "This isn't good."

This ain't great, and adult could easily observe our sort of intellectual and emotional stagnation. They start lobbying then over the summers for my sister and I to come out to the East Coast,

basically centered in an around New York City where all of my father's siblings live.

So we start doing that in the summer times. This happens a couple of times before then my mother passes away. So because of this, some of my aunt and uncle's, I guess all of them have, I've gone to know Esther and I pretty well. So my mother passes away and my uncle James.

He was one of the older kids who was tapped to raise his siblings. He took responsibility seriously as an adult. He turned the Navy. He's like, "I'm doing this." Oh, right. You already 12.

And on top of that, he's an newlywed. Oh, wow. Yes. Tell us, brand new white hate. So my brother, no, but it's also hard with him.

He's the most like, "Why didn't they do that sooner?" But the mom was, I know. I'm theory one. Well, that is actually when you saw your mom on the weekends, was there all these promises of like, "I'm going to get you guys out of here soon."

I think that stopped. My mother was very ill. And I think she knew it. She was in and out of a psych ward. I came to know as an adult that she was basically under constant suicidal ideation.

She's probably mitigated the fucking hell. Oh, yeah, that's ultimately what she died from. As a mix-up of methadone and whatever she was on. Stay tuned for more Our Magic Expert. If you dare.

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When I hear you story, my first thought without knowing more about Esther is I can't believe they

just took you. Yes, that seems cruel. I'll go into it. But now that I'm hearing a little bit more about Esther, maybe that was just more than they thought they could handle.

I'm 12. I've got, I would say, moderate behavioral problems. My sister on the surface looks fine. On a closer examination is beginning to have major behavioral problems. In and around her relationships with other people.

She was regularly threatened to decide. She's one of those people who would just go, I will ruin my life to ruin yours. So I'm here to hurt you, which is 14.

“So, so if he's choice type of thing, who can we help here?”

And so my aunt Nuckle chose to take me in. I still bear guilt over that. I was going to say, you didn't get along with her great, but did you still have guilt? Totally. But they had a solution for her.

They sent her to abortions? Yes, so there's a number of ants in Nuckle's flying around here. Just view them sort of collectively as finding a solution for the two of us. You can imagine them all having family dinner, and they got together to discuss this. Can you imagine that?

So she ends up at a boarding school called the Darrow School, which is actually a really nice school. It's a private school. It was funded by Elliot and Moira, I believe. It's just a boarding school. It has nothing to do with financial instability or kids at risk where you want to say it.

So I go to live with my aunt Nuckle. It's an immediate disaster. What kind of things were you doing that made it hard for them? I was obsessed with no longer being poor. We got toys from going to the retirement home, and we'd get handouts from the retirees.

It was poor. And so I'm in Virginia. I'm like, there's a pool here. There's a fitness center over there. There's a community garden.

So I kind of won't shut up about it.

“And so I think that just kind of irritated them.”

They're short to anger.

My uncle has never raised children before.

Right, right. So it didn't quite work out. Is that a strange thing that happened? He was a go-getter. He went to school, PTA meetings.

Like, OK, David should have 20 minutes of homework every night. Except I didn't need it. I do my homework in school. So all of a sudden there's a major lie. I'm lying to them about this thing.

So he settles that I should sit at the table for an hour and night to do my homework. It's just one anecdote except it happened all year long. So it was this constant source of tension between us. Well, I could say for me not having a dad around and then intermittently having step dads, I just fucking hated men.

I hated mal authority. I was so stubborn and I would die over these power struggles. I just hated outside mal authority.

I think of it more as me needing more from my aunt. She was not my blood. Wasn't her family. You know, my mother has just passed away.

“And she agreed to do it, but did she really sign up for that?”

I think that's where a lot of the tension that I felt came from. That makes sense. Yeah, you were probably expecting something that wasn't coming. I think you had just come from a situation where you had way too much independence. It's funny because I didn't know how to live alone.

I was always around other kids.

Oh, that's interesting. So all of a sudden I'm living alone by myself. I have a bedroom and a paper sounds great, but like I'm used to bunking with three of them. You're right. Only as fucking there. I totally see opposite of everything.

It's the opposite of everything I've ever known. So it was really difficult. They send you to the Hershey School and Hershey Pennsylvania. That's right. I like the history of this.

This is lovely. So this is the, uh, in some sense, the Hogwarts you're looking for. Oh, it is. For the listeners, dex me to point like, hey, maybe all these foster kids should have a place like Hogwarts that they can go and see their

bedrooms. So great. So there's almost a lore to this at this point, Milton Hershey, the chocolate tier, became very successful. Stupendously wealthy and discovered that he and his wife couldn't have children. So they started in orphanage. I believe it's 1906 called the Hershey Industrial School.

By 1909, he's left effectively all his money to this school,

“which back then I believe was $60 million which today is about $17 billion.”

Wow.

They use that currently as a $15 billion dollar in Germany.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's frankly, they're so wealthy. They don't know what to do with the money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They saw me getting in there and start Hogwarts and up the place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Give me my wand. Wait a minute. So that's the backstory there. And it's just grew from that through the 60s. Basically black kids were lit in in girls.

And there's like about 2,000 kids that are there. That's right. Yeah, I know there's 2,000 kids there when I was there was more like a thousand. But yeah, it's a big place. It dominates the town of Hershey.

There's basically the chocolate factory in Milton Hershey school. Wow. Yeah, this is all very well we won't go. I know it is. Yeah, totally.

It's crazy how fucking rich the candy folks were. Like the Mars family, the M&Ms, and the Reglies, and they have these mansions and Pasadena. You know, like there was so much money in candy. And beginning of the 1990s.

And Milton Hershey left his money to kids. Yeah, that's really sweet. But it wasn't just sweet place. Oh, last. No, so again, I want to be new.

Oh, it's clear. It's a huge school. There are lots of experiences. It's almost like when you work out a company. Your experience is almost purely dictated by your manager.

At a place like Milton Hershey School, your experience is almost purely dictated by your house parents. And my house father was a true piece of work. He was a control freak. You know, now that I'm an adult, I look at it like,

you know, what happened in his life as a child that made him the way he was.

“Why did he want to control a bunch of young people?”

That's right. He was universally despised by the boys. So because he was so difficult, it was this weird sort of spiral where all the worst kids in school. Keep in mind, this is aggregating over all of the northeast quarter,

all of the basically fucked up families, right?

Yeah. So you take all the worst kids and you put them into one student home because you know the house father can handle it. He's a warden. Yes, that he's a true piece of work.

How old are you at this point? I'm there from early in my freshman year until I graduate high school. Yeah, so it was a very bad place. I was beaten badly. I was beaten multiple times by many boys. You know, like, full on game-beating type of stuff

without the racial connotations there. Just multiple boys kicking the shit out of me. Yeah. So it was not a great place. I checked out. Yeah, you start really kind of disassociating now.

Disassociation is a big word. I would say that I was just medicating. So keep in mind, I had an idea that I was going to college. I found the classes at Milton. Hershey's school would be quite easy.

I didn't work at him and it all. Oh, it's got all his. So I'm just waiting it out. In all honesty, I feel like the best outcome would have been for me in a perfect world just to send me up to college at 16.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Give you away from all those boys. That's right. Yeah. God, thank you.

So this controlling man wasn't good at his job either then. If you're getting eat up. Well, so I mean, he basically sicked these boys on me once. Oh. At Albuquerque Christian Children's Home, there were four kids per room.

At MHS, there were two kids per room. And the standard rule was you could not enter anyone's room ever. My house father felt like that was too strict. So he allowed his own ad hoc room privilege. Where if you could on their permission, one kid go in.

Three all in. All right. So one day after church, I'm like farting around. And like I'm leaning against the door jams. And my tie is going into the room. And he busts us right.

He walked his beat about once every hour. So he catches me leaning into the room. The technical sense. I was certainly violating his role in a spiritual sense. He's definitely obeying the spirit of this.

And so through what he considered to be a little bit of back talk, he cancels the room privilege for everybody.

Like setting up a code red base.

“Exactly. And so then I'll never forget it.”

We had these student home meetings truly boring. It's like, you know, you guys should teach him a lesson. So that night, I woke up to half the student home kicking the ever living shit out of me. And that's what that place was like for me.

Especially the first two years.

It got easier in the second two years. Okay, I've watched a lot of kids get bullied into a living. And now there seems to be some predictive outcomes. A lot of kids try to make themselves invisible. And then another branch of kids weirdly become agitators.

Yes, that was me. I had a hunch. So my roommate Bob, you know, he was this really heavy kid. He had no chance of competing in the social hierarchy. He just didn't do it.

And hindsight, I'm looking at that. I'm like, that is really noble. That is one way to go. But wasn't in my personality. I was raised around kids my whole life.

So I became a suck up to exactly these fuckers who had kicked the shit out of me. And that's who I was in high school. Just not even close to the kid I was before. The last year too, definitely got a little easier. But it was really, really tough spot.

We're doing a lot of dust off. Yeah. And for people who haven't done dust off, this weren't, I think, extend great compassion to you. It's a terrible hot.

Yes.

“You have to have a really shitty resting state of consciousness for that to be an emperor.”

But the air does do yes. My memory is not fabulous. And I look back at some of those experiences. Oh, yeah, you blast it. And then I'll see you get all walks. Oh, I know nothing about you know, you clean like a keyboard.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it turns out now they're hip to it. So they add a bit of it, so you can't do it. But in the 90s, now this is 91, 92, something like this. You could just pound that shit.

Yeah. And it's a little bit like an nitrous eye, but not nearly as nice. And you're just all of a sudden you're getting into like the wall, wall, wall, wall, wall. You've left your current time and space, which is what the relief is. That's right.

But then the headache that ensues after it does stop Bench is excruciating. Cost benefit on does stop is terrible. I'll tell you why I stopped doing it. I did so much of my past out. I fell off my bed.

I laughed now because I survived. So this is a process that makes the can cooler. We're like it gets ice on me outside. It's spraying on my leg and I freeze my leg solid. Basically like frozen chicken, right?

And when I freeze it, it like okay, I'm out. It might do stop career. Okay, so again, you're still helping on this college fantasy, which is great. And you are specifically helping on MIT. I'd read all these magazines, basically Caltech Stanford and MIT end up as like

almost characters in these stories about these scientists who do all these amazing things.

I viewed programming and coding and physics and chemistry and biology and math as basically magic. This was a form of power through some grace of God that I was given the ability to comprehend. It's been from me, theists. And I'm going for it, right? So from a very early age, I hear about this place called MIT.

And I'm like, I'm going MIT. Newsflash, I did not get into MIT. MIT, dumb for them. You have your first experience and there's waves of realizing this. There's a big gap between intelligence and preparation.

The first thing I noticed is when I'm applying. I'm in the academic system now. I know how this stuff works. I just wouldn't took my SAT. I had no idea that people prepared for SAT.

No one had ever told me this. Monica, I'd like four or five workshops. I did go to a class and calculate the class, or the application. I just, like, all point pen right there, just started writing about like swimming. It was not lying.

Nothing. No, I had no nothing. I don't know what's telling you. I had no idea. It was completely lost on me that my own experiences in my childhood

might reflect well on me if I explain them in the world. I've been in a fucking group home for the last nine years. Yeah. That could help. But you're going to focus on your swimming.

Did you do well on the SATs? It okay. 13, 20. 13, 10.

“15, 10 going if you want to run on about six ten English.”

Yes. Nice. But people at MIT have 15 runs. Yeah, I know it's not a ballpark job. Yeah, you're not going to do that.

I'm not going to do that. Yeah. So I was accepted to Carnegie Mellon, which it turns out to be a fabulous school. I worked probably a little too hard.

But it was this moment for me of just absolute freedom, self-realization.

I had a really hard time my first semester.

Let's first though, talk about the euphoria. I think it's really rad. You get put in a dorm. You have a cafeteria to eat up. You're allowed to sit on the roof of your dorm.

Yeah. And you just sit up there and you get to gaze upon this campus that you're now a part of. And you're out of prison. Yes.

That is so profound. I can't even imagine the elation you've-- Yeah. My first buddy, sport. I think he walked by me in life on friend.

I met him the first day of college. And I'm like sitting, I'm cackling. And you don't like, I'm like, oh my God. I don't have to explain it like P after a five-hour car ride, right? Just like this huge sense of relief.

as you currently have it. That's quite a unique feeling. That's a unique feeling. And it was amazing. I was going to make the best of that circumstance, right?

And you would have scholarship, I see. Yeah, for, right. First one, I mean. [LAUGHTER] I was the worst swimmer in the school.

I couldn't stand it. I was terrible at it. My uncle takes me to Penn State. Just to look around as a prospective school, we sit down with a financial aid advisor who clearly

had some very broad authority. So this guy starts asking me about my life. And he's kind of like, dumpster diving through my childhood, but I tell him all this stuff. You get independent status.

Now, I'm no longer associated with my family from the perspective of the government. So I'm going to get the maximal amount of financial aid from the government. I'm going to get the maximal financial aid

from Carnegie Mellon.

“And when I say full ride, that's what I mean.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you go there with the original intention of doing physics, but quickly you get into computer science. Yeah. You've time this kind of nicely.

Yeah. Tell me if you can relate to this. We're the same age. I feel like my whole life has been writing on the crest of a technological wave.

I'm five years old when personal computers come out. Before personal computers, working with a computer was a colossal pain in the ass. Yeah. Then the video games come out.

And then all of a sudden, you can you tinker with basic programs. And then there's Pascal. And then I get to college. And there's the internet.

Yeah.

You're never playing catch-up.

No. You were learning at the same time everyone else. It was always just happening. Yeah, that's a huge advantage. I imagine now, if you're 17,

and you imagine entering this thing, and you've now got 40 years to catch up on. Well, now we say, yeah, I may be not. Maybe not. Yeah, up until 18 months ago,

it was and come up upon you to catch up. And that must have felt a little overwhelming. Yeah. You're already right at the press, but so a new thing comes out and you're interested in that.

And you already kind of understand the receding thing. And so you're like really well positioned for this. So I'm taking my classes really seriously. Now computer science class, it's just mind-bending. Just awesome.

Now what starts to happen is that the negative side of my childhood survival strategy starts to show itself, basically when I'm 10 years old, to survive these truly desperate circumstance. So I'm telling myself, I'm a fucking genius.

“So there's a fine line between self-love and narcissism, right?”

And so I get to Carnegie Mellon, and I'm like, wait a minute. There's a lot of very smart kids.

And I mean, even after the first semester,

where I sort of a cultureate and begin to figure out how to get things done, I'm just like, OK, I was big fish, small pond, that whole thing, and now I'm in the big pond. So I begin to go into self-prove mode.

I'm certainly not going to film my classes. I have to convince no matter what group I'm in, I'm the smartest, and all this is weird pathological stuff. Hard to be around, maybe a little bit. I'd like to think I wasn't too hard to be around,

but I was definitely intense. - OK. - To think about living in group homes, you learn how to be around people. - Yeah. - Adapt. - Like right now, what's going on between the three of us?

I know you guys are picking up, I watched a bunch of your episodes. I'm also doing that. - Yeah. - And so that's keeping me from being a complete jerk. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - That's a good skill. - Ashes at best, like alcoholics are

meglamaniacs with an inferiority complex, or the piece of shit that the world revolves around. Like, I can very much relate to these dramatic swings in my ego. - Yeah. - But I mean, they're worthless. - Or now I'm from you, you know? - You know, totally yes.

- And I think it's like to buff it and get you out of this other cycle. I just think this weird by polarity of it is a little predictable. - You're describing my experience, perfectly. And I'm guessing quite a few people's given social media and all the other things that are going on.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's one or the other. - That's right. - That's the worst or the best. - That's right. - There's no middle ground whatsoever. - You're gonna try it. - So as these things start burbling up,

how are you coping the fact that you're not an addict

“or you're not a sex addict or you're not a gambling addict?”

- The well-worn modulators of this feeling, you're not really using. - To be perfectly clear, I've in college I did a lot of drinking. Maybe it's just 'cause my parents were heroin addicts, but the word addicts to me has very specific meanings.

- It's very strange definition for you. - Well, you know, I'm drinking on Friday and Saturday night. - Yeah, but that's nice. - Yeah, that's good. - You're in college. - Yeah, yeah. - I'm not binging or anything so I had a couple friends

we'd hang out. And the other thing that I was doing was I'm busy all the time. - There we go. So you're gonna maybe regulating with kind of a work addiction. - There's something to do with you.

- That's right, yes. - Yeah, no, that's the most helpful. - Because when I stop going to college, things really fell apart. - Right, 'cause you're in discomfort

and humans don't sit in discomfort forever. They figure out something to alleviate that. And so obviously when you were killing yourself, working, and then you meet somebody and this is a match made in Heaven, right?

You have a professor that very much from your perspective, you're developing kind of a father's son. - That's right. So the beginning of my junior year, and it is there, and now people are starting to think

about how can we do stuff with this? - Yeah, at the time, what I thought was a brilliant idea

and hindsight wouldn't have never worked.

But it's like a social media company

And if anyone in the world knows it, then through your social network, you potentially get an answer, and everyone along the chain,

we get a cut, very clever idea, never ever gonna work.

We didn't know it at the time. - Kind of read it. - Really? - I mean, don't you think it's sort of like read it now, people?

“- But I think it would seem like a pitty in some fashion.”

- Sure, that's true. - I think it's true. - I think it would be nice. - Yeah. - I put down my math, close my textbooks,

and I go to the computer lab, we start building this thing out. It becomes a company, and I'm like the tech lead. - A weight jam? - Home.

All this sudden, I like the big man on campus. I cannot tell you how great, like, to have money, my classes were paid for, and like I could go to the cafeteria to eat, but I was truly scrumpting by.

- Yeah. - And you've never had money. - And I've never, in my life, had money in. - You're like a basketball player, you say? - Yeah, well, this is like, no idea what's going on,

like, ah, so it's perfect. - Is a beautiful and very inexpensive city. I don't even have to spend my money, my classes, like I'm just like buying canoes. - Wow, catching up.

- Just doing it all. - Yeah. - That's Freudian, 'cause your mother drug appeared. - That's right. - That's right.

- So, that was the experience, and I started burning out after two years of this. - And this relationship was not what you were hoping that we're doing. - I'm just gonna be additional.

“- That's right, so I think this is probably very common.”

I found this person to be like a father figure, and I don't know where his mental state on that, or emotional state on that was, he was a hot shot in computer science. And he had pivoted from like a theory career

to a more applied career, so we're building out this company. It turns out that he did not, I believe, have this same sense of mentoring me. Father figure's a funny word. There was clearly some kind of transference

on my part of feelings that were not really meant for him. - Right. - But I was giving them to him and then unwindingly farming expectations of how that would be reciprocated. I'm sure.

- And when it wasn't, I felt hurt and the company is very stressful. I mean, it was a very empowering experience. - You had a team of like 20 kids working under you. - 15 kids under me, I'm 22, 23.

- Well, kind of money are you making? I need to know. - Yeah, by that point, I'm making 50,000 bucks. - Oh, I got in college in '96, it's insane. - It's so much money.

- That's like two hundred grand a year or so. - It's so much money. - Totally, I get burned out in that rage quit. And it was the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life because now I'm still have to take classes,

but I'm past my senior year, so I gotta pay for it myself. - How do I pay for it? All my grants are gone. - Before when I was making that 50k, I could swing it, no problem. Now I can't swing it, so in a very rash and dumb move and exactly the kind of shit you wouldn't do.

If you had parents to talk to, people don't understand. These kids meet, I'm not talking to someone. - You get to come over, don't mind you, you have. - And execute it, so I moved to Boston. - Four credits, short of graduating.

- After this whole life goal, I'm gonna graduate. Isn't this heartbreaking and so predictable? - I know, I had educated myself, right? I didn't actually care about the degree per se.

So in my mind, I had viewed it as basically done.

- 'Cause you are employable now. - I was employable now, it's a night follow-up. AI and video game company to Boston. They wanted to relocate from Pittsburgh to there. And so I followed them up and I had, without a doubt,

the worst year of my life. - Oh my God. - I discovered that there is hell on earth. So I'm living alone for the first time. I think a lot of this again, I just wanna emphasize

with so avoidable, and if I had anyone to talk to, I'm not in therapy at this point. I'm not talking to any of my aunts and uncles. Obviously no parents. I'm just raw dog in the entire experience.

- Well, by the way, for me, my ego would have been saying, like, you know what, I didn't need any of you. I'm here now. I didn't get a fucking chance and no one was here. And now I'm doing it all on my own.

That would have been fuel for me. - You didn't have that. - Doesn't seem like your personality. - Yeah. - It was that way my whole childhood.

- That was just ingrained. - And who I was. - It wasn't like saucy, it was just like, yeah, I'm gonna go do it myself. - Right.

- But you knew you needed people, 'cause like you also grew up doing that. - So I discovered in Boston. And so when you go to college, even in the '90s, there's orientation.

They set you up here, your friends.

And I still best friend in life is my first buddy

from my first day of college. - Yeah. - So they really work hard to make these environments successful, right, socially successful. I moved to Boston.

I'm living in a suburb by myself for the first time ever. At like a truly nerdy 12th person company, I'm not really relating to anyone there. The job is without a doubt, the hardest thing technically I've ever done.

“- You know what I think all the thing you're building?”

- Compiler. - Compiler translates the high level human code. 10 print monocos, cool 20, go to 10, run monocos, cool monocos, cool monocos, cool. Turn that into machine code that runs.

- Wow. - That's a very difficult program to write or reason about. And so I ended up working as the junior guy with one of these fucking geniuses who had written this thing.

So I have to learn what he did. He's gonna go off to become an assistant professor.

So I have to learn all of this.

“I'm basically just well beyond my abilities here.”

And so within three or four months, my life just starts falling apart. I start having panic attacks. This is one of those things you either experienced it or you haven't.

'Cause you can't explain to people what a panic attack is

if they've never had one, they won't get it.

This is a thing that happens where it has the prominence of overwhelming pain. Whatever you were thinking about before, you don't care about that anymore. It's like you're being tortured,

except it's coming from inside of you. And you don't know why you're having it for me who lasted anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes. And then after that's done, you sort of have this overwhelming exhaustion

because your body is just like, completely freak out. And so I started having these panic attacks once a day. - Well, then each time I have a cycle of your fears.

- Well, yeah, I've had them. And that's the worst part. It's like, when's it coming today? - You know it, like, oh my God. So I'm alone, I don't have any support whatsoever.

I don't even know what to do. Like, should just go to a hospital.

“But what I learn is that I don't need to go to a hospital.”

I can just keep going and keep going. And as the year progresses, I move there in early fall. And now it's maybe spring or so. My panic attacks, I start doing like this. Completely uncontrollable.

- You're short-circuiting. - Yeah, right on the edge of being able to function in society. So I go up to the top of the roof, another roof story. And I'm smelling that the trees and the flowers in bloom. I'm like, look over the edge.

Like, I could do this. And I immediately realized I have a problem. - Oh, we're here now. - Yeah, I did not have suicidal ideation forever and ever. I had it once.

And I was like, this means something. I'm fucking smart. I'm gonna take this seriously. - Yeah. - Right.

- Because I'm just miserable. And I'm thinking if I throw myself over the roof, I'm gonna cease this pain. - Yeah. - Yeah.

- The suffering will stop. - A couple things I try a little bit of acupuncture, which is actually fairly helpful in the short term.

Ultimately, reach out to my uncle, Elliot.

It was a therapist. Uncle, Elliot, my Aunt Moira, they were the first people to come check out with a situation for my sister and I at the Albuquerque Christian Children's Home. Their therapists, they knew right away.

“They were like, you need to get into therapy.”

And I really didn't want to get into therapy. - Can you remember your reservation or the story you had about it? - Some combination of I knew it wouldn't be much fun. I was just in so much pain. But because I am, I am gonna do this.

It's guy Dr. The Quarcia, one of my uncle, it's close collaborators. So I give this guy a call and he agrees to see me. And so that really is like close the chapter because everything that happens afterwards,

my life just starts taking off. And so the first thing that happens, it takes a while, actually, six months to about a year is the cessation of this absolutely unbearable panic. I quit that job and I moved to New York.

This is where my uncle lived. I'm just trying to be close to anybody. - I am full on tail between my legs. I don't know what wrong with my life. Some things messed up.

I need to figure this out. - Also, can I say you have no more story? So you had a story that was getting you through the previous 15 years, which I'm gonna go to college and I'm gonna acquire this knowledge and that is going to liberate me.

And now you have it, you have the solution. Which is kind of the scariest point. When you have the solution and yet things are at their worst point, it's, I would say, triply scary. This is a moment in an addict's life

when you have all the medicine you're supposed to have and it's no longer fixing the thing. Is very, very, very discouraging. - You nailed it. This is exactly right.

I'm in Boston. I'm done. I did the thing, I know I had four classes left but in my mind, I've achieved the goal. And it turns out that it was the having the goal

was the solution. So now I just have lots of achievements. - Yeah. - Yeah. Stay tuned for our share expert, if you dare. So I moved down to Manhattan and a couple things happen.

I start going to therapy on a weekly basis. That's very, very helpful. I tried a little bit of project and like how it made me feel. So I discontinued that. But right around the same time, I started running.

I was a nerd, I never really got into fitness.

And all this sudden, I'm like, hey, I felt really good after running. - It buys me three, four hours of feeling good. - Yeah, so I discussed it with my therapist. The agreed we should probably turn this into habit.

So between exercise and this therapy and being closer to family, I start to pull myself out of a very, very dark place. - And things really start going much better for me after that.

- Yeah, you started a master's program at Columbia. - For breast collection. - What were you doing over there for three years? 'Cause you weren't accomplishing anything towards your PhD, I know that.

- Yeah, so I have to finish up my degree. I had to cut those four classes. Luckily my student advisor at Carnegie Mellon was helpful with that. So I get the degree a couple of years later.

Now, actually, to the Chief Technology Officer, it was a grossly overblown title.

That blows up in the dot com bubble. So now, like everyone else, I got to go back to school. I want to go back to school. I go up to Columbia University and I get a job as a Unix Systems Administrator

just fixing the computers. And they'll pay me a living wage and they'll let you take free classes. - That's right. - Great gig.

Even Administrator on a University campus. Get a free master's degree. It's a very good way to go. So that's just what I was doing. I then apply for a PhD program in neuroscience.

- The breakthrough hasn't happened yet, right?

To remind people we had the godmother of AI. - Very family. - Very family. - Really sure. And AI had all these stutter stops.

It had like big periods of progress than total stagnation for years. But the last big breakthrough which we're on the shoulders of is starting to design AI in the same way, a neural network works in a brain.

Had that happened yet? - No. - It's all earlier. But again, convenient, you get interested in neurology. - It all goes back to,

I want to do something that helps the world. That sounds a little cliche, but damn it. - I'm earnest. - Yeah. - This is what I want to do.

And well, what am I give, some technical. So there's this branch of neuroscience, called Computational Neuroscience, which is sort of like the math of how brains work. The brain is a complicated thing,

and so it's an organ. It actually builds itself to grows. So there's all kinds of things that happen as like a purely sort of organ. But there's this other thing, this view,

I can say, hey Monica, count to 10. You can do it. - Some days. - Yeah, we can figure out the rules of Scrabble together. So this arbitrary ability to reason about new things

that you've never ever thought about before.

- That sure sounds like a computer. - So I was interested in getting into that kind of work. - Yeah, maybe, did you have the realization? Like, oh, yeah, it's a big, gooey biological entity. But it is, in fact, very mechanized.

It's a machine. It runs on electricity. We know the parts of the electrical circuits.

“It's actually more mechanical than I think”

you grow up thinking of the brain. - So I think that's right. I'd say there is a machine in there. It's an electrical machine. - Yeah.

- But how does that work? It's one of the great mysteries of our time. I want to think about it. I think that's super interesting. And maybe it'll help.

Maybe mental illnesses, maybe drug addictions, or we would say like a network opathy. That is to say, even though some of these things change because of molecules, how the neural network function breaks and the pathology is at the network.

So if that's really true, you, of course,

you can go try to fix the molecules,

but you could also try to understand what's broken about the network. - Yeah. - So how the machine is no longer functioning. - Yeah, yeah.

- So I found that very interesting. I applied to a bunch of schools, I got into Columbia. Columbia, it turns out, has a truly world class neuroscience program.

- It's now called the neural... - So it's a big program. They have a sub program called the Center for the theoretical neuroscience. - Yeah, yeah, which is now very reputable.

- Yeah, it's very, very reputable. It was started by my mentor, my PhD at Missouri. Larry Abbott, yes, and another researcher, Ken Miller. And so they start this by now, we're in 2003, 2004.

“I joined, and this is just the best thing ever.”

- And the full bright was part of that. - Okay. - So, then you get your PhD. - You start working with Larry, who, you guys hit it off famously,

you had to have another advisor, you guys did not work out in a way. - Get to know it. (laughing) - And then you leave and then you go

and you work at Google Brain. But you have a desire still to be an academia. - Yeah. - How do we figure out how to go from Google Brain back to academia?

- Yes, so to answer that, I wanna just back up a little bit and talk about where is the state of AI and neural networks? - Yeah, yeah, let's do that. - The broad consensus moment for when people thought

that neural networks are here, there was a neural network that had a name, we gave it a name, it's called Alex Net after Alas Couchevsky, the Assuits gave her Jeff Hinton. Anyways, they built this network

that beat hand-designed networks at a really hard image recognition task. This is 2012's ImageNet. - This is ImageNet. - Fei Fei Lee, her lab collected that data.

- Yeah. - Right, so this hugely impactful thing she did, really drove all of this work in neuroscience. So that happened in 2012, but the real moment, something called our restricted Boltzmann machine.

This was like 2006, 2007, 2008, again out of Jeff Hinton's lab, I believe apologies, if I don't have that exactly right. Nowadays, we don't use any of those approaches, but it was this moment where like, okay, when you combine these simple systems,

these simple neurons together, an artificial neuron is really simple. It takes inputs, adds them up, and if there are above a certain value, it emits a one, and if there below a certain value,

it emits a zero. And so that's a very simple computational device. When you connect a gazillion of them together and just the right way, it turns out you can compute anything that is computable.

“That's what our brains are doing on some abstract level,”

and so that's where it's all coming from. I'm finishing my PhD in the restricted Boltzmann machine happens, and I'm thinking about what are called recurrent neural networks, which have feedback loops, feedback loops are important because that's actually how your brain is working.

Instead of a feed-forward processing of like an assembly line of information processing, it's people talking back

- You give like a literal example of how it works. - If I wanted to make a system that could flexibly pick up my soda, that is going to be a recurrent system, we call it a dynamical system,

“where what's happening, as I lift this can,”

is coming back through, so-called, proprioception, through signals that are telling my brain, what's actually happening, as well as my vision. So that's all one big thing. - It's like self-correcting at all time,

the information's flowing both directions. - That's right. - So it's sending him phone, it's receiving him phone, it's making adjustments real time. - That's right.

- It doesn't send like the full blueprint down to the hand to accomplish that task. It's going to check in all the time to see how we're doing. - Exactly. So this is the kind of thing that I'm thinking about,

right as these networks are starting to become prominent. So I then apply those approaches in a post-doc at Stanford and then I go to Google Prane and in Google Brain, this is when people with money. It was because of Alex Net, now we're like 2012.

The top brass at Google figured out that neural networks, we got to be in that. - Number one, are going to work. There's been this long many decades history of promise with no delivery.

That is changing. They knew that then.

They basically purchased all the talent on the planet.

Give or take. They get all these researchers together and just like, go do what you want. Develop these neural networks. Because we started stacking these networks together,

it became known as deep learning, deep neural networks. That was the catchphrase from like 2015 to 2020. - If the mind was one. - And deep mind was all built off of deep networks. So sorry, the naming is playing off of that cache.

- Yeah. - I'm part of that scene and now coming finally back to your question, I wanted to apply all of these neural networks approaches to understand actually how brain's work. I care about the brain.

- Now we're in this weird zone currently, right? Where it's like, we were trying to understand the brain to design the machine, but now the machine is kind of working in a way that we might be able to answer some of the ways that the brain works.

- That's exactly right. Modern AI, AI is sort of the rebranding of deep networks. There's some technical changes there, applied to language. Because the big surprise was that it's a really interesting thing, actually, if you ask a neural network to spit out the next word

in English and you do that for all of the text on the internet, it learns something about the world. - You can think about it in terms of context. Like, I'm going to the, now, ask me to fill in the next plan could be fridge, bathroom store.

But if you said, I need some milk, I'm going to the, then you know it's gonna be the fridge or store. Now you just expand that out to a full thing. - And the computer has the capacity to go through every single written word in the world

and come up with the most probabilistic next word in that sentence.

“Where is a human can't scan the known written language?”

But the computer can. - We don't learn anything like this, but this is how the computers are learning. It's just to predict one step ahead. That's really the magic of large language models.

And that's where we've now rebranded to AI because it turns out doing this makes these things intelligent. - Yeah. - So coming back to your point, the origins of AI really go back to studying the brain all the way back

to McCulloch and Pitz, they made this artificial neuron in the 40s and they showed that if you connected them,

you could build a arbitrarily powerful computer.

And it was revolutionary because no one had ever figured out. They abstracted away the details, but the squishing neurons in your brain could actually behave like a computer. It was just a revolutionary idea.

And that began decades of research to study that ultimately through neuroscience results sort of led to different types of networks and so on and so forth. So where are we today?

It's exactly what you said. It's the opposite. I'm a huge proponent of using artificial intelligence for a science discovery. It was much broader than neuroscience.

My particular love is neuroscience.

“I think we're in for some huge and positive changes here.”

If you look at it that way, there's a whole other conversation to be had. - We built a device that can help us understand our own and tell. - That's right, yes. - So now forecasting in the future,

which is always dangerous but super fun,

you could imagine that once we know how the brains work, we begin to actually include even more detail to align these AI models to more how we think. - Yeah, 'cause there was a single thing I read I wanted to bring up to you, which is,

I do think people misunderstand AI a little bit. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I read this interesting thing they did. It doesn't think they're not gonna create. They're gonna predict.

So the example that this article I read was is that they trained an AI model on all of the known scientific literature of the 1300s. And then they asked the AI, do we revolver on the sun or does the sun revolver on the planet?

Is it a heliocentric or a geocentric model of the universe? And the AI said, it's geocentric, the sun revolves around us. So in that way, it's not super intelligent. It can't be Galileo. If you give it the information that was known at that day,

it's going to give you the highest probability prediction of that information, but it can't be Galileo. It can't think beyond what it knows, at least currently.

- So what do we think about that?

Like, how do we define thinking? And then is that just one category with intelligence and how do we account for that? - I have a different opinion. So I want to be really nuanced here

because I can't stand AI freak out and I don't want to be a part of that. - But I don't think these AI's are live. I don't think they're conscious. So to the degree that this makes any sense,

I do think they're thinking.

“I think they're like the first example of day-carping,”

dead wrong in that sense of like, I think therefore I am. These things are thinking in the reductive sense of manipulating language for the purposes of reasoning and conceptualizing. I think they're doing it, but there's nothing behind the machine.

- There's just automated process, but how can they go forward, I guess, is my question. And let's we command them in a certain way. It's our original thought that was creative and what I would be putting quotes thinking.

And then we'll now use this device

as a great pattern recognition machine

to substantiate this creative thing we had. But on its own, it can't come up with the heliosentraff. - I acknowledge your example. That's a very hard example. But if we pull back, I do think that there is

quite a bit of novelty that these things are capable of generating. But I agree with you that there are unsolved problems in and around that kind of scientific progress. So this is an enormous conversation.

- Yeah, yeah. - But what I would say is in the air right now that something has changed in a line. I don't know if you cut wind of this, right? Like in the last say three or four months,

all the sudden these things are to our coding much better. And all the sudden, there's this sense that the top brass at major tech companies are taking it much more seriously. Again, I'm hesitant to make predictions,

but what's happening is that these tools are becoming much, much better, but there's still a real sense of supervision of these tools.

“- They're compounding, though, as the point, right?”

- Exactly. So the question is, if you believe that they've moved on from single token prediction to other more technical methods involving reinforcement learning. It's another conversation.

But the idea is that if they're self-improving at what pace and so on and so forth. - Yeah, yeah. - And what we've seen at least in early 2026, they are getting better.

And that I think a lot of the discussion that's happening is really more about people adjusting to this idea than it is, the technology itself. - What is your signpost you look at? So for me, obviously, egocentrically,

I'm really tracking AI's progress through what I see that is digitally created. We just had an ad-nazium talk about getting sent videos and should you tell the person, "Hey, I think that's AI or not."

- Yeah, because they're at the level where two people in film and television can't tell. And so that bridge has been crossed. Now, I still think they don't have the human voices when they do dialogue and they try to do the cadence

of human speak. That's to me, still, they give away. But fuck, there's no more six fingers. That's my layman's version of tracking where we're at just what I'm seeing done visually, digitally.

What are the things you look at? - In my world, it's all coding. - Oh, okay. - So if there is just interface, I'm gonna go build a little web browser

to go make a little video game. And AI's just gonna do that for you. - In a second.

- In a second, yeah, a couple minutes, but yeah.

- Yeah, yeah. - So where these things I think are still struggling is if it's we would say technically out of distribution, if it's not something it's seen a lot of before, if it's integrated into a much, much larger code base

is what you see at these large companies, but it's getting better at those things too. And so we're still, I think in this mode where like the human and the computer together, the human and the AI together are really the best.

- Yeah. - And so what I would look for in your orchids, very similar in my show is actually, is when does that clip become a movie? For me, it's when does that chunk OUI code,

user interface code become the whole program? - That's not product. - Exactly. - And to be honest with you, I just don't see humans leaving that process

in time soon. I think that's a risky opinion. - Well, there's a lot of money been bet on the fact that they will get more efficient. - There's a lot of hype out there.

“But in some sense, you have to take it seriously”

because these tools are getting much, much better. And what I would say to any of your listeners is like, if you're not checking these things out, you absolutely should be, I really mean it. - You can't set it out.

- In a positive way, like imagine all the things that you could do with these kinds of creation tools. For me and my science career, so there's this thing called Google Scholars, where academics have their papers listed.

Just go read every one of my papers and tell me what you think I should work on next. - Why? - Shit you not, it gave me the same idea that I had. - Oh, wow. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, really.

- No, I don't want to be disagreeable, but go ahead. - They're in lies also in the killies of it. - Which is? - Which is, it came to the same conclusion you came to. - Ah.

- Because it made a probabilistic prediction about you, which it can do well. - I gotta say, I find it pretty impressed. I don't view that as a fake. - Well, why?

- 'Cause it had to be that way. It was like the only thing it could have done. - Right. - Well, no, no, that's not actually my concern is that I'll make it more artistic.

What should I write next?

All that that would insure is that I stay within my creative pattern. And in fact, what I probably need to do isn't the thing that was obvious to me. I mean, this is very philosophical.

- I accept that critique, but you know what I'm saying? - I see where you're coming from. - What it can do is advise on more of the same in some sense. And depending on what your career is if your career is to disrupt yourself

in your work should constantly be trying to 180 at all times. Oh, fuck, well, let's jump way over here for this perspective and see what I can bring with that and come up with a new thing. And that way, I think it can be stunting for progress.

- I see. - In science, jumping around 180 too many times is not fabulous, because in one step to the other, it's hard, it's hard, right? - I mean, same in art too.

We don't like to think of it like that, but we have skills. - Yeah. - We have things we're better at than others and what it's doing is saying

“you're best at this, so maybe you should do more of that.”

And I think that's one of the things I think-- - I'm going to be able to articulate it better by saying I fear that it could be a reproduction instead of an iteration. Does that make sense?

- Yeah, it makes sense. - Does it get us out of the true creative mindset? - I'll tell you the one thing that I am aligned with with people who are thinking about this more deeply than I am is I think the world is in for some very large changes.

- Oh, yeah. - And especially like the science discovery optimization process, business to business applications is all in the table. - It's all in the table. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- We had a guy on David Faganbaum. He has a foundation where they're repurposing drugs that are already out on the market for other cures. He cured himself with the disease

and it's an incredible story.

And they're using AI, obviously, to like process all these drugs and see exactly what they do and they just got like a huge grant he emailed me. - Oh, wonderful. - That's so amazing.

- Well, cured diseases that cannot be cured based on this. It's happening. It's not like there's something in the future. It's currently going on. It's awesome.

- We're going to see this experiment play out. Like it or not, that's what's going to happen. So I don't even sit around. Well, what if I'm like, well, let's see. Allow myself to be as optimistic as I would be pessimistic.

We don't fucking know, so why am I going to have an opinion on something that none of this really is. - It's true, nobody knows. You know what's so fun? We're going to see.

- That's right. - We happen to have been born in a period of time. - We're going to see. - That's my mentality for sure. - Yeah.

- Well, David, this was lovely. - Thank you for having me. - Yeah, yeah. Thanks so much for sharing your story. I think it's a happy story.

- Yeah, really. - Yeah, I appreciate that. - Thank you for hearing it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Such a pleasure.

“Anyone ever tell you, you look like James Halffield?”

- These days, probably once every three months. - There we go. - Oh, wow. - Great. I'd be flattered.

- I think it's the beard. I actually took a close look. We don't actually look anything alike. (laughing) - Well, every three months,

some of you guys did a great job. It's a fail. - Yeah, I'm a mess. (laughing) - David's book, please.

Please read it. It's beautifully written and very, very honest. It's called Emergence, a memoir of boyhood, computation, and the mysteries of the mind. - Be well, David.

- Thank you very much. (upbeat music) - Stay tuned for Fat Check. It's rhythm part, he's out. (upbeat music)

- Did you get my text? - Which one? - I just sent you in a very important tag. - Oh my goodness, no. - About five minutes ago.

- Oh, I don't think that was me. - Raw, was it raw? Were you in the Nut in the club house? - I wasn't in the club house. - Yeah, I could hear you.

- Oh, wow, I don't even remember. If anything, my current assessment is I haven't been blowing my nose, but I heard that too. There was a loud one at the end there. - Yeah, I thought it really--

- It sounded like you had a die. - Exactly, so the text I sent was, are you okay? - I hear you. - I hear you. - I hear you. - I hear you. - More extreme than normal.

- Yeah. - Yeah, I can confirm. - Thank you. - Okay, it's I've subconsciously did. - It was real.

- It's hard to be me. - It was scary sounding. - Oh, real. You might need to come perform the hype, like maneuvering?

- Yeah, it's not like something was stuck in there. - Tell your wrestling a bear, maybe. - Oh, no. - Oh, no, he's really-- - He put his finger in his butt and poke their eyes out.

(laughing) - I had that fantasy at the airport in New Orleans. At this restaurant, I heard a woman coughed. - Don't you see what she's talking? - I don't. - I don't.

- Okay. - But I heard this, I didn't know if it was choking or coughing, it was like three tables over. - Oh. - And I just thought, I bet no one in here

is gonna be willing to do it.

Like that was just my first thought.

Not that I want to, just like I got a hunch, if I look over and I see that she's choking,

“I think her female companion, she's dining with,”

isn't gonna jump behind her and start. - Oh my gosh. - Why did she slide? - Why did she slide? - She just didn't give a fuck. - Well, I looked over and she had a like

paralyzed look on her face. - Wait, which one? The copper or the the associate?

- Yeah.

- So I was like, she ain't getting up.

And then I found myself just trying to value it like, this is a cough or a choke. - Okay. - And then it passed. - Okay.

- But I did have a whole thing. I just like, you know, your mind thinks so fast. It's like, I saw that. Is that that, that's her from she not gonna help. Look around the restaurant.

I don't see anyone like else paying attention. Fuck, if this is a choke, I gotta get out of the mood. - Yeah, I'll say I'm grateful that there are people like you. I really am in the world and not restaurants

because I don't know what happens to me, but I like don't, I do, I really don't wanna act.

“It's like when I hear what I think is a car crash.”

- Yeah. - And you, of course, run towards as a lot of people do. And you should, you should go check. - What is that, everyone's nature?

- But I like, I just like,

I'm just like, praying some, but what if no one's, I have to, I could be the only one. It's like, bad. - You do have to assess.

'Cause look, I'm thrilled if a doctor stands up in hell. I don't know that I know how to do the harm. Like, I know some attempt at it will be better than nothing. - That's all I think.

- Yeah, you do know, okay, I can relate to being the friend. - Uh-huh, okay. - It's so, when you run into the store that time with Kelly, there's almost been a salty people.

- He was coming towards us, screaming at us in the night. - And you left her. - Well, no, she was supposed to come with me. - Okay, I thought that might be the example you read. - No, no, thanks for bringing that up.

No, I, I, there's more than one occasion. Everyone can relate to this when you're at dinner with somebody.

“And then they get, like, the watered on the wrong side.”

- Okay. - And then the coughing and then like, they can't stop. And you want it, you don't want to make a big deal 'cause you know that I get very codependent. I'm like, they feel so embarrassed.

- Yeah. - So I'm just gonna act like, I don't even notice. And I'm gonna keep talking and like, I don't even know that. - That's a good, I approve of that technique.

- Yeah, and then, 'cause when it happens to me and then people are like, are you okay? I hate that. - That's worse, yeah. - And then it gets worse.

And you just say, yeah, like you're like dying and you're saying, yeah, really quick question. I just popped into my mind. Do you think that I would turn blue before you would because you're brown and I'm white?

Do you think like, I have some evolutionary advantage in a choking situation where it would be obvious, more obvious that I know I have a airway obstruction. - Um, maybe. - Do brown people turn blue?

- Whoa, of course. - I mean, if there's no blood, no, no, oh my god, ever. - Hey, is your check getting to know you in a way that like, you like, without any effort? Like, here's an example.

- What a sin. - Oh, you wanted to talk about something, you should have something written down. - Okay, then I'll save it. - Oh, earmark it, I won't put a pin in it.

- For the listener, we have a bit of a difference of opinion of what those do mean, we have different interpretations. - Hold on.

“I think we should put a pin in the blue skin and go to...”

- It says no, no, what, they can't turn blue or they do not turn blue. - No, that's not, what it says. - You got two different answers? - Yeah.

- Oh, my god, his white, his chat knows he's white, yours knows what's going on. - Oh, my god, this is brown skin, people can turn blue or grayish blue. - Dude, we just have to be dead.

I first Indian people specifically,

and I told the Indian people do not turn blue. - You're lying. - I can, I'll put up on the screen. (laughing) - Oh, my god, literally.

- He's an old white nationalist, calm. - It does, it occurs when blood is low and I get off that side. - Oh, this is just the Google AI. - Yeah. - And people do not turn blue with no blood

as a natural or racial trait. Well, certain Hindu deities like Krishna or Shiva are famously depicted with blue skin to symbolize divine cosmic nature or the absorption of poison. This is not a representation of a living biological condition.

However, there are rare medical conditions that can cause anyone regardless of race to appear blueish. - Yeah, exactly. - Our gariah, a rare skin condition caused by silver buildup.

Yes, I've we've seen this too much silver. There was this, there was a movement, I feel like it was primarily in the deep right where people drinking colloidal silver. - Oh, I remember that.

- I ate it was like it was really heavy in the right. - It was during COVID. - I just love how these medicines are political. - I know. - Like if you, that's not a medicine.

- Okay, but wait, pull that out, okay. The now there's pins everywhere, okay? - No, there's bookmarks everywhere. - Earmarks. - Earmarks.

(laughs) - Yeah, this says yes, brown skin people can turn blue or grayish blue due to a medical condition known as cyanosis. That was on there, which occurs when blood is low and oxygen.

- Blood is low and oxygen. - Yeah, so same stitch.

“- Oh, Rob, you're, and I is literally racist.”

- I think your lips also can turn blue if you have too much oxygen. - Oh, you're all right, see you look it up. - Okay. - Get brown people, you lip brown.

- You do lips turn blue. - You're a, I know's you. - That's right. - Well, mind's telling me, don't worry, like you can turn blue, like don't.

- Good news. (laughs) - Turn blip, turn blip. - This just isn't. - Too much oxygen.

- Blue lips can result from a lack of oxygen in the blood. This may happen to you at a high altitude or if you are choking or chronic underlying condition. Bring an up cyanosis again. - You're a cyanosis, that's a recrom not seeing much about.

- Okay. - To much, okay, back to your AI knowing you. - Yes, that was so similar you brought it up

because today I used e-mail AI for the first time.

- Oh, how does that work? - You don't have this yet, like when you're responding to an e-mail, it gives you an e-mail. - Oh, it's just an entire e-mail.

“- Yes, and by the way, I don't know how to turn it off”

and I actually hate it. Then I keep having to delete it. - This little button, Monica. - That's what you can turn it off. - That's the AI thing.

So if you click that, it should give you settings for it. - Oh, oh. - Okay, yeah, because-- - I'm still going with computer. - I know he is very good at computers.

- Normally, I hate it, I delete it. And I add the step and I'm already like Russian e-mails so I'm mad at it. But today the e-mail was perfect. - Perfect, yeah.

- And so I sent it. - Oh, here's an okay card that your marks are flying. So we had a real life experience that was hilarious. In this exact space, which is, I wrote to you, Amy and Ryan. - On night in the seven kingdom at seven p.m. tomorrow,

Stu, question mark. - Right. - You wrote back, yes, please. Ryan wrote back by Trump, it's calling clashing goblets. We shall attend the revelries.

Cheer mightily for the valiant night of the seven kingdoms in part take joyfully of the most noble and steamy Stu. I mean, I want to see the delay here. Okay, so he wrote that, it's okay.

I don't know if that's came in at 6.56 p.m. Did AI write that at some master piece? - It was so clearly. - And you go, I was just about to ask that. And I love Ryan Hansen.

He wrote absolutely. - Yeah. - And then we got into why. For you, it was most notable. And steamy Stu is the giveaway.

And I said, I thought revelries was the smoking gun. (laughing) - Yeah.

- That was the first time I caught someone cold blooded.

- Oh, yeah. - It was so good. I mean, he's so clever, but it was too fast and good. - It was too fast. It was too old, tiny words.

He would've had to take time to look up a lot of things. - I even said, I'm in thinking knows how to use the word revelries. - Yeah, and whatever I say. - I'm not, I want to throw out round revelries.

- You would want to look it up. - I would, yeah, I'd have some hesitation. - I, because it was a different AI issues, but okay. - Exactly. You do need to make sure it's something you could have done.

- If you're trying to fool people. - Right. (upbeat music) - Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. (upbeat music)

- And then you're being asked to assess how other people assess you. This is this is this is theory of mind and metacognition.

“I can think about how you think about how I think.”

- Yeah. - And so you better be good at that if you're gonna try to sneak one by us. - You know what was kind of interesting? So it's signed by name with the lower case M.

- Oh cool. - Which I don't do. - Okay, yeah. - But I am pretty willy millie about my sign-offs. - Right.

- Sometimes I'll sign M.P. Sometimes maybe just M, sometimes no sign-off. So maybe it was trying to mimic being casual. - Yeah, I think so. - Look, it's good, there's no question about it.

- That's like, yeah.

- But here's what I loved.

I'm gonna screw up the details precisely, but it went something like this. Lincoln and I were looking at a map of Italy. - Mm-hmm. - And we stumbled upon,

and I'm so embarrassed I've already forgotten the name of it. But there is a country inside of Italy, do you know this? - Well, I don't know yet. - And it's like 48 square miles. Other than the Vatican,

so you have the Vatican, which is its own country inside of Italy. Then you have this other country, like Santa Maria, Santa Marino. - Santa Marino. - Marino?

- Santa Marino. - Republic of Santa Marino. - We're like looking at places to visit, and then there's like, you know on a map, where it says Italy on one side,

it says Italia, and then it says Santa Marino,

And I'm like, why is the city? We're both like, what is the city? - Okay.

“- And she's like, I think it's a country, and I don't think”

there's a two mile long country in the middle. - Right. - And so we look it up, sure enough, it's a country. It had been a country since the 1300s, and it only only became a country in the 1800s,

and they had all these diplomatic relationships,

so they never absorbed it, they always honored it.

So there's this tiny little country. - No. - So then we got interested in what are the five tiniest countries in the world? - Oh.

- And the Vatican's of course, it's less than a square mile. Same Marino, I think was fourth. - Oh. - Lichtenstein is in there. - We're really, it's that small.

- It's very, very small, and Monaco, of course. - Oh, sure, been there. - Yeah, that's a tiny little country. And then once it had that list, it said, knowing how much you like F1,

would you like me to tell you what drivers live in Monaco? - Oh, no, and you weren't even talking about F1. - No, but I've loved that, 'cause that could have been a next search. So it's like, it wasn't just answering my question. It was encouraging me to learn more,

but it knows my interests. I've loved that. - Oh God. - You don't like it. - Well, 'cause it's like, it's like,

it's telling you what to think. - Oh, now you're gonna think about F1 right now. - No, it's trying to predict what I'll be interested in, and it's doing a good job. - What if it didn't know that you had a New Year's resolution,

Lunar New Year's resolution,

to never think about F1 ever again.

It was destroying your life, you were addicted. - Then it would've said, why did you ask what the schedule was yesterday for the F1? - 'Cause you slipped off the wagon, but you're trying to get back on.

- I didn't tell it. Hey, I'm trying to quit my obsession with F1. It would immediately adjust. - If it carries out whatever your desire is. - Yeah, but your desire versus your,

your need versus your want might be different. - Your first sort of verse, your second order of our bodies. - That's right. - Yeah, wow. - Wowsers.

What else do we put up with? - Either a few pens. - You're freaking out when people cough, you go invisible. - Oh.

- Yeah, so your friend was coughing, and you kept asking questions. - 'Cause then I thought, "Well, could you turn blue?" - That's right. - And we're not, we haven't determined.

- But also, you know, if you're choking, choking, for real choking, the Heinleuk choking, there's no air through your path. - Yeah. - And so you can't cough.

So you could still be in a lot of distress. - I also think you could have reduced air.

“I think you could have 80% blockage, 90% under it.”

- Yeah, but if you have 100, then you need the Heinleuk. - Right, if you have 50, there are other things you can do to get the thing out, and you don't need the Heinleuk, 'cause you can still get oxygen.

- Do you when you hear Heinleuk, do you not think about how close it is to Heinleuk? - No, I don't. - Do you, Rob? - No, like, I'm a botanist.

- What have you been in? - What am I out? - Like a Heinleuk? - Like, like, like, he's someone's Heinleuk. - What?

- No, no, no, no, no, no. - No, no, no.

- Okay, first of all, I've never heard it called Heinleuk.

- Heinleuk. - Heinleuk. - Heinleuk. - You're Heinleuk. - You're Heinleuk. - You've heard that. - I thought that was H-I-N-D. - You're Heinleuk. - Yeah. - Yeah.

- Okay, all Heinleuk is H-I-N-E-Y or something like that. - Yeah, I don't know a lot about Heinleuk, but I know Heinleuk orders, and so Heinleuk Manuver sounds like, in it, someone's choking you quickly,

like they're 90-week, freaks them out, and then they spit out the Q-I-L-E-S-Pitcher. - The Q-L-E-E-Pitcher. - The Q-L-E-Pitcher. - The Q-L-E-Pitcher. - The Q-L-E-Pitcher. Do you have it?

Do you go to a specific item? - Oh, who'd, oh, that's funny. No, I don't really think specifically, but yeah, in the movies, it's always stage. - A big Q-Bestay. - Yeah.

- Yeah, or chicken or something. - Wow, Heinleuk. - Heinleuk. - No. (laughing)

- Oh my god, oh, guess what? - What? - Chicken butt. - Chicken butt. (laughing)

- I started creatine last night. - You did. - Yeah. - Oh, tell me more. - How do you think I look?

(laughing) - It's like you have a lot of water in your muscles and in your brain. - Oh, it brings water there? - That's what it does.

- Well, fuck, that's in, - Tethetical to my water drinking. - No, I would argue with your reduced water consumption.

“You should have something helping you keep water”

in your muscles. - Okay. - And then I don't know the function of how it has all these huge impacts on your brain, which there's tons of data about it,

but I don't know if the mechanism is also allowing more water to be in your brain cells or not. But I do know that that's why it works for muscles. - Dude, I have like big muscles today. - Did you lift?

- You can't just take it. I am curious how much you've used your gym. 'Cause your mind doesn't nice gym now.

- I want to.

- I've only lived there a month.

- Give me a month. - You haven't got thought, I should've wanted it. - No, I think it all the time. - Okay. - I just don't do it.

- You don't do it. - My dad used it. - He did. - Oh, great. Did he get a good pump in?

- He used the treadmill. - He used the treadmill. - So I took it last night after my long walk. - Okay. - Okay.

- Because you're feeling like you're now you're on a virtuous cycle. - Yeah. - For the outward trajectory. - Yeah.

And also, it was the walk. - How long was the walk? - It wasn't that long. - Oh, I just didn't know. - You're poking on some of my virtuous cycles.

“- That is, that presumes that I think it was low.”

That's not my position.

- I felt like it was not a long enough walk.

- Okay. - Did you walk in the neighborhood? - Yeah. - Oh, fun, right? - I love it.

- Oh. - It was really hot out last night, but it was great. I walked for 35 minutes. - You did. - That's great.

- It's not my normal. I like to go an hour, but I was getting too hot. - So it's been very warm here in California. - Yeah. - And so we have taken two walks this last five days

and down to Hillhurst to have dinner. - Oh, nice. - Which is shockingly fun. - Oh, yes. - It's easy.

- It's shockingly fun. And on the way home, two nights ago, you know, all I do is scan for threats. And one of the threats I scan for is like paparazzi. I don't lie in pictures of our kids.

So I'm constantly looking on that, do you got a camera, is that right? A little bit of a preoccupation. So I said to the family, we're all walking. I said, gang, okay, here is the gameplay.

If I spot a paparazzi ahead of us, I'm gonna scream, baby, not formation. And then mom gets directly behind me. Link and you get behind mom, Delta, you get behind. Link in, and all the photographer will see

is a bit of a me walking on the street. I said to them, which is valueless. - Okay. - So no one's gonna buy a picture. - What about from the side?

- So maybe that formation can just pivot to wherever the photographer tries to go. - Okay, got it. - So that became the hilarious game. They wanted me to run drills.

So it just became me screaming, baby, duck formation, a lot, and everyone's scampering to get in position. And it didn't go well, I'm glad we ran drills. Link in constantly was, you know,

“she wanted to be directly behind me, I think.”

- Oh, she wanted to be his number two in the line.

- He's just like, he's the first place

to finish her type of person. So it's like, whatever, I'm supposed to, you know. And then I forget why we had to do a reverse, baby, back, baby, duck formation, a reverse, baby duck formation, wow.

- And that one doesn't make any sense, but we had to run it, just to get good at the drill. - Well, yeah, you got to practice lots of iterations, so you just don't know what will happen. - Oh, it was very fun.

- Anyway, I love walks, and I took, so I took my walk, my hot walk. It was about 35 minutes, so then I got back. And I did, I was like, I'm tired. And then I was like, this, like,

I'm really have not been moving my body enough, if I feel tired. And then I took a hot bath. - Oh my gosh, went the other direction. - Yeah, 'cause I wanted to continue my sweat.

- Okay. - So I took a hot bath, it just really nice, also shorter than I wanted. - Because I was hot. - And then I took my cream.

- To remind the listener also, you don't ever feel hot. - I know. - Yeah. - Yeah.

- If I were you and I was feeling not, I might have like health concerns. - Well, I, yeah. - So I took my cream. - That's a clear self-doubt.

- I mean, I guess I'm taking it for my brain, more than my body, so I can take it without lifting. I do it still lift. - Yeah, it's great for your brain recalls. - Yeah, that's what I want to do.

And for Perry menopause.

“- But, you should definitely start lifting.”

- I know. - I know. - I'm sorry. - I know. (laughs)

- Okay. - Okay. I want to start seeing some like some guns. - Look. - I want to be like, oh, wow.

- Money's got some fucking guns. - Oh, I have a new freckle. - Oh. - I probably got it last night 'cause it was hot out. - Pist.

- Okay. - Do some facts? - Yeah, we're gonna do some facts now. - Now you don't know if I'm looking at your hair or your shoulder. - You're looking at me there.

- You pass the test. So it's looking at you directly. - Yep. (laughs) - You can see more of the things that I wanted to say.

- So I need some mirror. I need some like cop mirror, sunglasses. (laughs) - Okay. (gasps)

This was another huge sim, unexpected. This really is doppelganger month. At the end of this episode, you said, does anyone ever tell you you get James Hatfield? - Oh my god.

- And he says, yeah, once every three weeks.

- God, I hope it continues.

- Me too. - Me too. - And that was a pop out at the end. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, I'm just speaking of which.

Mario told you that Mattelka's going to the sphere. - That's exciting. - Oh my god, me, Aaron and Aaron. - You're gonna go. - Oh fuck yes.

I can't imagine a fun or night to be have than the three of us at Mattelka. - That's a great plan. - Oh, I can't wait. I gotta wait all the way to November or October.

I think they're like October through something. - Okay. That's so fun. - You didn't happen to see everyone be in your algorithm. The announcement when they did it,

but they made the outside of the globe. Mattelka played all the song. They played all so cool. - I'm trying to think like, what band would I see there? That would like get me there.

“- Yeah, I mean, you should go be willing to see anybody there.”

- I know, but because I went to see you too. - Yes. - And although I was a great YouTube fan in my youth, I wouldn't necessarily go see them in concert, but I was like, well, I want to go to the sphere

in this sphere makes it. - I know, I'm just like, the sphere makes it look so cool. - Oh, look at that. - That'll be really fun.

- That's so cool, isn't it? - It is. I just feel anxious about the sphere for some reason. - A lot of stimuli. - Yeah, I won't be able to have a seizure, I think.

- That's a fair. Maybe you should do it. - Right? - You should do it. - My shirt is very expensive to help with that.

- Yeah, maybe. So I would, I would maybe see cold play there. - There you go. - Cold play.

- You know what? I don't want to sit on cold play. I think if like they didn't also love cold play. - Who does it like, cold play? - You just hear when people talk about it like,

“they are the type of person that likes cold play.”

And I'm like, oh my God. - See, they're at their every type of person. - Exactly. - The only knock on cold play I've ever heard is from like super music nerds there.

Like they're just ready, they just ripped off radiohead. Right Rob? - Yeah. - That's the complaint against cold play in the music geek world. - Oh wow.

- But I like it real, everybody. - Whatever. I'm here to say I love cold play. - Oh, I love cold play. I would say as a group,

they have had more songs that have ended up on repeat for me, for months on end. - Same. Okay, well, anyway, so if cold play goes, then maybe I'll go. - You'll be there.

- Taylor Swift, you'd see there, right? - Oh, yeah. - Yep, okay, the Hershey school, Milton Hershey school, cost free boarding school for low-income children

is supported by a massive endowment exceeding $17 billion.

Funded by controlling stake in the Hershey company, established in 1909, the trust holds approximately 28% of the company's stock, generating immense wealth for the school's operations. It's really cool.

I mean, I know a complicated man. - He had a bad experience,

“but I think he's also good about saying there are other”

experiences that have there. - Yeah, yeah, I thought that was really great. - Although I don't know why it's not Hogwarts, it sounds like it's funded enough to be straight up Hogwarts. - It sounded,

- But the experience didn't sound Hogwarts. - Well, his guy. - Maybe like blame or advisors, but that kind of money when we get like a buddy for every four kids or something.

- Well, in Hogwarts, they have a headmaster, they have like a house per lady or whatever. - Sometimes they're bad, even in Hogwarts. - Okay, I remember that. - That's bad.

- Umbridge. - Remember, umbridge? - Totally, that's all I think about it. - Umbridge. - I saw, I think about it.

- You talked about how rich the candy, like people were. - People were, yeah. - Rig leaves, bars. - Mars is still.

The Mars are the second richest family in America.

- Family. - Family. - And not person, but family. - That's from business insider. - Behind the Walton's, right?

- I don't know. - Yeah, the Walmart dynasty. - Yeah, I know that. - Okay, sorry, I brought it up. - I already know that, but I don't know if that's

the one, but it probably is. - They always make like, when there's a top 100 billionaires, like five Walton's on the list. - Oh, here are the 25 richest families in the U.S.

This is from Yahoo, find it. This is 2021, a lot's changed. - Sure. - I'm gonna go to the front, here. I gotta go from 25, I won't.

The Gallow. - Oh, Ernest Gallow, wine. - Jack Joseph Gallow. - Wine people, right? - Yeah, wine business during prohibition.

That was good, how do you know that? - Thank you, Ernest Gallow. - It says Joseph Gallow. - I know, but the brand is Ernest Gallow. - Oh, yeah, Ernest, yeah.

Cutting that, you shouldn't have more about wine than me. The Rollins' family, do you know what that is? - Rollins. - Or Rollins' maybe? - Rollins' family, no.

- Rollins' broad casting, a radio and TV biz. - Okay. - Okay. Then the Goldman family. - Goldman Sachs?

- Yes, sold Goldman. - Striker family. They're from Michigan.

- Are they an automotive supply company?

- No, this makes sense. - We are seeding. - In orthopedic surgeon. Oh, to decide to invent his own medical devices to meet his parents, his parents,

his patients' needs. One of them is the mobile hospital bed. - Oh, boy.

“- That's like when the people made this a block bag, you know?”

- Or the styrofoam cup that drops down in a coffee machine. - Oh, that's cool. - Okay, the Kathy family, Chick-fil-A. - Ah. - Wow.

- Okay, gray. - Ziff family, media conglomerate, Ziff Davis LLC. Okay, Dorans family, do you know what this is? - Dorans? - Uh-huh.

- No. - Oh, okay, but not camo, camo, camo. - Oh, sure. - The court. - Trust it, fucking brand.

- Very. - Almost, trust it. - Hunt, check-up family. - Actually, cotton trader, let's see, oil. - Oh.

- This is a different hunt. - Okay. - Do pot. - Yeah. - We know that.

- Yeah, 3M. - Oh, scary. - That's scary. - That's scary, baby. - Was it called again?

- Foxcatcher. - Yeah. - Deep brow, channing Tatum. - Beautiful film.

“- Oh, Mark Ruffalo, bring in all the heart.”

- God, I know. - Okay, Bush family. - Beer, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. - That's right, Anne Heiser Bush. - Oh, no, but family.

- B-U-T-T. - All of it. - All of it. - Wow, wow. - Is it free, aren't they?

- I'm rich if they're, if you can charge for them. (laughing) - I guess this is a grocery store. - Oh, okay.

- But like, I've never heard of it.

- Maybe they own like, they own croakers or something. - I know, it doesn't say that. - Yeah, this is H-E-B. Celebrate as the America's top grocery store. - Oh yeah, it's H-E-B.

That's a Southern thing. - Never heard of it. - Okay. - I've never seen one. - You haven't seen H-E-B.

- Uh-huh. - Texas. - Uh, that makes sense. - Marshall family. Marshall's the discounts store.

- Well, originally, department. - It's not that brown family. You were of his UPS. (laughing) - Brown Foreman, corp.

Kentucky-based spirits in wine produce are they give us jacked Daniels. Finlandia, that's cool. And George Foreman is involved, or you know, his part of that.

- Hurst? - Okay. - Dunkin' family. - Not Dunkin' don't it. - No.

“- Pipeline giant enterprise products partners.”

- Okay. - Newhouse family. - Oh, Claire. - Advanced publications, publishing company that owns Condonass.

- Mm. - That's cool. - Pritzker. - Oh, I feel like I should know that one. - Hi, it created the Hi-It.

- Hi, Regency. - And invested in industrial holding company, Marmin group. - Oh, okay, I don't know. - Cox family.

- Cable. - Evening news, yeah. - Johnson family. - Fuckin' Johnson, yeah. Very trusted brand.

- This is cool. - Well, I don't know if this is Johnson and Johnson, 'cause it's the Johnson's on half, almost half of mutual fund giant fidelity investment. - Okay, not those Johnson's.

- Oh, S.C. Johnson is next. - Oh, wonderful. - Yeah. - Windex, glass, ziplock. - Yeah.

- Yeah, they're basically proctor and gamble size.

- 37 bill. - Bill. - There's some bill. - Blater. - S.A. Later.

- Nice. - Cargo McMillan family. Green storage business in Iowa. - Of course. - Wow.

- Mar's family number three, we got there. - Yeah. - 94 billion. - No, he's congratulations, guys. - Two, the Coke family.

- 100 billion. - Mm-hmm. - Wow. Number one, you got it. - Wall.

- Wall. - 247 billion. - Yeah, I wish the Costco family had more, 'cause they're really upstanding. - They are, they're great, they're great.

- All right, let's see. That was unexpected, didn't mean to do that. - I'll add a cool thing to want to do. - Okay. - To get their inheritance,

they have to do a public works project in Bentonville, where they're headquartered. So Bentonville has all this impossibly great stuff because of this weird, so they have like a crazy good museum, with like an impossibly good art collection.

- Oh. - They have a crazy public parks bicycle networks. Like they have a bunch of cool things because they have to take on a public works project to get their money, I like that.

- That's cool.

and not just in Bentonville.

“- Well, you know, that's a conservative liberal thing”

or conservatives believe you make your community good. And if everyone makes their community good, the whole place will be good. - And if everyone can make it good

because I don't have 247 billion dollars.

- And then you got to move to Bentonville. - Oh my God. - Okay, how much was $50,000? That's what he was making in '96.

“- Yeah, yeah, yeah, nice to like 200, maybe.”

- Yeah, 103,649 dollars. - Oh, okay.

- Okay, well look what we haven't done in a while.

A bit coin. - Oh, yeah, well, we missed a huge cliff. - Oh, I mean, we missed, I know. - Around the Super Bowl, it lost like half of its value and we did not report on that.

“- Well, it's probably tomorrow is too sensitive”

at that time. - Oh, well, it's up today. - What's it, yeah? - It's at 70,392. - Oh, okay.

- But when we were talking, it was like 106 or 12 or something.

- Okay, the restricted Boltzmann machine, he said he thought it was out of Jeff Hinton's lab but was in 100% sure, but he is right. - Oh, good. - But I'm gonna give credit to Paul Smolensky.

He rose to prominence after Jeff Hinton and collaborators used Bass Learning Algorithms for them in the mid-2000s. And then, that's it. - That's everything.

- The last one was doppelgangers, but I already talked about it. - Covered he covered that. - Yep. - Okay, great. - Yeah, good stuff.

- Love you. - Love you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)