Simone Giertz: Queen of Sh*tty Robots, Innovative Engineering, and Design

00:00:00.000 | It's a machine, it was my friend Daniel Beauchamp and I,

00:00:03.000 | we had this long running joke about a proud parent machine

00:00:06.520 | that you could give a quarter

00:00:08.480 | and it pats you on the shoulder and says, "Proud of you."

00:00:11.720 | So yeah, I still have that hanging on my wall

00:00:14.160 | in my workshop.

00:00:15.520 | So that one I'm really happy with.

00:00:17.600 | I just think it's a really funny concept

00:00:20.120 | and also I executed the build well.

00:00:22.640 | - So it's an arm?

00:00:24.360 | Like what's the build?

00:00:25.240 | - I built it off of an old lamp arm.

00:00:27.500 | Yeah, basically it's just a motorized arm

00:00:30.160 | and this kind of torso of a person.

00:00:33.960 | - What's this?

00:00:34.800 | So it's actually a hand, right?

00:00:35.840 | - It's just laser cut plywood and it kind of has like,

00:00:38.360 | it looks creepy.

00:00:40.000 | And yeah, it says, "Proud of you, son."

00:00:42.880 | Because I just thought that sounded more funny

00:00:44.680 | than proud of you daughter and also proud of you son,

00:00:47.960 | just it immediately communicates that it's a parent.

00:00:51.360 | It's not just like a colleague or something.

00:00:53.280 | It's like proud of you.

00:00:54.440 | (laughing)

00:00:55.600 | - Yeah.

00:00:56.440 | - And charges you a quarter for it.

00:00:58.640 | - Yeah, but he added like chat GPT on top of that

00:01:01.540 | and fine tune it on conversations you've had

00:01:04.600 | with your parents and all of a sudden you have a thing

00:01:06.680 | that can fundamentally transform your psyche.

00:01:08.920 | - Yeah.

00:01:09.760 | - The following is a conversation with Simone Yetch,

00:01:14.660 | an inventor, designer, engineer, and roboticist

00:01:17.620 | famous for a combination of humor

00:01:19.780 | and brilliant creative design in the systems

00:01:22.080 | and products she creates,

00:01:23.620 | including as part of her new product design company

00:01:26.280 | called Yetch.

00:01:28.020 | She has a popular YouTube channel

00:01:30.620 | where she has demonstrated a lot of her

00:01:33.220 | incredible and fun designs and inventions

00:01:35.640 | from quote, "Shitty robots" to a Tesla Model 3

00:01:39.740 | converted into a truck.

00:01:41.760 | But where she also revealed her personal journey

00:01:44.740 | after having been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

00:01:47.780 | Simone is a brilliant, fun, and inspiring human being.

00:01:51.780 | It was truly an honor for me to get to meet her

00:01:54.820 | and to have this chat.

00:01:56.640 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:01:58.600 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:02:00.660 | in the description.

00:02:01.860 | And now, dear friends, here's Simone Yetch.

00:02:05.420 | What was the first cool thing you built

00:02:07.880 | where you fell in love with the process of making stuff?

00:02:10.280 | - You know, I think in the beginning of building stuff,

00:02:12.900 | you run into the limitations of your skills so much.

00:02:15.920 | So I feel like honestly building gets less and less

00:02:20.480 | frustrating or like I love it more and more

00:02:22.600 | the more I know.

00:02:23.760 | - So the limitations aren't fun?

00:02:25.600 | Like when it's really frustrating?

00:02:26.440 | - The limitations are fun, but it's like

00:02:27.720 | when you have an idea of something

00:02:29.440 | and you wanna make it a certain level

00:02:31.840 | and then you just have to compromise

00:02:34.480 | with the materials and the tools and the skills you have.

00:02:37.320 | So I can't remember first time where I felt like--

00:02:41.600 | - I'm proud of this.

00:02:42.440 | - Wow, this was so smooth.

00:02:44.920 | I'm so proud of it.

00:02:46.360 | Like I feel like a lot of people,

00:02:48.920 | I watch them build stuff and it's just like

00:02:51.200 | watching water pour down, you know?

00:02:53.300 | It's just like so easy and for me it's just like

00:02:56.480 | trying to shove a toy car into a wall.

00:03:00.800 | - So you're not able to step back and marvel

00:03:02.440 | like at the early creations, even like,

00:03:04.540 | even like, we're not even talking the Arduino stuff

00:03:08.160 | even before then.

00:03:09.400 | - I'm from Sweden and you have to choose

00:03:12.000 | either sewing or woodworking and I chose

00:03:14.480 | like woodworking in middle school.

00:03:16.400 | And I remember the sense of pride

00:03:18.680 | when I got to bring something home

00:03:20.280 | and that thing of like, oh my God,

00:03:21.600 | I get to show my parents this.

00:03:23.680 | And I think that is kind of the feeling

00:03:28.160 | that I've built my job around.

00:03:30.120 | It's like the sense of pride and wanting to show people

00:03:32.840 | something that I made and back then it was like

00:03:35.360 | a little wooden spoon, you know?

00:03:37.960 | And now it's a slightly larger wooden spoon.

00:03:40.760 | - Wooden spoon that is dynamic and moves

00:03:43.260 | and has a mind of its own.

00:03:45.080 | You first started doing more engineering type stuff

00:03:49.440 | with Arduino boards at Punch-through Design,

00:03:53.360 | which is an SF engineering firm.

00:03:55.320 | What are, just from your memory there,

00:03:56.720 | what are some cool things you built there?

00:03:58.740 | - So the thing is I went to advertising school

00:04:01.840 | and I just like vocational studies a year

00:04:05.780 | and I realized there that I didn't care much

00:04:08.120 | for advertising, but I thought it was really fun

00:04:10.120 | to build stuff and programs.

00:04:11.320 | So like, I just completely focused on that

00:04:14.200 | and there I built my first hardware project

00:04:18.120 | or like electronics project, which was this iPhone case

00:04:21.960 | with retractable guitar strings.

00:04:23.920 | So basically I imagined that you could like

00:04:25.720 | pull out guitar strings from the bottom of your iPhone

00:04:29.320 | and you could pluck it to your belt

00:04:31.700 | and then you could hold a cord on the screen.

00:04:34.120 | And I built that together with my friend Jonathan

00:04:36.880 | and I was like, oh, this is dope.

00:04:39.800 | I thought it was so much fun.

00:04:41.480 | And I considered like, oh, should I go to school for this?

00:04:45.300 | But then I thought, maybe I can get a job

00:04:48.100 | and I could get paid to learn about electronics.

00:04:51.220 | So just based off of that one project,

00:04:54.660 | I got the job at Punch Through Design,

00:04:56.780 | which actually was a one year internship.

00:04:59.180 | - Can you explain what we're talking about here?

00:05:00.740 | So it's a case with guitar strings attached to it.

00:05:04.700 | Does it actually work at all?

00:05:07.060 | - It does.

00:05:08.020 | - These are not on the screen guitar strings.

00:05:10.180 | - No.

00:05:11.020 | So they're actual strings that you pull out.

00:05:13.700 | So there's a mechanism that's almost

00:05:15.220 | like a seatbelt mechanism.

00:05:16.980 | And yeah, you pull them out from the bottom of your phone

00:05:21.980 | and you can attach them to your belt.

00:05:23.940 | I mean, it's terrible.

00:05:26.540 | There's a few different ways to decide

00:05:29.940 | if somebody is touching a guitar string.

00:05:32.660 | And what you do in a real guitar is you have the little,

00:05:36.340 | it's like measuring the vibration or the change in the,

00:05:39.260 | as the, yeah, you're measuring how the guitar is vibrating.

00:05:42.300 | And you can't really do that because I can't have

00:05:44.620 | a receiving sensor because the guitar strings

00:05:48.540 | are gonna move in relationship to that

00:05:50.420 | because you don't have like a rigid neck.

00:05:52.500 | And this is like, yeah,

00:05:53.460 | this was my first electronics project.

00:05:55.800 | I was a little fledging baby maker.

00:05:59.760 | But what I decided was to use capacitive touch

00:06:03.180 | 'cause that is independent on if the guitar strings

00:06:06.180 | are moving in relationship to something

00:06:08.260 | or in relation to something.

00:06:09.740 | So basically there was just this little Bluetooth

00:06:12.900 | Arduino board that this company Punch Through Design made.

00:06:16.100 | So that was how I found them.

00:06:17.660 | And I measured the capacitive touch.

00:06:20.020 | So like whenever the guitar string was measured,

00:06:23.840 | there was this little microcontroller that was like,

00:06:26.020 | oh my God, a guitar string got measured or touched.

00:06:29.060 | And then that sent a signal over Bluetooth to my phone.

00:06:34.060 | And I'd built a little iPhone app that interpreted

00:06:37.300 | those Bluetooth signals and then checked

00:06:39.500 | what type of chord I was holding on the screen

00:06:42.380 | and then play the chord here.

00:06:43.220 | - So you're holding the chords on the screen.

00:06:46.460 | So you're doing the multi-touch sensing there.

00:06:49.180 | That's incredible.

00:06:51.980 | - I honestly cannot believe that I pulled it off

00:06:54.540 | because I think I was, ignorance was definitely bliss

00:06:58.860 | because that was like, yeah,

00:06:59.900 | the first hardware project I'd ever built,

00:07:04.140 | the first iPhone app I'd ever programmed.

00:07:06.780 | And like now if somebody was like,

00:07:08.620 | hey, I want this to be my first project,

00:07:10.420 | I would probably be like, oh, that's a lot.

00:07:12.060 | But I pulled it off.

00:07:14.820 | - Because that's such an interesting thing

00:07:17.300 | for people to hear because it's your first project.

00:07:19.500 | And a lot of people stop because of the difficulty

00:07:22.900 | of their first project.

00:07:23.940 | They never truly discovered their own genius

00:07:25.780 | because they stopped at the first and you didn't stop.

00:07:28.320 | So it'd be interesting to kind of psychoanalyze you

00:07:31.060 | on the couch of why you didn't stop.

00:07:33.220 | 'Cause you have to build an app to figure out how to,

00:07:36.260 | did you know how to program much or no?

00:07:38.580 | - Okay.

00:07:39.420 | - I mean, a little bit, but I'd never programmed

00:07:41.420 | or done any iOS apps.

00:07:44.060 | - Okay, so you have to figure out how to get,

00:07:46.780 | forget like what the app does,

00:07:48.020 | just get the app running and working.

00:07:50.460 | And then you have to figure out how to get the sensors

00:07:52.380 | in like real time, the finger touching,

00:07:55.100 | and you have to connect how to get the capacitors

00:07:57.260 | touch working with the microcontrollers.

00:07:59.460 | Do you know anything about the capacitor touch sensors

00:08:02.220 | at that time?

00:08:03.060 | - I mean, it's pretty easy now.

00:08:04.820 | It's basically just--

00:08:05.660 | - Everything's easy.

00:08:06.980 | - You know, rockets are pretty easy.

00:08:08.780 | - Hey, you sound like my grandma.

00:08:11.180 | She's, I have an Italian grandma

00:08:13.340 | and I always trying to get her,

00:08:15.980 | we're like trying to get her to tell her recipes

00:08:18.980 | and every recipe starts with, it's very simple.

00:08:23.460 | And then there's like 45 minutes of her explaining it.

00:08:26.420 | - It's like with gymnastics at the Olympics,

00:08:28.820 | they make it look easy.

00:08:30.860 | The best people in the world always make

00:08:32.300 | the impossible seem easy.

00:08:34.420 | - I pride myself with making buildings look really hard

00:08:38.100 | 'cause I feel like I'm always struggling so much.

00:08:40.500 | - You make the easiest thing possible.

00:08:42.180 | No, so how many strings was it?

00:08:45.860 | Or is it just one?

00:08:46.700 | - Oh gosh, I mean, this is such a long time ago.

00:08:48.340 | No, it was six.

00:08:49.340 | - Oh, six strings and you can touch it

00:08:51.100 | and then there's, wow.

00:08:53.620 | And it can, and then the phone itself makes a sound?

00:08:56.740 | - Uh-huh.

00:08:58.020 | And I still think it's such a cool concept

00:09:01.940 | to have this like mobile,

00:09:03.540 | I'm not even a guitar player, I don't know.

00:09:05.580 | I was, I mean, I got the idea because I was kind of

00:09:08.740 | strumming on my charge cord of my phone.

00:09:11.820 | - Oh, like an air guitar but on a cord?

00:09:13.460 | - Yeah, but I've been thinking about it 'cause I'm like,

00:09:16.540 | oh man, it would be really fun to go back to that project

00:09:20.540 | with what I know now.

00:09:22.180 | But the problem with it is that

00:09:26.020 | when you're producing the tension in your string

00:09:28.460 | just with your arm, like you can't make it taut enough

00:09:32.140 | to actually play, like it kind of becomes

00:09:34.460 | playing these like saggy strings.

00:09:37.020 | So it's, you're not really getting that experience

00:09:39.580 | and I think that's why, I mean, I,

00:09:41.780 | yeah, I haven't really pursued it.

00:09:44.140 | - I wonder if there's a way to generate the tightness

00:09:47.300 | from the case itself.

00:09:49.060 | Like a device that unfolds and then

00:09:51.140 | with some kind of tightening mechanisms tightens.

00:09:53.780 | - Yeah, but then it kind of becomes this like

00:09:55.660 | whole thing in a guitar,

00:09:57.260 | then it just becomes a really shitty guitar.

00:09:59.580 | Like, which this is a really shitty guitar

00:10:02.060 | but it's also not a guitar.

00:10:02.900 | - But it's so shitty, it's awesome.

00:10:05.100 | - Yeah, I don't know.

00:10:06.940 | - But it's cool that you have an interface between

00:10:11.340 | a device that's capable of incredible computational power

00:10:14.940 | and an actual hardware thing.

00:10:17.460 | Is there something that you can psychoanalyze

00:10:20.300 | that made you finish that others could hear

00:10:23.540 | in their own struggle to do their first project like that?

00:10:27.900 | Because you were in a non-engineering person, technically.

00:10:32.180 | And you did a pretty cool, renegade, out there,

00:10:37.180 | wild, no instructions engineering project.

00:10:42.260 | - No, it's definitely was an off-road build

00:10:44.940 | where it's like if you're building a Lego kit,

00:10:46.620 | it's very much on the road and you're following instructions

00:10:49.580 | and this is like, you have no idea if you're headed

00:10:51.740 | for a cliff or a dead end or you're gonna get stuck.

00:10:54.420 | I think it had a natural pressure to it

00:10:59.500 | because it was a school project.

00:11:01.060 | - Yeah.

00:11:01.900 | - So it did have deadlines built into it

00:11:04.140 | and stuff like that, so that definitely helped.

00:11:07.100 | But I think also it was just so incredibly motivating

00:11:11.300 | when I realized that I might be able to pull it off.

00:11:14.340 | Like that was, I felt like a bloodhound, you know?

00:11:17.220 | You're just like, oh my God,

00:11:18.200 | I can actually make this happen.

00:11:19.540 | And I think if I hadn't seen that, the horizon,

00:11:24.540 | it would have been harder to stick through.

00:11:27.260 | - Were you able to see the end of the tunnel

00:11:30.740 | pretty early on?

00:11:31.780 | - No, not really.

00:11:32.780 | (laughing)

00:11:34.020 | - So there's something to just suffering for a while.

00:11:36.740 | - I don't know how your brain works,

00:11:38.660 | but it's like if I have a problem,

00:11:41.320 | I can't stop thinking about it.

00:11:44.820 | Like it's so fun to think about it.

00:11:47.340 | Like I spent two and a half years designing a coat hanger

00:11:52.340 | and I just can't stop thinking about it.

00:11:58.700 | Like I get so into it 'cause I think it's so much fun.

00:12:02.580 | - Take me to this two year journey of the coat hanger.

00:12:06.540 | - Of the coat hanger.

00:12:07.860 | - What, how did it begin?

00:12:09.820 | - How did it begin?

00:12:10.660 | It began with a corner in my home

00:12:13.040 | where I couldn't fit a coat rack.

00:12:15.020 | The thing is I shouldn't have brought this up

00:12:16.500 | because I'm gonna release it as a product

00:12:19.020 | probably in a year.

00:12:20.180 | - On an actual product?

00:12:21.860 | Okay, well, that's a mystery.

00:12:24.380 | - It's a mystery, yeah.

00:12:25.220 | - But it solves a fundamental problem

00:12:27.620 | in the human condition.

00:12:29.420 | - And I am so excited about it and I cannot,

00:12:32.500 | I don't, yeah, but this is, I get so pumped about it

00:12:37.180 | because I see it's just this issue

00:12:39.700 | or like this problem that I wanna solve

00:12:42.300 | and I kinda can't put it to rest until I have.

00:12:46.100 | - I mean, speaking of coat hangers,

00:12:49.000 | doorknobs have always been interesting to me.

00:12:52.340 | It's cool how there's things that everybody uses

00:12:56.380 | that somebody designed.

00:12:58.140 | - Lex. - Yeah.

00:12:59.500 | - Oh my God, so okay, so this is,

00:13:01.700 | so I have two like big,

00:13:03.500 | so basically I started on YouTube

00:13:05.260 | and I've been doing that for like the last seven

00:13:08.700 | or eight years and I've kind of been thinking of like,

00:13:10.700 | okay, what's next for me?

00:13:12.220 | 'Cause I wanna keep on trying out new things

00:13:14.660 | and I'm kind of going into two different avenues.

00:13:18.600 | One is the product business that I started,

00:13:21.020 | Coat Hangers TBD,

00:13:23.440 | and then I am working on a pilot episode of a show

00:13:27.640 | where each episode is about an everyday object

00:13:29.780 | and why they look the way that they do.

00:13:31.440 | So we've written a pilot episode about forks

00:13:34.120 | and it's all about like,

00:13:35.500 | why do they look the way that they do?

00:13:37.480 | Why did this became the like eating implement of the West?

00:13:41.160 | Why are we ruled by an iron fork?

00:13:43.480 | How did that happen?

00:13:44.320 | And every everyday object that you have

00:13:46.400 | and that you just take for granted,

00:13:48.260 | somebody just made it up.

00:13:49.720 | - Yeah, we're all sheep, we all keep using it.

00:13:52.840 | - Yeah.

00:13:53.680 | - Even if it's not optimal.

00:13:54.500 | I mean, presumably most objects are optimal, you hope.

00:13:58.320 | Or at least a local optimal.

00:14:00.160 | - Yeah, and that's what I think is so like

00:14:02.320 | the world around us,

00:14:03.520 | and this is why I love building things

00:14:05.160 | is because it just opens up this idea

00:14:07.440 | that the world around us is so malleable

00:14:09.760 | and you can make objects work for you better.

00:14:12.120 | Like I spent, I made this fruit bowl.

00:14:14.840 | I had a fruit bowl and I was always annoyed

00:14:17.000 | that I had either too little or too much fruit for it.

00:14:20.640 | So I made a fruit bowl where I can change

00:14:22.360 | the diameter of it.

00:14:23.240 | It has a mechanism so you can like make it bigger or smaller.

00:14:26.120 | And that's just like the thing of being like bowls.

00:14:29.880 | Why are they the way that they are?

00:14:31.600 | I can make them different.

00:14:33.000 | And I think like, I want to make an episode about doorknobs.

00:14:35.680 | I think it's so interesting.

00:14:36.840 | Why are they the way they are?

00:14:37.880 | Why are they placed the way where they are?

00:14:40.560 | - I think that's going to be a rabbit hole

00:14:42.360 | from which you will never return.

00:14:43.840 | - I would happily live in that rabbit hole forever.

00:14:47.580 | Like if I can like dig out a little niche for myself there,

00:14:52.420 | because I think it's like,

00:14:53.820 | they go so deep.

00:14:57.160 | - They're also on different sides of doors.

00:14:59.540 | You never, like the push pull situation on doors in general,

00:15:03.500 | like that's one of the main problems of humanity

00:15:06.860 | is figuring out the push pull.

00:15:08.300 | Figuring out which--

00:15:09.140 | - It is embarrassing.

00:15:10.220 | - It's just, okay, how many?

00:15:11.700 | There's 8 billion people on earth.

00:15:14.020 | Every single second, there is millions of people

00:15:17.780 | being embarrassed by the confusion

00:15:20.860 | of what the push pull. - Real life stats.

00:15:22.500 | - Right now there's somebody,

00:15:23.980 | some guy first time in college,

00:15:26.340 | he's trying to be impressive to everybody,

00:15:28.260 | pushes on a, and he plays it off like it's cool.

00:15:31.300 | Oh shit, I knew that.

00:15:32.900 | - No, but that's-- - Over and over.

00:15:33.740 | - And it affects our behaviors.

00:15:35.140 | That was why I think it's so interesting with forks

00:15:37.540 | is that forks actually affect our eating behaviors.

00:15:40.820 | And they can get you to eat faster or slower,

00:15:44.180 | take bigger bites or smaller bites,

00:15:46.020 | and there are all these ways, or like the social,

00:15:48.680 | I mean the reason that chopsticks work

00:15:53.100 | is because they do the food chopping in the kitchen

00:15:57.860 | rather than on the plate.

00:16:01.500 | And also you have a bowl that you bring to your mouth

00:16:04.940 | whereas a plate you keep on the,

00:16:07.660 | like there are just all these ways

00:16:08.860 | some of these objects affect our behavior,

00:16:11.220 | opening and closing doors.

00:16:12.980 | And I think it's such an interesting take on culture

00:16:16.620 | through, and like human behavior through these objects

00:16:19.780 | that we use every day and we never question them really.

00:16:22.860 | - Yeah, and then there's institutions

00:16:24.460 | that are controlling our mind

00:16:25.700 | that don't want us to know the truth.

00:16:27.700 | Why are sporks not more popular?

00:16:29.940 | Have you asked yourself that question?

00:16:31.180 | - Yeah, no, it's all big utensil is behind all of it.

00:16:35.540 | - Right, so I mean in those early days

00:16:38.620 | did you suffer from imposter syndrome?

00:16:41.820 | Like that leap to being an engineer,

00:16:44.140 | was there, especially when you started

00:16:49.100 | working a bunch of the design on a team of engineers,

00:16:52.240 | was there insecurity?

00:16:53.880 | - Both yes and no.

00:16:56.500 | I think I always try to flip my flaws into selling points.

00:17:02.980 | And for that, so getting that job,

00:17:06.420 | I was like, oh, you're a team of engineers.

00:17:12.560 | Everybody working here is an engineer.

00:17:14.540 | Your customers are not all engineers.

00:17:16.580 | You need somebody who can be your filter

00:17:20.100 | and tell you when something's gonna be too hard

00:17:22.020 | for your customers to understand.

00:17:23.660 | So it was more me being like, oh no,

00:17:26.180 | it might seem that me not having skills is a bad thing,

00:17:28.900 | but actually it's a great thing.

00:17:30.580 | I need it.

00:17:31.420 | - I represent the everyday person.

00:17:33.580 | I understand deeply what everybody needs and wants.

00:17:37.740 | - Yes, that is me, the representation of the average human.

00:17:41.640 | But I mean, I remember that.

00:17:44.140 | So I studied physics for a year in college

00:17:46.380 | and then I dropped out.

00:17:47.860 | And I had this rule for myself

00:17:50.300 | that whenever I did not understand something,

00:17:53.820 | I would ask a question.

00:17:54.740 | So I was always raising my hand in class.

00:17:56.940 | And it's this room, entire auditorium

00:18:00.860 | filled with incredibly intelligent people

00:18:02.900 | who are mortified of seeming stupid.

00:18:05.580 | And I think that was really like,

00:18:08.100 | and I remember people at the end of the year

00:18:10.140 | coming up to me and being like,

00:18:11.620 | thank you so much for all the questions you asked

00:18:13.420 | because whenever there was something

00:18:14.980 | that I was too scared to ask, you always raised your hand.

00:18:17.100 | So I think it is a bit of a skill.

00:18:19.700 | And I think that is kind of how I channel

00:18:21.540 | my imposter syndrome is I'm just like,

00:18:24.840 | no, let's lay it all out there.

00:18:26.900 | - So you're okay being almost like self-deprecating,

00:18:29.940 | just coming off.

00:18:30.780 | - Yeah, I'm definitely that.

00:18:31.740 | I kind of lean into call myself an idiot.

00:18:34.180 | I lean into being stupid.

00:18:35.260 | I think not all heroes wear capes

00:18:37.940 | and the guy and girl who asks the stupid question

00:18:40.980 | is everybody's hero, including the teachers.

00:18:45.180 | - Yeah, I think it's both.

00:18:48.980 | It's a double-edged sword.

00:18:51.020 | I started out on the internet.

00:18:52.820 | I kind of got the moniker, the queen of shitty robots

00:18:56.020 | because I posted a lot of stuff

00:18:57.560 | on /r/shittyrobots on Reddit.

00:19:00.740 | And people started calling me the queen of /r/shittyrobots

00:19:03.700 | and then the /r kind of dropped.

00:19:05.260 | So what I'm trying to say is I did not come up

00:19:07.300 | with that with myself, but I did happily adopt it.

00:19:10.900 | So I definitely came from a place of like,

00:19:13.360 | building things that didn't work and kind of,

00:19:17.620 | yeah, everything going wrong every time,

00:19:21.060 | like happily failing.

00:19:23.020 | And I think that was amazing.

00:19:24.820 | It was a really powerful tool for me

00:19:26.980 | to like not get my perfectionism in the way

00:19:29.620 | because if I set out to do something that's great,

00:19:32.820 | then I'm never gonna start.

00:19:34.540 | And I was like, no, I just need something that looks funny.

00:19:37.300 | But what I've realized now

00:19:41.660 | is there's also a defense mechanism.

00:19:44.580 | Being self-deprecating is like

00:19:46.500 | always beating people to the punch.

00:19:48.820 | It kind of was a survival tactic on the internet

00:19:52.540 | of being like never daring to set out as an expert.

00:19:56.060 | And I still do that.

00:19:57.300 | I'm terrified to tell people how to do something,

00:20:00.980 | even if I know,

00:20:02.100 | because it kind of opens you up for being shot down.

00:20:06.540 | So I think I definitely have a conflicted relationship

00:20:09.920 | with it and now, especially as I'm getting older,

00:20:13.240 | I am more skilled than I was before.

00:20:15.300 | I mean, I'm a CEO of three businesses and I'm like,

00:20:17.900 | I don't need to keep on talking myself down all the time.

00:20:21.460 | So yeah, I think it's definitely something

00:20:23.700 | that has served me really, really well.

00:20:26.380 | And that is still like a thing that I have in my work life

00:20:31.100 | and in my relationships,

00:20:33.200 | but I'm also trying to only

00:20:35.380 | do it when it's beneficial to me and not when it's harmful.

00:20:40.180 | - Yeah, I mean, but when you're as successful as you are,

00:20:42.720 | I feel like people like it when you're self-deprecating,

00:20:45.580 | you don't take yourself seriously, you have that humility.

00:20:48.660 | I think it's probably the hardest when you're starting out.

00:20:51.260 | - Yeah.

00:20:52.100 | - 'Cause-- - I don't know.

00:20:53.420 | I think it was easier than almost, I don't know.

00:20:55.900 | - But nobody takes you seriously, right?

00:20:58.060 | When you're starting out, when you're young.

00:21:00.420 | - You know, I just realized that I played

00:21:02.380 | a lot more stupid than I was.

00:21:04.740 | And I think it's also,

00:21:09.740 | oh gosh, I can't believe I'm the one bringing this up.

00:21:14.000 | But like being a woman in a male-dominated field

00:21:16.620 | and you're like, I was just trying to make myself

00:21:21.700 | the least amount threatening or like really unthreatening

00:21:24.100 | because people are threatened by you in different ways.

00:21:27.160 | And it's like, you have such a thin line that you can walk

00:21:30.780 | where you're like, okay, I need to be just attractive enough

00:21:34.180 | for people to not be offended by my appearance,

00:21:36.500 | but just unattractive enough for people to not sexualize me.

00:21:40.460 | I have to be just smart and witty enough

00:21:42.660 | for people to be like, oh my God, that's really cool.

00:21:45.300 | But also shoot myself down enough for other people

00:21:48.580 | not to be able to do it or be like, oh yeah,

00:21:50.660 | watch this woman try to thinking that she knows

00:21:53.020 | how to build electronics.

00:21:55.300 | So it's like--

00:21:57.300 | - That's an interesting skill to build,

00:21:58.940 | especially when you put yourself out there on the internet.

00:22:01.540 | Unfortunately, that's the reality of the internet

00:22:05.220 | and it's a skill you have to kind of develop.

00:22:07.500 | And it's actually why a lot of really brilliant people

00:22:09.420 | avoid the internet.

00:22:10.420 | There's not many people, like at MIT, for example,

00:22:14.300 | there's not many brilliant professors or PhD students

00:22:17.780 | and so on just putting their stuff out there

00:22:19.940 | because if they really put their heart and soul

00:22:24.940 | into a thing, first of all, it's really hard

00:22:29.940 | and nobody sees it and everyone's like, eh, this is boring.

00:22:34.340 | So there's so many failure modes, like this is boring,

00:22:37.100 | or like you said, you're coming off as too much of an expert,

00:22:40.700 | you're not self-deprecating enough,

00:22:42.300 | but there's just so many failure modes

00:22:43.900 | and it's terrifying for people.

00:22:45.260 | But I feel like that's a skill you should learn

00:22:47.900 | because most people, like at MIT, at university and so on,

00:22:52.900 | are doing a lot of awesome stuff.

00:22:55.460 | And you should show it off.

00:22:56.940 | But I feel like you figured out a really good process

00:23:01.500 | of showing it off, when you fail, when you succeed,

00:23:05.780 | all of it, not taking yourself too seriously,

00:23:08.060 | but also revealing through the humor

00:23:10.460 | and the self-deprecation a kind of genius,

00:23:13.020 | a kind of intelligence and curiosity.

00:23:15.940 | - Yeah, I just wanna snapshot that quote

00:23:18.020 | and put it on my LinkedIn profile.

00:23:19.580 | - On the back of your book.

00:23:20.420 | - On the back of my book.

00:23:21.240 | - When is your autobiography coming out?

00:23:22.340 | - Oh, never.

00:23:23.180 | (both laughing)

00:23:24.740 | - You don't wanna say that because like a year from now.

00:23:27.220 | - Oh gosh, I don't wanna shit on autobiographies, no.

00:23:31.460 | - No, no.

00:23:32.380 | - Just by saying that, I'm shitting on autobiographies.

00:23:35.100 | I just, me being interested enough in somebody

00:23:38.660 | to wanna read 600 pages about them talking about themselves.

00:23:41.660 | - Well, that's exactly the kind of person

00:23:45.060 | I should write one.

00:23:46.060 | - But also I'm fucking 32 years old.

00:23:48.580 | What do I have to write about?

00:23:49.540 | Like I went through puberty, I lost my virginity

00:23:52.020 | and here we are, like, I don't know.

00:23:54.540 | It's like such a.

00:23:55.780 | (both laughing)

00:23:57.140 | - Three chapters, it's a coloring book.

00:23:59.720 | - Chapter seven, I learned to tie my own shoelaces.

00:24:05.020 | - I feel like it would be awesome.

00:24:06.140 | Anyway, what's the queen,

00:24:08.980 | so how did you achieve the status of royalty?

00:24:11.340 | The queen of shitty robots, what's the origin story there?

00:24:14.260 | - I mean, I have officially renounced my title now.

00:24:18.420 | - Can you still speak of the time when you led?

00:24:20.180 | - I can still speak of the time.

00:24:21.540 | - Your kingdom?

00:24:22.380 | - Yes, no, I mean, it started on, because I.

00:24:25.780 | - Did you rule by love or fear?

00:24:27.460 | - By fear of rejection from me, that people would reject me.

00:24:32.260 | So I, yeah, I started making these little gifts.

00:24:36.940 | Like my, the early projects that I did

00:24:39.780 | were very gift forward.

00:24:42.260 | It was always like, I only did it

00:24:44.180 | because it could be translated into a gift.

00:24:46.780 | - Gift forward, I like it.

00:24:48.020 | - Yeah, but honestly, it was like,

00:24:49.540 | it's a really good mental exercise to vet

00:24:53.500 | if your project is easy enough to be explained

00:24:57.060 | by like a seven second looping video without audio.

00:25:00.980 | And because like, nobody's gonna care

00:25:04.900 | that it also has Bluetooth.

00:25:07.460 | Like, it's really like, is it self-explanatory enough

00:25:10.220 | to be explained through a gift?

00:25:13.420 | So yeah.

00:25:14.260 | - I can just pause, I'm sorry to interrupt,

00:25:15.780 | but I feel like all scientific papers and projects

00:25:19.340 | should go through that exercise.

00:25:20.740 | - Can you explain what's a gift?

00:25:22.220 | - Yeah, actually, DeepMind does a good job of this.

00:25:25.220 | Like, you know, we've solved protein folding,

00:25:27.780 | here's a gift.

00:25:29.140 | That's literally what they do.

00:25:30.940 | Because who's gonna read the nature paper?

00:25:33.100 | So like this, you have to,

00:25:35.220 | like how do we communicate this visually

00:25:37.940 | in a sexy, clean way where people can intuitively

00:25:40.580 | understand even if you don't know what a protein is,

00:25:42.820 | even if you don't know what protein folding is?

00:25:44.860 | Yeah, it's a cool exercise.

00:25:45.700 | - No, it's very like, yeah,

00:25:47.140 | if somebody comes out of context,

00:25:49.660 | and that's been really interesting also,

00:25:51.260 | like building this product business

00:25:53.220 | and trying to do the marketing around that.

00:25:55.820 | And I'm like, if somebody comes in

00:25:57.820 | and they have no idea about what this product is,

00:26:01.300 | will they get it explained to them in this ad?

00:26:03.980 | And I don't know.

00:26:05.340 | But it's definitely a worthwhile exercise to do.

00:26:07.160 | So I started making these projects.

00:26:09.500 | I got translated into GIFs.

00:26:12.140 | And I posted them on /r/shittyrobots on Reddit.

00:26:15.940 | - So that's how Reddit existed?

00:26:17.580 | - Yeah, and I loved it.

00:26:19.100 | I thought it was really fun.

00:26:20.100 | And I was like, I wanna contribute with content here.

00:26:22.380 | - Conquered it.

00:26:23.420 | - I don't, I mean, I don't know.

00:26:26.180 | I was voted-- - Through fear of rejection.

00:26:27.460 | - I think I was voted top user of 2015.

00:26:30.300 | So yeah, that's an old merit.

00:26:33.300 | - Once you win a Nobel Prize,

00:26:34.700 | you always have the Nobel Prize.

00:26:35.860 | (laughing)

00:26:36.900 | - Okay, so what was the first,

00:26:38.100 | do you remember the early GIFs that you created?

00:26:40.980 | - So this is when I was at Punch Through Design

00:26:42.980 | in San Francisco.

00:26:44.100 | I was kind of building a lot of hardware projects for them.

00:26:47.060 | But I also felt, and they were so supportive of me.

00:26:50.520 | But I also, it's such a different way

00:26:52.220 | representing a brand versus representing yourself.

00:26:54.740 | So there were some projects that I just like ruled out

00:26:57.500 | 'cause I was like, this feels too weird for this brand.

00:27:00.540 | And I started building them on the side.

00:27:02.260 | One of them was a toothbrush helmet.

00:27:04.180 | And yeah, so it's like a skateboard helmet

00:27:07.020 | with a robot arm on the forehead,

00:27:09.360 | kind of like a unicorn horn.

00:27:11.060 | And it brushes your teeth for you.

00:27:13.100 | - Was that the first YouTube video you uploaded?

00:27:15.020 | - It was the first GIF that I uploaded.

00:27:16.640 | So actually, I wanted to,

00:27:19.160 | I wanted to do a kid's show about electronics in Sweden

00:27:24.340 | 'cause I was like, I love electronics.

00:27:26.020 | I think it's fucking dope.

00:27:27.660 | I could do a kid's show about it.

00:27:30.180 | So I filmed this terrible, terrible pilot episode

00:27:35.180 | in my bedroom in San Francisco.

00:27:39.700 | And that's when I built the toothbrush helmet.

00:27:42.100 | And I emailed it to them.

00:27:43.060 | I mean, just cold email, like no in or anything.

00:27:46.060 | I was like, hey, I wanna do this.

00:27:47.820 | And they didn't get back to me.

00:27:50.700 | Nobody surprised.

00:27:52.060 | And I was like, well, I have this thing I built.

00:27:55.340 | I might as well post it on the internet.

00:27:56.740 | So that's what I made the little GIF

00:27:58.140 | and I posted it on /r/shadyrobots.

00:28:00.060 | I think it got like 50,000 views.

00:28:02.380 | And I was like, wow.

00:28:04.740 | And from there, I just kept on building things.

00:28:07.420 | And I think within six months, it was my full-time job.

00:28:11.260 | - Can you go through the detailed design

00:28:13.580 | of this toothbrush helmet?

00:28:15.820 | There's a motor, there's like a server.

00:28:18.260 | Like what's the motor?

00:28:19.820 | What's the, is an Arduino involved?

00:28:21.660 | - Yeah, so I built it off of this robot arm called MeArm.

00:28:27.540 | So it's just this acrylic robot arm.

00:28:31.180 | And I think it has three servo motors.

00:28:35.660 | And it's all controlled by an Arduino,

00:28:37.300 | all the electronics. - So the arm

00:28:38.140 | was already pre-built?

00:28:39.340 | - It was a kit, so I assembled it.

00:28:41.460 | - How do you make sure the length of the arm is the proper?

00:28:46.460 | - I mean, the arm came down.

00:28:49.140 | So it's like, I mean, I just programmed it

00:28:51.100 | to come down to my mouth

00:28:52.980 | and then poorly brush my front teeth.

00:28:55.260 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:28:56.100 | - And it was just swung back and forth.

00:28:57.740 | I mean.

00:28:58.940 | - Trial and error is how you do that.

00:29:00.420 | - Trial and error?

00:29:01.260 | What was the challenges of that?

00:29:03.020 | Do you remember? - Oh gosh.

00:29:04.180 | - Or was that one not much of a struggle?

00:29:06.820 | - No, it was definitely a struggle.

00:29:09.140 | - 'Cause also, how do you loop it with a nice GIF?

00:29:12.340 | - I mean, it loops fine.

00:29:13.940 | - Yeah, it looks pretty fine.

00:29:14.860 | - Yeah.

00:29:15.700 | - That's not that hard?

00:29:17.500 | - No, I mean, it doesn't have to be perfect.

00:29:18.980 | It's a GIF, it's the internet.

00:29:20.460 | Things are shitty all the time.

00:29:22.220 | I think, I mean, I think the biggest struggle of that

00:29:24.860 | was that I had this intention for it to be this show

00:29:28.380 | and then them not giving.

00:29:32.180 | - Oh yeah. - Yeah, giving back.

00:29:33.620 | And I was like, well, if they don't want it,

00:29:36.260 | then maybe YouTube will have me.

00:29:38.340 | - They don't notice my genius yet.

00:29:40.060 | What was so bad about the pilot?

00:29:41.900 | Do you remember?

00:29:42.740 | What was like the most embarrassing?

00:29:43.580 | - Oh, it's just so cringy.

00:29:45.180 | Yeah, I mean, it's thankfully not on the internet,

00:29:47.620 | so nobody can find it.

00:29:49.060 | But it's very much me being in what I called host mode,

00:29:53.100 | which is where I'm like, okay,

00:29:54.860 | so what we're gonna learn today

00:29:56.380 | is that we're gonna look at this.

00:29:57.220 | This is something called a servo motor.

00:29:59.340 | And it's like the intonation

00:30:00.460 | and everything is really different.

00:30:02.340 | And I'm actually, I mean, thinking back of that,

00:30:04.540 | I'm so happy that they didn't get back to me

00:30:08.940 | because it's such a different thing

00:30:12.300 | to kind of start your career in your living room,

00:30:15.940 | running back and forth to the camera

00:30:18.380 | and like filming something and then looking at it.

00:30:20.580 | And like, I got to really find my own voice

00:30:25.420 | in a different way.

00:30:26.300 | And then like a year later, they offered me a show,

00:30:29.780 | but then I was so off and running.

00:30:31.300 | I was like, no, I don't wanna do this.

00:30:33.140 | - You didn't fall into that place of being like a actor,

00:30:38.020 | like a YouTuber where you're presenting

00:30:40.900 | a kind of personality.

00:30:42.300 | You're more focused on the product you're creating.

00:30:44.740 | - I mean, I think it's a combination of it.

00:30:48.420 | I mean, I think of it as acting sometimes,

00:30:51.060 | but I only play the role of myself.

00:30:53.340 | But of course it's like when you're shooting something

00:30:55.620 | for the seventh time,

00:30:57.620 | like you have to be able to muster that enthusiasm.

00:31:00.980 | But no, it's not a kind of think of everyday life me

00:31:05.980 | as a watered down version of the YouTube version.

00:31:09.140 | It's like-

00:31:10.460 | - That's a cheap knockoff.

00:31:11.940 | - Yeah, the push.com version.

00:31:13.540 | No, it's just like add a few parts water and you have me.

00:31:18.020 | But like on YouTube it's just so condensed

00:31:19.940 | 'cause you have jump cuts and I'll script jokes

00:31:22.940 | and make sure that everything lands

00:31:24.620 | and there's music and stuff.

00:31:25.900 | And then in real life you don't have any of that,

00:31:27.820 | but it's still me.

00:31:28.820 | - What are some other cool robots in the early days

00:31:32.460 | that stand out to you?

00:31:33.780 | I mean, there's a million we can go through,

00:31:35.420 | but maybe what was a challenging one,

00:31:40.060 | like a really challenging one in the early days?

00:31:42.500 | - I mean, I remember the breakfast robot,

00:31:46.020 | which was my second project was a challenging one.

00:31:48.740 | - Was it eating cereal?

00:31:50.260 | - Yeah, it's a robot that like pours milk and cereal

00:31:53.380 | and feeds me with a spoon.

00:31:55.540 | I was mostly challenging because it was so like,

00:31:58.980 | everything had to be in the right location

00:32:00.860 | and there were so many takes before I got everything right.

00:32:04.260 | And by right, I mean, it makes an absolute mess.

00:32:06.660 | Yeah, that one was challenging.

00:32:10.380 | - How many takes was that one?

00:32:12.220 | - I don't know, probably 12, 10, something.

00:32:15.300 | - It's a mess everywhere.

00:32:16.500 | - It's a mess, and also I use like Cheerios for the cereals

00:32:19.620 | and it's shot in my old bedroom in San Francisco

00:32:23.500 | and the floors were sticky for weeks afterwards.

00:32:27.020 | - Do you use it to go into your autobiography?

00:32:29.180 | - Yeah. (laughs)

00:32:30.260 | - It's nice.

00:32:31.100 | - I'm gonna see if I can just type out this podcast

00:32:33.420 | and I'll release it as a, my manager would be stoked.

00:32:36.900 | - We'll fix it in post.

00:32:38.140 | Yeah, the feed, 'cause you have like a couple

00:32:41.220 | of feeding ones, right?

00:32:42.300 | The soup, isn't there a soup one?

00:32:43.620 | - Yeah, there's a soup robot.

00:32:45.420 | There's a beer pouring robot.

00:32:49.620 | - I mean, that's awesome.

00:32:51.660 | That's a difficult robotics problem

00:32:53.780 | in the shitty and the perfect version

00:32:58.060 | of having an arm that interacts intimately

00:33:02.020 | with a human being.

00:33:03.220 | And one of the most intimate things you could do

00:33:05.020 | with a human being, that's PG, is to feed it.

00:33:08.260 | - I was like, don't go there.

00:33:10.420 | - Where's he going with this?

00:33:12.500 | - Oh my God, he's a YouTube comment come live.

00:33:14.580 | (laughs)

00:33:15.420 | Like, damn it.

00:33:16.260 | - To me, feeding is tricky.

00:33:20.660 | Or even like getting a beer,

00:33:23.500 | even pouring a beer is tough until glass.

00:33:26.180 | - Yeah, it's trickier than anyone

00:33:28.060 | who hasn't tried it thinks.

00:33:29.780 | And even making it, I think what I realized

00:33:34.140 | is that making things really shitty

00:33:37.340 | or failing in a spectacular way

00:33:39.260 | is also its own sort of skill.

00:33:40.780 | Because the shittiest robot is the one

00:33:42.420 | that doesn't turn on.

00:33:43.820 | But that isn't much to watch.

00:33:47.260 | So it was always wanting for it to fail

00:33:49.780 | in these kind of spectacular ways.

00:33:51.700 | No, there's a lot of stuff to be said

00:33:55.220 | about engineering in it.

00:33:56.820 | - Is there something to be said on a philosophical level

00:33:59.380 | about the value of a flawed robot?

00:34:02.180 | So like, the kind of robots you want

00:34:06.180 | is to be partially flawed.

00:34:07.740 | Like, do you think the kind of robots

00:34:09.140 | we'll have in the home that are friends

00:34:11.820 | and almost like pets,

00:34:15.340 | wouldn't they need to be kind of shitty?

00:34:19.660 | Because we can love the,

00:34:20.980 | somehow we humans love the shitty.

00:34:23.260 | - I mean, it is kind of endearing

00:34:25.020 | 'cause I think it kind of,

00:34:27.140 | I'm gonna mess up this word,

00:34:29.100 | anthropomorphizes them.

00:34:30.860 | I think it's, I mean, I never feel

00:34:33.060 | as deeply connected to my Roomba

00:34:34.620 | as when it's like, I'm on a cliff.

00:34:37.460 | - Have you had Roomba's talk?

00:34:41.780 | - No. - I really,

00:34:42.780 | yeah, I've done that a lot.

00:34:44.180 | - Yeah. - When they talk to you.

00:34:45.860 | Yeah.

00:34:46.820 | And it immediately anthropomorphizes them.

00:34:50.740 | - Yeah. - And then you have,

00:34:51.660 | if they have a name,

00:34:52.660 | which is why most roboticists don't give names

00:34:54.700 | or gender to robots,

00:34:56.140 | 'cause you become connected to them.

00:34:59.100 | I'm of the opposite mind.

00:35:00.980 | You should have like an intimate relationship,

00:35:04.220 | sounds weird,

00:35:05.900 | but you should have a close connection to robots.

00:35:07.940 | I mean, there's power in that.

00:35:10.260 | There's a social element to robotics,

00:35:12.020 | even an arm.

00:35:13.340 | I don't know.

00:35:15.140 | There's something about us humans

00:35:16.300 | that gains so much value

00:35:18.340 | from our interaction with dynamic objects.

00:35:23.540 | And we should like lean into that

00:35:24.700 | as opposed to run away from it.

00:35:26.060 | That was always the confusing thing to me about robotics

00:35:29.140 | is that most roboticists run away from that.

00:35:31.500 | - Yeah. - It's weird.

00:35:33.700 | 'Cause it's obviously gonna be,

00:35:35.420 | robots are obviously going to be everywhere.

00:35:37.780 | - Yeah. - Obviously.

00:35:39.020 | - But it's also humans are sensitive and squishy

00:35:41.580 | and there's so much liability.

00:35:43.380 | - Oh, okay. - Yeah.

00:35:45.060 | - Yeah, but humans are sensitive and squishy

00:35:48.180 | when they interact with each other

00:35:50.220 | and they hurt each other all the time.

00:35:52.580 | Like sometimes they get together

00:35:54.580 | and they're like, "Oh, you're the best."

00:35:55.740 | No, you're the best.

00:35:56.780 | And then they leave each other

00:35:58.180 | and then they break each other's heart.

00:35:59.500 | - Sorry about your breakup, Lex.

00:36:01.140 | I didn't know you were done. - Yeah,

00:36:01.980 | I was trying to get over this.

00:36:03.820 | I'm actually drunk for this interview.

00:36:05.620 | (both laughing)

00:36:06.820 | I haven't been able to sleep for nights.

00:36:07.660 | - Have you slept all night?

00:36:08.500 | - No, not yet.

00:36:10.220 | But from a safety protocol perspective,

00:36:13.140 | people think about physical damage, not emotional damage.

00:36:16.460 | I know this sounds ridiculous.

00:36:18.260 | I know this sounds ridiculous, but it won't be.

00:36:20.180 | It's already happening.

00:36:21.620 | There's an app called Replica

00:36:23.100 | where people have an intimate relationship

00:36:24.900 | with an AI chatbot and they hurt themselves.

00:36:27.700 | - I was thinking about this.

00:36:28.940 | - Yeah. - Okay.

00:36:29.780 | In dating, what if you, 'cause you can train

00:36:34.780 | like a chatbot to kind of mimic

00:36:38.100 | the way that you talk to people and interact with people.

00:36:40.860 | - Go on. - Yeah.

00:36:42.180 | But then I'm like, okay,

00:36:43.060 | but what if we could all make AI versions of ourselves

00:36:46.420 | and have them date like thousands and thousands

00:36:49.860 | of other AI people and have that as a way

00:36:53.180 | to turn out potential candidates?

00:36:56.420 | Like, I feel like that's gonna be, what's the, yeah.

00:37:01.180 | - What's the, what?

00:37:02.340 | - No, but what's the point of like meeting 20 people

00:37:06.420 | if you're like, oh, but if we just had our AI versions

00:37:09.740 | of ourselves interact, they'd be like,

00:37:11.220 | oh, your method of conflict is not gonna match or.

00:37:15.220 | - What if the AI version of you like sleeps around

00:37:18.380 | with all the other AIs and becomes famous for that

00:37:20.900 | and it starts its own OnlyFans and then it become,

00:37:23.940 | and you're like, what did you do?

00:37:26.420 | You come back home, you'd realize like,

00:37:27.980 | I didn't want to. - I created a monster.

00:37:29.940 | - Create a monster.

00:37:30.780 | - I mean, do I get a cut?

00:37:32.540 | - Exactly, that's the question I would be asking.

00:37:35.020 | But I think it's definitely like, yeah,

00:37:36.980 | the human technology interaction is really interesting

00:37:41.580 | because I feel like I don't love any of the machines

00:37:44.660 | that I have in my life.

00:37:45.500 | - Oh, really, you haven't?

00:37:47.420 | - I mean, I don't love my phone.

00:37:48.820 | I touch it all the time and it's there

00:37:51.740 | and it's like constantly, it's a constant presence,

00:37:54.060 | but there's nothing in me that feels like,

00:37:55.780 | oh, I love this object.

00:37:57.580 | Like I kind of despise it.

00:37:59.020 | - Well, that might be the way you show love, I don't know.

00:38:02.380 | - Yeah. - That's a deeper,

00:38:03.580 | that's another psychoanalysis thing.

00:38:06.020 | So there's not robots whom you've taken apart that you miss?

00:38:10.220 | - No, they're all terrible.

00:38:13.700 | I mean, I have objects that I built that I love.

00:38:16.320 | None of the robots, I think,

00:38:19.300 | but that's also because that was a different era

00:38:22.180 | where I wasn't really putting a lot of care

00:38:24.620 | into the projects I built.

00:38:25.980 | - So the more care you put into the design

00:38:28.260 | to actually make it look, to make it functional, look good,

00:38:31.500 | that's where you put the love in.

00:38:33.180 | - Yeah, I mean, it is.

00:38:34.540 | It's like, I feel like any technology company

00:38:37.140 | that figures out a way to get you

00:38:38.620 | to actually genuinely love your Roomba

00:38:41.300 | or like love it in the way that you would love a pet,

00:38:43.940 | there's a lot to be gained.

00:38:48.100 | - Yeah, and I think it's scary

00:38:51.020 | depending on who the company is

00:38:53.420 | 'cause then they can manipulate you.

00:38:55.300 | - Yeah.

00:38:56.140 | - If you love your Roomba

00:38:58.180 | and all of a sudden your Roomba starts telling you

00:39:00.700 | to buy stuff or it's leaving.

00:39:03.780 | - To put lotion on Jeff Bezos's head.

00:39:06.100 | - Yeah.

00:39:06.940 | I don't know where the lotion came in,

00:39:08.140 | but yes, maybe buy certain.

00:39:09.500 | - I just imagine my Amazon Echo being like,

00:39:13.740 | "Hey, Jeff Bezos is really a great guy."

00:39:17.640 | - But even though you haven't,

00:39:20.820 | do you think it's possible to fall in love with a robot?

00:39:23.580 | - Yeah, I mean, people fall in love with things all the time.

00:39:26.720 | - Well, people have fallen in love

00:39:27.900 | with your shitty robots probably.

00:39:30.580 | I guarantee you there's people listening to this

00:39:33.180 | that are a little bit heartbroken

00:39:34.620 | saying that you've never fallen in love

00:39:36.220 | with your shitty robot.

00:39:37.460 | They're like, "But I had a really,

00:39:39.660 | "like I had an emotional connection to that robot."

00:39:42.260 | Like the one with the parent, Patsy on the back.

00:39:44.860 | - Oh, that one, that one I do like.

00:39:46.980 | I like that one a lot.

00:39:48.420 | That's probably my favorite shitty robot.

00:39:50.900 | - Can you explain it?

00:39:51.740 | - So it's a machine, it was my friend Daniel Beauchamp

00:39:54.500 | and I, we had this long running joke

00:39:57.060 | about a proud parent machine that you could give a quarter

00:40:00.460 | and it pats you on the shoulder and says, "Proud of you."

00:40:03.700 | So yeah, I still have that hanging on my wall

00:40:06.140 | in my workshop.

00:40:07.500 | So that one I'm really happy with.

00:40:09.580 | I just think it's a really funny concept

00:40:14.580 | and also I executed the build well, so that was.

00:40:18.420 | - So it's an arm?

00:40:20.140 | Like what's the build?

00:40:21.180 | - Yeah, I built it off of an old lamp arm.

00:40:23.540 | Yeah, basically it's just a motorized arm

00:40:26.140 | and this kind of torso of a person.

00:40:31.140 | - What's this, so it's actually a hand, right?

00:40:33.620 | Did I write that correctly?

00:40:34.700 | - It's like a laser cut, it's just laser cut plywood

00:40:37.500 | and it kind of has like, it looks creepy, which I like.

00:40:41.220 | - Yeah, the creepy helps with the.

00:40:43.060 | - Yeah, and yeah, it says, "Proud of you, son."

00:40:47.020 | Because I just thought that sounded more funny

00:40:48.820 | than proud of you, daughter,

00:40:50.340 | and also proud of you, son,

00:40:52.100 | just it immediately communicates that it's a parent.

00:40:55.500 | It's not just like a colleague or something.

00:40:57.420 | It's like, "Proud of you."

00:40:58.580 | (laughing)

00:40:59.780 | - Yeah.

00:41:00.620 | - And it charges you a quarter for it.

00:41:02.820 | - Yeah, but you add a like, chat GPT on top of that

00:41:05.700 | and fine tune it on conversations you've had

00:41:08.780 | with your parents and all of a sudden you have a thing

00:41:10.860 | that can fundamentally transform your psyche.

00:41:13.100 | - Yeah.

00:41:14.180 | - That's all it takes.

00:41:15.220 | That's a beautiful creation.

00:41:16.420 | How'd you come up with that creation?

00:41:18.180 | - That was my friend Daniel and I

00:41:19.500 | who had a long running joke about it.

00:41:21.620 | - High level, can you speak to your creative process?

00:41:24.280 | - I think a lot of it,

00:41:25.180 | I mean it's changed.

00:41:26.700 | - For the shitty robot,

00:41:27.540 | so it's actually separate. - For the shitty robot, yeah.

00:41:29.780 | I mean it has a lot of overlap.

00:41:32.140 | So it's identifying everyday problems

00:41:36.420 | and in the shitty robot era,

00:41:38.800 | I would kind of take an everyday problem like,

00:41:40.500 | "Oh, I have a hard time getting up in the morning,"

00:41:42.220 | and I would solve it in the most ridiculous,

00:41:44.060 | spectacular way I could think of.

00:41:45.780 | So for waking up in the morning,

00:41:47.260 | it was having an alarm clock that slaps me in the face

00:41:49.820 | with a rubber hand.

00:41:50.820 | And what I'm doing now

00:41:53.420 | is still identifying everyday problems,

00:41:55.900 | but I'm actually trying to product design my way out of it.

00:42:00.260 | - What in your experience was the funniest thing?

00:42:02.780 | Is it violence, like the hand slapping you?

00:42:05.620 | Food eating?

00:42:06.620 | Is there, or is it just a case of--

00:42:08.740 | - I think the funniest is,

00:42:11.920 | no, I think it's more like the proud parent machine.

00:42:14.140 | It's not violent, it doesn't,

00:42:15.940 | there's no, nothing is just emotional

00:42:18.080 | and it's kind of a commentary on this fraud.

00:42:23.120 | Fraught relationship that we sometimes have

00:42:25.080 | with our parents and their pride of us.

00:42:27.120 | - Sometimes, every time.

00:42:28.960 | - Sometimes.

00:42:30.140 | My dad visited like last week and he was like,

00:42:33.060 | "I just wanna say I'm so proud of you

00:42:34.640 | "and for the life you built for yourself."

00:42:36.960 | And that was really sweet.

00:42:38.760 | - Yeah, it's really kind. - I'll put that

00:42:39.600 | on the back of my autobiography too.

00:42:41.640 | - Yeah, it's not your fault, Simone.

00:42:43.440 | (Simone laughs)

00:42:44.400 | It's not your fault.

00:42:45.240 | - Some stuff is my fault.

00:42:46.340 | - What was the longest one to complete

00:42:49.800 | for the shitty robots that you remember?

00:42:53.000 | 'Cause you spent, on a few of them,

00:42:54.360 | you spent quite a long time.

00:42:55.760 | Which is also inspiring when you take so long on a project.

00:43:03.200 | - Yeah, I think kind of in the more

00:43:06.200 | like fun, whimsical department rather than shitty robots,

00:43:09.040 | I built recently this music box.

00:43:12.840 | So like a small music box that kind of has a barrel

00:43:16.040 | with little spikes and it plays a song.

00:43:17.520 | But I did a large version of that

00:43:19.360 | that pops a sheet of bubble wrap

00:43:21.320 | and then like plays tones into a pan flute.

00:43:23.840 | So yeah, you can actually program it

00:43:25.240 | to play different songs.

00:43:26.440 | That one kicked my butt in so many creative ways

00:43:30.200 | and it was such a pain.

00:43:31.760 | I think that is probably the like weird, funny project

00:43:36.760 | that's taken me the longest

00:43:38.960 | and like the biggest engineering effort.

00:43:41.000 | - Where's the sound coming from?

00:43:43.080 | - So if you, it all came from me realizing

00:43:46.000 | that if you pop bubble wrap and you pop it right in front

00:43:48.840 | of the opening of a pan flute,

00:43:50.960 | or like one of the pipes,

00:43:51.840 | you can have it play different tones.

00:43:54.400 | So that's what it does.

00:43:55.760 | So I built this music instrument off of that.

00:43:59.960 | - Okay, if it's okay, can you describe some,

00:44:03.120 | something like how it works,

00:44:04.200 | some of the technical details here?

00:44:06.720 | - Yeah, so basically, I mean,

00:44:08.320 | one of the big issues that I had,

00:44:11.440 | so I worked with, as of a year and a half back,

00:44:15.200 | I hired an engineer, Stu.

00:44:16.800 | So we were collaborating on it.

00:44:19.760 | But a big issue that we had was feeding in

00:44:22.320 | the bubble wrap sheet and like making sure

00:44:25.320 | that it feeds in straight and doesn't get skewed

00:44:27.560 | because you need to make like the popping feet,

00:44:30.560 | which is where you program this barrel

00:44:32.680 | to pop different bubbles,

00:44:34.400 | need to be so perfectly aligned on the bubble

00:44:38.680 | of the bubble wrap for it to pop in the right location.

00:44:41.160 | - So there's a feeder for the bubble wrap,

00:44:43.080 | that's a challenge.

00:44:43.920 | And then you have to have a barrel

00:44:45.000 | with the little baby feet on it that pops the bubble wrap.

00:44:48.840 | - Why is it so exciting? - Making that barrel

00:44:51.200 | was a pain as well.

00:44:54.280 | I had to get like this rotary set up for my CNC

00:44:57.560 | and yeah, it was a lot of work,

00:45:00.640 | but that was really fun.

00:45:02.040 | And it's just like,

00:45:03.080 | this is probably my favorite privilege of my job

00:45:09.200 | is that I can go down any rabbit hole

00:45:12.400 | I think find interesting.

00:45:14.520 | - Did you have a lot of joy from popping the bubbles?

00:45:19.520 | - A lot of self soothing.

00:45:22.480 | And like I got to spend,

00:45:23.800 | I think I spent a week trying to figure out

00:45:26.760 | the best material to pop bubble wrap with,

00:45:30.040 | because if you have two,

00:45:31.120 | if you kind of put them to two through or through,

00:45:34.440 | if you put a sheet of bubble wrap through two rigid tubes,

00:45:38.600 | the air kind of just escapes from one side of the bubble

00:45:41.240 | into the other.

00:45:42.080 | So what I realized was that if you have a squishy material,

00:45:44.880 | like kind of a yoga mat material in between it,

00:45:47.920 | it actually, it prevents that

00:45:49.640 | and pops it a lot more reliably.

00:45:52.920 | But like increasing the pop reliability

00:45:55.640 | was a huge effort as well.

00:45:57.800 | - You have to pop a squishy thing with another squishy thing.

00:45:59.920 | - 'Cause you don't need a lot of force.

00:46:01.760 | Like you just need it to not,

00:46:03.920 | the air to not be able to escape anywhere.

00:46:06.400 | - Wow.

00:46:07.240 | - But then also we had,

00:46:08.360 | there was different qualities of bubble wrap

00:46:11.120 | where there was a lot of transference

00:46:12.920 | between different bubbles.

00:46:14.040 | So instead of the bubble popping,

00:46:15.440 | it would just seep the air into a neighboring bubble

00:46:18.200 | and that like membrane would kind of,

00:46:19.880 | so, you know, I just like getting to spend weeks on weeks

00:46:23.640 | of just studying bubble wrap.

00:46:26.040 | - Did you ever think about like publishing academic work

00:46:28.480 | on bubble wrap?

00:46:29.320 | - No.

00:46:30.480 | - Wouldn't that be epic?

00:46:31.320 | 'Cause nobody's done this.

00:46:32.640 | I bet you nobody's done squishy material,

00:46:36.880 | squishy versus squishy for popping.

00:46:40.560 | - I bet somebody has, but you know, I always,

00:46:43.000 | I thought I was gonna go into academia.

00:46:45.240 | Like I was such an ambitious student.

00:46:48.340 | I loved school.

00:46:50.160 | I actually applied to MIT, but then I pulled out

00:46:53.360 | 'cause I was like, no, I don't wanna do it.

00:46:56.080 | But now I realize it's really good that I didn't

00:46:58.320 | because I'm too much of a spaz.

00:47:00.320 | - Too much of a spaz.

00:47:01.360 | Now I'm distracted.

00:47:02.600 | I'm thinking there must be papers about

00:47:05.400 | when you have two bubbles.

00:47:07.480 | Yeah, you need to know the physics of two bubbles.

00:47:10.200 | When you have two bubbles colliding, one will pop first

00:47:14.760 | and there has to be good models of that.

00:47:18.320 | But that's very, that has to do with chemistry

00:47:21.040 | and whatever the material the bubble is made from.

00:47:24.200 | But then, no, there's materials in here.

00:47:26.480 | Somebody must understand bubble wrap deeply, like deeply.

00:47:31.200 | - So I'm just gonna take a quick restroom break

00:47:33.300 | because Lex is on his own train now

00:47:36.360 | and I'm just gonna leave you to talk about bubble.

00:47:39.840 | - I actually don't need to go to the restroom.

00:47:41.520 | (all laughing)

00:47:43.560 | - I'm gonna insert a two hour instructional here

00:47:46.640 | with a blackboard where I--

00:47:48.560 | - It's the skill of a podcaster.

00:47:51.080 | I feel like I could throw you any topic

00:47:53.480 | and you could just go on about it.

00:47:55.720 | - I don't know if I have that skill.

00:47:57.480 | I just love bubble wrap.

00:47:59.640 | (all laughing)

00:48:00.960 | Okay.

00:48:01.800 | - Bubble on bubble interaction, go.

00:48:06.480 | - So you did mention at MIT,

00:48:09.880 | you went to college for physics for one year

00:48:12.160 | and you dropped out.

00:48:13.800 | What do you learn from that?

00:48:15.480 | Who do you think should and shouldn't go to college?

00:48:17.980 | - I think first of all, you shouldn't listen to me.

00:48:21.320 | - That should be the name of your autobiography.

00:48:24.400 | - First of all, you shouldn't listen to me.

00:48:26.480 | I realized that I was there for the wrong reasons.

00:48:31.760 | I had this deep,

00:48:33.680 | I got completely,

00:48:36.840 | starting to get grades in school,

00:48:38.680 | which in Sweden at that time,

00:48:40.280 | we started getting it at eighth grade.

00:48:41.560 | So when I was 14,

00:48:43.200 | it just kind of hijacked my brain

00:48:44.920 | because I realized that I could put a number

00:48:47.000 | on how smart I was.

00:48:48.920 | And I got obsessed with it.

00:48:52.320 | And I wanted to study mechanical engineering

00:48:57.200 | because I was like, I like machines.

00:48:59.960 | But then physics was kind of the hardest thing you could do

00:49:03.200 | and I had this deep need to prove to myself

00:49:06.400 | that I was smart.

00:49:07.560 | So I started studying physics,

00:49:09.720 | realized I wasn't that smart.

00:49:11.280 | I realized, or I mean, just mostly that I love math,

00:49:15.240 | but I don't love math 10 hours a day.

00:49:19.800 | And also I think I am a generalist through and through.

00:49:24.800 | I'm decent at a fair amount of things,

00:49:28.720 | but definitely not a specialist in any ways.

00:49:31.720 | And it was such a specialist type of area

00:49:35.680 | that I felt like the other parts of my brain

00:49:38.960 | kind of just dwindled and died.

00:49:40.840 | So I think most of all,

00:49:42.800 | if people are thinking about going to college,

00:49:45.440 | and especially if you're here in the States

00:49:47.120 | and it's so fucking expensive,

00:49:49.360 | really, okay, there's two things I wanna do.

00:49:54.480 | One is actually go to a workplace

00:49:57.680 | where people are doing the job

00:49:59.800 | that you think you wanna do

00:50:01.120 | if you wanna become a doctor,

00:50:02.440 | like be at a hospital and try to see how doctors work

00:50:06.680 | and if you actually like it,

00:50:08.040 | because I feel like people have a lot of ideas

00:50:10.160 | of what it's gonna be like

00:50:11.240 | and it just doesn't match with reality.

00:50:13.920 | And then I think when people figure out

00:50:15.240 | what they wanna do, there's kind of,

00:50:17.760 | that's two separate questions,

00:50:19.120 | or there's two questions that you can split out of that.

00:50:20.960 | One is like, what do you actually wanna do?

00:50:23.280 | That for me, for the last 10 years is building stuff.

00:50:28.280 | But then there's a second part to that question,

00:50:30.200 | which is what context do you wanna do that?

00:50:32.560 | Do you wanna build stuff at a startup

00:50:34.600 | or at a big corporation?

00:50:36.160 | Do you wanna build stuff for an art gallery

00:50:39.000 | or for the movies or for YouTube?

00:50:41.600 | And I think that's often like people only learn

00:50:46.120 | how to answer the first question,

00:50:47.680 | but then it's like the context means as much,

00:50:49.760 | because I was building stuff at Punch Through Design

00:50:53.120 | and I wasn't getting that deep fulfillment.

00:50:56.480 | I felt like I wasn't fully using myself

00:51:00.520 | and hitting all of my gears

00:51:02.360 | because I just wasn't that motivated

00:51:04.200 | about building stuff for other people.

00:51:06.200 | And I changed the context and everything changed.

00:51:09.640 | - And so sometimes you do need to consider a resume

00:51:12.360 | and stuff like that, depending on the,

00:51:14.600 | but I think people consider that way too much,

00:51:17.840 | especially in modern times.

00:51:19.880 | I feel like you don't need to go to college

00:51:23.200 | just for the resume.

00:51:25.080 | I feel like the biggest benefit of college,

00:51:27.280 | I mean, there's a bunch, but one is just to do hard things.

00:51:31.280 | But you could do hard things anywhere,

00:51:33.280 | but some people need to be,

00:51:35.920 | I was probably one of those people

00:51:38.040 | to be forced to do hard things.

00:51:39.880 | And the other is to meet fascinating humans

00:51:44.440 | from all walks of life that are pursuing,

00:51:46.920 | they have all kinds of different passions

00:51:49.200 | and allows you to learn, depending on the major,

00:51:51.960 | you can learn generally

00:51:54.440 | and you can search if you're doing it efficiently

00:51:57.440 | about what actually inspires you.

00:51:59.160 | And then the other thing is the resume thing.

00:52:02.560 | But ultimately you don't need college

00:52:06.240 | to find your passion to run with it.

00:52:08.560 | - I mean, I have so much college FOMO though.

00:52:11.520 | Like I think it's, I chose a different set of experiences.

00:52:16.520 | And when I applied to MIT, I was, I think I was 24

00:52:22.200 | 'cause I was like,

00:52:23.440 | "Maybe I should become an electrical engineer

00:52:25.120 | because I really liked electronics."

00:52:27.400 | But then I remember seeing that the average age was 18

00:52:30.800 | and I was like, "Oh, fuck no, I can't hang out

00:52:33.520 | or like be in a room filled with 18 year olds

00:52:36.440 | who are smarter than me."

00:52:37.920 | - Yeah.

00:52:39.200 | - So I think I definitely like missed the train

00:52:42.000 | on having that experience,

00:52:43.960 | but at the same time I did so many other things

00:52:46.320 | and I chose other experiences and I wouldn't trade them.

00:52:49.520 | But I still like, I mean, I'll go to on a campus

00:52:53.440 | and I'll be like, "Oh."

00:52:54.920 | But I think it's also because I have a dreamy idea

00:52:57.840 | of what it is because I never had to do it

00:52:59.400 | and practice fully.

00:53:00.360 | - Exactly, it's the FOMO.

00:53:02.040 | - Yeah.

00:53:02.880 | - Yeah, a lot of people really struggle with that burden.

00:53:06.440 | They'll go, it doesn't matter how long you go through,

00:53:11.440 | if you don't go all the way to the PhD,

00:53:15.040 | a lot of people have the FOMO.

00:53:17.720 | It's a silly little notion, I think.

00:53:21.920 | 'Cause I think you should be doing college or school

00:53:24.240 | until you find something that lights your heart aflame

00:53:27.840 | where you're like, "Fuck yes, I wanna do this."

00:53:31.360 | - Yeah.

00:53:32.200 | - And run with it.

00:53:33.040 | - I mean, you can find that in other contexts as well.

00:53:35.240 | I've found it.

00:53:37.880 | - Yeah, definitely.

00:53:38.720 | - Yeah, but it is a buffet of experiences that you can have.

00:53:43.640 | - What about, what was the most fun robot to make?

00:53:46.200 | Or musical, artistic creation?

00:53:50.680 | Where the process was the most fun.

00:53:54.120 | - They're all painful in different ways.

00:53:55.800 | - So pain.

00:53:56.640 | - Yeah.

00:53:57.480 | - Do you find pain fun?

00:53:58.560 | - No, but it's definitely the pride

00:54:02.440 | of getting to pull something off

00:54:04.400 | or managing to pull something off

00:54:05.880 | even when it was really difficult is very satisfying.

00:54:10.480 | - What was the difficult thing that you pulled off

00:54:12.040 | and you were like, "Yeah, this is cool."

00:54:15.020 | - I like working on jigsaw puzzles,

00:54:16.760 | but I don't like how much table space they take up

00:54:19.800 | 'cause I just have one big table where I can do it.

00:54:22.440 | And that's also my dining table.

00:54:24.600 | So I made this mechanical table

00:54:27.240 | where you can switch between two tabletops.

00:54:29.800 | And that was an incredibly painful project.

00:54:32.760 | And I'm really happy with the outcome

00:54:34.320 | and so proud that I managed to pull it off.

00:54:36.480 | - How does it switch tabletops?

00:54:38.000 | - It's a tambour mechanism.

00:54:39.920 | So tambour, you'll have on old record player,

00:54:44.720 | like it's these like thin slats of wood

00:54:46.640 | with fabric on the back

00:54:47.720 | and you can kind of get them to go around curves.

00:54:49.760 | So basically one of the tabletops

00:54:52.000 | or table surfaces is tambour.

00:54:53.880 | And then there's a little crank

00:54:55.160 | and you can kind of roll it off to the side

00:54:57.040 | and it reveals another tabletop under it

00:54:59.080 | that you can lift up 'cause it's on cams.

00:55:02.000 | So you can switch between the two.

00:55:03.820 | I think that one was both really difficult to pull off.

00:55:07.680 | And it's also one of few projects

00:55:10.240 | that I use in my everyday life.

00:55:11.640 | Like I use it almost every day.

00:55:13.600 | - You know what a really cool one was

00:55:15.240 | that was part of your Ted Talk

00:55:17.080 | where there's a rotating thing

00:55:21.180 | that you wear on your shoulders.

00:55:23.280 | Was that hard to make?

00:55:24.280 | So for people who haven't seen your Ted Talk,

00:55:26.320 | they should, of course.

00:55:27.840 | But it's a, how would you describe that?

00:55:28.680 | - Oh, they cut out the best joke.

00:55:30.780 | - How would you call that device?

00:55:33.520 | Sorry, I have to check that.

00:55:34.360 | - I don't even know.

00:55:35.180 | I never used it beyond the Ted Talk really.

00:55:38.120 | Yeah, but basically it's a shoulder rig

00:55:41.160 | and it has this almost like Saturn ring looking platform

00:55:45.200 | that goes around.

00:55:46.440 | I can't even remember what the problem proposition was

00:55:49.960 | that I was trying to solve.

00:55:51.080 | - Variety probably, introducing variety to your life.

00:55:53.680 | - Yeah, maybe.

00:55:54.520 | - And an element of surprise

00:55:56.200 | because you can put popcorn as you did on it

00:55:58.600 | and it goes around as a little hand.

00:56:01.400 | Why is it like a tiny hand funny?

00:56:03.680 | I don't know.

00:56:04.520 | But it just slams whatever is on that thing into your face.

00:56:08.160 | - Yeah, I don't know.

00:56:09.960 | Was that easy to make?

00:56:11.560 | - Yeah, that one's fine.

00:56:13.800 | I can.

00:56:14.640 | I mean, my Ted Talk was so,

00:56:18.520 | yeah, for one, once again, they cut out my best joke.

00:56:20.480 | - What was the best joke?

00:56:21.320 | - My best joke, they didn't even ask me about it.

00:56:23.680 | It was, so there's this whole lead up

00:56:28.360 | where I built a chopping machine.

00:56:30.040 | So it's a machine that chops vegetables

00:56:32.520 | and it has two giant knives and it goes,

00:56:33.920 | dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, and it's kind of terrifying.

00:56:36.040 | And I show a video of it and then it ends on this gif

00:56:41.080 | of it chopping up a banana

00:56:42.880 | and I'm kind of scrunching up my face being like, ugh, ugh.

00:56:46.080 | And the whole reason I show that project

00:56:48.000 | is because I'm leading it up to the punchline of,

00:56:50.760 | oh, and as a bonus, this gif right here

00:56:54.040 | is the perfect response if anyone ever sends you dick pics

00:56:56.920 | you don't want, which brought down the house.

00:56:59.760 | It does it every time.

00:57:01.080 | And they cut it out without asking me

00:57:02.800 | 'cause they were like, oh, but we wanted people

00:57:04.040 | to be able to show it in classrooms.

00:57:05.280 | And I was like, I have abandoned the hope

00:57:07.200 | of being shown in classrooms for years ago.

00:57:10.760 | - I think that's a good joke.

00:57:12.160 | - Thank you.

00:57:13.000 | - That's a really good one.

00:57:15.000 | You're okay going sometimes a little bit edgy.

00:57:18.200 | - I say that I'm crude and wholesome

00:57:23.600 | because I can be very crude,

00:57:26.720 | but I also try really, really hard to be a good person

00:57:30.480 | and to like, I'll say shit and fucking all that stuff,

00:57:34.920 | which I don't even think is crude, but yeah.

00:57:39.760 | But I really, really try to wield the power

00:57:42.480 | that I have in a thoughtful way.

00:57:44.560 | So no, I wouldn't call me edgy because I'm not,

00:57:48.880 | I don't think it's edgy.

00:57:50.440 | It's all like sex and body.

00:57:51.280 | - Chopping a banana with knives

00:57:53.520 | and saying it's a good gif response

00:57:56.000 | to anyone that sends you dick pics

00:57:57.600 | is definitely not edgy, you're correct, yeah.

00:57:59.840 | - It's a funny joke.

00:58:03.120 | - Yeah, it's pretty funny.

00:58:04.560 | - I feel bad that Ted cut that.

00:58:06.920 | - I mean, it's fine.

00:58:07.760 | It's a decision that I made really early on

00:58:10.920 | where I was like, I think often people misinterpret

00:58:13.640 | what I'm doing as being for children,

00:58:16.360 | which I think is part,

00:58:17.200 | because my projects were always really colorful and fun,

00:58:20.920 | but I think it also has some sprinkles of sexism

00:58:25.080 | of being like, oh, it's a woman doing something.

00:58:27.480 | She must be doing it for the children.

00:58:29.120 | And I'm like, fuck the children, I'm doing it for myself.

00:58:33.120 | So I think I was just really early on decided of like,

00:58:36.000 | oh no, I'm not gonna try to cater to that,

00:58:37.840 | which still, I mean, I get a lot of messages

00:58:40.760 | from parents being like,

00:58:41.600 | can you please stop cussing in your videos?

00:58:43.760 | And I'm also like, I get it,

00:58:46.080 | but also that is not what's gonna mess up your kids.

00:58:49.600 | I really try to be thoughtful

00:58:52.280 | and a decent enough role model,

00:58:55.240 | but I'll also acknowledge that humans fuck.

00:58:59.680 | - Yeah. - It's okay.

00:59:00.640 | - Somehow that you being able to say the F-U to the system.

00:59:05.040 | - What word?

00:59:05.880 | Word?

00:59:07.200 | What?

00:59:08.040 | Do it.

00:59:08.860 | - I can't.

00:59:09.700 | I'm scared.

00:59:10.540 | - Yeah.

00:59:11.360 | (both laughing)

00:59:14.600 | - It sounds better when you say F-U.

00:59:16.800 | It's a dance.

00:59:18.640 | I should, oh boy.

00:59:20.900 | Have you ever made a robot that dances with you?

00:59:25.320 | - No. - Okay.

00:59:26.400 | - You need a dance partner.

00:59:27.760 | - I get lonely sometimes. - Is this a personal request?

00:59:30.280 | - Yeah, I feel like that's the theme

00:59:32.080 | of this whole podcast, yeah.

00:59:34.800 | What's the most embarrassed you've ever been

00:59:38.720 | on your podcast?

00:59:39.980 | - So I don't know if you've experienced this,

00:59:45.520 | but I'm generally embarrassed

00:59:48.120 | by most things I say inside my head.

00:59:50.720 | - Yeah.

00:59:51.640 | - So like when I say something,

00:59:53.200 | like now, there's a voice inside my head that goes,

01:00:00.020 | (chuckles)

01:00:00.860 | - Yeah.

01:00:01.680 | - Like what?

01:00:02.520 | (chuckles)

01:00:03.340 | You're a disappointment.

01:00:04.620 | Like the parent petting you in the back,

01:00:06.940 | the hand stops working.

01:00:08.900 | - Yeah.

01:00:09.740 | - Just slows down.

01:00:10.560 | Yeah.

01:00:15.380 | And then there's an awkward silence.

01:00:16.540 | You don't know what to say next.

01:00:17.500 | That's really embarrassing usually.

01:00:19.240 | - I used to work as a journalist,

01:00:21.540 | so I know how to sit with a silence

01:00:22.980 | and try to drag it out of you.

01:00:25.700 | (chuckles)

01:00:27.960 | - See what I did there?

01:00:35.540 | (chuckles)

01:00:36.380 | - You gave up.

01:00:37.220 | You pulled out.

01:00:38.700 | - I quit.

01:00:39.780 | - You blanked.

01:00:40.620 | - I was sweating.

01:00:41.440 | I was literally sweating.

01:00:42.460 | Okay.

01:00:43.300 | - Also 'cause you're in a full fucking suit.

01:00:45.140 | What is that?

01:00:45.960 | Like how did that come about?

01:00:48.660 | - Actually it was probably MIT

01:00:50.020 | is because everybody was dressing in like sweatpants.

01:00:55.540 | Very chill wear.

01:00:57.340 | And I was like, I like taking everything seriously.

01:01:01.260 | It just felt like, it was my way of saying F you

01:01:05.860 | to the way things are.

01:01:07.420 | 'Cause I like, I always admire Richard Feynman.

01:01:09.820 | I like it how there's like a classiness to it.

01:01:12.120 | So I don't know if it's for visual purposes,

01:01:15.380 | but it's just how I feel when I put on a suit.

01:01:17.420 | It makes me feel like I'm gonna take this

01:01:20.040 | really, really seriously.

01:01:22.340 | And if I embarrass myself, it's all my fault.

01:01:25.940 | 'Cause I tried, there's no excuse.

01:01:27.740 | I tried a hundred percent.

01:01:29.100 | The interesting thing about your Ted talk

01:01:32.460 | to go to a dark topic.

01:01:33.920 | - Is what happened when I walked off stage?

01:01:39.100 | - No, what happened when you walked off stage?

01:01:40.660 | - Found out that I had a brain tumor.

01:01:42.500 | Was that not where you're going?

01:01:44.620 | There's something else dark about my, yeah.

01:01:46.380 | - Well, yes.

01:01:47.320 | I thought you knew through the Ted talk.

01:01:51.420 | You found out right after.

01:01:52.780 | - I mean, the reason that I found out

01:01:54.700 | was partly because of the Ted talk.

01:01:56.260 | 'Cause my mom came into town to be there for it.

01:02:00.400 | And my right eyelid was swollen

01:02:04.900 | and it had kind of been swelling over a while.

01:02:08.340 | And I even got in comments about it on my YouTube channel.

01:02:11.220 | And I thought it was allergies.

01:02:12.700 | 'Cause I was like, oh, it's just pollen allergies.

01:02:14.620 | It's just affecting my one eye.

01:02:16.140 | 'Cause maybe I sleep mostly on that side.

01:02:17.860 | I don't know.

01:02:19.020 | And my mom came into the States

01:02:24.020 | and then Vancouver for my Ted talk.

01:02:25.500 | And she was like, Simone, you have to have a scan

01:02:29.940 | or see what's up.

01:02:30.900 | Well, we have to go to the doctor.

01:02:32.180 | And she really pushed me to do it.

01:02:33.460 | 'Cause I was like, I'm fine.

01:02:35.360 | And I had an MRI scan on 5 p.m. on a Friday night.

01:02:42.140 | My boyfriend at the time was there.

01:02:47.460 | And I remember halfway through an MRI scan,

01:02:52.180 | they kind of pull you out and they inject contrast fluid.

01:02:57.180 | Or this thing that just gives them another type of scan.

01:03:01.100 | And the nurse looked at me in this way and was like,

01:03:05.160 | how long have you had symptoms for?

01:03:07.540 | And that's when I knew that they'd found something.

01:03:09.380 | And then they shove you back into the machine

01:03:11.260 | for another 20 minutes.

01:03:12.620 | And my ex was just seeing them zooming in and out

01:03:16.660 | of my scans.

01:03:17.580 | And there was like this, obviously,

01:03:18.940 | something that just looked wrong in there.

01:03:21.500 | And they sent me to the ER and I found out

01:03:23.260 | that I had a brain tumor, the size of a golf ball.

01:03:27.660 | They've probably been grown since I was a teenager.

01:03:29.940 | So it'd been growing over like 10, 15 years.

01:03:32.660 | And yeah, I had surgery to remove it.

01:03:35.140 | And then it kept on growing,

01:03:37.060 | the parts that they couldn't remove.

01:03:38.300 | And I went through radiation treatment.

01:03:39.740 | So that was like two years that just was kind of dedicated

01:03:46.020 | to just getting better and getting back to where I am now.

01:03:50.060 | And I remember, like I was so stoked about 2020

01:03:53.220 | 'cause I was like, this is the first year

01:03:55.220 | that I'm not held back by my health.

01:03:56.980 | And I'm like finally gonna be able to do everything

01:03:59.220 | I've feathered.

01:04:00.060 | And then the pandemic happens and you're kind of just like,

01:04:01.500 | okay, just in the backseat of what's happening

01:04:04.420 | and things that are out of my control again.

01:04:06.660 | - In your public, you made a couple of videos about it.

01:04:10.060 | I have a brain tumor, my brain tumor's back.

01:04:14.060 | You kind of, you name your tumor Brian.

01:04:16.700 | You kind of make it a lighthearted thing.

01:04:20.340 | So you don't reveal much of the darkness.

01:04:23.860 | But were you scared or some low points?

01:04:27.700 | - Of course I was scared.

01:04:30.420 | I mean, it's terrifying.

01:04:32.440 | And also when it's in your brain,

01:04:36.620 | I was like, take any other part of me,

01:04:41.140 | but don't take my brain.

01:04:43.580 | Um, no, it's this unfathomable thing that happens.

01:04:48.580 | And you're like, I'm healthy.

01:04:49.780 | I've had, how could this possibly be a brain tumor?

01:04:52.220 | Like my eye is swollen.

01:04:54.340 | Like there's nothing there.

01:04:56.560 | I haven't had any seizures.

01:04:57.700 | I haven't had any cognitive issues.

01:04:59.780 | I haven't had any headaches even.

01:05:01.500 | Like how is that even possible?

01:05:03.220 | So you go through a lot of different stages

01:05:06.160 | of just trying to understand what it is.

01:05:08.980 | And I think I remember being hit,

01:05:12.100 | like right as I found out when we're in like an Uber,

01:05:14.940 | poor Uber driver,

01:05:16.180 | from where I had my MRI scan to the ER where they sent me.

01:05:19.740 | And I was really, both really grateful

01:05:24.180 | that I've gotten so much more out of life

01:05:26.380 | than I ever thought I would.

01:05:27.540 | Like I've had a hell of a life.

01:05:29.980 | And even if it would have ended really early,

01:05:32.220 | I would have done so much more than I ever thought.

01:05:35.040 | But I was also really, really sad

01:05:36.660 | that I hadn't had kids yet.

01:05:38.000 | Like that was my big grief of like,

01:05:39.820 | fuck, I haven't had time to have kids yet.

01:05:42.440 | But no, it's terrifying.

01:05:45.220 | I mean, the prospect of somebody cutting up your head,

01:05:48.620 | like that's terrifying.

01:05:50.980 | But it honestly wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be.

01:05:55.980 | - What about the radiation treatment?

01:05:58.740 | What are some things that, you know, people should,

01:06:02.260 | you learned about it,

01:06:03.780 | about the process and about yourself through that,

01:06:06.260 | that people might be interested about?

01:06:08.960 | - I think surgery was both harder and easier

01:06:13.240 | than radiation treatment because it was harder

01:06:16.160 | because it was so much more intense.

01:06:19.520 | And it's such a dramatic thing,

01:06:21.600 | like going to the hospital that morning and being like,

01:06:25.520 | I don't know, and you feel so awful when you wake up.

01:06:29.680 | But then the recovery from it was pretty linear.

01:06:32.400 | Like almost every week I would get a little bit better.

01:06:35.320 | The thing about radiation is that it was not linear at all.

01:06:39.780 | And it kind of drained me in this weird,

01:06:42.740 | like it was so hard to predict.

01:06:45.260 | And also they put me on these,

01:06:47.160 | I spent months feeling like I was high out of my mind

01:06:53.300 | and I couldn't process reality

01:06:55.500 | in a way that I normally would.

01:06:56.820 | Like everything just felt off.

01:06:58.380 | Like I felt, yeah, I felt like I was high on drugs.

01:07:01.140 | And I kept on asking my doctors what was going on.

01:07:04.340 | And they're like, no, I don't know.

01:07:05.780 | Don't think it's anything related.

01:07:08.040 | And I was on this Alzheimer's medicine

01:07:11.760 | that they put you on to prevent dementia

01:07:13.960 | from radiation treatment, like kind of as a preventative.

01:07:16.760 | And I found all these subreddits of people

01:07:19.940 | using that Alzheimer's medicine to get high.

01:07:23.440 | And people would be like, oh my God, bro,

01:07:25.280 | I was like 20 milligrams yesterday

01:07:27.480 | and I was high out of my mind.

01:07:29.120 | And I'm like, I'm on 30 milligrams a day.

01:07:32.640 | And they're like, of course it feels weird.

01:07:34.840 | And that was honestly one of the scariest parts of it

01:07:37.980 | because that was the first time where I felt like

01:07:40.860 | it genuinely affected my way of processing reality.

01:07:45.560 | And yeah, I was so relieved when I found out

01:07:50.280 | that that was what was causing it

01:07:51.640 | 'cause I felt like I was going crazy.

01:07:53.160 | But even after surgery, like I woke up

01:07:55.560 | and I felt like myself, like everything was,

01:07:58.000 | I got no brain injury.

01:07:59.480 | So obviously this is like my experience

01:08:01.380 | from somebody who came out of it pretty unscathed,

01:08:04.000 | who didn't get any brain injuries

01:08:05.720 | and didn't have to do any of that recovery.

01:08:07.560 | It's more just the recovery from like the physical act

01:08:11.040 | of somebody cutting your skull open

01:08:13.560 | and taking a large chunk out.

01:08:16.680 | - Did you research all the things that can go wrong

01:08:18.760 | during surgery? - No, no.

01:08:20.280 | I honestly, I'm a bit surprised by how I acted.

01:08:24.660 | Just pausing for you to pour.

01:08:29.620 | (both laughing)

01:08:31.700 | You're welcome, editors.

01:08:33.100 | - This is like a commercial.

01:08:37.780 | - This is like work injury from being a YouTuber.

01:08:40.940 | It's all like freeze if there's audio that comes in.

01:08:43.740 | Yeah, sponsored by tap water.

01:08:47.920 | I was surprised by how little I was willing to

01:08:57.060 | think critically about what my doctors told me to do.

01:08:59.960 | Like I very early on, the neurologist that I worked with,

01:09:05.760 | he was the one who was on call at the ER

01:09:08.800 | the day where I came in.

01:09:10.480 | And he was the one who ended up doing my surgery.

01:09:12.760 | And he kind of became like my rock in this.

01:09:15.980 | And I just 100% trusted him.

01:09:18.280 | And he turned out to be an amazing doctor

01:09:20.520 | and like did a great job and was just like,

01:09:22.680 | so I got so, so lucky.

01:09:26.240 | But I remember my mom being like,

01:09:27.780 | "Oh, but we should like talk about second opinions.

01:09:30.000 | And like, we should try to do more research."

01:09:32.240 | And I was like, so unwilling to do that

01:09:34.160 | because opening up to the idea that there are

01:09:38.420 | multiple ways or multiple things that might be right

01:09:44.700 | or wrong was so terrifying.

01:09:46.800 | Like I wanted there to just be like,

01:09:48.320 | "No, this is the only option.

01:09:49.720 | This is what we need to do."

01:09:51.800 | And if I started questioning that,

01:09:53.580 | then I don't know if I would have been able

01:09:55.000 | to go through with it.

01:09:56.560 | So yeah, it was a strange,

01:09:59.600 | I just really wanted to trust the doctors

01:10:02.660 | that I worked with.

01:10:04.040 | And I was very scared to question them in any way.

01:10:08.080 | - How did that process change your relationship with death?

01:10:11.180 | Are you afraid of death?

01:10:13.780 | Do you ponder your mortality?

01:10:16.960 | - Yeah, I think it took away a part of youth for me.

01:10:21.600 | - Like the innocence?

01:10:22.880 | - Yeah, I mean, you kind of think of terrible things

01:10:26.080 | as something that happens to other people

01:10:28.240 | and death and illness.

01:10:30.020 | So I think it kind of fast-tracked that for me.

01:10:35.160 | But it mostly changed my relationship to life.

01:10:40.720 | It changed, it's made me so much more gentle with myself.

01:10:46.520 | Like going through illness,

01:10:51.560 | it forces you to redefine what it means to be good.

01:10:54.360 | And before, being good had been pushing myself really hard.

01:10:57.400 | It had been working and I don't know,

01:11:00.960 | just being really hard with myself and disciplined.

01:11:04.320 | And when you're healing from something,

01:11:06.640 | being good is listening to your body.

01:11:08.880 | It's resting.

01:11:09.840 | It's like really being in tuned with what your health,

01:11:14.600 | where your health is at.

01:11:16.400 | And I think that is something that's kind of stuck with me

01:11:18.760 | since then.

01:11:19.600 | I'm so much more gentle and delicate with myself.

01:11:23.040 | - And with others?

01:11:23.920 | - I think it definitely, it's like,

01:11:28.680 | when you're young and healthy,

01:11:29.720 | it's really hard to know what it feels like to be ill.

01:11:34.720 | And I remember, you know, you go to yoga class

01:11:42.080 | and you'd be like, "Oh my God, this is too slow.

01:11:43.760 | "I want it to be, I have so much more energy.

01:11:45.680 | "I need to."

01:11:46.800 | And when I was recovering from my brain surgery,

01:11:51.800 | there was this yoga studio nearby my house

01:11:54.920 | and they had yoga for seniors.

01:11:57.000 | And I was so stoked 'cause I was like,

01:11:59.400 | "Oh, this is a yoga class I'll be able to take."

01:12:02.840 | And I think that was really eyeopening.

01:12:05.080 | I was just like, there's no,

01:12:07.880 | you kind of imagine that it's just like,

01:12:09.280 | "Oh, just push yourself harder."

01:12:10.600 | But no, that's not it.

01:12:12.880 | With age or sickness or it's just,

01:12:15.040 | you gotta be so gentle with yourself

01:12:16.720 | and you have to cater to people where they're at.

01:12:21.560 | - Yeah, and just the appreciation of this

01:12:24.360 | like biological vehicle you get

01:12:26.720 | and you should take care of it.

01:12:27.960 | - Being sick sucks.

01:12:30.640 | It's awful.

01:12:32.400 | And I'm really motivated to postpone that

01:12:37.400 | for as much as I can.

01:12:39.840 | And also I was so tremendously grateful when I got ill

01:12:44.120 | that I felt like I had so much to take from.

01:12:46.320 | Like I had so many energy reservoirs.

01:12:48.400 | I'd spent my life taking pretty decent care of my body

01:12:51.200 | and like exercising and eating well

01:12:53.560 | and like not wrecking my body in any way.

01:12:55.640 | And I felt like this was the first time

01:12:58.200 | where that was so critical

01:12:59.840 | and I felt like my body was ready for it.

01:13:02.560 | - I thought you were gonna go the other way.

01:13:07.200 | Like you can take care of your body all you want

01:13:10.880 | and it's bad stuff happens.

01:13:13.760 | So you should go on drug binges

01:13:15.680 | and go wild and do crazy things.

01:13:18.160 | - I mean, I also had that thought where I was like,

01:13:21.040 | I fucking floss every day.

01:13:22.360 | How do I have a brain tumor?

01:13:23.880 | I've been good.

01:13:25.080 | Like why does this happen to me?

01:13:27.120 | But more so it was like my body was so resilient

01:13:30.440 | and ready for it.

01:13:32.000 | And I was really, really proud of it.

01:13:36.960 | - It's amazing that the human body is able to recover

01:13:39.360 | from even the harshest things.

01:13:40.880 | - Yeah, it's wild.

01:13:42.640 | And my brain, so after surgery,

01:13:46.960 | 'cause yeah, I had a brain tumor

01:13:48.080 | the size of a golf ball,

01:13:49.560 | kind of behind my right eye.

01:13:51.160 | And after brain surgery,

01:13:53.280 | you kind of just have this big hole in your head,

01:13:55.680 | like this void.

01:13:57.240 | And usually your brain stays that way.

01:14:01.640 | Like it retains the shape

01:14:03.320 | even after the brain tumor is gone.

01:14:05.680 | But for some reason, my brain was feeling really ambitious

01:14:09.400 | and it has completely flopped back.

01:14:11.360 | And I have almost like a normal looking brain now

01:14:15.240 | where doctors are like,

01:14:16.080 | oh, we would almost not be able to tell that you had one.

01:14:18.920 | So yeah, that just blew my mind.

01:14:21.840 | I'm like, when did it?

01:14:23.120 | Was that why I had all those headaches after surgery?

01:14:26.360 | It's just my brain being like, ah!

01:14:28.760 | - Trying, working, yeah.

01:14:31.160 | Oh, pretty cool thing I wanted to ask you about

01:14:33.840 | is the everyday calendar that you worked on.

01:14:36.480 | That was a long time.

01:14:39.240 | That took a long time.

01:14:40.240 | - Yeah, so basically I designed this calendar.

01:14:44.240 | Like I wanted to start meditating every day,

01:14:47.000 | but it's really hard to meditate every day

01:14:50.120 | and to like kind of build that habit.

01:14:51.680 | And what I would do is I would make these grids

01:14:53.640 | in my notebooks where I could like check a box for every day.

01:14:56.280 | Like I just wanted like a little ding, I did it.

01:14:58.880 | And like this thing of accountability.

01:15:00.880 | But then I was like, this is,

01:15:03.000 | I don't wanna have a notebook that I do this in.

01:15:05.040 | Like I want an art piece that I can hang on my wall,

01:15:07.760 | like accountability art.

01:15:10.000 | And I made this thing called the everyday calendar,

01:15:13.200 | which has an entire year on it.

01:15:15.280 | So it's 365 days.

01:15:16.920 | And if you tap any of the days, you light it up.

01:15:19.560 | And we turned it into a Kickstarter campaign

01:15:21.520 | and it's now a product that I'm selling

01:15:24.240 | through my product business, The Yacht Store.

01:15:25.960 | - What's it called?

01:15:27.120 | - The Yacht Store.

01:15:28.720 | - And that for people who are confused

01:15:30.840 | is the right way to pronounce your last name.

01:15:32.960 | - Which it's right, but it's so wrong.

01:15:36.800 | My last name is spelled G-I-E-R-T-Z.

01:15:40.240 | - Who does that song?

01:15:41.440 | If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

01:15:44.280 | - Yeah, pronouncing my last name, Yacht.

01:15:48.440 | - That's what makes me, 'cause what's his name?

01:15:50.940 | From the office, he covers it from the British office,

01:15:56.920 | which is the better office.

01:15:59.120 | Okay, tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent.

01:16:02.280 | So you said you created the everyday calendar

01:16:04.920 | to make a more beautiful, in quotes,

01:16:07.160 | and more sacred gold star system on a wall,

01:16:09.960 | not a notebook that gets thrown into a drawer.

01:16:12.560 | - Yeah, wow, well said past me.

01:16:15.020 | - You said that making this calendar

01:16:18.560 | taught you a lot, in quotes.

01:16:20.080 | I feel like a real investigative journalist.

01:16:22.540 | You've said in 2018--

01:16:26.880 | - Yeah, I'm waiting for the gotcha.

01:16:28.240 | - Can you share some of the lessons you've learned?

01:16:29.960 | Like what do you mean you've learned a lot

01:16:31.840 | from making this calendar?

01:16:33.040 | What are we talking about?

01:16:34.400 | - As somebody who builds things,

01:16:36.200 | manufacturing something is such an unrelated process.

01:16:40.480 | Like making one of something

01:16:41.640 | and making 10,000s of something,

01:16:43.120 | like they're not even distant cousins.

01:16:44.600 | Like it's completely different beasts to tackle.

01:16:48.320 | And yeah, so that was one of it.

01:16:51.720 | Everything takes so much longer

01:16:53.280 | than you think it's going to.

01:16:54.320 | I did a Kickstarter campaign that we launched in 2018

01:16:57.880 | after my surgery.

01:17:00.360 | And yeah, it's just, you know,

01:17:03.080 | we think you're so generous with the timelines.

01:17:05.080 | We still ended up being a year late,

01:17:07.000 | but we shipped, we're good.

01:17:09.820 | But yeah, I mean, I'm trying to get my product business

01:17:14.880 | off the ground.

01:17:15.760 | We launched in May.

01:17:17.560 | And it's just, yeah, it's just a pain.

01:17:21.000 | As somebody who's terrified of disappointing people,

01:17:22.840 | I'm like, why have I chosen some of the jobs

01:17:26.540 | where it's the easiest to disappoint people?

01:17:28.840 | - You can disappoint people at scale now.

01:17:30.840 | - Yeah, I can disappoint people at scale

01:17:32.760 | and also them actually having paid me money

01:17:36.360 | to deliver on something, which is a terrible transaction.

01:17:40.040 | But I'm just stoked to realize that I love the job still.

01:17:44.960 | Like I love the product development aspect of it.

01:17:47.600 | I love trying to design stuff for manufacturing

01:17:50.800 | and figure it out and like anticipate

01:17:53.800 | how people are gonna use your products

01:17:56.160 | and like the everyday calendar.

01:17:57.640 | I mean, we've sold thousands of them now.

01:17:59.680 | They're all over the world.

01:18:00.680 | And it's like people actually finding something useful

01:18:05.680 | that I made and implementing them into their lives.

01:18:09.840 | It's just mind boggling.

01:18:12.320 | - Especially 'cause this is tracking habits, good habits.

01:18:15.760 | - Or bad ones, you can do it however.

01:18:18.080 | (both laughing)

01:18:20.040 | You can use it however you want.

01:18:21.800 | - I went in a drinking binge again today.

01:18:23.920 | - Yeah. (laughs)

01:18:25.280 | - Great success. - Kicked another kid.

01:18:26.720 | (both laughing)

01:18:28.720 | - What does it take to mass manufacture something?

01:18:31.120 | What did you learn about that?

01:18:32.280 | Like what are, can you like elucidate the gap

01:18:36.160 | between the one, the prototype versus the product development

01:18:40.520 | for mass manufacture?

01:18:41.640 | - I mean, for one of it is like, yeah, the manufacturing,

01:18:44.120 | the tooling that they use in manufacturing

01:18:46.440 | and to do things in a cost-effective way

01:18:49.880 | is really different.

01:18:51.640 | Like I can make a one-off,

01:18:53.480 | then it's gonna take me 17 hours.

01:18:55.280 | But obviously you can't spend 17 hours per calendar

01:18:58.000 | when you're doing something in factory.

01:18:59.960 | I think it's that like quality control is such a beast.

01:19:05.720 | You cannot trust anybody telling you

01:19:10.400 | that things are gonna be okay.

01:19:11.840 | Like you have to have such trust issues.

01:19:16.080 | And it's also terrifying.

01:19:17.720 | I mean, as somebody who's doing everything independently,

01:19:20.120 | I haven't raised any capital for it.

01:19:22.680 | Like it's all self-invested and we're doing it all in-house.

01:19:26.480 | It's just, yeah, I could buy 10,000 calendars,

01:19:31.480 | but then what if all of them have a manufacturing issue?

01:19:36.800 | Or it's just terrifying because the risks are so high.

01:19:41.800 | But also I got to this point where for one,

01:19:45.480 | this is something that I wanted to do for a long time,

01:19:47.640 | but something that going through health problems taught me

01:19:51.600 | is how fragile my business model is.

01:19:55.440 | Because I mean, I'm basically running an influencer business

01:19:58.240 | where I make videos on YouTube and then I have an ad spot

01:20:02.200 | and I talk about a brand.

01:20:03.560 | So like I'm a human billboard, which is fine.

01:20:07.080 | It grants me a lot of freedom to play around.

01:20:09.800 | But if I am not well enough to be on a stage giving talks

01:20:14.840 | or be in front of a camera, everything stops.

01:20:17.600 | Like it's such a pillar of a business

01:20:20.720 | and it can topple over at any given moment.

01:20:23.040 | Or like YouTube could change the algorithm,

01:20:25.880 | like legislation could catch up

01:20:28.120 | and change how you're able to advertise on the internet.

01:20:31.800 | Like it's so frail and I really felt like I need

01:20:35.080 | to diversify what I'm doing

01:20:37.280 | and also just to keep it interesting for myself.

01:20:40.320 | So what I decided was to start a product business

01:20:43.640 | because also it's kind of this perfect combination

01:20:46.080 | of businesses where I can turn my YouTube channel

01:20:48.600 | into an R&D department.

01:20:50.080 | 'Cause I have a reason to constantly be exploring things

01:20:52.960 | and churning out new products.

01:20:55.040 | I can also do that as early audience testing

01:20:57.080 | and see what people are actually excited about.

01:20:59.280 | And if there's something that I think

01:21:00.560 | would make an interesting product,

01:21:02.600 | I can pass that over to the product business.

01:21:04.720 | And then once I'm ready to market that and sell it,

01:21:07.440 | I can pass it over to the YouTube channel.

01:21:09.280 | So it's like, I can kind of,

01:21:11.040 | once I realized that YouTube

01:21:13.840 | didn't feel like an end goal for me,

01:21:16.320 | I was like, okay, then I can use it as a tool

01:21:19.520 | to accomplish these other things that I wanna do.

01:21:21.640 | And this was one of them.

01:21:22.560 | So yeah, it's a lot that went into it.

01:21:24.760 | - And one of the tools, like you said, is R&D,

01:21:26.720 | but it's also kind of advertisement

01:21:28.200 | for the cool stuff that you're doing.

01:21:29.680 | I think Mr. Beast is one of the creators

01:21:33.120 | that's also starting to understand this power

01:21:36.520 | of this reputation that you've built

01:21:40.000 | of people trust you, they love you to do cool stuff.

01:21:45.000 | They trust that you put your heart and soul into a thing.

01:21:50.280 | And they feel your pain and the struggle too.

01:21:52.720 | Like if a product, for example, say the everyday calendar,

01:21:56.120 | like there was issues in manufacturing or something like this.

01:21:58.400 | - Which we've had, yeah.

01:21:59.960 | - They would feel the pain of that

01:22:00.800 | and there was still support.

01:22:02.040 | I mean, that's the beauty of it

01:22:03.360 | when you have the actual person right there

01:22:05.720 | struggling with their lows and highs.

01:22:08.960 | - That's a decision that I made really early on

01:22:11.180 | where I was like, the Yacht Store is supported by me,

01:22:14.020 | but it's separate from me.

01:22:15.640 | It's not merchandise.

01:22:17.440 | You don't have to know who I am

01:22:19.680 | or care about who I am to be interested in this product.

01:22:22.800 | And if you go on the website, Yacht.Store, plug.

01:22:27.240 | It's like, I'm on the about page, Y-E-T-C-H.Store.

01:22:32.240 | Like you have to go to the about page

01:22:36.120 | to find anything about me.

01:22:37.280 | Like it's definitely not like this is Samo's brand.

01:22:39.680 | And I think anybody who's followed me for a long time

01:22:41.960 | will see that like my personality is sprinkled into it,

01:22:45.400 | but it's still like clean off of me.

01:22:47.560 | And I think that's also because I wanted something

01:22:49.520 | that was separate from me.

01:22:50.600 | 'Cause I am also running out of narcissism,

01:22:53.880 | believe it or not.

01:22:55.080 | Like I don't feel like I wanna,

01:22:57.160 | I don't want it to be about me.

01:23:00.040 | And I want it to be something

01:23:01.320 | that can also run independently of me and doesn't,

01:23:04.280 | like I wanna be able to retire my face

01:23:06.480 | and still do like the other stuff because I think it's fun,

01:23:09.000 | but I don't want that to be the core of it.

01:23:13.200 | - What other kind of stuff have you worked on

01:23:15.840 | for the product design for Y-E-T-C-H?

01:23:19.920 | - So, I mean, a lot of the products,

01:23:22.320 | I decided to launch the store

01:23:24.720 | with a really small roster of products

01:23:26.680 | because developing products is such a,

01:23:29.760 | it's such upfront heavy, like cost-wise and just investment.

01:23:34.760 | It's very big upfront investment.

01:23:38.440 | So, and I know that it would take a while

01:23:43.440 | or I knew it would take a while for me

01:23:44.680 | to kind of find the right tonality

01:23:46.360 | and visual language for the brand.

01:23:48.080 | So I just wanted to launch it, have it be out there,

01:23:50.400 | start working on it, start like learning more

01:23:52.760 | about what it entails,

01:23:54.560 | even if we just had a small roster of products.

01:23:56.520 | So we released it with, we have a puzzle.

01:23:59.560 | (Dana laughs)

01:24:01.480 | - Yes. - This is just a whim.

01:24:03.600 | But I wanted to release a puzzle that has one piece missing.

01:24:07.720 | So it's actually, as far as I can tell,

01:24:09.680 | it's the world's first officially incomplete puzzle.

01:24:12.160 | You get 499 out of 500 pieces.

01:24:14.520 | I keep the 500th piece.

01:24:16.480 | So I have a box in my workshop

01:24:18.840 | with everybody's missing pieces.

01:24:20.280 | - Yeah. - And I don't know

01:24:21.200 | what to do with it yet, but someday it will come to me.

01:24:23.640 | - Profound artistic statement.

01:24:25.480 | - It is something.

01:24:26.800 | It's definitely something.

01:24:28.800 | And I'm surprised by how many of them we've sold,

01:24:31.480 | which I'm also like,

01:24:32.560 | I kind of wanted to have that product out there

01:24:35.120 | 'cause I was like, can you imagine having a pitch deck?

01:24:37.880 | If I do ever raise money of being like,

01:24:40.600 | you know how good I am at selling things?

01:24:42.120 | I sold people 5,000 incomplete puzzles.

01:24:45.640 | - Incomplete puzzles. - Yeah.

01:24:48.600 | Also have, you know, it's like a lot of the products,

01:24:51.560 | I call them basket fillers.

01:24:52.800 | Like they're kind of just like stuff where I'm like,

01:24:54.720 | yeah, this is like easy to throw into your basket.

01:24:56.640 | I mean, we have these rings, I'm wearing them.

01:24:58.840 | So there's a screwdriver ring,

01:25:00.120 | which is a Phillips head screwdriver,

01:25:01.720 | and then a screw ring that kind of has a recess,

01:25:04.360 | like a Phillips head screw.

01:25:05.880 | I have these sawdust socks that make you look like

01:25:09.000 | your feet are covered in sawdust.

01:25:10.280 | Like you spent all time in the, all day in the shop

01:25:12.400 | without having to put any of the actual effort in.

01:25:15.120 | But then we have four more products in the pipeline

01:25:19.680 | that we're working on and that are kind of the more,

01:25:21.720 | the big ambitious products that are more in line

01:25:26.480 | with what I want the brand to be.

01:25:27.720 | Like the tagline is unique solutions to everyday problems.

01:25:30.840 | And it's just a lot of like trying to develop novel takes

01:25:35.840 | on existing products.

01:25:38.480 | - So something where the function becomes a bigger,

01:25:40.800 | bigger part of the design.

01:25:42.160 | - Yeah.

01:25:43.000 | - And so what's the process of creating something like that?

01:25:45.240 | Like the, even the everyday calendar.

01:25:47.200 | So like, what are some challenges that are interesting

01:25:49.720 | along the way?

01:25:50.560 | So you have to sketch it out.

01:25:52.280 | You have to like brainstorm, draw things out,

01:25:55.160 | and then create a schematic and see like how,

01:25:57.520 | how do you know what it's going to look like visually?

01:25:59.680 | - You don't.

01:26:01.120 | And it's, I mean, I, so the everyday calendar, the first,

01:26:05.000 | so I just built it for myself first.

01:26:07.200 | Like that did not come as a product idea first.

01:26:11.480 | And that's kind of been the process that I've had

01:26:13.260 | for a lot of things.

01:26:14.100 | Like I make it for myself and then I'm like, oh,

01:26:16.000 | maybe other people would find this useful too.

01:26:18.840 | So the everyday calendar, the first prototype I made,

01:26:22.360 | it had actually physical mechanical toggle switches.

01:26:25.520 | So 365 toggle switches that you could flip.

01:26:28.320 | So if you worked out that day or meditated,

01:26:30.880 | for me it was meditating, you can just flip that switch.

01:26:34.160 | And that was great.

01:26:35.880 | But when I started evaluating it as a product, it's,

01:26:38.740 | if you have 365 of something in a product,

01:26:42.660 | like the runaway cost is crazy.

01:26:45.100 | So the cheapest option, most reliable option we could find

01:26:49.940 | was capacitive touch.

01:26:51.200 | So basically it's a touch interface.

01:26:54.000 | And the front plate is a circuit board itself.

01:26:56.320 | So it's this like circuit board that's designed

01:27:01.320 | in this really fancy way.

01:27:04.400 | So it looks like a beautiful piece of art,

01:27:07.840 | not to do my own work too much,

01:27:10.000 | but it's actually a circuit board,

01:27:12.480 | which I also thought was really interesting

01:27:14.020 | of like using this that people usually hide away

01:27:16.760 | in products.

01:27:18.080 | And it felt like a nod to my career in electronics as well,

01:27:21.600 | of being like, no, let's make it pretty.

01:27:22.960 | Let's make it, put it front and forward.

01:27:25.560 | But yeah, I mean, what I'm realizing now more and more

01:27:29.480 | is like, there's so many of like,

01:27:30.640 | I would love to turn the puzzle table into a product,

01:27:33.760 | but then it's like, that would be a $7,000 table.

01:27:36.680 | And I don't wanna sell a table for $7,000.

01:27:38.960 | So you're kind of limited to the price bracket you're in.

01:27:41.540 | And it's like, your margins are tough.

01:27:44.600 | Like maintaining your margins are really, really tough.

01:27:47.420 | And as somebody who's like,

01:27:48.920 | I would love to sell the stuff that we're doing cheaper,

01:27:52.200 | but you just, it's just not feasible.

01:27:54.180 | Like you need those margins to survive.

01:27:56.240 | - Well, one of the genius things

01:27:58.760 | in the conversations I've had with Elon

01:28:00.440 | is the ability through sort of systematic questioning

01:28:04.440 | of how things have been done in the past

01:28:07.640 | to discuss what is the lowest cost way to solve a problem.

01:28:11.000 | And so he's very good at getting to,

01:28:14.040 | like with Optimus Robot, for example, the humanoid robot,

01:28:16.880 | how do you get the cost down?

01:28:18.320 | - Yeah.

01:28:19.160 | - And that seems to be like

01:28:20.000 | one of the essential things to do

01:28:23.080 | in any product that you have to mass manufacture

01:28:26.900 | is constantly discuss, like how do we simplify, simplify?

01:28:29.580 | - It's definitely a design limitation.

01:28:31.180 | It's interesting.

01:28:32.100 | It's both hard and interesting to work within.

01:28:34.380 | And that's such a different thing as well.

01:28:35.820 | It's like, I mean, as I talked about before,

01:28:37.700 | like what is the context in which you're creating things?

01:28:40.220 | Like I'm still building things.

01:28:41.340 | I'm still inventing things,

01:28:42.820 | but I changed the context

01:28:43.940 | and it has a very different set of limitations

01:28:46.580 | and constantly trying to simplify your product

01:28:50.260 | to make it cheaper.

01:28:51.780 | And yeah, it's a really interesting

01:28:54.600 | and different type of design process.

01:28:57.320 | - You can lose some of the magic though, right?

01:28:59.440 | Like people can do that a little bit too much.

01:29:02.120 | I think Apple is famous, like Johnny Ive is famous

01:29:04.500 | for sort of focusing on design first

01:29:07.640 | and not worrying about the cost later

01:29:10.080 | 'cause you don't wanna sacrifice.

01:29:11.920 | There's some stuff that's gonna cost more,

01:29:14.520 | but it keeps some of the magic.

01:29:18.360 | - I think it's for some of the products

01:29:19.920 | that we're working on, it's like,

01:29:21.360 | I'm like, let's just make it the best we think it can be

01:29:24.120 | and then we can scale back from there.

01:29:25.920 | Like, let's not impose these limitations

01:29:28.720 | on ourselves up front.

01:29:29.820 | Like, let's just make it the most beautiful version

01:29:32.580 | of itself and then we can decide

01:29:34.720 | what we wanna compromise with or compromise on, yeah.

01:29:38.120 | - That's what I say every day when I look in the mirror.

01:29:41.560 | Let's just make it the most beautiful.

01:29:43.600 | - And then we can compromise, yeah.

01:29:45.440 | (laughing)

01:29:47.040 | So you put on that suit.

01:29:48.440 | - Yeah.

01:29:49.280 | - And then see how shit goes wrong later.

01:29:51.640 | All right, back a little bit to the robots,

01:29:54.680 | just, or actually to one of your more epic projects.

01:29:59.240 | I mean, they're all epic, but Truckla.

01:30:01.280 | - Yeah.

01:30:02.560 | - You cutting into a Tesla and turning into an epic truck.

01:30:05.680 | What was that like?

01:30:06.520 | Where did the idea come from?

01:30:08.400 | - The idea came from that I really wanted

01:30:10.960 | an electric pickup truck.

01:30:12.800 | Like, I'm only really driven electric

01:30:14.680 | because I got my driver's license pretty late

01:30:16.760 | and I'm like one of that first generation drivers.

01:30:19.520 | It's like probably never gonna have a gas vehicle.

01:30:22.200 | But yeah, this was in 2018 as well.

01:30:26.720 | 2018 was a big year.

01:30:28.560 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

01:30:29.920 | Or 2019, I can't remember.

01:30:31.800 | And I figured that we could just make our own.

01:30:36.800 | - So you took a Tesla?

01:30:39.760 | - Tesla Model 3.

01:30:40.880 | - Model 3?

01:30:41.720 | And you cut off a piece of it.

01:30:46.640 | And you turn it into a pickup truck.

01:30:48.160 | What's the...

01:30:49.000 | (laughing)

01:30:52.440 | It looks pretty badass.

01:30:53.400 | So what are some of the challenges of doing that?

01:30:55.640 | It's unlike other projects you've done.

01:30:58.200 | - Yeah, it's very much outside of my realm.

01:31:00.600 | Like I'm not a car person.

01:31:02.200 | I haven't worked on cars before.

01:31:03.840 | So we brought in a big team

01:31:05.920 | and had another project manager for it and stuff.

01:31:10.200 | 'Cause also like cars,

01:31:12.000 | you definitely don't want things to go wrong.

01:31:14.000 | There's no part of me that wants to fuck around

01:31:16.840 | and make something that's gonna be really unsafe for me

01:31:18.840 | or for other people who are driving with me.

01:31:21.040 | So yeah, I mean, it was about a year of planning.

01:31:27.080 | And then we got the car and then we spent a month

01:31:30.280 | just tearing it apart and trying to make it.

01:31:33.160 | I was so set.

01:31:34.400 | I really wanted the car just for its function.

01:31:38.000 | And I was like, I'm so fine with if it's really ugly.

01:31:43.120 | But then we managed to make it actually look really good.

01:31:46.200 | - So that wasn't part of the discussion,

01:31:47.760 | like how the final thing looks?

01:31:49.600 | - I wasn't that fussed about it.

01:31:52.320 | I was like, I just want it for its function.

01:31:54.760 | Like I really want this car.

01:31:56.520 | I don't want it because it looks cool.

01:31:58.040 | But then it ended up looking pretty cool as well.

01:32:00.920 | And I'm really, I mean, even now a couple of years later

01:32:04.480 | when there are some more options of electric pickup trucks,

01:32:08.360 | I still stand truck law.

01:32:11.120 | Like she's like Rivian, Ford F-150,

01:32:16.120 | like they're all great, but they're giant.

01:32:19.280 | - You're sitting there on the porch in your cowboy hat.

01:32:24.280 | - Yeah.

01:32:25.640 | - Drinking whiskey and saying.

01:32:27.080 | - With my cattle dog.

01:32:28.240 | - Yeah.

01:32:29.080 | - Yeah.

01:32:29.920 | - No, I just want a small, I want like a small

01:32:32.640 | nineties pickup truck.

01:32:34.920 | - Back to shitty robots.

01:32:35.960 | You reuse parts of previous robots a lot.

01:32:38.040 | What's like a memorable example of that?

01:32:39.880 | Is just the graveyard of parts?

01:32:42.360 | - I mean, I've gotten better at keeping projects intact.

01:32:47.360 | In the beginning I used to disassemble every project

01:32:50.800 | 'cause I was also a much more stringent budget.

01:32:53.560 | So if I needed a motor, then I would like steal it off

01:32:56.040 | of an existing robot or a previous robot.

01:32:59.000 | But I've gotten really good at not doing that now

01:33:02.120 | because I'm like, maybe one day I wanna have

01:33:05.240 | a museum exhibit and then it would be nice

01:33:07.920 | to have all of those machines intact

01:33:09.840 | and not having to rebuild them.

01:33:11.560 | - Centuries from now, you can look

01:33:13.880 | at Benjamin Franklin's house.

01:33:15.440 | - Oh yeah, no, we're just gonna look at my house.

01:33:18.840 | - Yeah, just house.

01:33:19.840 | Some weird shit.

01:33:23.340 | - Yeah, that goes great with my idea of myself.

01:33:27.400 | - With the autobiography, yeah.

01:33:31.040 | You said that people keep requesting in the comments.

01:33:33.840 | - That I put a dildo on it?

01:33:35.320 | - Yeah.

01:33:36.800 | - Wait, was that actually what you were gonna ask?

01:33:39.120 | - Yeah, I have dildo written in my notes.

01:33:41.680 | - I thought I just made it into a raunchy punchline.

01:33:46.440 | - Dildo.

01:33:47.280 | - You were actually gonna get there.

01:33:48.280 | Yeah, that was in the early days, in the shitty robot days,

01:33:50.560 | but now I have a filter on my YouTube channel

01:33:53.200 | for every possible spelling of dildo.

01:33:56.480 | - I mean, people want to probably sexualize robots, right?

01:34:00.440 | And then, or they put--

01:34:01.840 | - They wanna sexualize my relationship with them, yeah.

01:34:05.160 | - Oh.

01:34:06.000 | - You know, 'cause I have majority male followers,

01:34:09.840 | and they're so sweet and so respectful, 99%,

01:34:14.840 | but I realize there is a lot of...

01:34:18.920 | I've realized that society hasn't taught men

01:34:23.880 | how to have female role models,

01:34:26.840 | and the way that people channel it is through being like,

01:34:31.240 | "Oh, it's because I wanna fuck her,

01:34:32.520 | "or I wanna date her, or I wanna marry her."

01:34:35.320 | And I'm like, "I don't think you want any of those things.

01:34:37.280 | "I think you actually just admire my work."

01:34:40.040 | But you don't know how to look up to a woman.

01:34:43.960 | - Yeah, that's beautifully put.

01:34:46.640 | What about weapons?

01:34:47.680 | Do you get requests to put weapons on a thing?

01:34:49.760 | - Yeah.

01:34:50.800 | It's interesting, I kind of started in robotics

01:34:53.200 | as just like a happy camper

01:34:54.720 | who is really into tinkering,

01:34:57.040 | and now I'm kind of seeing some of the darker parts of it.

01:35:02.840 | I remember first time I went to a proper factory,

01:35:05.760 | and I saw big industrial robot arms at work,

01:35:08.600 | and I was like, "Oh, wow, this is what it is about."

01:35:12.400 | And it was almost scary where I was like,

01:35:14.320 | "Oh, I've just been playing around

01:35:16.240 | "with these tiny versions of this."

01:35:17.840 | And I'm like, "Oh my God, everybody,

01:35:18.880 | "robotics is cool and fun."

01:35:20.680 | And then you get in there, and you're like,

01:35:21.720 | "This is kind of terrifying."

01:35:24.080 | - You were platforming the very things

01:35:27.080 | that will destroy human civilization.

01:35:29.040 | You're making it fun and entertaining.

01:35:31.040 | - I'm the mouthpiece, and I'm getting people

01:35:33.840 | into robotics and engineering,

01:35:35.920 | and we're all just building our demise

01:35:38.520 | and accelerating speed.

01:35:40.120 | No, but I mean, I had that, and the same also

01:35:43.280 | with companies who are saying

01:35:48.280 | that they're never gonna put weapons on their robots,

01:35:51.240 | and then have military contracts and stuff like that.

01:35:53.840 | And you're like, "This is dark and scary."

01:35:57.320 | Fortunately, I haven't gotten a lot of requests for it.

01:35:59.660 | - Yeah, drones are terrifying, especially.

01:36:01.880 | - Drones are fucking terrifying.

01:36:03.640 | And it's really everything.

01:36:07.600 | I mean, we humans are so good at creative ways

01:36:10.760 | of killing and fucking each other.

01:36:13.360 | It's like almost how everything goes.

01:36:15.600 | It's like, and it's, yeah, I'm terrified of the future

01:36:20.160 | where we are gonna use more robots to kill each other.

01:36:22.860 | - And come up with new and new creative ways

01:36:25.880 | to kill and hurt each other.

01:36:28.040 | Emotionally, psychologically, physically.

01:36:30.260 | - Yeah.

01:36:31.220 | - Speaking of which, what are your thoughts about,

01:36:34.100 | I don't know if you've been paying attention,

01:36:35.900 | but Chad GPT, the advancement in language models

01:36:39.220 | and artificial intelligence.

01:36:40.440 | Have you added speaking capabilities to any of your devices?

01:36:44.940 | - I have Siri on, yeah.

01:36:47.440 | I used to have an Amazon Echo in my house,

01:36:49.140 | but then I removed it.

01:36:50.940 | It just freaked me out that I could whisper

01:36:53.340 | from my bed and it heard me.

01:36:55.380 | I'd be like, Alexa, play Spotify.

01:36:58.860 | I'd be like, playing Spotify.

01:37:00.780 | - Yeah. - Fuck.

01:37:01.740 | (laughing)

01:37:03.980 | I think it is a powerful tool

01:37:10.140 | that we are not fully ready for.

01:37:12.540 | - Yeah. - And I don't know.

01:37:14.100 | I think the internet is kind of a parade

01:37:17.780 | of us using powerful things in harmful ways.

01:37:23.380 | And I think chatbots are really, really exciting.

01:37:27.820 | I'm stoked to have a personal assistant

01:37:30.740 | that's like, or a virtual assistant

01:37:32.300 | that actually does a good job

01:37:34.100 | and can solve problems for me.

01:37:36.340 | But yeah, it also feels like it can get dark

01:37:39.900 | really, really quickly.

01:37:41.140 | - Yeah, 'cause you can form close connections

01:37:43.380 | like we're talking about with it,

01:37:44.580 | and then it can be used to manipulate you.

01:37:47.300 | Manipulate you in terms of what is true

01:37:51.260 | and manipulate you in terms of getting you to buy stuff.

01:37:54.380 | - Yeah.

01:37:55.300 | - Or maybe because at least for now,

01:37:57.780 | it's centralized, getting everybody to think the same way.

01:38:00.780 | - I mean, it's the same in algorithms

01:38:03.540 | being used to radicalize people

01:38:05.100 | or kind of having that as a consequence

01:38:07.140 | of the way that they work

01:38:08.760 | and combine that with a really advanced language model.

01:38:12.580 | And you can control people's world view

01:38:16.820 | in a way that you could.

01:38:18.460 | I mean, it's just, it's wild.

01:38:21.540 | And I think we're not ready for it.

01:38:24.180 | And I don't know if we ever would be

01:38:25.380 | because we're very impressionable,

01:38:28.060 | little squishy flesh bags.

01:38:30.700 | - Which takes us back to the,

01:38:32.380 | when the squishy flesh bags interact,

01:38:34.940 | which one pops first?

01:38:36.060 | It's the um, bubble.

01:38:36.900 | - Yeah, the bubble.

01:38:37.740 | - We'll cut to this, the bubble wrap.

01:38:38.940 | - Bubble, um, bubble, new paper coming out.

01:38:42.060 | I like to read my paper.

01:38:42.900 | - What were we talking about?

01:38:44.420 | Oh, what about consciousness?

01:38:47.900 | So you never anthropomorphized the robots?

01:38:50.900 | Did they ever come to life for you?

01:38:52.700 | Where you kind of thought?

01:38:55.700 | - No, 'cause I built them and I know how they work.

01:38:58.140 | - So that prevents you from being able to see the magic?

01:39:01.060 | - I don't know, yeah.

01:39:02.020 | But I think it's like,

01:39:03.980 | I definitely, when I did a lot of the shitty robot stuff,

01:39:06.980 | like I wanted them to move like a human

01:39:10.180 | or like in a more organic way

01:39:11.900 | and not just like point A to point B,

01:39:14.140 | which is the easiest way to program stuff.

01:39:17.060 | So I wanted other people to anthropomorphize them,

01:39:19.700 | but I don't think I did necessarily.

01:39:22.740 | I'm trying to think of a piece of technology

01:39:25.420 | that I've kind of projected feelings upon, but no, I can't.

01:39:30.100 | - So sometimes what makes me anthropomorphize something,

01:39:33.980 | even though I built it, is there's a element of surprise.

01:39:38.580 | So especially with machine learning,

01:39:40.700 | you're surprised by the kind of things it does.

01:39:43.580 | Have you ever been surprised by a robot?

01:39:46.780 | - No, 'cause they're all pretty dumb.

01:39:48.540 | Like also the robots I built,

01:39:50.060 | it's like they're all just servos moving from,

01:39:55.060 | I mean, I don't think I've built anything

01:39:59.740 | with a huge amount of sensors

01:40:02.220 | or like they're just moving in a pattern

01:40:04.500 | that I programmed them to move.

01:40:06.020 | - What's the most complex thing you've built?

01:40:08.860 | - I mean, probably a truck cloud.

01:40:11.500 | - Truck cloud.

01:40:12.340 | - Yeah, was complex just for the sheer scale of it

01:40:15.540 | and like the, I mean, I think that was my biggest project,

01:40:20.140 | both in terms of build scope,

01:40:21.980 | but also in terms of impact that it had.

01:40:24.060 | Like that project just went wild.

01:40:26.780 | But then, yeah, then I don't know.

01:40:28.900 | The bubble wrap music box, I don't know.

01:40:31.380 | They're all complicated in different ways.

01:40:33.300 | - That one is epic.

01:40:34.860 | How does the bubble wrap connect to the flute, by the way?

01:40:38.420 | How does that work?

01:40:39.380 | - The flute is just right where,

01:40:42.620 | like mounted right where it pops it.

01:40:45.180 | - Okay. - Yeah.

01:40:46.100 | - So fascinating, I gotta watch that video.

01:40:48.820 | - Yeah, that's fun.

01:40:50.660 | - Funny enough, in my deep investigative

01:40:55.660 | journalistic research of you,

01:40:58.300 | says you used to be an MMA reporter.

01:41:00.940 | How did that happen?

01:41:05.140 | How'd you get into it?

01:41:06.340 | - I was really into martial arts.

01:41:08.980 | I was like a huge UFC buff.

01:41:10.700 | I mean, this is 2010, maybe.

01:41:14.300 | - Did you practice martial arts yourself?

01:41:16.020 | - I did, yeah.

01:41:16.980 | I was mostly standup.

01:41:18.380 | I did a lot of Muay Thai and then some Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

01:41:22.420 | and just, yeah.

01:41:23.660 | I was really, the thing is I get really intense

01:41:28.300 | about my hobbies and I was so into it.

01:41:32.300 | I was all in. - Awesome.

01:41:34.300 | - And I had worked a little bit as a journalist

01:41:38.740 | and I was like, oh, I should do MMA reporting.

01:41:43.140 | And I emailed this MMA website in Sweden.

01:41:47.380 | I was like, hey, can I come and write for you?

01:41:48.980 | And they were like, oh, actually we're going to an event

01:41:52.380 | in Gothenburg tomorrow, do you wanna come?

01:41:54.780 | - Yeah.

01:41:55.620 | - And I was like, wow, that's a lot.

01:41:57.100 | It's like 11 p.m. at night, but sure, I'll come.

01:41:59.980 | And I went there to their office.

01:42:01.420 | I'd never really met them and I'm like,

01:42:02.900 | this is kind of scary.

01:42:03.780 | Like I'm a 20-year-old girl and going there

01:42:06.180 | in a group of men, with a group of men.

01:42:07.940 | And they were so rude.

01:42:12.460 | I went there and I was like, hey, what's up?

01:42:15.060 | And they were all kind of ignoring me

01:42:16.660 | and just like not looking at me or interacting with me

01:42:20.060 | until they realized that Simon was a girl

01:42:24.660 | 'cause we'd only talked over email.

01:42:26.340 | And they were like, oh, this guy named Simon is gonna come.

01:42:30.140 | And then they were like, oh, fuck, Simon,

01:42:32.460 | it's actually Simone and it's a girl.

01:42:35.360 | So I kind of like slid into that in a very,

01:42:38.780 | very strange way and I did that for a year.

01:42:41.180 | But then I got kicked out of an interview

01:42:43.060 | with Alexander Gustafsson.

01:42:45.020 | And I was like-- - Wow, your pronunciation

01:42:46.580 | is so good.

01:42:47.420 | - Yeah. (laughs)

01:42:48.820 | And then I just kind of never went back

01:42:50.620 | and I was done with it.

01:42:51.540 | And now I'm not allowed to do martial arts

01:42:53.220 | because of brain stuff.

01:42:54.500 | So I've kind of put all of that behind me.

01:42:57.940 | And it's interesting.

01:42:58.940 | It's like I definitely see the athleticism in it

01:43:03.300 | and the skill that goes into it.

01:43:05.460 | I think as the older I get, the more concerned I am

01:43:08.820 | about the health impacts of the sport.

01:43:10.740 | And of the people who are practicing it on an elite level.

01:43:13.980 | And I'm just not as,

01:43:16.020 | cannot as 100% just cheer as somebody

01:43:22.500 | beats somebody else up into a pulp.

01:43:24.820 | - Yeah, especially considering the effects

01:43:26.500 | it might have on the brain.

01:43:28.140 | May I ask why you got kicked out

01:43:32.180 | of the Gustafsson interview?

01:43:34.380 | Was anything fun?

01:43:35.820 | Was it embarrassing?

01:43:36.660 | What happened? - No, it wasn't.

01:43:38.260 | I didn't, it was not, I didn't intend to get kicked out.

01:43:41.540 | I didn't realize I was gonna get kicked out.

01:43:43.140 | So it was, Alexander Gustafsson was gonna fight John Jones.

01:43:47.380 | And he had just, he was kind of like this golden boy

01:43:51.780 | in Sweden.

01:43:53.060 | And he had just come out to the press

01:43:55.540 | that he had actually been to jail for violent crimes.

01:44:00.540 | And all I wanted to ask, all I asked was,

01:44:02.940 | what was the reason that you wanted

01:44:04.900 | to bring that forward now?

01:44:07.980 | And apparently that was completely like blacklisted,

01:44:11.420 | but I hadn't gotten briefed about it at all.

01:44:13.380 | And the PR man, head of PR of the UFC

01:44:18.380 | was just yelling at me and they kicked me out

01:44:21.820 | of Grand Hotel in Stockholm.

01:44:24.580 | And I immediately called my mom and I was like,

01:44:27.980 | "Mom, you will not believe what just happened.

01:44:30.140 | "I got kicked out of an interview at Grand Hotel."

01:44:33.180 | Because in the '90s, she got kicked out of an interview

01:44:38.100 | with Mel Gibson from the Grand Hotel.

01:44:40.660 | So that's like, runs in the family.

01:44:42.580 | So I was just like, it was so--

01:44:43.420 | - Was she proud of you?

01:44:44.660 | - Yeah, no, it was just this weird generational skip

01:44:48.060 | where we both gotten kicked out of interviews

01:44:51.460 | at the same hotel.

01:44:53.320 | - You spent quite a bit of time in China as a student.

01:44:56.940 | Is that something you could speak to,

01:44:59.020 | the differences culturally?

01:45:02.140 | Maybe even from like a student in engineering perspective

01:45:04.740 | between China and US, maybe even Sweden.

01:45:07.220 | Those are like technologically speaking,

01:45:09.060 | just such fundamentally different places.

01:45:11.380 | - I mean, I moved to China when I was 16

01:45:13.940 | and I went through as an exchange student.

01:45:15.700 | So that is before I had ever touched upon those things.

01:45:19.620 | And it was, and then I went back when I was 19

01:45:24.620 | to work as an English teacher for a little bit.

01:45:28.060 | So it was incredibly challenging to be there.

01:45:33.060 | - The language barrier, the language, the culture.

01:45:37.260 | - All of it.

01:45:38.380 | I mean, I was like now when I look at 16 year olds,

01:45:41.140 | I'm like, you're a baby.

01:45:42.780 | And I moved, sorry, 10 to 16 year olds listening to this.

01:45:46.460 | But like, I just can't believe I did that.

01:45:49.700 | And yeah, I didn't speak the language.

01:45:51.160 | I got placed in like a small city with almost no foreigners.

01:45:54.540 | It was just a constant audience of people staring at you

01:45:57.780 | because they haven't interacted

01:46:00.500 | with a lot of foreigners before.

01:46:02.500 | And yeah, it definitely,

01:46:05.540 | and then after that I moved to Kenya.

01:46:07.440 | And I think that was one of the reasons

01:46:12.060 | why it was so interesting to move to the States

01:46:14.700 | because people were like, oh, isn't it like hard

01:46:17.060 | with the language barrier or the cultural difference?

01:46:19.340 | And I was like, this is nothing.

01:46:22.340 | And I could speak the language,

01:46:24.020 | like I could speak English well

01:46:25.180 | and I could kind of pass as an American,

01:46:27.320 | even just as I moved here.

01:46:28.660 | And it was such a relief where I was like,

01:46:31.020 | wow, I'm like an undercover foreigner.

01:46:33.500 | Because I got to a point where I realized

01:46:34.940 | like it doesn't matter how good my Mandarin is,

01:46:36.820 | I'm never, people are never gonna fully accept me here.

01:46:41.820 | So yeah.

01:46:44.460 | - And you moved, you went to Kenya,

01:46:46.780 | you've spoken about this after your parents got divorced.

01:46:49.740 | - Yeah.

01:46:50.900 | When did I talk about that?

01:46:52.740 | Didn't realize I told that story.

01:46:53.860 | - I know, I know so many things.

01:46:55.940 | What do you think this is?

01:46:56.780 | - Is it from when I have my Amazon Echo installed?

01:46:59.460 | - Yeah.

01:47:00.300 | - Yeah, so I came home from China first time,

01:47:04.460 | I was there for a year.

01:47:05.740 | It's one of the most turned upside down days of my life.

01:47:12.780 | I spent a year there and I was so excited.

01:47:15.900 | I had a really rough year and I was so excited

01:47:18.540 | just to come home and like be a child again.

01:47:21.260 | I remember thinking and just like feeling like I belonged.

01:47:24.340 | And then I came home and I found out that my parents

01:47:29.340 | had separated when I was gone and they hadn't told me

01:47:32.100 | because they wanted to like not affect my stay there,

01:47:34.700 | which I think was 100% the right decision of them to make.

01:47:37.980 | But I kind of came home to a house

01:47:40.860 | that was starting to get picked apart and--

01:47:43.220 | - It's a big shock to your world.

01:47:45.940 | - It was both yes and no.

01:47:48.780 | I think I remember I just sat down on my bed

01:47:51.780 | and I was like, well, this isn't what I expected,

01:47:55.140 | but I guess I'll move to Kenya

01:47:57.180 | because that was one of the few,

01:47:58.860 | there were a few Swedish boarding schools in the world.

01:48:01.060 | There was one in Brussels, Paris, London,

01:48:03.380 | and then one in Nairobi.

01:48:05.380 | And I didn't wanna miss more school

01:48:06.660 | because I'd taken a gap year when I went to China.

01:48:09.540 | So I was like, I guess I'll go to Nairobi.

01:48:12.220 | And I'm thinking now,

01:48:13.060 | like I think if my parents had stayed together,

01:48:15.660 | granted, it was amazing that they did made

01:48:17.780 | the right decision in every way,

01:48:19.740 | but my roots kind of never grew back after that.

01:48:23.660 | And I think I just kept on moving abroad and moving around

01:48:29.620 | and being really restless and yeah.

01:48:33.860 | - Have you ever been able to find a home spiritually?

01:48:36.860 | - I have a home, yeah.

01:48:38.460 | I mean, I have a home in the people around me

01:48:43.460 | and I have a lot of different homes.

01:48:48.380 | I think what I'm realizing more and more

01:48:49.860 | is like you cannot live without consequence and compromise.

01:48:53.380 | And sometimes I can envy people

01:48:55.540 | who have that like same friend group

01:48:57.540 | that they had their entire life

01:48:59.180 | or that just really belong in a place.

01:49:03.780 | And I realized that would be amazing,

01:49:06.980 | but I've chosen different experiences.

01:49:10.260 | And one of the upsides of that

01:49:12.260 | is I can feel home almost anywhere.

01:49:15.060 | One of the downsides of that

01:49:16.540 | is that I cannot feel fully at home anywhere.

01:49:19.660 | - Wow, that's deeply and darkly poetic.

01:49:24.100 | - Do you feel at home?

01:49:25.180 | - Probably the way you put it is really beautifully put.

01:49:34.580 | Yeah.

01:49:35.420 | No, I have to find home in the people I love.

01:49:41.260 | - Yeah.

01:49:43.340 | (sighs)

01:49:45.340 | What advice would you give to young people

01:49:49.260 | that look at your stellar life,

01:49:53.220 | the trajectory of your career as a human being,

01:49:56.940 | as a creator, as a engineer, as a designer,

01:50:01.940 | as a incredibly interesting personality

01:50:05.740 | who's working on an autobiography?

01:50:09.860 | What advice would you give them?

01:50:11.700 | Like how to make their way in this life?

01:50:14.580 | Maybe high school students, maybe college students

01:50:17.300 | on how they can have a career they can be proud of

01:50:20.580 | or a life they can be proud of.

01:50:22.340 | - Oh my God, Lex.

01:50:23.340 | You know, this is not the advice,

01:50:28.940 | but there are very few moments in a career

01:50:31.420 | that feel as good as you think they are going to.

01:50:34.420 | And there are very few moments

01:50:36.020 | of feeling really proud of yourself.

01:50:38.740 | Like I feel like I often just feel like

01:50:41.540 | I'm not doing it well enough or big enough,

01:50:43.460 | or I know I just had one of those moments

01:50:46.380 | like hearing you say that.

01:50:47.220 | I'm like, oh, I'm actually doing okay.

01:50:49.780 | I think my main advice is enthusiasm

01:50:58.900 | is a much more potent fuel in life than duty.

01:51:02.660 | And just because something is boring

01:51:05.380 | doesn't mean that it's important.

01:51:07.380 | I kind of realized for myself

01:51:10.500 | that like I'm so much better at the things I enjoy,

01:51:13.900 | but school doesn't really teach us

01:51:17.260 | how to stay excited about something

01:51:19.580 | and how to stay enthusiastic about something.

01:51:21.420 | And if you can find that,

01:51:22.820 | then like you got a gold mine of potential.

01:51:27.180 | So I kind of had to reprogram myself to be like,

01:51:31.700 | just because this is fun

01:51:32.940 | doesn't mean that it's not important.

01:51:35.940 | Because I had so much guilt about it in this weird way

01:51:39.420 | or where I'm like, no, this is too fun.

01:51:40.940 | This can't be work.

01:51:41.780 | And I'm like, no, it's still work.

01:51:43.940 | The boring stuff isn't more important.

01:51:45.900 | - And the vice versa, as you said,

01:51:47.700 | just because it's boring and hard

01:51:52.380 | doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

01:51:54.460 | That's interesting.

01:51:55.460 | I'm gonna have to take that advice and think through it.

01:51:59.180 | 'Cause genetically I'm built a little bit

01:52:01.580 | like if this is really unpleasant,

01:52:03.540 | it's probably good for me.

01:52:05.620 | And it's a dangerous thing to think.

01:52:08.020 | Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not.

01:52:10.020 | - No, and it's like, what comes really easy

01:52:13.980 | and where do you have that kind of effortless momentum

01:52:18.220 | and enthusiasm?

01:52:19.340 | And that is kind of the sweet spot.

01:52:22.140 | I think that I'm also really happy

01:52:24.420 | that I spent time trying out so many different jobs.

01:52:28.500 | I mean, I've had so many different jobs before I did it

01:52:31.300 | and I would do things for a year and then I quit.

01:52:33.900 | And it feels like I tried on a bunch of different pants

01:52:37.020 | and you're like, okay, I can kind of wear this,

01:52:39.340 | but they're not super comfortable

01:52:40.940 | or I don't love the look of them or whatever.

01:52:43.060 | And now I feel like I found this pair of pants

01:52:45.300 | that just fits me perfectly

01:52:48.700 | and that perfectly caters to my strengths and my weaknesses.

01:52:53.380 | Like I used to work as an editor for the Swedish government.

01:52:56.380 | And I remember thinking like,

01:53:00.140 | oh, I need to be okay that not a lot of things are happening

01:53:03.300 | and that things are moving slowly

01:53:04.820 | and that the work is kind of like monotonous.

01:53:07.780 | And then I realized like,

01:53:08.980 | or maybe I should be in a workplace

01:53:10.700 | where it's a benefit or strength

01:53:14.540 | that I want a lot of things to happen

01:53:15.940 | and that I can handle a high speed.

01:53:18.580 | And I think that is really such a good question task as well.

01:53:23.060 | Like what are my strengths, what are my weaknesses

01:53:24.980 | and in what context are most of these things strengths?

01:53:27.740 | - And if you know that, if you know the measurements,

01:53:31.940 | you can find the right fitting pants.

01:53:33.540 | - Yeah, or the right suit as Lex will tell you.

01:53:37.100 | - What do you think is the meaning of life?

01:53:40.580 | - Oh, I don't think there's any meaning.

01:53:42.940 | - It's a meaningless void?

01:53:44.740 | - No, that it doesn't have any meaning

01:53:46.500 | doesn't mean that it's meaningless.

01:53:48.180 | I don't think that there's this big grand meaning.

01:53:50.740 | I think a more important question

01:53:53.140 | is what brings you substantial joy in your life.

01:53:58.980 | To me, it's the relationships with people that I have.

01:54:01.780 | - Love?

01:54:03.740 | - Yeah, I mean, love in all different kinds of form.

01:54:06.420 | I'm really working on figuring out

01:54:10.300 | how to build more community,

01:54:11.660 | especially in a society that isn't really made for it.

01:54:15.260 | I want more passive hangouts with people

01:54:21.980 | where like, I just want people who are there.

01:54:24.580 | - Together?

01:54:27.140 | - To get high?

01:54:27.980 | - Maybe to get high.

01:54:28.820 | - Together, yeah.

01:54:29.660 | I mean, I think seeing somebody for lunch

01:54:32.660 | and kind of shooting the shit

01:54:33.780 | and what's the latest with you is great.

01:54:37.300 | But what I want is somebody to just roll up in sweatpants

01:54:41.300 | and open my fridge and be like, "What are you gonna do?

01:54:44.940 | I don't know, maybe I'll read a book."

01:54:46.700 | Like, yeah, I think that--

01:54:48.220 | - Sharing kind of like silence.

01:54:50.020 | - Sharing silence, being alone together,

01:54:52.940 | and just that type of community.

01:54:55.060 | - Yeah, I think that's a great question.

01:54:57.060 | That type of community, I think,

01:54:58.620 | is what I'm really seeking out now.

01:55:01.740 | 'Cause I think, yeah.

01:55:05.140 | And also like working on a goal,

01:55:08.580 | on a joint goal together with other people.

01:55:11.060 | I think being a YouTuber can be really lonely.

01:55:13.380 | I mean, as much as I'm working with a team, it's like,

01:55:17.460 | yeah, I just wanna work in a bigger project

01:55:20.700 | and kind of have that sense of,

01:55:23.020 | wow, we're like doing this together.

01:55:24.620 | 'Cause I think that accesses my pride a lot better

01:55:29.220 | than just being proud of myself.

01:55:30.620 | It's so much easier for me to be proud of a team

01:55:33.980 | than for me to be proud of myself.

01:55:37.220 | - That's probably good advice for people

01:55:38.700 | who are doing creative work on YouTube,

01:55:40.620 | to work on a team.

01:55:43.780 | - Yeah, and just choose, try to do things,

01:55:47.060 | take it from the queen of shitty robots,

01:55:49.140 | but like try to do things with integrity.

01:55:51.340 | Former queen of shitty robots.

01:55:53.860 | Do things with integrity.

01:55:55.300 | Like anything you do on the internet is kind of,

01:55:57.860 | I think of things as tattoos on my internet

01:56:00.700 | and on my internet self.

01:56:02.340 | And I'm really happy that I said no

01:56:05.100 | to some things early in my career

01:56:06.740 | that I know that I would have regretted now.

01:56:08.300 | And just think of it in the longterm.

01:56:11.740 | Like going viral is overwhelming

01:56:16.460 | and so stressful and so fun, but like so intense.

01:56:21.220 | And I'm really happy that I managed to build that

01:56:25.060 | into a more longterm career

01:56:28.140 | than just have it be something that passed.

01:56:30.940 | - And come down from the viral moment

01:56:34.580 | and maintain your humanity.

01:56:36.100 | - Yeah, and also really deliberately defining

01:56:41.100 | what success means to you.

01:56:43.460 | Because there are so many reasons

01:56:46.940 | or so many definitions that other people will give you.

01:56:50.020 | And especially when you're working on the internet,

01:56:51.700 | there are just numbers upon numbers that are like,

01:56:53.980 | you're doing well, you're not doing well.

01:56:56.300 | And something I'm really happy that I did was early on,

01:57:00.100 | I really tried to think of like,

01:57:01.580 | what does success look like for me?

01:57:03.740 | And I realized that it's not having

01:57:07.620 | the world's biggest YouTube channel.

01:57:09.740 | It's being proud of the projects that I put out

01:57:13.940 | and having full say in how I spend my time.

01:57:18.740 | Like that is the most important thing to me.

01:57:20.940 | And if I had a huge YouTube channel

01:57:23.260 | and I was making so much money,

01:57:25.100 | but I kind of had this machine run me

01:57:27.820 | rather than the other way around,

01:57:29.340 | like to me, it's so important to be able to wake up

01:57:32.020 | in the morning and be like, I don't wanna do this anymore.

01:57:34.820 | And for that to be okay.

01:57:36.380 | And I think I defined that for myself early on

01:57:40.700 | and I've really tried to live by it

01:57:42.060 | and made decisions after that.

01:57:44.580 | And I'm really happy that I did that.

01:57:46.500 | - And also you're with the store,

01:57:49.700 | with the design you're doing now,

01:57:51.660 | you're putting a little bit of love

01:57:54.540 | in the products that create a scale.

01:57:56.380 | I mean, that's what Johnny Ive did.

01:57:58.140 | That's the cool thing.

01:58:00.220 | So you can create something beautiful

01:58:02.180 | and then people can share that love at scale.

01:58:05.960 | - It's terrifying and beautiful and I'm so here for it.

01:58:09.360 | - I'm here for it too.

01:58:10.500 | I'm a big fan.

01:58:13.140 | I'm a big fan of who you are.

01:58:14.380 | I'm a big fan of everything you do,

01:58:15.780 | of putting yourself out there,

01:58:16.900 | putting your love out there

01:58:18.540 | in terms of the designs you create.

01:58:20.900 | Also just because I'm a fan of robotics,

01:58:22.740 | I think you inspire a lot of people.

01:58:24.220 | I think the shitty robots are actually incredible robots

01:58:28.300 | and it's incredible engineering.

01:58:30.940 | That's the best combination of design and engineering

01:58:34.780 | and fun, all of it together.

01:58:36.580 | So thank you for doing that.

01:58:38.580 | I'm a big fan, you're an inspiration

01:58:40.500 | and thank you for sitting down with me.

01:58:41.940 | This is awesome.

01:58:42.780 | - Thank you so much for having me.

01:58:44.980 | Thanks for listening to this conversation with Simone Giertz.

01:58:47.700 | To support this podcast,

01:58:48.820 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

01:58:51.420 | And now let me leave you with some words from Kurt Vonnegut.

01:58:54.580 | We have to continually be jumping off cliffs

01:58:58.780 | and developing our wings on the way down.

01:59:01.340 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

01:59:04.900 | (upbeat music)

01:59:07.500 | (upbeat music)

01:59:10.100 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Simone Giertz: Queen of Sh*tty Robots, Innovative Engineering, and Design | Lex Fridman Podcast #372

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