David Sussillo (on foster care and neuroscience)

22:31That karate instructor had. That karate instructor had, yeah. You can get scholarships is the upshot. And so from that moment on, the way I would describe it is it's like in Harry Potter, the Patronus spell. I had like a shield. I did. A future guide, a sense of self-pride, dare I say self-love, about this thing, my intelligence. From that moment on, I was going to make it no matter what. Come hell, come high water. You know, this idea of like having a future or of thinking about what the future could mean for you, I think is a big differentiation in some of the kids. This came up in that other interview.

23:07The frontal lobe stuff. Yes, this is exactly right. Like some inability to model the future seems to be the outcome. Why would you? It gets atrophied. Why model out the future? Nothing's going to happen. I'm going to sit in this fucking Christian home for the next seven years. I'm not planning whether I start racing BMX or I try to do this or that. That's right. Just a quick caveat about the ACCH. And also it goes the same way for Milton Hershey School, which I was in in high school. These institutions, if you read my story, they don't come off particularly well. But these are basically practicing Christians doing very, very difficult work.

23:40I would have been on the street otherwise. Self-funded and voluntarily. Yeah, it's just a little bit of nuance there. What you need is a sense of permanence with a caregiver. There's one dude for 16 kids and one woman for 16 kids and three houses of 16 kids. And the house parents turn over. We thought, I don't know if it's true, but we had the idea that we would have loved to be in foster care. that we thought that was a better outcome than the situation that we were in. So 16 kids, very depending, but a lot. And the house parents come and go because the job is impossible. It's too much. It's too hard.

24:16It's just built for failure. It's just built for failure. So when I was there, maybe seven or eight different sets of house parents in five years. And so this sense of impermanence and the ACCH, I don't know what it's like now, but in the 80s, it was not meant to be a permanent living facility. It was meant to be a transitory care. While mom got done resting. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. But for some of us, we were there longer than the admin staff was there. Nobody knows what your situation is, right? Like literally nobody knows that in the second grade, you freaked out in the middle of the night because you thought some person was going to come kill you.

24:49And then in the third grade, you were in a fight. Nobody knows any of this. And I think deeper than no one knows, no one cares. That's the fear. That's the heartbreaking part. The people working there care. But I'm saying when they leave and you're there and no one present knows anything about your history, I think the conclusion you make as a kid is like, yeah, no one cares at all about me. And how is your sister faring? She's passed away. Oh, she has. Yeah, I'm sorry, you're asking the past tense, but so she's since passed away. No, she's doing terribly at the time. One of the major outcomes of the kind of neglect that she and I suffered from is emotional dysregulation.

25:23For me, that became anger. For her, ice or hot. She loves you or she hates you. It's very hard for her to regulate her emotions in and around other people. Kind of like borderline personality type. Kind of like borderline personality type. Terrified everyone's going to leave her. Overly attracted to people immediately. That's right. It's all of that. I'm just not making the diagnosis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Leave that to me. You were asked to tutor. I was, yeah. And it's insane what that can do to your life trajectory. So basically through school, in a number of different ways, I was invited to the gifted and talented program.

25:57I was asked to be a tutor here and there. I became known as the smart kid. And so I sort of have this simplistic psychology that all these kids in these circumstances have their survival strategy. Omar was the tough kid. My sister Esther was like the pretty girl and so on and so forth. And, you know, what ends up happening is you take those behaviors into adulthood and some are more or less adaptive than others. Yes. Yes. You must have looked forward to going to school. Oh my God, yes. Right? Like that's the sanctuary. I was good at it. I actually enjoy knowledge. It did not come hard to me. I got a kick out of it.

26:30I got attention. You had self-esteem. Positive attention. Positive self-esteem. And so, you know, I was one of these loudmouths who never shut up. So I'm sure my teachers really couldn't stand me. But I was personally getting a lot out of it. Yeah, again, we should add, you had behavioral issues. I had major behavioral issues. How'd you get on with other boys? Well, the way that usually worked was we'd have a fight. I would lose. and then we'd either be friends or we wouldn't be friends. I was not a fight in my life that I couldn't lose. And you were tall, so I got to imagine like, were you always tall?

27:04No. Oh, you weren't. One of the great curses of my life, I didn't start growing until I was 17. Oh. 17. Wow. The math teacher in high school, he's the basketball coach, and I'm a senior in high school. He's like, if I had known you were going to be this tall, I would have coached you in ninth grade. It's too late. Come on, man. Oh, man. Okay, so around this time to, well, let's say seventh grade, your mom dies. That's right. You've gotten a got even now yet another round of some sense of permanent loneliness on your plate. My mother passes away. It's a huge catastrophe for me. And what's interesting about that is like if you would ask me at that time, I'm like, I don't give a shit about my mother.

27:43She's not in my life. She hasn't been in my life for five years. You haven't seen her. She would take us out on weekends here and there. There is a sense of connection there. It's a very thin tether, but it's a tether. And that has a couple of knock-on effects. Number one is, turns out, I really love my mother. And so she dies. Like, where's my emotional space at this point? I have no way of relating to this. So I basically start having minor panic attacks. I just don't even know what's going on. I have no one to talk to. Therapy would have been completely culturally untenable at the ACCH in the 80s.

28:12Not that they could have afforded it in the first place. I am just completely out of control. You're now on an island by yourself. My sister and I didn't really get along. That possibility was not really there. But the only person I was talking to, though not about my mother, was Omar, my buddy and my roommate. So she passes away, and it's a good thing in some sense. This is the tether. I have this phrase. It's not my phrase, but I use it. Orphaned by the living. In any functional sense, my sister and I and many of the kids in the ACCH were orphans, except that our parents were alive. Yeah. But functionally, they were unable to take care of us or unwilling to take care of us, be it mental illness, drug addiction, incarceration, you name it, right?

28:49So she passes away. All of a sudden, my aunt and uncles feel like they can get involved. These are my father's brothers and sisters. Who didn't want to intervene with mom, who expressed goal was to have them. But now she's out of the picture. In hindsight, I can't help but wonder, again, I'm sort of casting shade on my grandparents, if the situation was reversed, if we were not kept around on the hopes of making my mother better. But one way or the other, there was a symbiosis there that's severed. And so my aunt and uncle Elliot and Moira, they had come out a couple years earlier. Seventh grade is when my mother dies.

29:25I'm backtracking to, say, fourth, fifth grade. They come to check us out. They're like, uh. This isn't good. This ain't great. An adult could easily observe our sort of intellectual and emotional stagnation. They start lobbying then over the summers for my sister and I to come out to the East Coast, basically centered in and around New York City where all of my father's siblings live. So we start doing that in the summer times. This happens a couple of times before then my mother passes away. So because of this, some of my uncles, I guess all of them have, I've gotten to know Esther and I pretty well.

29:57So my mother passes away and my uncle James, he was one of the older kids who was tapped to raise his siblings. He took responsibility seriously as an adult. He joined the Navy. He's like, I'm doing this. Oh, wow. Right? And you're already 12. And on top of that, he's a newlywed. Oh, wow. Yes. Tell his brand new wife, hey, so my brother. Exactly. No, but it's also hard because I'm also like, why didn't they do that sooner? But the mom was, in theory, wanting her children. When you saw your mom on the weekends, was there all these promises of like, I'm going to get you guys out of here soon? I think that stopped.

30:32My mother was very ill, and I think she knew it. She was in and out of a psych ward. I came to know as an adult that she was basically under constant suicidal ideation. She's probably Medicaid at the fucking Hill. Oh, yeah. That's ultimately what she died from, is a mix-up of methadone and whatever she was on. Oof. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Apple TV, the new U.S. home of Formula One. You can now watch complete all-access live coverage of every Grand Prix, including practice, qualifying, and sprints all in one place. I will be consuming all of those things, Monica.

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35:08When I hear your story, my first thought without knowing more about Esther is I can't believe they just took you. Yes. That seems cruel. I'll go into that. But now that I'm hearing a little bit more about Esther, maybe that was just more than they thought they could handle. I'm 12. I've got, I would say, moderate behavioral problems. My sister, on the surface, looks fine. On a closer examination, is beginning to have major behavioral problems in and around her relationships with other people. She would regularly threaten suicide. She's one of those people who would just go, I will ruin my life to ruin yours.

35:44To hurt you. To hurt you. She's 14, so Sophie's Choice type of thing. Who can we help here? And so my aunt and uncle chose to take me in. I still bear guilt over this. I was going to say, you didn't get along with her great, but did you still have guilt? Totally. But they had a solution for her. They sent her to a boarding school? Yeah, so there's a number of aunts and uncles flying around here. Just view them sort of collectively as finding a solution for the two of us. You can imagine them all having family dinner and they got together to discuss this. Can you imagine that? So she ends up at a boarding school called the Darrow School, which is actually a really nice school.

36:17It's a private school. It was funded by Elliot and Moira, I believe. It's just a boarding school. It has nothing to do with financial instability or kids at risk, however you want to say it. So I go to live with my aunt and uncle. It's an immediate disaster. What kind of things were you doing that made it hard for them? I was obsessed with no longer being poor. We got toys from like going to the retirement home and we'd get handouts from the retirees. It was poor. And so I'm in Virginia. I'm like, there's a pool here. There's a fitness center over there. There's a community garden. So I kind of won't shut up about it.

36:53And so I think that just kind of irritated them. They're short to anger. My uncle has never raised children before. Right, right. So it didn't quite work out. The other strange thing that happened was he was a go-getter. He went to school PTA meetings. like okay David should have 20 minutes of homework every night except I didn't need it I do my homework in school so all of a sudden there's a major lie I'm lying to them about this thing so he settles that I should sit at the table for an hour a night to do my homework it's just one anecdote except it happened all year long so it was this constant source of tension between us well I can say for me not having a dad around and then intermittently having stepdads I just fucking hated men.

37:33I hated male authority. I was so stubborn and I would die over these power struggles. I just hated outside male authority. Were you having any issues now with having an authoritarian father figure? I think of it more as me needing more from my aunt. She was not by blood. It wasn't her family. You know, my mother has just passed away and she agreed to do it, but did she really sign up for that? I think that's where a lot of the tension that I felt came from that makes sense yeah you were probably expecting something that that wasn't coming also you would just come from a situation where you had way too much independence it's funny because i didn't know how to live alone i was always around other kids oh that's interesting right so all of a sudden i'm i'm living alone by myself i have a bedroom and the paper sounds great but like i'm used to bunking with three other boys lonely as fuck in there yeah totally it's the opposite of everything it's the opposite of everything i've ever known so it was really difficult.

38:29They send you to the Hershey School in Hershey, Pennsylvania. That's right. I like the history of this. This is lovely. So this is the, in some sense, the Hogwarts you're looking for. Oh, it is? For the listeners, Dax made a point like, hey, maybe all these foster kids should have a place like Hogwarts that they can go and be nurtured. So great. Yeah, so there's almost a lore to this at this point. Milton Hershey, the chocolatier, became very successful, stupendously wealthy and discovered that he and his wife couldn't have children. So they start an orphanage, I believe it's 1906, called the Hershey Industrial School.

39:05By 1909, he's left effectively all his money to this school, which back then I believe was$60 million, which today is about$17 billion. Wow. And you said currently has a$15 billion endowment. Yeah, exactly. Frankly, they're so wealthy, they don't know what to do with the money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They just want to get in there and start Hogwarts-ing up the place. Exactly. I love that. Give me my wand. So that's the backstory there. And it just grew from that through the 60s. Basically, black kids were let in and girls. There's like about 2 ,000 kids that are there. That's right. Yeah, no, there's 2 ,000 kids there.

39:38When I was there, it was more like 1 ,000. But yeah, it's a big place. It dominates the town of Hershey. There's basically the chocolate factory and Milton Hershey School. Wow. Yeah. This is all very Willy Wonka. I know it is. Yeah, totally. It's crazy how fucking rich the candy folks were, like the Mars family and the M &Ms and the Wrigley's and they had these mansions in Pasadena. Like there was so much money in candy beginning of the 1900s. And Milton Hershey left his money to kids. Yeah that's really sweet but it wasn't a sweet place. Alas. No so again I want to be nuanced here. It's a huge school.

40:10There are lots of experiences. It's almost like when you work at a company your experience is almost purely dictated by your manager. At a place like Milton Hershey School your experience is almost purely dictated by your house parents. And my house father was a true piece of work. He was a control freak. You know, now that I'm an adult, I look at it like, you know, what happened in his life as a child that made him the way he was. Why did he want to control a bunch of young men? That's right. He was universally despised by the boys. So because he was so difficult, it was this weird sort of spiral where all the worst kids in school, keep in mind this is aggregating over all of the Northeast Corridor, all the basically fucked up families, right?

40:52Yeah. So you take all the worst kids and you put them into one student home because you know the house father can handle it. He's a warden. Yes, he's a true piece of work. How old are you at this point? I'm there from early in my freshman year until I graduate high school. Okay, okay. Yeah, so it was a very bad place. I was beaten badly. I was beaten multiple times by many boys, you know, like full-on gang-beating type of stuff without the racial connotations there. Just multiple boys kicking the shit out of me. Yeah. So it was not a great place. I checked out. Yeah, you start really kind of disassociating now.

41:25Disassociation is a big word. I would say I was just medicating. So keep in mind, I had an idea that I was going to college. I found the classes at Milton Hershey School to be quite easy. I didn't work at them at all. Oh, it's got all A's. So I'm just waiting it out. In all honesty, I feel like the best outcome would have been for me in a perfect world just to send me up to college at 16. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Get you away from all those boys. That's right, yeah. God, they can be so rough. So this controlling man wasn't good at his job either then, if you're getting beat up all the time.

41:55Well, so, I mean, he basically sicked these boys on me once. At Albuquerque Christian Children's Home, there were four kids per room. At MHS, there were two kids per room, and the standard rule was you could not enter anyone's room ever. My house father felt like that was too strict, so he allowed his own ad hoc room privilege where if you could, on their permission, one kid go in. Three all in, right? So one day after church, I'm like farting around and like I'm leaning against the door jams and my tie is going into the room and he busts us, right? He walked his beat about once every hour. So he catches me leaning into the room.

42:28In a technical sense, I was certainly violating his role. In a spiritual sense, I was definitely obeying the spirit of this role. And so through what he considered to be a little bit of backtalk, he cancels the room privilege for everybody. You know, there's a sort of group punishment for one person's actions. Setting up a code red, basically. Exactly. And so then I'll never forget it. We had these student home meetings. Truly boring. It's like, you know, you guys should teach them a lesson. So that night I woke up to half the student home kicking the ever-living shit out of me. And that's what that place was like for me.

42:59Especially the first two years. It got easier in the second two years. Okay, I've watched a lot of kids get bullied into oblivion. Now, there seems to be some predictable outcomes. A lot of kids try to make themselves invisible. And then another branch of kids weirdly become agitators. Yes, that was me. I had a hunch. So my roommate, Bob, you know, he was this really heavy kid. He had no chance of competing in the social hierarchy. He just didn't do it. In hindsight, I'm looking at that. I'm like, that is really noble. That is one way to go. But it wasn't in my personality. I was raised around kids my whole life.

43:32So I became a suck up to exactly these fuckers who had kicked the shit out of me. And that's who I was in high school. just not even close to the kid I was beforehand. The last year or two definitely got a little easier, but it was a really, really tough spot. You're doing a lot of dust off. Yeah. And for people who haven't done dust off, this is where I'm going to extend great compassion to you. It's a terrible high. Yes. You have to have a really shitty resting state of consciousness for that to be an improvement. With an air duster, yes. My memory is not fabulous, and I look back at some of those experiences.

44:03Uh-huh. Yeah, you blast it, and then all of a sudden you get a wall. Blast what? Sorry, I know nothing about that. You know when you clean like a keyboard? Oh, like the aerosol. So it turns out now they're hip to it. So they add a bitter and so you can't do it. But in the 90s now, this is 91, 92, something like this. You could just pound that shit. And it's a little bit like a nitricide, but not nearly as nice. And you're just all of a sudden you're getting into like the wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. You've left your current time and space, which is what the relief is. That's right. But then the headache that ensues after a dust off bench is excruciating.

44:36Cost benefit on Dust Off is terrible. It's terrible. I'll tell you why I stopped doing it. I did so much of it, I passed out, and I fell off my bed. I laugh now because I survived. So this is a process that makes the can cooler. Or like it gets ice on the outside. It's spraying on my leg, and I freeze my leg solid. Basically like frozen chicken thigh, right? Flash freeze it. Yeah, and like, okay, I'm out. End of my Dust Off career. Okay, so again, you're still hell-bent on this college fantasy, which is great. And you are specifically hell-bent on MIT. I had read all these magazines. Basically, Caltech, Stanford, and MIT end up as like almost characters in these stories about these scientists who do all these amazing things.

45:19I viewed programming and coding and physics and chemistry and biology and math as basically magic. This was a form of power through some grace of God that I was given the ability to comprehend. It's the Prometheus. And I'm going for it, right? So from a very early age, I hear about this place called MIT. And I'm like, I'm going to MIT. Newsflash, I did not get into MIT. MIT, dumb for them. You have your first experience and there's waves of realizing this. There's a big gap between intelligence and preparation. The first thing I notice is when I'm applying, I'm in the academic system now. I know how this stuff works.

45:58I just went and took my SAT. I had no idea that people prepared for an SAT. No one had ever told me this. Monica had like four or five workshops. I did go to a class, a Kaplan class. And you should. Or the application, I just like ballpoint pen right there, just started writing about like swimming. Couldn't stand swimming. No outline, no. Nothing, no outline, no nothing. Yeah, well, no one's telling you. I had no idea. It was completely lost on me that my own experiences in my childhood might reflect well on me if I explain them in the right way. If you've been in a fucking group home for the last nine years, that could help.

46:33But you're going to focus on your swimming. That's right. Did you do well on the SATs? Did okay. 13-20. 13-10, yeah, good one. 13-10 going in blind is really good. 700 on math, 6-10 in English. Yes. Wow. Nice. But people at MIT have 1 ,500. Yeah, no, it's not even in the ballpark. You're not getting it. I'm not getting any 10. So I was accepted to Carnegie Mellon, which it turns out to be a fabulous school. I worked probably a little too hard, but it was this moment for me of just absolute freedom, self-realization. I had a really hard time my first semester. Let's first, though, talk about the euphoria.

47:07I think it's really rad. You get put in a dorm. You have a cafeteria to eat at. You're allowed to sit on the roof of your dorm. Yeah. And you just sit up there, and you get to gaze upon this campus that you're now a part of, and you're out of prison. Yes. That is so profound. I can't even imagine the elation you felt. Yeah, my first buddy, Sport, I think he walked by me. He's a lifelong friend. I met him the first day of college. And I'm like sitting, I'm cackling, you know, like, I'm like, oh my God. I don't know how to explain it, like pee after a five-hour car ride, right? Just like this huge sense of relief.

47:42You hadn't even let yourself fantasize that you could now have it as good as you currently have it. That's quite a unique feeling. That's a unique feeling and it was amazing. I was going to make the best of that circumstance, right? And you had a scholarship, I assume. Yeah, full ride. For swimming. I was the worst swimmer in high school. I couldn't stand it. I was terrible at it. My uncle takes me to Penn State just to look around. It's a prospective school. And we sit down with a financial aid advisor who clearly had some very broad authority. So this guy starts asking me about my life. And he's kind of dumpster diving through my childhood.

48:18But I tell him all this stuff. You get independent status. Now, I'm no longer associated with my family from the perspective of the government. So I'm going to get the maximal amount of financial aid from the government. I'm going to get the maximal financial aid from Carnegie Mellon. And when I say full ride, that's what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you go there with the original intention of doing physics, but quickly you get into computer science. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've timed this kind of nicely. Yeah. Tell me if you can relate to this. We're the same age. I feel like my whole life has been riding on the crest of a technological wave.

48:48I'm five years old when personal computers come out. Before personal computers, working with a computer was a colossal pain in the ass. Yeah. Then the video games come out. And then all of a sudden you can tinker with basic programs. And then there's Pascal. And then I get to college. And there's the internet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You weren't ever playing catch up. No. You were learning at the same time everyone else was. It was always just happening. Yeah, that's a huge advantage. I imagine now if you're 17 and you imagine entering this thing and you've now got 40 years to catch up on. Well, now with AI, maybe not.

49:21Maybe not. Yeah. Up until 18 months ago, it was incumbent upon you to catch up. And that must have felt a little overwhelming. Yeah. You're already right at the precipice. So a new thing comes out and you're interested in that. And you already kind of understand the preceding thing. And so you're like really well positioned for this. So I'm taking my classes really seriously. Now computer science class is just mind bending, just awesome. Now what starts to happen is that the negative side of my childhood survival strategy starts to show itself. Basically, when I'm 10 years old, to survive these truly desperate circumstances, I'm telling myself I'm a fucking genius.

49:57So there's a fine line between self-love and narcissism, right? And so I get to Carnegie Mellon and I'm like, wait a minute. There's a lot of very smart kids. And I mean like even after the first semester where I sort of acculturate and begin to figure out how to get things done. I'm just like, okay, I was big fish, small pond, that whole thing. And now I'm in the big pond. So I begin to go into self-prove mode. I'm certainly not going to fail my classes. I have to convince, like, no matter what group I'm in, I'm the smartest and all this just weird, like, pathological stuff. Hard to be around maybe a little bit.

50:28I'd like to think I wasn't too hard to be around, but I was definitely intense. Okay. The thing about living in group homes, you learn how to be around people. Yeah. Adapt. Like right now, what's going on between the three of us? I know you guys are picking up. I watched a bunch of your episodes. I'm also doing that. Yeah. And so that's keeping me from being a complete jerk. Okay. That's a good skill. A.A. says it best. Like, alcoholics are megalomaniacs with an inferiority complex or the piece of shit that the world revolves around. Like, I can very much relate to these dramatic swings in my ego.

51:01I'm either worthless or now I'm promenious. Totally, yes. And I think it's like to buff it and get you out of this other cycle. I just think this weird bipolarity of it is a little predictable. You're describing my experience perfectly. And I'm guessing quite a few people's given social media and all the other things that are going on. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's one or the other. That's right. The worst or the best. That's right. There's no middle ground whatsoever. Gotta try. So as these things start burbling up, how are you coping? The fact that you're not an addict or you're not a sex addict or you're not a gambling addict.

51:34The well-worn modulators of these feelings you're not really using. To be perfectly clear, in college I did a lot of drinking. Maybe just because my parents were heroin addicts, but the word addict to me has very specific meanings. It's a very extreme definition for you. Well, you know, I'm drinking on Friday and Saturday night. Yeah, but that's like, you're in college. Yeah, I'm not binging or anything. So I had a couple friends, we'd hang out, and the other thing that I was doing was I'm busy all the time. There we go, so you're kind of maybe regulating with kind of a work addiction. something that's right yes yeah no that's insightful because you know when i stopped going to college things really fell apart right because you're in discomfort and humans don't sit in discomfort forever they figure out something to alleviate that and so obviously when you were killing yourself working and then you meet somebody and this is a match made in heaven right you have a professor that very much from your perspective you're developing kind of a father son vibe.

52:30That's right. So the beginning of my junior year, the internet is there. And now people are starting to think about how can we do stuff with this? He had this at the time, what I thought was a brilliant idea in hindsight, it would never have worked, but it's like a social media company for exchanging information where like you ask a question and if anyone in the world knows it, then through your social network, you'd potentially get an answer and everyone along the chain would get a cut. Very clever idea. Never, ever going to work. We didn't know it at the time. Kind of Reddit. Really? I mean, don't you think it's sort of like Reddit now?

53:01You could even say Wikipedia in some fashion. That's true, that's true. Self-generated knowledge. Yeah. I put down my math, close my textbooks, and I go to the computer lab. We start building this thing out. It becomes a company, and I'm like the tech lead. Oh, wait, Cham? Oh, all of a sudden, I'm like the big man on campus. I cannot tell you how great. Like, to have money, my classes were paid for, and like I could go to the cafeteria to eat, but I was truly scrimping by. Yeah. And you've never had money. And I've never in my life had money. You're like a basketball player who says a contract.

53:33Yeah, all of a sudden I have no idea what's going on. I'm like, ah! So Pittsburgh is a beautiful and very inexpensive city. I don't even have to spend my money. My classes, like, I'm just, like, buying pianos. Wow! Catching up. Just doing it all. That's Freudian because your mother drug a piano around every place you went. So that was the experience, and I started burning out after two years of this. And this relationship was not what you were hoping it was really going to be additionally, right? That's right. So I think this is probably very common. I found this person to be like a father figure.

54:07And I don't know where his mental state on that or emotional state on that was. He was a hotshot in computer science. And he had pivoted from like a theory career to a more applied career. So we were building out this company. It turns out that he did not, I believe, have this same sense of mentoring me. Father figure is a funny word. There was clearly some kind of transference on my part of feelings that were not really meant for him. Right. But I was giving them to him. Yes. That's right. And then unwittingly forming expectations of how that would be reciprocated, I'm sure. And when it wasn't, I felt hurt and the company is, you know, very stressful.

54:44I mean, it was a very empowering experience. Yeah. You had a team of like 20 kids working under you? 15 kids under me. I'm 22, 23. What kind of money are you making? I need to know. Yeah, by that point, I'm making 50 ,000 bucks. Oh, I got in college in 96. That's insane. It's so much money. That's like 200 grand a year right now. It's so much money. Yeah, totally. I get burnt out and I rage quit. And it was the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life because now I still have to take classes, but I'm past my senior year, so I got to pay for it myself. How do I pay for it? All my grants are gone.

55:14Before, when I was making that 50K, I could swing it. No problem. But now I can't swing it. So in a very rash and dumb move, in exactly the kind of shit you wouldn't do if you had parents to talk to, people don't understand. These kids, me, I'm not talking to someone. You get to come up with whatever dumb idea you have. And execute it. So I moved to Boston, four credits short of graduating. After this whole life goal of I'm going to graduate, isn't this heartbreaking and so predictable? I know. I had educated myself, right? I didn't actually care about the degree per se. So in my mind, I had viewed it as basically done.

55:48Because you were employable now. I was employable now, yes. And I followed an AI and video game company to Boston. They wanted to relocate from Pittsburgh to there. And so I followed them up and I had, without a doubt, the worst year of my life. Oh my God. I discovered that there is hell on earth. So I'm living alone for the first time. I think a lot of this, again, I just want to emphasize, was so avoidable. And if I had anyone to talk to, I'm not in therapy at this point. I'm not talking to any of my aunts and uncles. Obviously no parents. I'm just raw-dogging the entire experience. Well, by the way, for me, my ego would have been saying like, you know what?

56:23I didn't need any of you. I'm here now. I didn't get a fucking chance and no one was here and now I'm doing it all on my own. That would have been fuel for me. You didn't have that. It doesn't seem like your personality. Yeah. It was that way my whole childhood. That was just ingrained in who I was. It wasn't like saucy. It was just like, yeah, I'm going to go do it myself. Right. But you knew you needed people because you also grew up doing that. So I discovered in Boston. And so when you go to college, even in the 90s, there's orientation. They set you up. Here are your friends. My still best friend in life is my first buddy from my first day of college.

56:58Yeah. So they really work hard to make these environments successful, right? Yes. Socially successful. I moved to Boston. I've been living in a suburb by myself for the first time ever at like a truly nerdy 12-person company. I'm not really relating to anyone there. The job is without a doubt the hardest thing technically I've ever done. What do they call the thing you're building? Compiler. A compiler. So a compiler translates the high-level human code, 10, print, Monica is cool, 20, go to 10, run, Monica is cool, Monica is cool, Monica is cool. Turn that into machine code that runs. Wow. That's a very difficult program to write or reason about.

57:33And so I ended up working as the junior guy with one of these fucking geniuses who had written this thing. So I have to learn what he did. He's going to go off to become an assistant professor. He's a PhD. So I have to learn all of this. I'm basically just well beyond my abilities here. And so within three or four months, my life just starts falling apart. I start having panic attacks. This is one of those things you've either experienced it or you haven't. Because you can't explain to people what a panic attack is if they've never had one. They won't get it. This is a thing that happens where it has the prominence of overwhelming pain.

58:08whatever you were thinking about before. You don't care about that anymore. It's like you're being tortured, except it's coming from inside of you. And you don't know why you're having it. For me, it lasted anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes. And then after that's done, you sort of have this overwhelming exhaustion because your body is just like complete freak out. And so I started having these panic attacks once a day. Well, then you talk about the cycle of your fear of having one. Well, yeah, I've had them. And that's the worst part. It's like, when's it coming today? You know it. Like, oh my God.

58:41So I'm alone. I don't have any support whatsoever. I don't even know what to do. Like, should I go to a hospital? But what I learn is that I don't need to go to a hospital. I can just keep going and keep going. And as the year progresses, I move there in early fall. And now it's maybe spring or so. My panic attack, I start doing like this, completely uncontrollable. You're short-circuiting. Yeah, right on the edge of being able to function in society. So I go up to the top of the roof, another roof story, and I'm smelling the trees and the flowers in bloom. I'm like, look over the edge. I'm like, I could do this.

59:14And I immediately realized I have a problem. Oh, we're here now. Yeah, I did not have suicidal ideation forever and ever. I had it once, and I was like, this means something. I'm fucking smart. I'm going to take this seriously. Yeah. Right? Because I'm just miserable, and I'm thinking, if I throw myself over the roof, I'm going to cease this pain. Yes. Yeah, the suffering will stop. A couple things I try, try a little bit of acupuncture, which is actually fairly helpful in the short term. I ultimately reach out to my Uncle Elliot, who's a therapist. Uncle Elliot, my Aunt Moira, they were the first people to come check out with a situation for my sister and I at the Albuquerque Christian Children's Home.

59:51They're therapists. They knew right away. They were like, you need to get into therapy. And I really didn't want to get into therapy. Can you remember your reservation or the story you had about it? Some combination of I knew it wouldn't be much fun. I was just in so much pain. But because I am, I am going to do this. This guy, Dr. LaQuersha, one of my Uncle Elliot's close collaborators. So I give this guy a call and he agrees to see me. And so that really is like close the chapter because everything that happens afterwards, my life just starts taking off. And so the first thing that happens, it takes a while actually, six months to about a year is the cessation of this absolutely unbearable panic.

1:00:31I quit that job and I moved to New York. This is where my aunt and uncle live. I'm just trying to be close to anybody. I am full on tail between my legs. I don't know what went wrong with my life. Something's messed up. I need to figure this out. Also, can I say you have no more story. So you had a story that was getting you through the previous 15 years, which is I'm going to go to college and I'm going to acquire this knowledge and that is going to liberate me. And now you have it. You have the solution, which is kind of the scariest point when you have the solution and yet things are at their worst point.

1:01:02It's, I would say, triply scary. This is a moment in an addict's life when you have all the medicine you're supposed to have and it's no longer fixing the thing is very, very, very discouraging. You nailed it. This is exactly right. I'm in Boston. I'm done. I did the thing. I know I had four classes left, but in my mind, I've achieved the goal. And it turns out that it was the having the goal was the solution. So now I just have lots of goals. The achievement. Yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We are supported by ProtonMail. You know how your email address ends up becoming the key to basically your whole digital life?

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1:05:58So I moved down to Manhattan and a couple of things happen. I start going to therapy on a weekly basis. That's very, very helpful. I tried a little bit of Prozac, didn't like how it made me feel, so I discontinued that. But right around the same time, I started running. I was a nerd. I never really got into fitness. And all of a sudden, I'm like, hey, I felt really good after running. It buys me three, four hours of feeling good. Yeah, so I discuss it with my therapist. They agree we should probably turn this into a habit. So between exercise and this therapy and being closer to family, I start to pull myself out of a very, very dark place.

1:06:35And things really start going much better for me after that. Yeah, you start a master's program at Columbia. The Bright Scholarship. What were you doing over there for three years? Because you weren't accomplishing anything towards your PhD. I know that. Yeah, so I have to finish up my degree. Got to get those four classes. Luckily, my student advisor at Carnegie Mellon was helpful with that. So I get the degree a couple years later. Now, I actually did a chief technology officer. It was a grossly overblown title. But anyways, we were building some dot-com thing. That blows up in the dot-com bubble.

1:07:03So now, like everyone else, I got to go back to school. I want to go back to school. I go up to Columbia University, and I get a job as a Unix systems administrator, just fixing the computers. And they'll pay me a living wage, and they'll let you take free classes. Oh, nice. Great gig. Be an administrator on a university campus, get a free master's degree. It's a very good way to go. So that's just what I was doing. I then apply for a PhD program in neuroscience. The breakthrough hasn't happened yet, right? To remind people, we had the godmother of AI. Fei Fei Li. Fei Fei Li. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, and AI had all these stutter stops.

1:07:37It had like big periods of progress, then total stagnation for years. But the last big breakthrough, which we're on the shoulders of, is starting to design AI in the same way a neural network works in the brain. Had that happened yet? No, it's all earlier than that. But again, convenient you get interested in neurology. It all goes back to, I want to do something that helps the world. That sounds a little cliche, but damn it, I'm earnest. Yeah. This is what I want to do. And well, what are my gifts? I'm technical. So there's this branch of neuroscience called computational neuroscience, which is sort of like the math of how brains work.

1:08:09The brain is a complicated thing. And so it's an organ. It actually builds itself. It grows. So there's all kinds of things that happen as like a purely sort of organ. But there's this other thing, this view. I can say, hey, Monica, count to 10. You can do it. Some days. Yeah, totally. We can figure out the rules of Scrabble together. So this arbitrary ability to reason about new things that you've never, ever thought about before, that sure sounds like a computer. So I was interested in getting into that kind of work. Yeah, maybe. Did you have the realization like, oh, yeah, it's a big, gooey biological entity, but it is, in fact, very mechanized.

1:08:46It's a machine. It runs on electricity. We know the parts of the electrical circuits. It's actually more mechanical than I think you grow up thinking of the brain. So I think that's right. I'd say there is a machine in there. It's an electrical machine. Yeah. But how does that work is one of the great mysteries of our time. And I want to think about it. I think that's super interesting. And maybe it'll help. Maybe mental illnesses, maybe drug addictions are, we would say, like a network apathy. That is to say, even though some of these things change because of molecules, how the neural network function breaks and the pathology is at the network.

1:09:19So if that's really true, of course you can go try to fix the molecules, but you could also try to understand what's broken about the network. Sort of how the machine is no longer functioning. So I found that very interesting. I applied to a bunch of schools. I got into Columbia. Columbia, it turns out, has a truly world-class neuroscience program. It's now called the Neural... Right, so it's a big program. They have a sub-program called the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is now very reputable. Yeah, it's very, very reputable. It was started by my mentor, my PhD advisor.

1:09:51Larry Abbott, yes, and another researcher, Ken Miller. And so they start this. By now we're in 2003, 2004. I join, and this is just the best thing ever. And the Fulbright was part of that. Okay. So then you get your PhD. You start working with Larry, who you guys hit it off famously. you had another advisor that you guys did not work out so well. Yeah, yeah. And then you leave and then you go and you work at Google Brain. But you have a desire still to be in academia. Yeah. How do we figure out how to go from Google Brain back to academia? Yeah, so to answer that, I want to just back up a little bit and talk about where is the state of AI in neural networks.

1:10:31Yeah, yeah, let's do that. The broad consensus moment for when people thought that neural networks are here, There was a neural network that had a name. We gave it a name. It's called AlexNet after Alex Krzyzewski, Ilya Suitskaver, Jeff Hinton. Anyways, they built this network that beat hand-designed networks at a really hard image recognition task. This is 2012. This is ImageNet? This is ImageNet. Fei-Fei Li, her lab collected that data. Yeah. Right, so this hugely impactful thing she did really drove all of this work in neuroscience. So that happened in 2012. But the real moment, something called a restricted Boltzmann machine.

1:11:07This is like 2006, 2007, 2008. Again, out of Jeff Hinton's lab, I believe. Apologies if I don't have that exactly right. Nowadays, we don't use any of those approaches. But it was this moment where like, okay, when you combine these simple systems, these simple neurons together, an artificial neuron is really simple. It takes inputs, adds them up. And if they're above a certain value, it emits a one. And if they're below a certain value, it emits a zero. And so that's a very simple computational device. When you connect a gajillion of them together in just the right way, It turns out you can compute anything that is computable.

1:11:40That's what our brains are doing on some abstract level. And so that's where it's all coming from. I'm finishing my PhD and this restricted Boltzmann machine happens. And I'm thinking about what are called recurrent neural networks, which had feedback loops. Feedback loops are important because that's actually how your brain is working. Instead of a feed-forward processing of like an assembly line of information processing, it's people talking back at each other and all this really complex chaotic activity. Could you give like a literal example of how it works? If I wanted to make a system that could flexibly pick up my soda, that is going to be a recurrent system.

1:12:14We call it a dynamical system where what's happening as I lift this can is coming back through so-called proprioception through signals that are telling my brain what's actually happening as well as my vision. So that's all one big feedback. It's like self-correcting at all times. The information is flowing both directions. That's right. So it's sending info and it's receiving info and it's making adjustments real time. That's right. It doesn't send like the full blueprint down to the hand to accomplish that task. It's going to check in all the time to see how we're doing. Exactly. So this is the kind of thing that I'm thinking about right as these networks are starting to become prominent.

1:12:49So I then apply those approaches in a postdoc at Stanford and then I go to Google Brain. And in Google Brain, this is when people with money, it was because of AlexNet now we're like 2012. The top brass at Google figured out that neural networks... We got to be in this. Number one, are going to work. There's been this long, many decades history of promise with no delivery. That is changing. They knew that then. They basically purchased all the talent on the planet, give or take. They get all these researchers together and just like, go do what you want. Develop these neural networks. Neural networks, because we started stacking these networks together, it became known as deep learning, deep neural networks.

1:13:27That was the catchphrase from like 2015 to 2020 or so. Deep mind was one. And deep mind was all built off of deep networks. So, sorry, the naming is playing off of that cachet. Yeah. I'm part of that scene. And now coming finally back to your question, I wanted to apply all of these neural networks approaches to understand actually how brains work. I care about the brain. Now we're in this weird zone currently, right, where it's like we were trying to understand the brain to design the machine, but now the machine is kind of working in a way that we might be able to answer some of the ways that the brain works.

1:13:57That's exactly right. Modern AI. AI is sort of the rebranding of deep networks. There's some technical changes there applied to language because the big surprise was that it's a really interesting thing, actually. If you ask a neural network to spit out the next word in English and you do that for all of the text on the Internet, it learns something about the world. You can think about it in terms of context. Like, I'm going to the... Now, ask me to fill in the next blank could be fridge, bathroom, store. But if you said, I need some milk, I'm going to the... Then you know it's going to be the fridge or store.

1:14:32Now you just expand that out to a full thing. And the computer has the capacity to go through every single written word in the world and come up with the most probabilistic next word in that sentence. Whereas a human can't scan the known written language. But the computer can. We don't learn anything like this, but this is how the computers are learning. is just to predict one step ahead. That's really the magic of large language models. And that's where we've now rebranded to AI because it turns out doing this makes these things intelligent in some way. So coming back to your point, the origins of AI really go back to studying the brain all the way back to McCulloch and Pitts.

1:15:08They made this artificial neuron in the 40s and they showed that if you connected them, you could build an arbitrarily powerful computer. And it was revolutionary because no one had ever figured out, they abstracted away the details, but these squishy neurons in your brain could actually behave like a computer. It was just a revolutionary idea. And that began decades of research to study that ultimately through neuroscience results sort of led to different types of networks and so on and so forth. So where are we today? It's exactly what you said. It's the opposite. I'm a huge proponent of using artificial intelligence for science discovery.

1:15:44And it's much broader than neuroscience. My particular love is neuroscience. I think we're in for some huge and positive changes here. If you look at it that way, there's a whole other conversation to be had. We built a device that can help us understand our own intelligence. It's hilarious. So now forecasting in the future, which is always dangerous, but super fun. You could imagine that once we know how the brains work, we begin to actually include even more detail to align these AI models to more how we think. Yeah, because there was a single thing I read I wanted to bring up to you, which is, I do think people misunderstand AI a little bit.

1:16:16And maybe I'm wrong about this, but I read this interesting thing they did. It doesn't think. They're not going to create. They're going to predict. So the example that this article I read was that they trained an AI model on all of the known scientific literature of the 1300s. And then they asked the AI, do we revolve around the sun or does the sun revolve around the planet? Is it a heliocentric or a geocentric model of the universe? Yeah. And the AI said it's geocentric. The sun revolves around us. So in that way, it's not super intelligent. It can't be Galileo. If you give it the information that was known at that day, it's going to give you the highest probability prediction of that information.

1:16:57But it can't be Galileo. It can't think beyond what it knows, at least currently. For now, yeah. So what do we think about that? Like, how do we define thinking? And then is that just one category within intelligence? And how do we account for that? I have a different opinion. So I want to be really nuanced here because I can't stand AI freak out and I don't want to be a part of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't think these AIs are alive. I don't think they're conscious. So to the degree that this makes any sense, I do think they're thinking. I think they're like the first example of like Descartes being dead wrong in that sense of like, I think therefore I am.

1:17:30These things are thinking in the reductive sense of manipulating language for the purposes of reasoning and conceptualizing. I think they're doing it. But there's nothing behind the machine. There's just automated process. But how can they go forward, I guess is my question, unless we command them in a certain way. It's our original thought that was creative and what I would put in quotes thinking. And then we'll now use this device as a great pattern recognition machine to substantiate this creative thing we had. But on its own, it can't come up with the heliocentric. I acknowledge your example.

1:18:02That's a very hard example. But if we pull back, I do think that there is quite a bit of novelty that these things are capable of generating. But I agree with you that there are unsolved problems in and around that kind of scientific progress. So this is an enormous conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what I would say is it's in the air right now that like something has changed in AI. I don't know if you caught wind of this, right? Like in the last, say, three or four months, all of a sudden these things are coding much better. And all of a sudden there's this sense that the top brass at major tech companies are taking it much more seriously.

1:18:35Again, I'm hesitant to make predictions. But what's happening is that these tools are becoming much, much better. But there's still a real sense of supervision of these tools. They're compounding, though, is the point, right? Exactly. So the question is, if you believe that, you know, they've moved on from single token prediction to other more technical methods involving reinforcement learning, it's another conversation. But the idea is that if they're self-improving at what pace and so on and so forth. Yeah, yeah. And what we've seen, at least in early 2026, they are getting better. and that I think a lot of the discussion that's happening is really more about people adjusting to this idea than it is the technology itself.

1:19:13What is your signpost you look at? So for me, obviously, egocentrically, I'm really tracking AI's progress through what I see that is digitally created. We just had an ad nauseum talk about getting sent videos and should you tell the person, hey, I think that's AI or not. Yeah, yeah, totally. Because they're at the level were two people in film and television. Can't tell. Can't tell. And so that bridge has been crossed. Now, I still think they don't have the human voices when they do dialogue and they try to do the cadence of human speak. That to me is still the giveaway, but fuck the visuals.

1:19:46There's no more six fingers. That's my layman's version of tracking where we're at. It's just what I'm seeing done visually, digitally. What are the things you look at? In my world, it's all coding. Oh, okay. So if there is just interface, like I'm going to go build a little web browser to go make a little video game. AI is just going to do that for you. In a second. In a second, yeah, a couple minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, so where these things, I think, are still struggling is if it's, we would say, technically out of distribution. If it's not something it's seen a lot of before, if it's integrated into a much, much larger code base is what you see at these large companies.

1:20:20But it's getting better at those things too. And so we're still, I think, in this mode where the human and the computer together, the human and the AI together, are really the best. And so what I would look for in your shoes, very similar in my shoes actually, is when does that clip become a movie? For me, it's when does that chunk of UI code, user interface code, become the whole program? And a product. Exactly. And to be honest with you, I just don't see humans leaving that process anytime soon. I think that's a risky opinion. Well, there's a lot of money been bet on the fact that they will get more efficient.

1:20:57There's a lot of hype out there. But in some sense, you have to take it seriously because these tools are getting much, much better. And, you know, what I would say to any of your listeners is, like, if you're not checking these things out, you absolutely should be. I really mean it. You can't set it out. In a positive way. Yeah. Like, imagine all the things that you could do with these kinds of creation tools. For me in my science career, so there's this thing called Google Scholar. It's where academics have their papers listed. Just go read every one of my papers and tell me what you think I should work on next.

1:21:27Wow. I shit you not, it gave me the same idea that I had. Whoa. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, really. Now, I don't want to be disagreeable, but... Go ahead. Therein lies also an Achilles of it. Which is? Which is, it came to the same conclusion you came to. Ah. Because it made a probabilistic prediction about you, which it can do well. I gotta say, I find it pretty impressive. I don't view that as a fair. Well, but... Because it had to be that way. It was like the only thing it could have done, right? Well, no, no, that's not actually my concern is that I'll make it more artistic. So, yeah, go read the 35 scripts I've written.

1:22:06What should I write next? All that that would ensure is that I stay within my creative pattern. And in fact, what I probably need to do isn't the thing that was obvious to me. I mean, this is very philosophical. I accept that critique. But you know what I'm saying? I see where you're coming from. What it can do is advise on more of the same in some sense. And depending on what your career is, if your career is to disrupt yourself and your work should constantly be trying to 180 at all times. Oh, fuck. Well, let's jump way over here for this perspective and see what I can bring with that and come up with a new thing.

1:22:36And that way I think it can be stunting for progress. I see. In science, jumping around 180 too many times is not fabulous because it's one step to the next. You lose your reputation. It's hard. It's hard, right? I mean, same in art too. We don't like to think of it like that, but we have skills. Yeah. We have things we're better at than others, and what it's doing is saying, you're best at this, so maybe you should do more of that. I think that's not a bad idea. I might be able to articulate it better by saying, I fear that it could be a reproduction instead of an iteration. Does that make sense?

1:23:08Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. Does it get us out of the true creative mindset? Right. I'll tell you the one thing that I am aligned with with people who are thinking about this more deeply than I am is I think the world is in for some very large changes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And especially like the science discovery, optimization process, business to business applications. It's all on the table. It's all on the table. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had a guy on, David Fagenbaum. He has a foundation where they're repurposing drugs that are already out on the market for other cures. He cured himself with this disease, and it's an incredible story.

1:23:42And they're using AI, obviously, to like process all these drugs and see exactly what they do. And they just got like a huge grant. He emailed me. Oh, wonderful. That's so amazing. We'll cure diseases that cannot be cured based on this. It's happening. It's not like something in the future that's currently going on. It's awesome. We're going to see this experiment play out. Like it or not, that's what's going to happen. So I don't even sit around, well, what if, what if? I'm like, well, let's see. Allow myself to be as optimistic as I would be pessimistic. We don't fucking know. So why am I going to have an opinion on something that none of us really has?

1:24:17Yeah, it's true. Nobody knows. You know what's so fun? we're going to see. That's right. We happen to have been born in a period of time where we're going to see. That's my mentality for sure. Yeah. Well, David, this was lovely. Thank you for having me. Yeah, yeah. Thanks so much for sharing your story. I think it's obviously so important. I appreciate that. Thank you for hearing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Such a pleasure. Anyone ever tell you you look like James Hatfield? These days, probably once every three months. There we go. Oh, wow. Great. I would be flattered. I think it's the beard. I actually took a close look.

1:24:48We don't actually look anything alike. Well, every three months, some people disagree. Yeah, it's a thing. I'm like, yeah, man, let's stretch. David's book, please, please read it. It's beautifully written and very, very honest. It's called Emergence, a memoir of boyhood, computation, and the mysteries of the mind. Be well, David. Thank you very much. Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at.

1:25:18Did you get my text? Which one? I just sent you a very important text. Oh, my goodness. No. About five minutes ago. Oh. I don't think that was me. Rob? Was it Rob? Were you not in the clubhouse? I was in the clubhouse. Yeah, I could hear you. Oh, wow. I don't even remember. If anything, my current assessment is I haven't been blowing my nose much. Oh, I heard that, too. There was a loud one at the end there. There was a big one? Yeah, really. It sounded like you might have died. Exactly. So the text I sent was, are you okay? I hear your - Extreme throat clearing. More extreme than normal. Yeah.

1:25:54Yeah. I can confirm. Thank you. Okay. I subconsciously did it. It was real. It's hard to be me. It was scary sounding. Oh, really? Like you thought you might need to come perform the Heimlich maneuver? Yeah. It's not like something was stuck in there. It's like you're wrestling a bear maybe. Okay. Oh, no. Okay, so it's really - But he would poke his - He would put his finger in his butt and poke their eyes out. I had that fantasy at the airport in New Orleans at this restaurant. I heard a woman coughing slash choking. Don't say you want someone to need the Heimlich. I don't want that. But I heard this.

1:26:29Lady. I didn't know if it was choking or coughing. It was like three tables over. Oh. And I just thought, I bet no one in here is going to be willing to do it. Like, that was just my first thought. Not that I want to. Just like, I got a hunch. If I look over and I see that she's choking, I think her female companion she's dining with isn't going to jump behind her and start. Oh, my gosh. Ratcheting her diaphragm. She just didn't give a fuck? I looked over and she had a, like, paralyzed look on her face. Wait, which one? The copper or the friend? The associate. Oh, shit. Yeah. So I was like, she ain't getting up.

1:27:07And then I find myself just trying to evaluate, like, is this a cough or a choke? Okay. And then it passed. Okay. But I did have a whole thing. I was just like, you know, your mind thinks so fast. It's like, I saw that. Is that that? That's her. She's not going to help. Look around the restaurant. I don't see anyone else paying attention. Fuck. If this is a joke, I got to get on the move. I will say I'm grateful that there are people like you. I really am in the world and at restaurants because I don't know what happens to me, but I like. You want to disappear. I do. I really don't want to act.

1:27:45It's like when I hear what I think is a car crash. Yeah. And you, of course, run towards, as a lot of people do, and you should. You should go check. Well, it's not everyone's nature. You shouldn't be who you're not. I'm just like praying some, but what if no one's, I have to. I could be the only one. It's like bad. You do have to assess, because look, I'm thrilled if a doctor stands up. I don't know that I know how to do the heimlich. Like, I know some attempt at it will be better than nothing. That's all I think. Yeah. You do know. Okay. I can relate to being the friend. Uh-huh. Okay. It's so.

1:28:23I mean, everyone can relate. Was this the running into that store that time with Callie? Oh, that was horrible. Where there was the homeless man assaulting people? He was assault. He was. She was coming towards us. Yeah, yeah. He was screaming at us. And you left her. Well, no. She was supposed to come with me. Okay. I just thought that might be the example you were thinking. No, no. Thanks for bringing that up. Okay. Um, no, I, I. There's more than one occasion. Everyone can relate to this when you're at dinner with somebody and then they get like the water down the wrong pipe. Oh, sure, sure, sure.

1:28:50And then the coughing and then like they can't stop. And, and you want to, you don't want to make a big deal because you know that I get very codependent. I'm like, they feel so embarrassed. Yeah. So I'm just going to act like I don't even notice and I'm going to keep talking and like I'm not even. That's a good, I like, I approve of that technique. Yeah. Yeah, and then because when it happens to me and then people are like, are you okay? I hate that. It's worse, yeah. And then it gets worse and you have to say, yeah. Like you're like dying and you're saying, yeah. Really quick question. It just popped into my mind.

1:29:23Do you think that I would turn blue before you would because you're brown and I'm white? Do you think like I have some evolutionary advantage in a choking situation where it would be obvious, more obvious that I'm, no, I have an airway. obstruction? Um, maybe. Do brown people turn blue? Well, of course. I mean, if there's no blood. Can we chat that? Oh no. Oh my God. Ever. Hey, is your chat getting to know you in a way that like you like without any effort? Like here's an example. What a sim. Oh, you wanted to talk about something just like that? I have something written down. Okay. Then I'll save it.

1:30:04Oh, earmark it. I won't put a pin in it. For the listener, we have a difference of opinion of what those two mean. We have different interpretations. Hold on. I think we should put a pin in the blue skin and go to... It says no. No what? They can't turn blue or... They do not turn blue. No, that's not what it says. You got two different answers? Yeah. Oh my God. His chat knows he's white. Yours knows you're brown. Oh my God. It says brown skin people can turn blue or grayish blue. They just have to be dead. I searched Indian people specifically, and it told me Indian people do not turn blue. You're lying.

1:30:42I can, I'll put up on my screen. Oh my God, literally. Is it on whitenationalist.com? It says it occurs when blood is low, and yeah, get off that site. Oh, this is just the Google AI. Yeah. Indian people do not turn blue with no blood as a natural or racial trait. Well, certain Hindu deities like Krishna or Shiva are famously depicted with blue skin to symbolize divine cosmic nature or the absorption of poison. This is not a representation of a living biological condition. However, there are rare medical conditions that can cause anyone, regardless of race, to appear bluish. Yeah, exactly. Argaria, a rare skin condition caused by silver buildup.

1:31:25Yes, we've seen this. Too much silver. There was this, there was a movement. I feel like it was primarily in the deep right where people were drinking colloidal silver. Oh, I remember that. Right? Yeah. It was like, it was real heavy in the right. It was during COVID. I just love how these medicines are political. I know. Right? Like if you, anyways. Well, that's not a medicine. Okay. Yeah. But wait, hold on. So now there's pins everywhere. Okay. No, there's bookmarks everywhere. Earmarks. Earmarks. Yeah. Yeah, this says, yes, brown skin people can turn blue or grayish blue due to a medical condition known as cyanosis.

1:32:00That was on there. Okay. Which occurs when blood is low in oxygen. So that's what's happening when you're choking. Blood is low in oxygen. Yeah, so same sitch. Ugh, Rob, your AI is literally racist. I think your lips also can turn blue if you have too much oxygen. You want me to look it up? If you're over-oxygenated. Let me look it up. Yeah, okay. Do brown people's lips? Well, you don't need brown. Do lips turn blue? Your AI knows you. That's right. Well, mine's telling me, don't worry. Like, you can turn blue. Like, don't. Good news. Turn lips, turn blue. This just in. With too much. Oxygen. Blue lips can result from a lack of oxygen in the blood.

1:32:40This may happen when you're at a high altitude or if you are choking. Or chronic underlying condition. I'm bringing up cyanosis again. I've never seen cyanosis. That's a recurrent. I'm not seeing much about. Okay. Too much. Okay. Back to. Your AI knowing you. Yes. That was so similar that you brought it up because today I used email AI for the first time. Oh, how does that work? You don't have this yet. Like when you compose, when you're responding to an email, it gives you an email response. Oh, so just an entire email? Yes. And by the way, I don't know how to turn it off and I actually hate it.

1:33:18Yeah. And then I keep having to delete it. This little button, Monica. That's where you can turn it off? That's the AI thing. So if you click that, it should give you settings for it. Oh. Okay, yeah, because. I'm so good with computers. I know. He is very good at computers. Normally, I hate it. I delete it. And that adds a step. And I'm already, like, rushing email. So I'm mad at it. But today, the email was perfect. Perfect. Yeah. And so I sent it. Oh, here's an. Okay, God, the earmarks are flying. So we had a real life experience that was hilarious in this exact space, which is I wrote to you, Amy and Ryan, a night in the seven kingdom at 7 p.m.

1:33:59tomorrow. Stu question mark. Right. You wrote back. Yes, please. Ryan wrote back. By trumpets calling clashing goblets, we shall attend the revelries. cheer mightily for the valiant night of the seven kingdoms and partake joyfully of the most noble and steamy stew i mean i want to see the delay here okay so he wrote that it's okay i wasted no time that came in at 6 56 p.m and at 6 56 p.m said did ai write that it's a masterpiece it was so clearly and you go i was just about to ask that and i love ryan hansen he wrote absolutely Yeah. And then we got into why. For you, it was most notable in Steamy Stew as the giveaway.

1:34:46And I said, I thought Revelries was the smoking gun. Yeah. But that was the first time I caught someone cold-blooded. Oh, yeah. It was so good. I mean, he's so clever, but it was too fast and good. It was too old-timey words. He would have had to take time to look up a lot of those words. I didn't think he knows how to use the word Revelries. Yeah, and whatever I said. I'm not, I wouldn't throw around revelries. You would want to look it up first. I would, yeah, I'd have some hesitation. I did think that was so funny. Okay, so these are different AI issues, but okay. Exactly, so you do need to make sure it's something you could have done.

1:35:28If you're trying to fool people. Right. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. This episode has been brought to you by Anthropic. So I've been using this AI called Claude, and I have to tell you, I'm kind of obsessed. I use it for guest research, obviously, but also for working through bigger questions, like when I'm trying to understand patterns and how people think or why certain conversations land differently than others, I can spend time going back and forth with Claude, exploring different angles. It doesn't just give me some surface level answer. It asks me questions and pushes back on my assumptions.

1:36:06What I appreciate is that it feels like I'm expanding my thinking in every conversation and actually learning. And Anthropic, the company that makes Claude, has committed to keeping it ad-free. So when I'm in the middle of exploring something, my conversation stays mine. Claude's only job is to give me a helpful answer. For anyone who likes to sit with a problem rather than just get the quick fix, Claude's been the thing for me. Try it free at claude.ai slash armchairexpert and see why problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner.

1:36:43And then you're being asked to assess how other people assess you. This is theory of mind and metacognition. I can think about how you think about how I think. Yeah. And so you better be good at that if you're going to try to sneak one by us. You know what was kind of interesting? So it's signed by name with a lowercase M. Oh, cool. Which I don't do. Okay, yet. But I am pretty willy-nilly about my sign-offs. Sometimes I'll sign MP. Sometimes maybe just M. Sometimes no sign-off. So maybe it was trying to mimic being casual. Yeah, I think so. Look, it's good. There's no question about it. It's like, yeah.

1:37:24But here's what I loved. I'm going to screw up the details precisely but it went something like this Lincoln and I were looking at a map of Italy and we stumbled upon and I'm so embarrassed I've already forgotten the name of it but there is a country inside of Italy do you know this? well I don't know and it's like 48 square miles other than the Vatican so you have the Vatican which is its own country inside of Italy then you have this other country like Santa Maria or something San Marino San Marino Marino? San Marino. Republic of San Marino. We're like looking at places to visit. And then there's like, you know on a map where it says Italy on one side, it says Italia.

1:38:03And then it says San Marino. But it looks like a city. And I'm like, why is the city? We're both like, what is the city? And she's like, I think it's a country. I'm like, I don't think there's a two-mile-long country in the middle. And so we look it up. Sure enough, it's a country. It had been a country since the 1300s. And Italy only became a country in the 1800s. And they had all these diplomatic relationships. So they never absorbed it. They always honored it. So there's this tiny little country. Wow. So then we got interested in what are the five tiniest countries in the world. Oh. And the Vatican's, of course.

1:38:34It's less than a square mile. San Marino, I think, was fourth. Oh. Liechtenstein is in there. Really? It's that small? It's very, very, very small. And Monaco, of course. Oh, sure. Been there. Yeah. That's a tiny little country. and then once it had that list it said knowing how much you like F1 would you like me to tell you what drivers live in Monaco oh no and you weren't even talking about F1 no but I loved that because that could have been a next search so it's like it wasn't just answering my question it was encouraging me to learn more but it knows my interests I loved that oh god you don't like Well, because it's like it's like it's it's telling you what to think.

1:39:17Oh, now you're going to think about F1 right now. No, it's trying to predict what I'll be interested in. And it's doing a good job. What if it didn't know that you had a New Year's resolution, Lunar New Year's resolution to never think about F1 ever again? It was destroying your life. You were addicted. And then it would have said, why did you ask what the schedule was yesterday for the F1? Because you slipped off the wagon, but you're trying to get back on. I could tell it, hey, I'm trying to quit my obsession with F1. It would immediately adjust. I know, but. It carries out whatever your desires are.

1:39:49Yeah, but your desire versus your need versus your want might be different. Your first order versus your second order priorities. Yeah, wow. Wowzers. What else did we put a pin in? Yeah, there were a few pins. You're freaking out when people cough. You go invisible. Yeah, so your friend was coughing and you kept asking questions. Oh, just if. And then I thought, could you turn blue? That's right. And we haven't determined. But also, you know, if you're choking choking for real choking, need the Heimlich choking, there's no air through your path. Yeah. And so you can't cough. So you could still be in a lot of distress.

1:40:32I also think you could have reduced air. I think you could have 80 % blockage, 90, 100. Yeah, but if you have 100, then you need the Heimlich, right? You need the Heimlich, yeah. If you have 50, there are other things you can do to get the thing out, and you don't need the Heimlich because you can still get oxygen. Do you, when you hear Heimlich, do you not think about how close it is to Heimlich? No, I don't. Do you, Rob? No, like a butt lick? What even is that? I'm on my own. Like a Heine lick? Like licking someone's Heine. What? No one. The Heimlich maneuver. No one. Type in Heinlein like maneuver and see how many results there are.

1:41:10Okay. First of all, I've never heard it called Hein. Only Hein-ee. Hein-ee is not Hein. Your Hein quarters. You've heard that. I thought that was H-I-N-D. Your Hein quarters? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, Hein-ee is H-E-I-N-E-Y or something like that. Yeah. I don't know a lot about Hein-ee, but I know Hein quarters. And so hind lick maneuver sounds like someone's choking and you quickly lick their hiney, which freaks them out. And then they spit out the cube. I always pitch out a cube of steak in someone's throat. Do you go to a specific item? Oh, food? Oh, that's funny. No, I don't really think specifically.

1:41:49But yeah, in the movies, it's always steak. A big cube of steak. Yeah. Or chicken or something. Wow. Hind lick. The hind lick maneuver. I should patent that. Oh, my God. Oh, guess what? What? Chicken butt. I started creatine last night. You did? Yeah. Oh, tell me more. How do you think I look? Like you have a lot of water in your muscles and in your brain. Oh, it brings water there? That's what it does. Well, fuck. That's antithetical to my water drinking. No, I would argue with your reduced water consumption, you should have something helping you keep water in your muscles. Okay. And then I don't know the function of how it has all these huge impacts on your brain, which there's tons of data about it, but I don't know if the mechanism is also allowing more water to be in your brain cells or not.

1:42:52But I do know that that's why it works for muscles. Do I have like big muscles today? Did you lift? You can't just take it. I am curious how much you've used your gym. Because Monica's a nice gym now. I know. I want to use it. I want to. I've only lived there a month. Give me a break. A month. You haven't, like, thought, oh, I should wander down there? No, I think it all the time. Okay. I just don't do it. You don't do it. My dad used it. He did? Yeah. Oh, great. Did he get a good pump in? He used the treadmill. He used the treadmill. So I took it last night after my long walk. Okay. Okay. You were feeling like now you're on a virtuous cycle.

1:43:33Yeah. An upward trajectory. Yeah. And also, it's mainly— How long was the walk? It wasn't that long. Oh, why are you doing this? I just need to know. You're poking holes in my virtuous cycle. That presumes that I think it was low. That's not my position. I felt like it was not a long enough walk. Okay. Did you walk in the neighborhood? Yeah. Oh, fun, right? Yeah, I love it. Oh, what a blessing. It was really hot out last night. But it was great. I walked for 35 minutes. You did? That's great. It's not my normal. I like to go an hour. But I was getting too hot. So it's been very warm here in California.

1:44:11And so we have taken two walks this last five days down to Hillhurst to have dinner. Oh, nice. Which is shockingly fun. Oh, yeah. It's easy. It's shockingly fun. and on the way home two nights ago, you know, all I do is scan for threats. And one of the threats I scan for is like paparazzi. I don't want any pictures of our kids. So I'm constantly looking, does that dude got a camera? Is that right? A little bit of a preoccupation. So I said to the family, we're all walking. I said, gang, okay, here is the game plan. If I spot a paparazzi ahead of us, I'm going to scream baby duck formation. Oh, wow.

1:44:54And then mom gets directly behind me. Lincoln, you get behind mom. Delta, you get behind Lincoln. Okay. And all the photographer will see is a picture of me walking down the street. I said to them, which is valueless. Okay. No one's going to buy a picture. What about from the side? So baby duck formation can just pivot to wherever the photographer tries to go. Okay. Got it. So that became this hilarious game. They wanted me to run drills. So it just became me screaming baby duck formation. a lot and everyone's scampering to get in position and it didn't go well i'm glad we ran drills lincoln constantly was you know she wanted to be directly behind me i think oh she wanted to be number two in the line it's like she's a first place finisher type of person so it's like whatever i'm supposed to you know um and then i forget why we had to do a reverse baby back baby reverse baby duck formation wow that one doesn't make any sense but we had to run it just to get good at the drill.

1:45:53Well, yeah, you got to practice lots of iterations because you just don't know what will happen. It was very fun. Anyway, I love walks. And I took so I took my walk, my hot walk. It was about 35 minutes. And then I got back and I did. I was like, I'm tired. And then I was like, like, I'm really have not been moving my body enough if I if I feel tired. Yeah. And then I took a hot bath. Oh, my gosh. Went the other direction. Yeah. Because I wanted to continue my sweat. Okay. So I took a hot bath, which is really nice. Also shorter than I wanted. Because? I was hot. Too hot. And then I took my creatine.

1:46:30To remind the listener also, you don't ever feel hot. I know. Yeah. Yeah. If I were you and I was feeling hot, I might have like health concerns. Well, I, yeah. So I took my creatine. To cool yourself down. Yeah. And I guess I'm taking it for my brain more than my body. So I can take it without lifting. I should still lift. Yeah, it's great for your brain regardless. Yeah, that's what I want to do. And for perimenopause. But you should definitely start lifting. I know. It's in your house. I know. I'm sorry. I know. Okay. Okay. I want to start seeing some, like, some guns. Look. I want to be like, oh, wow.

1:47:19Look. Monty's got some fucking guns. Oh, I have a new freckle. I probably got it last night because it was hot out. Pissed. Okay. Want to do some facts? Yeah, we're going to do some facts now. Now you don't know if I'm looking at your hair or your shoulder. You're looking at neither. You passed the test. I was looking at you directly in the eyes. Yep. You can see more through those than you think. That game's not as fun as I want it to be. I need some mirror. I need some like cop mirror sunglasses. Okay. This was another huge sim. Unexpected. This really is doppelganger month. At the end of this episode, you said, does anyone ever tell you you get James Hatfield?

1:48:05And he says, yeah, once every three weeks. Oh, you're right. God, I hope it continues. Me too. And that was a pop out. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm shook. Speaking of which, have I already told you that Metallica's going to the sphere? That's exciting. Oh, my God. Me, Aaron, and Aaron. You're going to go? Oh, fuck yes. I can't imagine a funner night to be had than the three of us at Metallica. That's a great plan. Oh, I can't wait. I've got to wait all the way to November. Oh. Or October. I think they're there like October through something. Okay. That's so fun. You didn't happen to see them if it wouldn't be in your algorithm.

1:48:45The announcement when they did it, but they made the outside of the globe, Metallica. Oh, that's cool. Oh, and the song they played. Oh, it's so cool. I'm trying to think, like, what band would I see there that would, like, get me there? I mean, you should go be willing to see anybody there. I know, but. Because I went to see U2. Yes. And although I was a great U2 fan in my youth, I wouldn't necessarily go see them in concert. Right. But I was like, well, I want to go to the Sphere. And the Sphere makes it. I know. I'm just like, the Sphere makes it. Oh, that's cool. Oh, look at that. That'll be really fun.

1:49:17That's so cool, isn't it? It is. I just feel anxious about the spear for some reason. A lot of stimuli. Yeah. I'm a little nervous I'll have a seizure, I think. That's a fair. Maybe you should do mushrooms or acid to help with that. Yeah, maybe. So I would maybe see Coldplay there. There you go. I love Coldplay. You know what? Everyone wants to shit on Coldplay. Who does? If, like, they didn't also love Coldplay. Who doesn't like Coldplay? You'll just hear when people talk about it, like, they're the type of person that likes Coldplay. And I'm like, oh, my God. So they're every type of person?

1:49:59Exactly. The only knock on Coldplay I've ever heard is from, like, super music nerds that are like, they're just radio, they just ripped off Radiohead. Right, Rob? Yeah. That's the complaint against Coldplay in the music geek world. But I'm like, get real, everybody. Whatever. I'm here to say I love Coldplay. Oh, I love Coldplay. I would say as a group, they have had more songs that have ended up on repeat for me for months on end. Same. Okay. Well, anyway, so if Coldplay goes, then maybe I'll go. You'll be there. Taylor Swift, you'd see there, right? Oh, yeah. Yep. Okay. The Hershey School, Milton Hershey School.

1:50:41Yeah. Cost-free boarding school for low-income children is supported by a massive endowment exceeding$17 billion. Oof. Funded by a controlling stake in the Hershey Company. Established in 1909, the trust holds approximately 28 % of the company's stock, generating immense wealth for the school's operations. It's really cool. I mean, I know it was complicated, but man. He had a bad experience. But I think he was also good about saying there are other experiences to have there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I thought that was really great. Although I don't know why it's not Hogwarts. It sounds like it's funded enough to be straight up Hogwarts.

1:51:16It kind of sounded. But the experience didn't sound Hogwarts-y. Well, his guy. Maybe like way more advisors. But that kind of money, when we get like, you know, a buddy for every four kids or something. Well, in Hogwarts, they have a headmaster, you know, they have like a house lady or whatever. Sometimes they're bad, even in Hogwarts. Okay. Remember that bad Umbridge? Remember Umbridge? Totally. That's all I think about is Umbridge. That's all I think about. You talked about how rich the candy, like, entrepreneurs were. Yeah. Wrigley's. Yes. Mars. Mars is still, the Mars are the second richest family in America.

1:51:57Family. Family. Yeah. Not person, but family. That's from Business Insider. Behind the Waltons, right? I don't know. Yeah. The Walmart dynasty? Yeah, I know that. Okay. Sorry I brought it up. I already know that, but I don't know if that's the one, but it probably is. They always make, like, when there's a top 100 billionaire, there's, like, five Waltons on the list. Oh, here are the 25 richest families in the U.S. This is from Yahoo! Find It. This is 2021. A lot's changed. Sure. Okay, I'm going to go to the front here. I got to go from 25. It won't. The Gallo. Oh, Ernest Gallo Wine? Joseph Gallo.

1:52:35Wine people, right? Yeah. Yeah, wine business during prohibition. That was good. How'd you know that? Thank you. Ernest Gallo. It says Joseph Gallo. I know, but the brand is Ernest Gallo. Oh, yeah. Ernest. Yeah. Cutting that. You should know more about wine than me. The Rollins family. Do you know what that is? Rollins. Or Rollins, maybe? Rollins family? No. Rollins Broadcasting. Oh. A radio and TV biz. Okay. Okay. Then the Goldman family. Goldman Sachs? I'm guessing. Yes, Sol Goldman. Striker family. They're from Michigan. Are they an automotive supply company? No, this makes no sense. Lear seating?

1:53:18An orthopedic surgeon. Oh, decided to invent his own medical devices to meet his parents, his patients' needs. One of them is the mobile hospital bed. Oh, boy. That's like when the people made the Ziploc bag, you know? Or the styrofoam cup that drops down in a coffee machine. Oh, that's cool. Okay. The Kathy family. Chick-fil-A. Ah. Wow. Okay. Great. Ziff family. Media conglomerate Ziff Davis LLC. Okay. Dorrance family. Do you know what this is? Dorrance? Uh-huh. No. Condensed soup. Oh, okay. But not Campbell's. Campbell's. Campbell's. Oh, sure. Of course. Trusted fucking brand. Very. The most trusted.

1:54:07Hunt. Sure. The Hunt family. The Ketchup family. Actually, Cotton Trader. Let's see. Oil. Oh. This is a different Hunt. Okay. DuPont. Yeah. We know that. Yeah. 3M. Ooh, scary. Bell Laboratories. That was a scary movie. What was it called again? Fox Catcher. Yeah. Yeah, great. Steve Carell. Channing Tatum. Beautiful film. Oh, Mark Ruffalo. bringing all the heart. God, I know. Okay, Bush family. Beer, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's right, Anheuser-Busch. Oh, no, Butt family, B-U-T-T. He invented farts. Oh, wow, wow. Those are free, aren't they? I'm rich if you can charge for them. I guess it's a grocery store.

1:54:55Oh, okay. But, like, I've never heard of it. Maybe they own, like, they own Kroger or something. I know, but it doesn't say that. Yeah, it says H-E-B. Celebrated as one of America's top grocery stores. Oh, really? H-E-B. That's a Southern thing. Never heard of it. Okay. I've never seen one. You haven't seen an H-E-B? Uh-uh. Texas. Oh, that makes sense. Marshall Family. Marshall's the discount store. Originally a department. It's not that. Oh. Brown Family. What if it was UPS?

1:55:32Brown Foreman Corp. Kentucky-based spirits and wine producer that gave us Jack Daniels. Finlandia. Ooh. That's cool. And George Foreman is involved or, you know, is part of that. Hearst. Okay. Dunkin' Family. Not Dunkin' Donuts. No. No. Pipeline Giant Enterprise Products Partners. Okay. Newhouse Family. No clue. Advanced Publications, a publishing company that owns Condonast. That's cool. Pritzker. Oh, I feel like I should know that one. Hyatt. Created the Hyatt. Hyatt Regency chain? And it invested in industrial holding company Marmon Group. Okay, I don't know. Cox Family. Cable. Evening News, yeah.

1:56:19Johnson Family. Fucking Johnson, yeah. Very trusted brand. Cotton Swabs. Well, I don't know if this is Johnson & Johnson, because the Johnsons own almost half of mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments. Okay, not those Johnsons. Oh, SC Johnson is next. Oh, wonderful. Windex, Glad, Ziploc. Yeah, they're basically Procter & Gamble size. 37 Bill. Bill? 37 Bill. Bill. Lauder. Estee Lauder. Nice. Cargill-McMillan family. Grain storage business in Iowa. Of course. Wow. Mars family, number three. We got there. Yeah. 94 billion. Nice. Congratulations, guys. Two, the Koch family, 100 billion. Wow. Number one, you got it.

1:57:18The Waltons. 247 billion. Yeah. Yeah. I wish the Costco family had more because they're a really upstanding place. They are. They're great. They're great. All right. Let's see. That was unexpected. Didn't mean to do that. I'll add a cool thing the Waltons do. Okay. To get their inheritance, they have to do a public works project in Bentonville where they're headquartered. So Bentonville has all this impossibly great stuff because of this weird. Oh, that's funny. So they have like a crazy good museum with like an impossibly good art collection. Oh. They have a crazy public parks bicycle network.

1:58:01Like they have a bunch of cool things because they have to take on a public works project to get their money. I like that. That's cool. Yeah. I wish it could be countrywide and not just in Bentonville. Well, you know, that's a conservative liberal thing where conservatives believe you make your community good. And if everyone makes their community good, the whole place will be good. And not everyone can make it good because we're going to have$247 billion. Well, then you got to move to Bentonville. Oh, my God. Okay. How much was$50 ,000? That's what he was making in 96. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said like 200 maybe.

1:58:41Yeah,$103 ,649. Oh, okay. Okay, well, look what we haven't done in a while. Bitcoin. Oh, yeah. We missed a huge cliff. Oh, we missed. I know. Around the Super Bowl, it lost like half of its value, and we did not report on that. Which is probably smart. It's too sensitive at that time. Well, it's up today. What's it at? It's at 70 ,392. Okay. But when we were talking, it was— It was like 106 or 112 or something. Okay. The restricted Boltzmann machine. He said he thought it was out of Jeff Hinton's lab, but wasn't 100 % sure, but he is right. Oh, God. I'm going to give credit to Paul Smolenski. He rose to prominence after Jeffrey Hinton and collaborators used fast learning algorithms for them in the mid-2000s.

1:59:29Okay. And then that's it. That's everything. The last one was Doppelgangers, but I already talked about it. I already covered that. Yep. Okay, great. Yeah. Really good stuff. Love you. Love you. Thank you.