815. - Baiju Bhatt

20:14Baiju Bhatt:Yeah. Well, so a little back story on me. So my parents immigrated to the U.S., right? Okay. India. And I come from a long line of vegetarians. Sure. What does that mean? My parents are tiny. My parents are like barely five feet tall each. And I'm closer to six feet than I am to five feet.

20:34Jason Stewart:That's a cool way to put it. Good way to put it on your hinge profile. Yeah. Closer to six and five.

20:39Baiju Bhatt:We're not going to get into the details. I don't want to split hairs. I've never been one to be like, I'm six feet tall. I always put a little caveat on it. It's a little less than six. But at one point, I think I was actually a little bit more. So when I was a kid, I grew up eating American food. And let's be clear, I ate a lot of Taco Bell as a kid. I used to love Taco Bell as a kid. And I both grew in sort of height and width proportionately.

21:10Jason Stewart:Sure. Thank you. Thank you for using your master's degree in mathematics to dictate your sphere-like shape here.

21:18Baiju Bhatt:I'm like a foot taller than my parents, right? And I – actually, I could show you guys a – we're on video. I'll show you guys a picture of this because it's hard to explain. But when I was in high school, towards the middle of high school, I lost like a little less than 70 pounds. Wow. So I was like 210, 215, and I got down to like 140. What was your method in high school for this? Just less Taco Bell? A lot less Taco Bell. And, you know, I got some people that kind of made fun of me for being a big boy. And to quote Michael Jordan, I took it personally. i i i feel the same way i think that being made fun of for being a husky teen gave me the personality that i've used to um i'm not gonna say get ahead but get somewhere um and i think that that's an important well you know it's an important thing to go through yeah i i would say the place that it got me was beautiful actually oh you feel okay yeah you do have a nice head of hair on you so i wasn't you know i didn't want to so i had this i had this transformation that happens in high school this is like 10th grade so i get made fun of um at this debate tournament for being kind of a big boy.

22:25Baiju Bhatt:I took it very personally. And I went on to lose a ton of weight. At the same time, I grew this hair out, which was a nice touch. So I came down. So you were a whole new man. You were a whole new man. Oh, totally different. Totally different vibe. Did the ladies of this high school take notice of this? Or was it still? It's one of those things where it took a couple of years, I think, for people to really take notice. If other people were taking notice in high school, I certainly wouldn't. I didn't notice. You didn't notice.

22:56Jason Stewart:So it was more of a, less of a head turning, you know, bow chicka wow wow, who's out of more of a like, keep at it. Keep at it.

23:03Baiju Bhatt:You know, looking pretty good. Not bad. Actually, you know what I just realized? I don't know why they're wearing these headphones. I'm not even using these things.

23:09Jason Stewart:Well, they're, I mean, not to be a stickler, but when you're wearing the headphones, our voices are only going to come into your ears and not onto the microphone. so while when you're using no headphones our voices could be recorded by your microphone which would then hinder your audio quality yeah if that makes sense yeah but it sounds okay and if you're if you don't want to wear them it's fine you want me to wear them i'm happy to i

23:33Baiju Bhatt:actually thought i was i guess i wasn't that sounds way better oh yeah there we go uh the noise canceling on headphones man that's pretty if you if you just leave that on for a while it kind of gives you a headache. Disorienting. It's a bit much. I only do it on the plane because it's so disorienting. I think walking around New York with AirPod Max on is dangerous. Yeah, it's very disorienting. It gives me a headache pretty quickly. Yeah, we're not meant for that. No. Let's talk about you being fat again, though, just quickly, if you want to finish. If you want to finish.

24:04Jason Stewart:Just another 30 on your weight, if you could. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so you put down the Crunchwrap Supremes. You say, Derry, thank you so much for the inches that you've given me in height no thank you for the inches you've given me on the waistline we're gonna maybe move on to a taco salad hold the cheese hold the sour cream yeah well it was

24:24Baiju Bhatt:more of a bean and cheese burrito situation beforehand the sort of like there's there's like a few there's a few threads that are kind of constants in my life one is probably the pursuit of physics and math the other one is the pursuit of like farts and poop jokes okay okay so you do work in fintech got it oh yeah wait is that is that like a hallmark of working in fintech is

24:46Jason Stewart:making fart jokes i mean you know i wouldn't say a direct through line but i think there's enough of a connection to you know the the poop humor with the billionaire mindset you know yeah these these things go hand in glove a classic marriage a classic marriage yeah without one you don't

25:05Baiju Bhatt:have the other no you no yeah so i i lose all this weight in high school i like i dropped a ton of weight and i did it mostly through running actually in all seriousness like going through that kind of transition and transformation right it gives you a level of like mental focus in this is like in the entrepreneurial business context right like if you're successful you want to do things that are impactful you want to like have control over big things that are happening in the external world but there's this kind of like um if you can't control your own body like what that control or sort of ideas that you're exerting on the rest of the world they just feel very thin and and not substantive right like you kind of have to prove to yourself that you can conquer your own physical body because otherwise the rest of the stuff sort of feels

26:00Jason Stewart:like veneer on top so you're long story short if you're fat your ideas feel thin ironically yeah they do okay okay i mean that makes sense i mean it does make it's a it's a it's like a lizard brain yeah correlation to to your constitution because if you're just like if you're like crushing it at whatever you're doing professionally and you're like i can't control how i eat right now right

26:27Baiju Bhatt:or I'm just like, and I don't feel good about it. Like it's really difficult keeping those two incongruent things kind of straight in your head. And that's not to say I haven't reverted to being kind of a fatty magoo from time to time in the years that have followed. But still, it's kind of like, it's given me, like losing all that weight as a kid, it's kind of given me like the toolkit of like going back to fitness when you're kind of stressed out or stuff like that. And also knowing that if you put your mind to something, you can do it right and like big or small in this case big boy big big big too small is what we're

27:05Jason Stewart:going to do and also you were able to do that you know to bring back the the mental fortitude if you're doing this in high school this is pre you know airpod max and podcasts and headphones and listening to music you know when you were running back then i'm assuming you were running just straight you and the brain, right? Oh, yeah.

27:26Baiju Bhatt:I had an iPod at some point. I might have tried to play around.

27:30Jason Stewart:It was right on the cusp of, you know, you could have had a Discman, but that gets tricky with the skip edge, you know? At this point, you're like whistling tunes to yourself to keep yourself engaged. Yeah, you're whistling Big Pimpin' by Jay-Z and featuring Pharrell as you do your three and a half mile run. No, but this is what I... I was just with these professional runners and they were like, oh we don't listen to music like 100 miles no music 250 miles no music and i i thought they lying no no no this is like at the top of i think at the top of the game it's considered sort of passe to listen to music like a crutch it was i think it was one part you're you're being a bitch if you listen to music it's cheating and then two parts like we're doing these outdoor runs and we need to be able to hear when there's a rattlesnake when there's a bear when you know when your life is maybe in danger, you know?

28:19Baiju Bhatt:Yeah, yeah, that seems responsible. Although you could also accomplish that by carrying a little bear bell. Yeah, of course, yeah. I think on my... It's a simple bear bell. I think pulling the bear bell out of the Satisfye vest at mile 112 might be a little kind of... Yeah. It might not work super well, but running is the most... We talk about it a lot, but it's the most democratic form of exercise, and I think it does, like, it really is, no pun intended, one foot in front of the other, and then you see some results pretty quickly. You do. Yeah, you do. And it also clears your head out. Totally.

28:52Baiju Bhatt:Like if you're stuck on stuff, like I kind of, and this is coming back full circle back to the math lead because I, at various points in time in my life, would have considered myself a math lead. That's very brave of you to say. Thank you for sharing. Thank you, yeah. It's taken me many years to get to this point where I can say that. It doesn't get easier, brother. No. but the two the two things that i kind of found are pretty effective if you're like trying to get some creative ideas to fit together number one is if you kind of get tired of whatever you're working on usually taking a short nap is pretty effective hell yeah how short are we talking like micro i mean i mean like 20 minutes like okay okay okay not like a if you're gonna kick back on the on the couch in the office do you set an alarm for the 20 minutes or are you vibrating on a plane where you automatically wake up i think i i will set the alarm but the vibration the vibrational modes are pretty strong like i usually get up okay on the 20 minute mark you know god tells you when it's time to wake up oh absolutely or the next meeting one or the other sure sure but if you if you so you're saying if you're stuck on something you kind of kick your feet up you lay down for 20 minutes you wake up and you just feel refreshed basically so your brain is kind of restarted, let's say.

30:09Totally.

30:09Baiju Bhatt:It's either that or if you're feeling kind of groggy in the middle of the day and you're reaching for like a third or fourth cup of coffee, at least I found it pretty effective to just like go and try to get some exercise. You know, what's funny about this is that today, because of my schedule, I had to do a midday pump, which I never do. So I had to go to the Equinox. I had to go to the Equinox here in the J. Crew office building in New York City. And I have to say it worked i completely agree with you like i feel i like don't like doing it because i take a shower at the gym which is a whole issue i hate doing um but i did come out feeling never nude more men yeah more i came out feeling more mentally mentally clear and like refreshed and i thought i was just gonna feel tired it really did work wait you're never nude no that's a joke were you wearing were you wearing denim underwear in the shower at the equinox i just don't i don't because of the way I've set my life up, I don't have to take showers at a gym.

31:06I get to go home. It's a point of privilege. Oh, yeah. It's a personal point of privilege. Personal point of privilege. So when I have to take all my shit, I just don't like to do it. When I have to take all my apothecary, I have all of my skincare routine, my fragrances. I just don't like having all this shit in my bag. Now I've got a bag full of wet clothes. It's just not.

31:26Jason Stewart:All of your serums clanging around. Because you've got a good pump on. Your clothes are wet because you've got sweaty. That's right. And that's how I look at it. And I will do whatever I can to fit it in, obviously. But I do think that the idea of being like, I mean, this sounds almost like the advice to go on a walk. It's just moving the body is sort of what gets the brain going. Because where do you think all of your best ideas have come to you? Are there places that get it flowing better?

31:52Baiju Bhatt:So Robin Hood office was pretty close to Stanford campus. Aetherflux office where I'm at right now. a little bit further but still relatively close there's a loop around stanford campus that i really like to run it's called campus loop so that's probably where i've gotten a lot of my my good school that's cool how creative they got with the name of that trail i like that campus

32:14Jason Stewart:the loop was on the campus but when now that you are who you are currently when you go do the campus loop at stanford are people jogging alongside you pitching ideas are you able to have to wear a That would be nice, right?

32:28Baiju Bhatt:In my mind's eye, that's the life that I'm living. I'm out for a run and people are like, oh my God, is that Bijou? I've got an idea. Sir, just a moment of your time. I mean, these precocious college students in 2025, I think they're different. But it's nice that you can return to the campus and maybe it takes you back somewhere mentally. It does, but I want to take this back to a place where I want, I had a little comment to add, right? So you're, you're like, there's the privilege of being able to take a shower in the middle of the day at the Equinox, which by the way, going to work out at the Equinox in New York is kind of like, it's like walking into an oasis, right?

33:08Baiju Bhatt:It's like, it's intense. Like Equinox is like, you know, you can take a shower. It's like nice and clean. The towels all smell really good. but if you really if and this is this is my my advice having lived as short but uh somewhat successful professional career if you really want to power move billionaire yeah really want to power move the situation don't take a shower hell yeah that's i knew where you were going with this right so if i come back i'm in my full nike kit i'm just dripping with sweat i'm like all right what's next then they're scared no you walk in and you see somebody you're like oh my god it's been forever since i've seen you and go give them a big hug let them know who's boss that that is kind of big dick in them i see what you're doing i like that and you don't walk in and say what did i

33:54Jason Stewart:miss you say what did you miss and that puts them on their heels right i know that puts them on

34:00Baiju Bhatt:their heels and you're like oh yeah no i i just got done with a heavy duty workout have you been exercising today yet oh oh let me oh wow pizza for lunch okay well i guess whatever you want to do

34:12Jason Stewart:whatever you want to do um speaking of fitness a couple things i know that you enjoy a little bit of a fast and i know you enjoy a deep squat i want to talk about both of those which one you can you

34:25Baiju Bhatt:can choose which one first yeah you know i've done some fasting over the years i got pretty into it a couple of years ago as well as well as meditation and i gotta tell you meditating just made me way more anxious and on edge really yeah i don't know about that you just made a lot of people very

34:42Jason Stewart:happy hearing that information like yeah hell yeah never gonna do it again yeah i mean do you think do you think it was how was your relationship to your phone was it like anxiety of missing something or is it just like the the brain couldn't quiet yeah i think it's probably brain

34:56Baiju Bhatt:and quiet yeah yeah yeah sure i mean if you're you know this is like if you're doing like a technology job right you're just kind of like constantly plugged into one technical device or the other even if it's not your phone right you're just kind of like constantly getting this like stream of updates um and usually if you're the founder or co-founder of a company right you're not getting a lot of like everything's been taken care of right you're like here's the shit that i couldn't figure out another great day boss see you tomorrow here's this thing i couldn't figure out or here's this problem that like is too big for me to be able to handle can you fix this shit for me and so it's you're not you're not opening your phone or your laptop and like expecting to get like you know like happy news you're like what's what's the new what's the new turd that's in my punch bowl right now yeah so it's so it's like i see what you're saying so it becomes i mean that feels like something no matter how used to it you get that still can induce some

35:57Jason Stewart:anxiety yeah yeah but i also feel like we all and you're a very intelligent person i feel like you are creating ways to micro meditate on your own that aren't just the standard i'm going to sit crisscross applesauce and listen to you know ambient frequencies for 20 minutes and i'm all cured i feel like you're you're doing your own meditation in many ways throughout the day oh i

36:20Baiju Bhatt:I mean, exercising is a big one. Also, would you guys believe me if I told you I did some micro meditations even in the middle of this podcast? Oh, shit. You just Criss Angel mind freaked us right now.

36:33Jason Stewart:Did you guys even notice that I was doing that? I didn't notice. When you closed your eyes, I was worried, but I thought maybe you just were blinking. You did not off for a couple of minutes there at the beginning. So now that you call it out. Micro meditations are good. That's really good. Okay. When's the last time you had like an out of body experience? In terms of, you know, it could be meditation or it could be, you know, ayahuasca related, whatever it may be. If you want to have an out-of-body experience.

37:16we've been debating this off mic you know off camera in our personal lives but you know we're looking to expand our How Long Gone portfolio. And we've been debating what we should do, and I think we've landed on a boat. I've been using Yahoo Scout to make my case for the boat. I've gotten a lot of great information from Yahoo Scout. It's organized it all perfectly for me. And I have the data to fight you in the squared circle, but do you have something to bring to the table? Have you been using Yahoo Scout as well?

37:49Jason Stewart:Should the host of How Long Gone podcast buy a boat? I typed in R instead of T, and it said, should it buy a boar? And then Yahoo! Scott was really cranking out a lot of agricultural relevance with livestock farmings as an investment. And instead of saying, oh, did you mean a boat? It said, no, I'm going to give you lots of pros and cons and things that you should talk about if you're trying to win a debate about boar ownership. I'm still focused on the boat. I don't want to get into our financials, etc. I'm just going to put all that information into the Yahoo Scout and let it spit out all the data, and then I'll present you with a kind of a fully formed idea in deck format, and we can kind of take it from there.

38:33But I feel pretty good about this. Thanks to Yahoo Scout.

38:35Jason Stewart:Try Yahoo Scout yourself at scout.com. We all know eating out in New York has become an extreme sport. If you treat dining out like a full-time obsession and care about the scene just as much as what's on the menu, you need to listen to Expense Account. Expense Account uses food as an entry point to bigger conversations about culture, identity, taste, and the way we live now. It treats every meal as a window into someone's life and the world at large. Hosted by Jay Lee, food critic at Emily Sundberg's Feed Me Media Empire. Each episode features Jay sitting down with guests like writer Molly Baz, chef Carla Lally, PBS host Patty Ginch, and so, so many more to explore how food and culture are inextricably linked.

39:21Jason Stewart:You might also hear from musicians, writers, tastemakers. I even recorded an episode with them as well on the cutting room floor. Even the bartender at Jay's favorite joint, because everyone eats, everyone has a story, and everyone has a take. Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline?

39:38Baiju Bhatt:That's bullspend, And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions. My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive-sounding metric I had. Impressions. Cut the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a$250 credit. Go to linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. if you want to have an out of body experience get to the point that you're sweating to the point that you like can't see straight i went for actually this is a good one i went for a run last week i was actually doing a podcast in new york when it was like 102 degrees outside yeah dangerously hot oh my god that was a bit of an out of body experience because i because after after this is uh it's what's the name of this podcast it's called the post run high yeah my god my god i was like apparently like after we like ran across the the brooklyn bridge i think it was and it was like 102 degree heat we get to the other side and i'm just like i this comes back to squatting i was like i gotta get a little squat and i just gotta like lower the body temperature it's too high yeah yeah yeah apparently some people were like is that guy in the corner a bum is he good because he's like yeah he's like totally out of sorts and squatting and sitting on the ground hold on hold on just to clarify this podcast is called post run clarity and you run with the host and then record it when you finish it's called post run high yeah post run high okay yeah and you that's a good idea yeah there's a little segment that you tape when you do the run and then afterwards you do a podcast and i was yeah i was like man that was a bad idea that was just yeah that's the kind of thing where my mom is going to be pissed at me whenever whenever she realizes that I did that.

41:30Baiju Bhatt:Yeah, like this is, sweetheart, this is dangerous.

41:33Jason Stewart:Like why are you doing these weird running pods? Jason thought you had to do ketamine to have an out-of-body experience, but I'm glad that you're here to tell him that all you have to do is push yourself physically and you can kind of float above.

41:43Baiju Bhatt:Oh yeah, I mean, you can go full out-of-body experience and just straight up pass out, which I got pretty close to. Yeah, I mean, that is, I know the feeling that you speak of. And it's, even though, I guess though, the feel it feels good when it's over like most things you know it did and it didn't because afterwards i was like i have to now like sound somewhat coherent as i'm talking to this person that's true well this is this is a special case this is special when you know when you're running do we pull the hair back do we wear a headband what's kind of the move no dude watch feeling the hair the wind flowing through your hair is like one of the greatest feelings you feel majestic you feel like a horse or something like that hell yeah no i feel it so do you drive a convertible No, too much hair for that.

42:28Baiju Bhatt:I do love cars, though. Okay, so you don't drive a... I understand, because when you drive a convertible, you have to kind of keep a hat on the passenger seat. You know, it is a little frustrating. It is a little frustrating. No, this is just far too much hair for a convertible. Yeah. It looks good, though. I'm glad that's keeping you away from the midlife crisis 911.

42:44Jason Stewart:The neutrophil is paying off.

42:45Baiju Bhatt:I mean, it's not keeping me away from 911s. Let's be clear about that. Okay, so you have the hard top. You don't need a convertible, is what you're saying. No, I'm actually, believe it or not, there's a 911 literally parked right next to me. You guys can see it. Oh, wow.

43:01Jason Stewart:For our listeners at home, he panned his laptop to reveal a Tiffany blue 911. What year is that? 92, I believe. What do you call that? I would call that thing mint chip if I was feeling crazy. Yeah, it's a mint green. Did you buy it like that or did you have it made to look like that? I scoured the world for this car. Okay, where did, okay, where, how far was the, where was it shipped from? It was from Germany. Okay, you went to the motherland. You went to the home. Yeah, from the source. I did.

43:31Baiju Bhatt:As somebody else did, actually, and shipped it here to me, but yes. You know, our friend, a friend of ours just built a new Porsche and had it delivered, and he showed us on the app how, like, it tracks where the car is, like when it's on a boat in the middle of the ocean coming from Germany to America. It was very cool.

43:49Jason Stewart:I mean, when I buy socks on Amazon, it gives me that. So they better when I fucking buy a$400 ,000 911. Are you guys into cars? That's a good point. Are you guys car enthusiasts? I wouldn't say enthusiast. I like nice stuff kind of across the board. You know what I mean? So I can appreciate all of it. Neither of us are real grease monkeys. I'm more of a car guy than Chris is, but we don't really collect or anything like that. We don't collect also because it's a financial issue. One day we could get there and it's possible to have more than one car. We're looking forward to that day. It's a great day.

44:18It's a great day.

44:20Baiju Bhatt:I got into car collecting and just cars in general. I grew up around them. I grew up in the South. Wait, where'd you grow up? I grew up in a little town called Pocosin, Virginia. Whoa, okay. I'm from Atlanta. I didn't know.

44:32Jason Stewart:That's an island, right? Or is that an island kind of? No, but it sounds like it could be an island.

44:36Baiju Bhatt:It's more of a swamp than an island. He's like, yeah, yeah. I was an Indian guy in Virginia. It felt like a fucking island. I'll tell you.

44:45Jason Stewart:There's a big population. Big population over there. not so much the part i was from there's there's many different virginias we will say yeah i mean

44:53Baiju Bhatt:growing up i was like i i definitely looked really really fucking different than everybody else and you know what i was kind of cool with it i was like grew my hair out and i was like fuck it if i'm if i'm gonna be different i'm gonna own it capital but you're saying that cars were cars were around cars were kind of a constant and there was just a lot of car culture i remember a lot more truck culture but i remember i used to take i used to take classes at this this is gonna this is going back to my mathlete stuff here so i used to take classes at this like governor's school for like a magnet school like a governor's school for science and technology yeah and in my spare time i actually did research at a particle accelerator called jefferson lab it's a little something on the weekends deep nerd stuff did you get paid for this or was this just to to expand your mind Might have gotten paid a little bit along the way, but it was mostly mind expansion.

45:45Baiju Bhatt:And also getting into college resume expansion. Okay, sure. But you knew from like an early, it sounds like you knew what you wanted to do pretty early on. I did. I did. Yeah. I mean, it was one of those things where, well, growing up, family moved here from India. My dad had wanted to pursue a degree in physics. My dad was kind of old when he came to the U.S. too. He was in his late 30s. I want to say 36 or 37. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that is pretty old. Yeah. And he had had like a whole professional career before this in India. Like he had started a PhD in chemistry, I want to say. And then my grandfather in India was a Western-trained eye doctor.

46:27Baiju Bhatt:And so they were like the optometrists in our little town in India. And my dad did the contact lens business for them. This sounds... I love that. But he, I mean, basically he had to start over when he came to Virginia. Totally. so he had been applying to phd programs in the u.s year in year out and had kind of like devoted himself to this he like wanted to study theoretical physics that was his goal in life and he was like i'm not going to get married i want to have kids i want to purely devote my life to science and he told me he changed his name his name is profil he changed it to profil kumar which apparently indicates that you're a bachelor so he like he like really wanted to just like get it out there i want to be very clear let's let's be perfectly clear uh i'm legally single i just want you only thinking about numbers you guys not boobies at all physics only yeah no nothing else this is just and i don't i don't know exactly what the story is maybe you just like at some point was like fuck it threw in the towel i'm gonna get married and have a kid because he did and then immediately got into to study physics in the united states so that's kind of how that's kind of how i showed up well you come by it honestly then in that i was born in the u.s no no as in what you chose an immigration joke no absolutely i would never make an immigration

47:47Jason Stewart:joke trust me the question he's calling you an astrophysical nepo baby yeah yeah yeah i think that's right it's in the water it's in the dna you were born to engineer yeah like if i became space if i became an accountant like my father i would say the same thing but i i kind of you know lost the plot several times and ended up here but i think it's interesting when people sort of like really soak it up at a young age dude i think the the ship has not sailed for you to become

48:15Baiju Bhatt:an accountant okay i think you would really enjoy where your head's at on this because i love the stability of accounting and there is a family business that could take over gary l black and associates oh um i just don't know if i um i'm gonna be honest with you i had to take algebra twice um in ninth grade and that's kind of i dropped out of high school so i think i would have to go and kind of do some further education if I wanted to get my certification. Yeah, I think also if you're doing a client-facing accounting business, they probably don't want you cracking too many jokes. No, they don't love jokes.

48:47Baiju Bhatt:My dad's a hilarious guy, but he kind of saves it for home. Keep it business only. Yeah, accountants aren't funny. That's not really. But I mean, I got to say, there's probably not a lot of humor in your field either. I would say there's some pretty funny people in my field. In my field being science or physics. Really? Aerospace engineering.

49:02Jason Stewart:Neil deGrasse, Elon, nothing but killers. When I think of...

49:07Baiju Bhatt:Elon's pretty funny. Elon is funny. Elon's got a great sense of humor. Whether he knows it or not, he's very funny. Whether he knows it or not. Whether he knows it or not. Now, I'm a little... You didn't go to the Bezos wedding, did you? No, but I guess I'm not famous enough to go to that. I thought... Well, I don't think... It did feel like maybe not real friends. It felt more like, how much time have you spent with Sidney Sweeney? You know what I'm saying? Over the years, I don't think it's...

49:31Jason Stewart:The plastic surgeons, different people on staff. Well, I mean, I guess on that subject, you weren't invited, which is okay. But maybe to tie in an energy-related situation, there's a lot of people complaining about all these celebs flying in, each on their own private jet from all over the world, to Venice, Italy, to take over and rent every boat. Just so much energy being used for this dumb event. you know what if this was all just powered by some free solar right then then everyone would be okay with you know you're right taylor swift on her you know 14 minute private jet rides every

50:11Baiju Bhatt:other hour yeah she really earned a reputation for taking exceptionally short private flights

50:17Jason Stewart:right yeah yeah she really like and and hundreds others are doing the same exact thing you know many of our world's biggest djs are using up almost the same amount of energy so i gotta i

50:27Baiju Bhatt:I gotta say, I think people are going to be people. I think you can't stop people from using energy. I think you got to just make more of it. And I was actually in Geneva kind of recently, only to realize that, I don't know if this is like only for residential homes or what, but you're not allowed to have air conditioning in your homes in Geneva. Damn, I'm out. Which to me seems like the most counterintuitive thing you could possibly do. Because if you're trying to save energy, And again, I'm not a Swiss person, so I don't know what the fuck the politics there are. But if this is an energy thing, I make the argument this makes no sense.

51:05Baiju Bhatt:Because if you're trying to stay cool in the summertime, you're probably running your air conditioning, right? And if you want to offset that energy use, maybe you don't want to use the energy because, you know, that energy could be better used in some other way. You need to conserve the energy. the problem is is that if you're trying to run an air conditioner you're probably trying to run it in the middle of the day and you're probably trying to run it when it's hot now if it's the middle of the day and it's hot outside it's probably because the sun is out right i see where your head's at i'm with you i'm with you so far you don't have to conserve energy in this like you can run air conditioners with solar power and it's like what the actual fuck are are you doing like you're just miserable it's it's it's basically it's a it's a plant that waters itself we need people around the world to be solving the energy problems not trying to take our take us back to you know like 500 years ago when we didn't use energy and if we want these people to be solving our energy problems they're not going to be thinking straight if it's like 110 degrees in their apartment that's true that that will scramble the brain so what you're saying is basically like there are ways to do this like acting like it's the 1800s is not the way that is not that is not the way that is not the way forward i would agree with you i think you can't uh as we say a lot on the show you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube like people are used to a certain level of thing and you can't take that away from them because you say it's bad they don't care humans are good at innovating too man like we we're good at solving problems we just have to like i think when problems get big enough to solve this is one of my general views on humanity right is that humans are really good at solving problems and the the right thing to do is to usually equip people with the ability to solve the problems if they're important not to prevent people from using energy or stuff like that like yeah yeah humans need energy to pursue you know economic self-betterment they need energy to pursue modern lives like we can't like we as a society have to embrace the fact that people use energy we just got to make more of it yeah yeah yeah no i mean i think that yeah it's a pretty simple thing to understand your your

53:15Jason Stewart:goal put a giant satellite up in space it it absorbs a lot of energy from the sun which is constantly creating energy and then beaming that back to precise locations on earth to give you this free, you know, never ending abundance of energy at that point, I mean, which is a beautiful thing and I hope you succeed. And I look forward to that day. Is there ever going to be a situation where this is so prevalent? There's so much energy that the entire world can just access free energy all the time. And if so, will big energy unalive you or the people that are doing this because it's going to really cut into their business you know what i mean are you scared of big energy

54:00Baiju Bhatt:uh i've disrupted a well-established industry before i i'm i'm pretty well aware of what happens in that situation you're like look losers this ain't this ain't my first time my first rodeo uh in all goddamn disruptor like going after and challenging established industries is something i personally really enjoy right i think there's a category of entrepreneur that wants to make their own use case for like whatever thing they're inventing i kind of like to work in established industries and well a couple of things right one is our approach this is this is a company i'm working on now called aetherflux yeah yeah is actually not to build one big beautiful satellite but to actually build a constellation of smaller satellites um because actually the big beautiful satellite i think the fact that that was what people thought space solar power was going to be a while ago is one of the things that has kept it from being real and there's a bunch of physics and math that goes into why that's the case which i'm happy to bore you guys on the details but probably not we're good our approach is actually like you you make a bunch of smaller ones yeah and the benefits of it are pretty obvious actually because like you if you're iterating on a new technology you don't want each one to cost like you know a quarter of a billion dollars if you can iterate on something that costs a few million dollars you're going to be able to do more of them right and like that's one of the benefits the other thing is is that if something goes wrong with one of them you got that you got other ones that can do the job right so similar to

55:32Jason Stewart:like starlink let's let's put hundreds of these all over the and connect into a network one of them breaks we just fix that little cog in the wheel we don't have to fix the whole wheel and i

55:41Baiju Bhatt:think the the other thing is is that we want to eventually make this more and more economical it's not it's not it's not gonna be free energy like we're gonna have to build and launch satellites We're going to have to charge for the energy. But I think the thing is, is that we need more energy sources and we need energy sources that are renewable, that work kind of when we want them, not when they're available. Right. That's the problem with renewable energy, broadly speaking, is like we as humans want to use energy when we want to use energy. We don't necessarily want to turn our air conditioning on when the sun's out.

56:14Baiju Bhatt:Right. Like we just, if it's hot, we just want air conditioning. and that's the place where if you have all your energy stored in the chemical bonds of a hydrocarbon like gasoline then it's just like it's on tap it's literally on tap when you need it right oh yeah just like a just like a hazy ipa we got it on tap the wind the windmill

56:35Jason Stewart:is the windmill is only creating energy when it's windy and you know etc etc so etc etc the sun is always on like like waffle house the sun is always on and and we fight in here and there's no there's

56:48Baiju Bhatt:no shortage of solar power right the sun is spewing off so much energy and if we if we like if we fast forward the clock to well past when any of us are alive right at some point that is going to be the primary source of energy for our society you know like at some point humans are going to burn through all the hydrocarbons there's good there's going to come at some point in time where humans are like, maybe we shouldn't have as much nuclear activity within our atmosphere. And then the sun is kind of like this, like it's not gonna run out, right? I mean, it will eventually, but like at that point, there's not gonna be humanity on earth.

57:27This is my question to you though, because as a person who is, I don't care about space or space exploration. I also have a hard time caring about things because I know I'm going to be dead. And I know that's a bad nihilistic attitude to have. And I feel like you're the exact opposite of me. And it is impressive.

57:50Baiju Bhatt:Yeah, I mean, I've loved space since I was a kid, right? I kind of come back to that stuff from a few minutes ago, right? I grew up with my dad working at NASA and doing this stuff. On the topic of doing stuff that matters in your lifetime versus after it, I don't want to be the person that just was successful in business. because those are remembered in history in a certain sort of way. In my mind, always the higher calling has been the great scientific thinkers. Einstein's never going out of style. Shit he figured out, it's not getting old, right? No, you're right. That's true. Einstein's kind of a timeless cat.

58:27Jason Stewart:Ken Burns isn't going to do an eight-hour documentary about the guy who invented a great new way to make Triscuits or something. It's Da Vinci. It's Einstein. It's Einstein. Yeah, it's Isaac Newton. So hundreds and hundreds of years, we're all going to be talking about him, not the guy who did a really awesome deal on the S &P 500.

58:45Baiju Bhatt:My dad is the one that really got that sort of love of science in my head. So a little bit more about that backstory there, right? So when I was a kid, actually, my dad, he had some health problems. Kidneys failed when I was pretty young as a kid. So this kind of makes the childhood experience a little bit more trying. it was in high school and when my dad in middle school was actually really sick for kind of a while kidney disease kidney transplant he ended up getting a kidney transplant but like that was kind of the point at which like all those years of growing up around my dad and kind of having this scientific backdrop really flipped the switch and started like loving school interesting so you're saying but you're you're saying like him being sick sort of like made you sit up and pay attention a little bit more or like it brought you to it made you feel closer to him maybe because you were into the same thing it definitely brought me closer to him because we were into the same thing by the way my dad is alive and well just just uh thank you yes thank you thank you i had a feeling i had a feeling i had a feeling yeah he's he's alive and well he's he's old but he's he's alive and well still kicking i mean it was one of those things right when my dad was really sick it's like well what is the way out it's education right it's like doing well in school if you do well in school, then you can kind of write your own path.

1:00:03Baiju Bhatt:That was kind of the thing for me, right? It's like taking back some degree of control over what my life was going to be. And it just, you know, it kind of makes you, I feel like it kind of turned me into an entrepreneur as a pretty young kid, even though at that point I was kind of like starting to run my own life as opposed to running a company. Yeah, yeah, sure. And I feel like it takes a long time for people sometimes to figure out that your life is kind of your own. Like you kind of have to take agency over the, over the shit that you're doing because otherwise other people do it for you.

1:00:33Baiju Bhatt:You know, like it's not, it's not hard finding other people to tell you what to do in life. No, no, it's not. My wife tries to do it every day. Having a job. Every day. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what you mean. I get it at home. I get it at work. No, you're right. I mean, I think that like there is a point though in an adult's life where you're like, oh shit, this is kind of up to me. like this is sort of like i can go with the flow to some extent but like i there are certain decisions i'm going to make that are going to affect my entire life you know and i'm the only person responsible for that yeah it doesn't it never matters more to anyone than it does to you

1:01:07Jason Stewart:right yes yes yes well at least we hope not i don't want it to matter to somebody else it might be a little creepy yeah that is kind of creepy um talking about elon space exploration he's sort of not having a great q1 q2 right now um you a fellow person who is considered or is at least interested in occupying mars quote unquote whatever that means nowadays what advice would you give elon to kind of turn his ship around and get in the in the better graces of of the public right now

1:01:39Baiju Bhatt:well for all the advice that elon musk is coming to me for let me tell you you get the guy won't stop calling he won't leave me alone it's just like it's a voicemail after text message like just help me think through my decisions in life beiju well i mean this is kind of the thing i thought about when he got into politics right it's like dude you're you're working on the higher calling like you don't need to do this stuff right like the world is not going to remember you for getting into a pissing match with some like elected official yeah you're you're trying to go to mars dude and like you've lost the plot keep your eyes on the prize like why yeah eyes on the prize man like why why does this other stuff matter because in the context of all the people that are alive in the world today if he ends up being the person that takes humanity to mars like that like that's got to be that's like the thing to focus on right sure yeah not to mention the fact that you're running like several other companies, right?

1:02:40Baiju Bhatt:And the thing is going to Mars, it's not, it's not a foregone conclusion, right? There's, they have to do a lot of hard work to get there. And I don't know, I just, I feel like that that's the most important thing. I see what you're saying, but do you think God, I mean, I think that there becomes a certain, there's a certain level of wealth and power. And I think that you just want more and more power, you know, and that, that's what I think that, I think you're right. I think there, even though I don't, I don't care about putting humanity on Mars, I agree. that's a bigger goal than being sort of an unpopular president's friend.

1:03:12You know what I mean? It's a better way to go. I completely agree with you. But I do think there's just sort of, I think people, once you reach a certain level of success, and you seem to have avoided it, but you do get a little bit of a complex about what you can and can't do and a God complex and what you can affect and not affect. I think it's powerful to be able to avoid that and steer clear

1:03:35Baiju Bhatt:and stay focused like you're saying there's also like this there's also like the the things that people really pursue in life right rather whether it's money power or accomplishment i think those were like three of the big buckets and kind of coming back to the einstein analogy right like was einstein a wealthy person like i don't know i don't give a shit right no one yeah no one's checking no one's probably doing fine but he wasn't flying private did did einstein have like you know 10 000 people that reported to him like i don't know i don't really give a shit right but like here's the thing i do give a shit about is like he figured out the special theory of relativity sure that trumps that sort of trumps all the other stuff yeah it's the accomplishments right the accomplishments are what people are going to remember they're not going to remember the other stuff.

1:04:28So where are you at? Where are you at in your journey then? Are you, have you always been able to focus on the accomplishments or have you gotten caught up in the other stuff along the way?

1:04:36Baiju Bhatt:Oh no, no, no. I was, I grew up poor, man. I was money motivated as, as a younger person. Like let's just be super real about it. Right. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the, the, the scientific mindset I think is fundamentally one that's like accomplishment motivated. So I think that's kind of been a big part of it over the years for me um but look i mean just kind of very real on this right is like growing up a little bit i've given you guys like like a couple of snippets from that childhood but like one of the big things that was kind of a takeaway right is like as an immigrant kid in this country you kind of get this like pretty pure view of like what american society is about and the fundamental thing that makes america so fucking awesome is that this is a place of upward economic mobility it's the american dream right it's like that's the thing that america exports it's real that's real right it's it's the optimism it's the belief that you can like make shit happen in your own life and realizing that i had that power right and like starting companies pretty much straight out of school that was like one of the connecting thoughts and the the idea behind robin hood right is the idea that capitalism is this really important thing that we need more and more people in our society to participate in right okay so we didn't we didn't vote for zohron got it got it

1:06:01Baiju Bhatt:um no no no no no no no that's that's look i mean that i don't i've i've okay i don't think that's i don't think that's how i don't think that's how you create the right outcomes for people right i i i will make no bones about this i'm not a believer in socialism i don't think that that makes for a better society and there's plenty of historical evidence and i don't think

1:06:22Jason Stewart:that there's anything different about where we are right now all right um well going back to what you said you know those did you guys before before sarah tells you to delete this part wait sorry what are you guys new yorkers i i am chris is i am i live in la it was a it was um i i think that it's a lot of it is a reaction to what's going you know what i mean i think everything's a reaction to what's going on and i think it does i understand that it like gives people hope in a certain in a certain way same reason why we voted for trump for a second time just this ain't working so maybe we'll try this bullshit it's like it's not ain't working maybe i have an alternative what do you got is not which is not the elon musk third party but i

1:07:06Baiju Bhatt:think that there is room for another i think people need to be really hardcore about being centrists right like the alt center who do you right can you give me an example of someone who is who is on the forefront of that i don't know i don't know if anybody is but i feel like there's good branding to be had here right to be a hard line centrist yeah like i take this seriously yeah i'm like a party line moderate yeah yeah i think the i think there's always room for development i think that the um i think that people are looking for anything so if that if

1:07:39Jason Stewart:that works most most of the hardline centrists i know become you know they they start out left-leaning and then they have a kid and make money and buy a house republicans yeah and that well no no i mean it's it's the ones that are so far left and then you're like oh i like porsches and a pool and my kids in college so and i don't like that my house keeps getting broken into yeah maybe center is looking okay not so far into the into the deep right roland cole kkk world but you know maybe we don't need to abolish the police system no that's not a good idea that's not a good as much as we don't like but i hate but i hate cops so much bro what am i supposed to do god damn it you will you will die soon dude don't litter don't don't don't litter you you mentioned money power accomplishment as like the three sort of basic tentpole needs or whatever for these successful people finding things in terms of the billionaire mindset you don't seem to participate in the i need to live forever and have a hundred children how have you managed to become a normal cool regular billionaire who's not doing that you don't know that these are not things that

1:08:51Baiju Bhatt:I believe as well.

1:08:52Jason Stewart:Okay. Well, I know you have one kid. I have three. I have three. Oh, you have three?

1:08:57Baiju Bhatt:Three boys. Yeah.

1:08:58Jason Stewart:Okay. Okay. So you're working. Okay. So I take that back. How many kids, how many dozen head of cattle do you hope to have by the end of your run? And how many hundreds of years will your cerebral cortex be floating in a jar of goo for?

1:09:14Baiju Bhatt:I mean, I think that the Steve Jobs take on this is like pretty on point, which is that like what was the statement he said is that like death is one of the best inventions of life something like that humanity is intended to have a lifespan like we're intended to to turn over and as much as i would like to live forever i'm like not under any assumptions that i'm going to i will say though i would like to stay healthy and fit for a long time um and and growing up around a dad that had like a pretty major health illness like i'm very that'll stick with you that'll stick with you yeah i'd like to be healthy for a long time i'd like to be healthy for a long time because i want to accomplish a lot of stuff and you can't accomplish a lot of stuff if you're like constantly fighting health battles yeah right if you need to run to clear

1:10:05Jason Stewart:that mind and create things what's going to happen when you can't run anymore and i'm glad that you're drinking that full fat coca-cola and not that diet coke bullshit that has cancer no dude This is Coke Zero, guys. This is Coke Zero. We're closer. It's still better. It's still better than diet. So you prefer Coke Zero to the Diet Coke? I got to stay beautiful, guys. It's not optional. How many of those zeros are we slugging down per day?

1:10:30Baiju Bhatt:I have a big, beautiful cup of coffee in the morning. I'm not a person that drinks lots of coffee during the day. It's like one great coffee. And then I'll usually have like three of these a day. sometimes if i'm busy it goes up for sure for sure when we're in a crunch mode okay so one big beautiful pour over are you guys coke zero people too no chris doesn't really drink anything but

1:10:54Jason Stewart:water and i will drink a mexican coke every once in a while if i'm eating pizza chinese food or if i'm deathly hungover and i just you know you just need one i have a friend i have a french friend

1:11:05Baiju Bhatt:who claims to not drink water when he when he and he drinks wine all the time and if he gets dehydrated he just drinks more wine that's some french ass that's some french ass shit that's some french ass shit and i think that they could be wired to do that whereas we are not yeah the

1:11:19Jason Stewart:french specific i know a french friend of mine he refused to eat vegetables and fruit as a kid and he went on a hunger strike and his mom eventually was like all right fine just no and he just never ate vegetables never will eat vegetables just you know french fries is as veggie as he's gonna get my mom why why was i not born with these genetics i was born with the

1:11:43Baiju Bhatt:genetics where i was a vegetarian as a kid and like totally overweight like what the fuck hey man hey man welcome to my welcome to my entire middle school and high school both of us grew up as fat vegans so yeah yeah the few the proud we do exist brother were you guys were you guys fat ever in life i can't imagine oh yeah i was fat when i was like most of my you know whatever from like teenage, you know, I guess like adolescent to teenage, like late teenage.

1:12:09Jason Stewart:I mean, we weren't like obese, but we were, we were husky. And then, you know, once you hit your early 20s, make a little bit of money, go out to eat, drink a lot more. And then that, that really packs on another. Yeah. That's, that's like,

1:12:23Baiju Bhatt:that's the fit to fat to fit that I was talking about. Yeah.

1:12:26Jason Stewart:Once you have a little extra walking around money and you're like, oh, I'll just.

1:12:30Baiju Bhatt:Well, that's the thing people do, right? Is they, they, they get lean and then they like, pack on a bunch of muscle and fat, and then they try to shed it, right? So it's like you lean, and then you bulk, and then you cut. But the real version of it that most of us face in life is that we're lean, then we bulk, and then we just bulk again. Sure, we're bulking. Bulking's a nice way to put it.

1:12:50Jason Stewart:We find new and exciting ways to bulk

1:12:52Baiju Bhatt:is what I'm usually up to. Cultivating mass. Cultivating mass.

1:12:55Jason Stewart:Cultivating mass on a global scale. Said like a true pro. All right, all right. Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. It was fun. Yeah. And I feel like we learned a little bit today, which is rare for this podcast. So thank you for giving us your time.

1:13:10Baiju Bhatt:I try not to have that happen, but I'm glad it did.

1:13:13Jason Stewart:It worked out well. Well, it's not you, it's us. We hope one day to have this podcast be powered by some delicious Aetherflux solar energy. Not cheap, but worth it. Oh, yes. Presented by. Presented by. If nothing else, presented by. No, we appreciate it, man. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon. Appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

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