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The following is a conversation with Simone Jetsch, an inventor, designer, engineer, and roboticist famous for a combination of humor and brilliant creative design in the systems and products she creates, including as part of her new product design company called Jetsch.
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She has a popular YouTube channel where she has demonstrated a lot of her incredible and fun designs and inventions from, quote, shitty robots to a Tesla Model 3 converted into a truck.
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But where she also revealed her personal journey after having been diagnosed with a brain tumor.
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Simone is a brilliant, fun, and inspiring human being.
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It was truly an honor for me to get to meet her and to have this chat.
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And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor.
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Check them out in the description.
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It s the best way to support this podcast.
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We got Masterclass for learning, Insight Tracker for biological data, and Athletic Greens for my daily multivitamin.
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Choose wisely, my friends.
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Also, if you want to work with our amazing team, we re always hiring.
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Go to lexfriedman.com slash hiring.
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And now onto the full ad reads.
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As always, no ads in the middle.
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I try to make this interesting, but if you must skip them, please still check out our sponsors.
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I love their stuff, and maybe you will too.
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This show, speaking of love, is brought to you by Masterclass.
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180 bucks a year gets you an all-access pass to watch courses from the best people in the world at their respective disciplines.
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The list is so long, and it s amazing exploration of all the humanities able to create.
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You know, when I ask about the meaning of life, to me at the core, it s love.
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but the way that love manifests itself in the human condition in society, I think at this moment I can try to express as a creation of beauty, of increasing the amount of beauty in the world, of celebrating, of noticing, of admiring, and of creating beauty.
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And the mastery of a particular discipline, I think, is one of the best ways to create that beauty.
0
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So the best people in the world doing a thing and teaching you how to do it, or even just talking through how to do it.
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It s not always the big advice, but the little details.
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And you notice the genius of these people in the details, in the way they see the world, in the way they care themselves, in the way they start and end a thought, in the way they start and end a sentence, in the way they look, in the way they move their hands, in the way they think, in the way they hope, in the way they fear.
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This is why it s good to learn from the best people in the world.
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Get unlimited access to every masterclass and get 15% off an annual membership at masterclass.com slash flex.
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This show is also brought to you by Insight Tracker, a service I use to track biological data that comes from my body to give me recommendations on what the heck I should be doing with my life.
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I m happy to report, if you cared, that most markers for me are looking pretty good.
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The only small exceptions, I think, reveal themselves in just the tremendous amount of stress I ve been under over the past year.
0
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And I think, stress or not, many of you listening to this are going through a rough time.
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for reasons that are hard to explain and for reasons that are obvious.
0
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The human mind can experience some deep moments or deep days and weeks and months of loneliness for reasons that make no sense to the outside world, but it s still real to the human mind.
0
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And of course, our life is such that we experience a lot of loss, a lot of struggle.
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a lot of pain and suffering.
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And through that, it s more obvious that the mind can be in turmoil and suffer and feel lonely and feel hopelessly lost in this world.
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And I think through all of that, the least you could do is to honor this life you re given, this moment, this chance you re given, no matter how hard it is by taking care of yourself mentally, physically,
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It sounds silly to say, but sometimes a nap, sometimes a shower, sometimes a healthy meal, and maybe a walk, a brisk walk or a run can make the difference between a mind that s really struggling and a mind that at least sees a light at the end of the tunnel.
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So take care of yourself.
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We need you here.
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Get special savings for a limited time when you go to insighttracker.com slash Lex.
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This show is also brought to you by Athletic Greens and this AG1 drink that I just consumed and I really enjoyed.
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I put it in the refrigerator to make it cold.
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I don t know why.
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I ve been into that recently.
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It s an all-in-one daily drink that I drink twice a day now that has all the multivitamins to make sure I ll get all the healthy stuff in there.
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You can read up about it.
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The point is you don t have to worry about all the vitamins and minerals you re supposed to get.
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because athletic greens takes care of all that for you.
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For me, it s a little bit home in a bottle.
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I make the drink, and even when I m traveling, I feel grounded.
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All the turmoil, all the madness going on in the outside world, there s something at least I can rely on, a little bit of habit.
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SPEAKER_02
I do the same thing with meditation.
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I wake up every morning and repeat a mantra to myself.
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and most evenings before bed, unless I m really struggling, I ll repeat a mantra.
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And it s a kind of meditative process.
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So that to me, no matter where I am, feels like home.
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Because home is a place you live in, inside your mind.
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SPEAKER_02
But little triggers, positive triggers, like drinking an athletic greens drink is very much that for me.
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All of a sudden I m transformed into this place, into this feeling of home.
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They ll give you a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase when you go to athleticgreens.com slash Lex.
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This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here s Simone Gietzsch.
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What was the first cool thing you built where you fell in love with the process of making stuff?
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You know, I think in the beginning of building stuff, you run into the limitations of your skills so much.
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So I feel like honestly, building gets less and less frustrating, or like I love it more and more, the more I know.
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So the limitations aren t fun?
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Like when it s really frustrating?
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SPEAKER_00
The limitations are fun, but it s like when you have an idea of something and you want to make it a certain level, and then you just have to compromise with the materials and the tools and the skills you have.
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SPEAKER_00
So I can t remember first time where I felt like – I m proud of this.
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Wow.
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SPEAKER_00
This was so smooth.
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I m so proud of it.
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SPEAKER_00
Like I feel like a lot of people I watch them build stuff and it s just like watching water pour down, you know?
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SPEAKER_00
It s just like so easy.
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SPEAKER_00
And for me, it s just like –
0
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trying to shove a toy car into a wall.
0
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So you re not able to step back and marvel at the early creations, even like, we re not even talking the Arduino stuff even before then.
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SPEAKER_00
I m from Sweden, and you have to choose either sewing or woodworking, and I chose woodworking in middle school.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I remember the sense of pride when I got to bring something home, and that thing of like, oh my God, I get to show my parents this.
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I think that is kind of the feeling that I ve built my job around.
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SPEAKER_00
It s like the sense of pride and wanting to show people something that I made.
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SPEAKER_00
And back then it was like a little wooden spoon, you know, and now it s a slightly larger.
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Wooden spoon is dynamic and moves and has a mind of its own.
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You first started doing more engineering type stuff with Arduino boards at Punch Through Design, which is an SF engineering firm.
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What are, just from your memory there, what are some cool things you built there?
0
SPEAKER_00
So the thing is I went to advertising school and I just like vocational studies a year and I realized there that I didn t care much for advertising but I thought it was really fun to build stuff and programs.
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So like I just completely focused on that and there I built.
0
SPEAKER_00
my first hardware project, or electronics project, which was this iPhone case with retractable guitar strings.
0
SPEAKER_00
So basically, I imagined that you could pull out guitar strings from the bottom of your iPhone, and you could pluck it to your belt, and then you could hold a chord on the screen.
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And I built that together with my friend Jonathan, and I was like, oh, this is dope.
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I thought it was so much fun.
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And I considered, oh, should I go to school for this?
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But then I thought, maybe I can get a job and I could get paid to learn about electronics.
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So just based off of that one project, I got the job at Punch Through Design, which actually was a one-year internship.
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Can you explain what we re talking about here?
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So it s a case with guitar strings attached to it.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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Does it actually work at all?
0
SPEAKER_00
It does.
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SPEAKER_02
These are not on-the-screen guitar strings.
0
SPEAKER_00
No.
0
SPEAKER_00
So they re actual strings that you pull out.
0
SPEAKER_00
So there s a mechanism that s almost like a seatbelt mechanism.
0
SPEAKER_00
And yeah, you pull them out from the bottom of your phone and you can attach them to your belt.
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s terrible.
0
SPEAKER_00
There s a few different ways to decide if somebody s touching a guitar string.
0
SPEAKER_00
And what you do in a real guitar is you have the little it s like measuring the vibration or the change in the
0
SPEAKER_00
as the, yeah, you re measuring how the guitar is vibrating.
0
SPEAKER_00
And you can t really do that because I can t have a receiving sensor because the guitar strings are going to move in relationship to that because you don t have like a rigid neck.
0
SPEAKER_00
And this is like, yeah, this was my first electronics project.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was a little fledging baby maker.
0
SPEAKER_00
But what I decided was to use capacitive touch.
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SPEAKER_00
because that is independent on if the guitar strings are moving in relationship to something or in relation to something.
0
SPEAKER_00
So basically there was just this little Bluetooth Arduino board that this company Punch-Thru-Design made, so that was how I found them.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I measured the capacitive touch, so like whenever
0
SPEAKER_00
the guitar string was measured.
0
SPEAKER_00
There was this little microcontroller that was like, oh my God, a guitar string got measured or touched.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then that sent a signal over Bluetooth to my phone.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I d built a little iPhone app that interpreted those Bluetooth signals and then checked what type of chord I was holding on the screen and then played the coherent sound.
0
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So you re holding the chords on the screen.
0
SPEAKER_02
So you re doing the multi-touch sensing there.
0
SPEAKER_02
That s incredible.
0
SPEAKER_00
I honestly cannot believe that I pulled it off because I think I was – ignorance was definitely bliss because that was like, yeah, the first hardware project I d ever built, the first iPhone app I d ever programmed.
0
SPEAKER_00
And like now if somebody was like, hey, I want this to be my first project, I would probably be like, oh, that s a lot.
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SPEAKER_00
I pulled it off.
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Because that s such an interesting thing for people to hear because it s your first project.
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And a lot of people stop because of the difficulty of their first project.
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They never truly discover their own genius because they stop at the first.
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And you didn t stop.
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So it d be interesting to kind of psychoanalyze you on the couch of why you didn t stop.
0
SPEAKER_02
Because you have to build an app to figure out how to, did you know how to program much or no?
0
SPEAKER_02
No.
0
Okay.
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean a little bit, but I never programmed or done any iOS apps.
0
SPEAKER_02
Okay, so you have to figure out how to get, forget like what the app does, just get the app running and working.
0
SPEAKER_02
And then you have to figure out how to get the sensors in like real time, the finger touching, and you have to connect how to get the capacitors touch working with the microcontrollers.
0
SPEAKER_02
Do you know anything about the capacitor touch sensors at that time?
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s pretty easy now, it s basically.
0
SPEAKER_02
Everything s easy.
0
SPEAKER_02
You know, rockets are pretty easy.
0
SPEAKER_00
You sound like my grandma.
0
SPEAKER_00
She s, I have an Italian grandma and I always trying to get her, we re like trying to get her to tell her recipes and every recipe starts with.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s very simple.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then there s like 45 minutes of her explaining it.
0
SPEAKER_02
It s like with gymnastics at the Olympics.
0
SPEAKER_02
They make it look easy.
0
SPEAKER_02
The best people in the world always make the impossible seem easy.
0
SPEAKER_00
I pride myself with making buildings look really hard, because I feel like I m always struggling so much.
0
SPEAKER_02
You make the easy seem impossible.
0
SPEAKER_02
So how many strings was it?
0
SPEAKER_00
Oh gosh, I mean this is such a long time ago.
0
SPEAKER_00
No, it was six.
0
SPEAKER_02
Oh, six strings and you can touch it and then there s, wow.
0
SPEAKER_02
And it can, and then the phone itself makes a sound.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I still, I still think it s such a cool concept to have this like mobile, I m not even a guitar player.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was, I mean, I got the idea because I was kind of strumming on my charge cord of my phone.
0
SPEAKER_02
Oh, like an air guitar, but on a chord?
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
But I ve been thinking about it because I m like, oh man, it would be really fun to go back to that project with what I know now.
0
SPEAKER_00
But the problem with it is that when you re producing the tension in your string just with your arm, like you can t make it taut enough to actually play.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like it kind of becomes playing these like saggy strings.
0
SPEAKER_00
So it s you re not really getting that experience.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s why, I mean,
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I haven t really pursued it.
0
SPEAKER_02
I wonder if there s a way to generate the tightness from the case itself.
0
SPEAKER_02
Like a device that unfolds and then with some kind of tightening mechanisms tightens.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but then it kind of becomes this like whole thing in a guitar.
0
SPEAKER_00
Then it just becomes a really shitty guitar.
0
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like, which this is a really shitty guitar, but it s also
0
SPEAKER_02
but it s so shitty, it s awesome.
0
SPEAKER_02
But it s cool that you have an interface between a device that s capable of incredible computational power and an actual hardware thing.
0
SPEAKER_02
Is there something that you can psychoanalyze that made you finish that others could hear in their own struggle to, you know,
0
SPEAKER_02
do their first project like that because you were in a non-engineering person, technically.
0
SPEAKER_02
And you did a pretty cool, renegade, out there, wild, no instructions, engineering project.
0
SPEAKER_00
No, it definitely was an off-road build where it s like if you re building a Lego kit, it s very much on the road and you re following instructions and this is like you have no idea if you re headed for a cliff or a dead end or you re going to get stuck.
0
SPEAKER_00
I think it had a natural pressure to it because it was a school project.
0
SPEAKER_00
So it did have deadlines built into it and stuff like that.
0
SPEAKER_00
So that definitely helped.
0
SPEAKER_00
But I think also it was just so incredibly motivating when I realized that I might be able to pull it off.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like that was, I felt like a bloodhound, you know?
0
SPEAKER_00
You re just like, oh my God, I can actually make this happen.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I think if I hadn t seen that, the horizon, it would have been harder to stick through.
0
SPEAKER_02
Were you able to see the end of the tunnel?
0
SPEAKER_02
pretty early on?
0
SPEAKER_00
No, not really.
0
SPEAKER_02
So there s something to just suffering for a while.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how your brain works, but it s like if I have a problem, I can t stop thinking about it.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like it s so fun to think about it.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like I spent two and a half years designing a coat hanger.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I just can t stop thinking about it.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like, I get so into it, because I think it s so much fun.
0
SPEAKER_02
Take me to this two-year journey of the coat hanger.
0
SPEAKER_00
Of the coat hanger.
0
SPEAKER_02
How did it begin?
0
SPEAKER_00
How did it begin?
0
SPEAKER_00
It began with a corner in my home where I couldn t fit a coat rack.
0
SPEAKER_00
The thing is, I shouldn t have brought this up, because I m gonna release it as a product probably in a year.
0
SPEAKER_02
Oh, an actual product?
0
SPEAKER_02
Mm-hmm.
0
SPEAKER_02
Okay, well, that s the mystery.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s a mystery, yeah.
0
SPEAKER_02
But it solves a fundamental problem in the human condition.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yes, and I am so excited about it and I cannot, I don t, yeah, but this is, I get so pumped about it because I see
1
SPEAKER_02
it s just this issue or like this problem that I wanna solve and I kinda can t put it to rest until I have.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, speaking of cone hangers, doorknobs have always been interesting to me.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s cool how there s things that everybody uses that somebody designed.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
Oh my god.
1
SPEAKER_02
So, okay, so this is I so I have two like big so basically I started on YouTube and I ve been doing that for like the last seven or eight years and I ve kind of been thinking of like okay what s next for me because I want to keep on trying out new things and I m kind of
1
SPEAKER_02
going into two different avenues.
1
SPEAKER_02
One is the product business that I started, Code Hinders, TBD.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then I am working on a pilot episode of a show where each episode is about an everyday object and why they look the way that they do.
1
SPEAKER_02
So we ve written a pilot episode about forks.
1
SPEAKER_02
And it s all about like,
1
SPEAKER_02
Why do they look the way that they do?
1
SPEAKER_02
Why did this became the eating implement of the West?
1
SPEAKER_02
Why are we ruled by an iron fork?
1
SPEAKER_02
How did that happen?
1
SPEAKER_02
And every everyday object that you have and that you just take for granted, somebody s just made it up.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
We re all sheep.
1
SPEAKER_01
We all keep using it.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Even if it s not optimal.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, presumably most objects are optimal, you hope.
1
SPEAKER_01
or at least a local outlook.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and that s what I think is so, like the world around us, and this is why I love building things is because it just opens up this idea that the world around us is so malleable and you can make objects work for you better.
1
SPEAKER_02
Like I spent, I made this fruit bowl.
1
SPEAKER_02
I had a fruit bowl and I was always annoyed that I had either too little or too much fruit for it.
1
SPEAKER_02
So I made a fruit bowl where I can change the diameter of it.
1
SPEAKER_02
It has a mechanism so you can like make it bigger or smaller.
1
SPEAKER_02
And that s just like the thing of being like,
1
SPEAKER_02
bowls.
1
SPEAKER_02
Why are they the way that they are?
1
SPEAKER_02
I can make them different.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I think like, I want to make an episode about doorknobs.
1
SPEAKER_02
I think it s so interesting.
1
SPEAKER_02
Why are they the way they are?
1
SPEAKER_02
Why are they placed the way, where they are?
1
SPEAKER_01
I think that s going to be a rabbit hole from which you will never return.
1
SPEAKER_02
I would happily live in that rabbit hole forever.
1
SPEAKER_02
Like if I can, if I can like dig out a little niche for myself there, because I think it s like,
1
SPEAKER_02
Because they go so deep.
1
SPEAKER_01
They re also on different sides of doors.
1
SPEAKER_01
You never, like the push-pull situation on doors in general, like that s one of the main problems of humanity, is figuring out the push-pull.
1
SPEAKER_01
Push-pull doors.
1
SPEAKER_02
Figuring out which- It is embarrassing.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s just, okay, how many, there s eight billion people on earth.
1
SPEAKER_01
Every single second, there is millions of people being embarrassed by the confusion.
1
SPEAKER_02
of whether you push or pull.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right now there s somebody, some guy, first time in college, he s trying to be impressive to everybody, he pushes and he plays it off like it s cool.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh shit, I knew that.
1
SPEAKER_02
Over and over.
1
SPEAKER_02
And it affects our behaviors.
1
SPEAKER_02
That was why I think it s so interesting with forks is that forks actually affect our eating behaviors.
1
SPEAKER_02
And they can get you to eat faster or slower, take bigger bites or smaller bites.
1
SPEAKER_02
And there are all these ways or like the social, I mean, the reason that chopsticks work is because they do the food chopping in the kitchen.
1
SPEAKER_02
rather than on the plate.
1
SPEAKER_02
And also, you have a bowl that you bring to your mouth, whereas a plate you keep on the – like, there are just all these ways in which these objects affect our behavior, opening and closing doors.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I think it s such an interesting take on culture and human behavior through these objects that we use every day, and we never question them, really.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and then there s institutions that are controlling our mind that don t want us to know the truth.
1
SPEAKER_01
Why are sporks not more popular?
1
SPEAKER_01
Have you asked yourself that question?
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, no, it s all big utensil is behind all of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
All right, so, I mean, in those early days, did you suffer from imposter syndrome?
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, that leap to being an engineer.
1
SPEAKER_01
Was there, especially when you started working at Points of Design on a team of engineers, was there insecurity?
1
SPEAKER_02
Both yes and no.
1
SPEAKER_02
I think I ve, I always try to flip my flaws into selling points.
1
SPEAKER_02
And for that, so getting that job, I,
1
SPEAKER_02
I was like, oh, you re a team of engineers.
1
SPEAKER_02
Everybody working here is an engineer.
1
SPEAKER_02
Your customers are not all engineers.
1
SPEAKER_02
You need somebody who can be your filter and tell you when something s going to be too hard for your customers to understand.
1
SPEAKER_02
So it was more me being like, oh, no, it might seem that me not having skills is a bad thing, but actually it s a great thing.
1
SPEAKER_01
I represent the everyday person.
1
SPEAKER_01
I understand deeply what everybody needs and wants.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yes, that is me, the representation of the average human.
1
SPEAKER_02
But I mean, I remember that.
1
SPEAKER_02
So I studied physics for a year in college and then I dropped out.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I had this rule for myself that whenever I did not understand something, I would ask a question.
1
SPEAKER_02
So I was always raising my hand in class.
1
SPEAKER_02
And it s this room, entire like,
1
SPEAKER_02
auditorium filled with incredibly intelligent people who are mortified of seeming stupid.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I think that was really like, and I remember people at the end of the year coming up to me and being like, thank you so much for all the questions you asked, because whenever there was something that I was too scared to ask, you always raised your hand.
1
SPEAKER_02
So I think it is a bit of a skill.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I think that is kind of how I channel my imposter syndrome is I m just like,
1
SPEAKER_02
Nope, let s lay it all out there.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you re okay being almost like self-deprecating, just coming off.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I m definitely that.
1
SPEAKER_01
I kind of lean into it, call myself an idiot.
1
SPEAKER_01
I lean into being stupid.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think not all heroes wear capes.
1
SPEAKER_01
And the guy and girl who asks the stupid question,
1
SPEAKER_01
is everybody s hero, including the teachers.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I think it s both.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s a double-edged sword.
1
SPEAKER_02
I started out on the internet, I kind of got the moniker the queen of shitty robots because I posted a lot of stuff on slash r slash shitty robots on Reddit and people started calling me the queen of slash r slash shitty robots and then the slash r kind of dropped.
1
SPEAKER_02
So what I m trying to say is I did not come up with that with myself.
1
SPEAKER_02
But I did happily adopt it.
1
SPEAKER_02
So I definitely came from a place of like building things that didn t work and kind of.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, everything going wrong every time, like happily failing.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I think that was amazing.
1
SPEAKER_02
It was a really powerful tool for me to like not get my perfectionism in the way because if I set out to do something that s great, then I m never going to start.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I was like, no, I just need something that looks funny.
1
SPEAKER_02
But what I ve realized
1
SPEAKER_02
Now, there s also a defense mechanism.
1
SPEAKER_02
Being self-deprecating is like always beating people to the punch.
1
SPEAKER_02
It kind of was a survival tactic on the Internet of being like never daring to set out as an expert.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I still do that.
1
SPEAKER_02
Like, I m terrified to tell people how to do something, even if I know.
1
SPEAKER_02
Um, because it kind of opens you up for being shot down.
1
SPEAKER_02
So I think I have, I definitely have a conflicted relationship with it.
1
SPEAKER_02
And now, especially as I m, I m getting older, I am more skilled than I was before.
1
SPEAKER_02
I mean, I m a CEO of three businesses and I m like, I don t need to like keep on talking myself down all the time.
1
SPEAKER_02
So yeah, I think it s definitely something that has served me really, really well.
1
SPEAKER_02
And that is still like a.
1
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that I have in my work life and in my relationships, but I m also trying to only do it when it s beneficial to me and not when it s harmful.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, but when you re as successful as you are, I feel like people like it when you re self-deprecating, you don t take yourself seriously, you have that humility.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think it s probably the hardest when you re starting out.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
1
SPEAKER_02
I think it was easier then almost, I don t know.
1
SPEAKER_01
But nobody takes you seriously, right?
1
SPEAKER_02
When you re starting out, when you re young, like... You know, I just realized that I played a lot more stupid than I was.
1
SPEAKER_02
And...
1
SPEAKER_02
I think it s also, oh gosh, I can t believe I m the one bringing this up, but like being a woman in a male-dominated field and you re like trying, I was just trying to make myself the least amount threatening or like really unthreatening because people are threatened by you in different ways and it s like,
1
SPEAKER_02
You have such a thin line that you can walk where you re like, okay, I need to be just attractive enough for people to not be offended by my appearance, but just unattractive enough for people to not sexualize me.
1
SPEAKER_02
I have to be just smart and witty enough for people to be like, oh my God, that s really cool.
1
SPEAKER_02
But also shoot myself down enough for other people not to be able to do it or be like, oh yeah, watch this woman try to thinking that she knows how to build electronics.
1
SPEAKER_02
So it s like,
1
SPEAKER_01
But that s an interesting skill to build, especially when you put yourself out there on the internet.
1
SPEAKER_01
Unfortunately, that s the reality of the internet.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it s a skill you have to kind of develop.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it s actually why a lot of really brilliant people avoid the internet.
1
SPEAKER_01
There s not many people, like at MIT, for example, there s not many brilliant professors or PhD students and so on just putting their stuff out there.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because like, if they,
1
SPEAKER_01
Like if they really put their heart and soul into a thing, first of all, that s really hard.
1
SPEAKER_01
And nobody sees it, and everyone s like, eh, this is boring.
1
SPEAKER_01
So there s so many failure modes, like this is boring.
1
SPEAKER_01
Or like you said, you re coming off as too much of an expert, you re not self-deprecating enough.
1
SPEAKER_01
There s just so many failure modes, and it s terrifying for people.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I feel like that s a skill you should learn, because,
1
SPEAKER_01
Most people, like at MIT, at university and so on, are doing a lot of awesome stuff.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you should show it off.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I feel like you figured out a really good process of showing it off.
1
SPEAKER_01
When you fail, when you succeed, all of it, not taking yourself too seriously, but also revealing through the humor and the self-deprecation a kind of genius, a kind of intelligence and curiosity.
1
SPEAKER_02
I just wanna snapshot that quote and put it on my LinkedIn profile.
1
SPEAKER_02
On the back of your book.
1
SPEAKER_01
On the back of my book.
1
SPEAKER_01
When is your autobiography coming out?
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, never.
1
SPEAKER_01
You don t wanna say that because like a year from now.
1
SPEAKER_02
Oh gosh, I don t wanna shit on autobiographies, no.
1
SPEAKER_02
No, no.
1
SPEAKER_02
But even just by saying that I m shitting on autobiographies.
1
SPEAKER_02
I just, me being interested enough in somebody to wanna read 600 pages about them talking about themselves,
1
SPEAKER_01
No, well, that s exactly the kind of person that should write one.
1
SPEAKER_02
But also, I m fucking 32 years old.
1
SPEAKER_02
What do I have to write about?
1
SPEAKER_02
Like, I went through puberty, I lost my virginity, and here we are.
1
SPEAKER_02
Like, I don t know.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s like such a... Three chapters.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s a coloring book.
1
SPEAKER_02
Chapter seven, I learned to tie my own shoelaces.
1
SPEAKER_01
I feel like it would be awesome.
1
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, what s the queen, so how did you achieve the status of royalty?
1
SPEAKER_01
The queen of shitty robots, what s the origin story there?
1
SPEAKER_02
I mean, I have officially renounced my title now.
1
SPEAKER_01
Can you still speak of the time when you led?
1
SPEAKER_02
I can still speak of the time.
1
SPEAKER_01
Your kingdom?
1
SPEAKER_02
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_02
No, I mean, it started on, because I- Did you rule by love or fear?
1
SPEAKER_02
by fear of rejection from me, that people would reject me.
1
SPEAKER_02
So I, yeah, I started making these little GIFs.
1
SPEAKER_02
Like my, the early projects that I did were very GIF forward.
1
SPEAKER_02
It was always like, I only did it because it could be translated into a GIF.
1
SPEAKER_01
give forward.
1
SPEAKER_01
I like it.
1
SPEAKER_02
But honestly, it was like, it s a really good mental exercise to vet if your project is easy enough to be explained by like a seven second looping video without audio.
1
SPEAKER_02
And
1
SPEAKER_02
Because nobody s going to care that it also has Bluetooth.
1
SPEAKER_02
Is it self-explanatory enough to be explained through a GIF?
1
SPEAKER_02
So, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Let me just pause.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m sorry to interrupt.
1
SPEAKER_01
No, go for it.
1
SPEAKER_01
I feel like all scientific papers and projects should go through that exercise.
1
SPEAKER_02
Can it be explained as a GIF?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, actually DeepMind does a good job of this.
1
SPEAKER_01
We ve solved protein folding.
1
SPEAKER_01
Here s a GIF.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s literally what they do.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because who s gonna read the nature paper?
1
SPEAKER_01
So you have to, how do we communicate this visually?
1
SPEAKER_01
in a sexy, clean way where people can intuitively understand even if you don t know what a protein is, even if you don t know what protein folding is.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s a cool exercise.
1
SPEAKER_02
No, it s very like, yeah, if somebody comes out of context, and that s been really interesting also, like, building this product business and trying to do the marketing around that, and I m like, if somebody comes in and they have no idea about what this product is, will they get it explained to them in this ad?
1
SPEAKER_02
And I don t know.
1
SPEAKER_02
But it s definitely a worthwhile exercise to do.
1
SPEAKER_02
So I started making these projects that got translated into GIFs, and I posted them on slash r slash shitty robots on Reddit.
1
SPEAKER_01
So that s how Reddit existed?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I loved it, I thought it was really fun, and I was like, I wanna contribute with content here.
1
SPEAKER_02
I don t, I mean, I don t know.
1
SPEAKER_02
I was voted, I think I was voted top user 2015, so yeah, that s an old merit.
1
SPEAKER_01
Once you win a Nobel Prize, you always have the Nobel Prize.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so what was the first, do you remember the early GIFs that you created?
1
SPEAKER_02
So this is when I was at Punch Through Design in San Francisco.
1
SPEAKER_02
I was kind of building a lot of hardware projects for them, but I also felt, and they were so supportive of me, but I also, it s such a different way representing a brand versus representing yourself.
1
SPEAKER_02
So there were some projects that I just like ruled out because I was like, this feels too weird for this brand.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I started building them on the side.
1
SPEAKER_02
One of them was a toothbrush helmet.
1
SPEAKER_02
And yeah, so it s like a skateboard helmet with a robot arm on the forehead, kind of like a unicorn horn.
1
SPEAKER_02
And it brushes your teeth for you.
1
SPEAKER_01
Was that the first YouTube video you uploaded?
1
SPEAKER_02
It was the first GIF that I uploaded.
1
SPEAKER_02
So actually I wanted to, um,
1
SPEAKER_02
I wanted to do a kid s show about electronics in Sweden because I was like, I love electronics.
1
SPEAKER_02
I think it s fucking dope.
1
SPEAKER_02
I could do a kid s show about it.
1
SPEAKER_02
So I filmed this terrible, terrible pilot episode in my bedroom in San Francisco.
1
SPEAKER_02
And that s when I built the toothbrush helmet and I emailed it to them.
1
SPEAKER_02
I mean, just cold email, like no in or anything, but I was like, hey, I want to do this.
1
SPEAKER_02
And they didn t get back to me.
1
SPEAKER_02
Nobody surprised.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I was like, well, I have this.
1
SPEAKER_02
thing I built I might as well post it on the internet.
1
SPEAKER_02
So that s why I made the little gif and I posted it on slash r slash shitty robots and I think it got like 50,000 views and I was like wow.
1
SPEAKER_02
And from there I just kept on building things and I think within six months it was my full time job.
1
SPEAKER_01
Can you go through the detailed design of this toothbrush helmet?
1
SPEAKER_01
There s a motor, it s like a servo, like what s the motor, what s the, is an Arduino involved?
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so I built it off of this robot arm called MiArm.
1
SPEAKER_02
So it s just this acrylic robot arm.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I think it has three servo motors, and it s all controlled by an Arduino, all the electronics.
1
SPEAKER_01
So the arm is already pre-built?
1
SPEAKER_02
It was a kit, so I assembled it.
1
SPEAKER_02
How do you make sure the length of the arm is the proper... I mean, the arm came down, so it s like, I mean, I just programmed it to come down to my mouth and then poorly brush my front teeth.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it was just swung back and forth.
1
SPEAKER_02
I mean... Trial and error is how I do that.
1
SPEAKER_01
Trial and error.
1
SPEAKER_01
What was the challenges of that?
1
SPEAKER_01
Do you remember, or was that one not much of a struggle?
1
SPEAKER_02
No, it was definitely a struggle.
1
SPEAKER_01
So how do you loop it with a nice GIF?
1
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it loops fine.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it looks pretty fine.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s not that hard?
1
SPEAKER_02
No, I mean, it doesn t have to be perfect.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s a GIF, it s the internet.
1
SPEAKER_02
Things are shitty all the time.
1
SPEAKER_02
I think, I mean, I think the biggest struggle of that was that I had this intention for it to be this show and then them not giving, yeah, giving back.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I was like, well, if they don t want it, then maybe YouTube will have me.
1
SPEAKER_01
They don t notice my genius yet.
1
SPEAKER_01
What was so bad about the pilot?
1
SPEAKER_01
Do you remember?
1
SPEAKER_01
What s like the most embarrassing?
1
SPEAKER_02
Oh, it s just so cringy.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it s thankfully not on the internet, so nobody can find it.
1
SPEAKER_02
But it s very much me being in what I called host mode, which is where I m like, okay, so what we re going to learn today is that we re going to look at this.
1
SPEAKER_02
This is something called a servo motor, and it s like the intonation
2
SPEAKER_01
and everything is really different.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I m actually, I mean, thinking back of that, I m so happy that they didn t get back to me because it s such a different thing to kind of start your career in your living room, running back and forth to the camera and like filming something and looking at it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And like, I got to really find my own voice in a different way.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then like a year later,
2
SPEAKER_01
they offered me a show, but then I was so off and running, I was like, no, I don t want to do this.
2
SPEAKER_00
You didn t fall into that place of being like a actor, like a YouTuber, where you re presenting a kind of personality.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re more focused on the product you re creating.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I think it s the combination
2
SPEAKER_01
of it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I think of it as acting sometimes, but I only play the role of myself.
2
SPEAKER_01
But of course, it s like when you re shooting something for the seventh time, you have to be able to muster that enthusiasm.
2
SPEAKER_01
But no, it s not.
2
SPEAKER_01
I kind of think of everyday life me as a watered-down version of the YouTube version.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s like... That s a cheap knockoff.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the wish.com version.
2
SPEAKER_01
No, it s just like add a few parts water and you have me.
2
SPEAKER_01
But like on YouTube, it s just so condensed because you have jump cuts and you know, like, I ll script jokes and make sure that everything lands and there s music and stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then like in real life, you don t have any of that, but it s still me.
2
SPEAKER_00
What are some other cool robots in the early days that stand out to you?
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s a million we can go through, but maybe what was like a challenging one, like a really challenging one in the early days?
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I remember the breakfast robot, which was my second project, was a challenging one.
2
SPEAKER_00
Was it eating cereal?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s a robot that, like, pours milk and cereal and feeds me with a spoon.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was mostly challenging because it was so, like, everything had to be in the right location and there were so many takes before I got everything right.
2
SPEAKER_01
And by right, I mean it makes an absolute mess.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that one was challenging.
2
SPEAKER_00
How many takes was that one?
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, probably 12, 10, something.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s just a mess everywhere.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a mess, and also I use Cheerios for the cereals.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s shot in my old bedroom in San Francisco, and the floors were sticky for weeks afterwards.
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you think this goes into your autobiography?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s nice.
2
SPEAKER_00
This is chapter two.
2
SPEAKER_01
I wish we could just type out this podcast and I ll release it as a, my manager would be stoked.
2
SPEAKER_00
We ll fix it in post.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the feed, because you have like a couple of feeding ones, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
The soup, isn t there a soup one?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there s a soup robot.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s a beer pouring robot.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that s awesome.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s a difficult robotics problem.
2
SPEAKER_00
in the shitty and the perfect version of having an arm that interacts intimately with a human being.
2
SPEAKER_00
And one of the most intimate things you could do with a human being, that s PG, is to feed it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was like, don t go there.
2
SPEAKER_00
Where is he going with this?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God, he s a YouTube comment come live.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, damn it.
2
SPEAKER_00
To me, feeding is tricky.
2
SPEAKER_00
Or even like getting a beer, even pouring a beer is tough until glass.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s trickier than anyone who hasn t tried it thinks.
2
SPEAKER_01
And even making it, I think what I realized is that like,
2
SPEAKER_01
making things really shitty or failing in a spectacular way is also its own sort of skill.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because the shittiest robot is the one that doesn t turn on.
2
SPEAKER_01
But that isn t much to watch.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it was always wanting for it to fail in these kind of spectacular ways.
2
SPEAKER_01
No, there s a lot of stuff to be said about engineering in it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is there something to be said on a philosophical level about the value of a flawed robot?
2
SPEAKER_00
So like,
2
SPEAKER_00
the kind of robots you want is to be partially flawed.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, do you think the kind of robots we ll have in the home that are friends and, you know, almost like pets, wouldn t they need to be kind of shitty?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because we can love the, somehow we humans love the shitty.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it is kind of endearing because I think it kind of, I m gonna mess up this word, anthropomorphizes them.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think it s, I mean, I never feel as deeply connected to my Roomba as when it s like, I m on a cliff.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m like, babe.
2
SPEAKER_00
Have you had Roombas talk?
2
SPEAKER_00
No.
2
SPEAKER_00
I really, yeah, I ve done that a lot.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
When they talk to you.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it immediately anthropomorphizes them.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you have, if they have a name, which is why most roboticists don t give names or gender to robots, because you become connected to them.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m of the opposite mind.
2
SPEAKER_00
You should have like an intimate relationship sounds weird, but you should have a close connection to robots.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s power in that.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s a social element to robotics, even an arm.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s something about us humans that gains so much value from our interaction with dynamic objects.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we should lean into that as opposed to run away from it.
2
SPEAKER_00
That was always the confusing thing to me about robotics, is that most roboticists run away from that.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s weird.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because it s obviously gonna be, robots are obviously going to be everywhere.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it s also humans are sensitive and squishy, and there s so much liability.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but humans are sensitive and squishy when they interact with each other and they hurt each other all the time.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like sometimes they get together and they re like, oh, you re the best.
2
SPEAKER_00
No, you re the best.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then they leave each other and then they break each other s hearts.
2
SPEAKER_01
Sorry about your breakup.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m just trying to get over this.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m actually drunk for this interview.
2
SPEAKER_00
I haven t been able to sleep for nights.
2
SPEAKER_00
Have you slept all night?
2
SPEAKER_01
I have not.
2
SPEAKER_00
from a safety protocol perspective, people think about physical damage, not emotional damage.
2
SPEAKER_00
I know this sounds ridiculous.
2
SPEAKER_00
I know this sounds ridiculous, but it won t be.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s already happening.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s an app called Replica, where people have an intimate relationship with an AI chatbot, and they hurt themselves.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was thinking about this.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_01
Dating?
2
SPEAKER_01
What if you, because you can train like a chat bot to kind of mimic the way that you talk to people and interact with people.
2
SPEAKER_00
Go on.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
But then I m like, okay, but what if we could all make AI versions of ourselves and have them date like thousands and thousands of other AI people and have that as a way to turn out potential candidates?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, I feel like that s going to be, what s the
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
No, but what s the point of meeting 20 people if you re like, oh, but if we just had our AI versions of ourselves interact, they d be like, oh, your method of conflict is not gonna match.
2
SPEAKER_00
What if the AI version of you sleeps around with all the other AIs and becomes famous for that, and it starts its own OnlyFans, and you re like, what did you do?
2
SPEAKER_00
You come back home, you d realize like, I didn t want anything.
2
SPEAKER_01
I created a monster.
2
SPEAKER_00
I created a monster.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, do I get a cut?
2
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s the question I d be asking.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I think it s definitely like, yeah, the human technology interaction is really interesting because I feel like I don t love any of the machines that I have in my life.
2
SPEAKER_00
Really?
2
SPEAKER_00
You haven t...
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I don t love my phone.
2
SPEAKER_01
I touch it all the time and it s there and it s like constantly, it s a constant presence, but there s nothing in me that feels like, oh, I love this object.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like I kind of despise it.
2
SPEAKER_00
That might be the way you show love, I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s deeper, that s another psychoanalysis thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you don t, there s not robots whom you ve taken apart that you miss?
2
SPEAKER_01
No, they re all terrible.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I have objects that I built that I love.
2
SPEAKER_01
None of the robots, I think, but that s also because that was a different era where I wasn t really putting a lot of care into the projects I built.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the more care you put into the design to actually make it look, to make it functional and look good, that s where you put the love in.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean it is, it s like, I feel like any technology company that figures out a way to get you to actually genuinely love your Roomba, or like love it in the way that you would love a pet, there s a lot to be gained.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I think it s scary, depending on who the company is, because then they can manipulate you.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you love your Roomba, and all of a sudden your Roomba starts telling you to buy stuff, or it s leaving.
2
SPEAKER_01
To put lotion on Jeff Bezos s head.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don t know where the lotion came in, but yes, maybe buy certain things.
2
SPEAKER_01
I just imagine my Amazon Echo being like, hey, Jeff Bezos is really a great guy.
2
SPEAKER_00
But even though you haven t, do you think it s possible to fall in love with a robot?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, people fall in love with things all the time.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, people have fallen in love with your shitty robots, probably.
2
SPEAKER_00
I guarantee you there s people listening to this that are a little bit heartbroken saying that you ve never fallen in love with your shitty robot.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re like, but I had a really emotional connection to that robot.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like the one with the parent, Patsy on the back.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that one.
2
SPEAKER_01
That one I do like.
2
SPEAKER_01
I like that one a lot.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s probably my favorite shitty robot.
2
SPEAKER_00
Can you explain it?
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s a machine, it was my friend Daniel Beauchamp and I, we had this long running joke about a proud parent machine that you could give a quarter and it pats you on the shoulder and says, proud of you.
2
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, I still have that hanging on my wall in my workshop.
2
SPEAKER_01
So that one I m really happy with.
2
SPEAKER_01
I just think it s a really funny concept and also I executed the build well, so that was,
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s an arm?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like what s the build?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I built it off of an old lamp arm.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, basically it s just a motorized arm and this kind of torso of a person.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s actually a hand, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Am I remembering it correctly?
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like a laser cut, it s just laser cut plywood and it kind of has like, it looks creepy, which I like.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the creepy helps with the...
2
SPEAKER_01
And yeah, it says, proud of you, son.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because I just thought that sounded more funny than proud of you, daughter.
2
SPEAKER_01
And also, proud of you, son, just, it immediately communicates that it s a parent.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s not just like a colleague or something.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like, proud of you.
2
SPEAKER_01
It charges you a quarter for it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but he added like chat GPT on top of that and fine tune it on conversations you ve had with your parents.
2
SPEAKER_00
And all of a sudden you have a thing that can fundamentally transform your psyche.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s all it takes.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s a beautiful creation.
2
SPEAKER_00
How d you come up with that creation?
2
SPEAKER_01
That was my friend Daniel and I who had a long running joke about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
High level, can you speak to your creative process?
2
SPEAKER_01
I think a lot of it, I mean, it s changed.
2
SPEAKER_00
For the shitty robot, so it s actually separated.
2
SPEAKER_01
For the shitty robot, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it has a lot of overlap.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s identifying everyday problems.
2
SPEAKER_01
And in the shitty robot era, I would kind of take an everyday problem, like, oh, I have a hard time getting up in the morning, and I would solve it in the most ridiculous, spectacular way I could think of.
2
SPEAKER_01
So for waking up in the morning, it was having an alarm clock that slaps me in the face with a rubber hand.
2
SPEAKER_01
And what I m doing now is still identifying everyday problems, but I m actually trying to product design my way out of it.
2
SPEAKER_00
What, in your experience, was the funniest thing?
2
SPEAKER_00
Is it violence, like the hand slapping you?
2
SPEAKER_00
Food eating?
2
SPEAKER_01
Or is it just a case of... I think the funniest is... No, I think it s more like the proud parent machine.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s not violent.
2
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t... There s no... Nothing is just emotional and it s kind of...
2
SPEAKER_01
a commentary on this fraught relationship that we sometimes have with our parents and they re proud of us.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes, every time.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes.
2
SPEAKER_01
My dad visited last week and he was like, I just wanna say I m so proud of you and for the life you ve built for yourself.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that was really sweet.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ll put that on the back of my autobiography, too.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s not your fault, Simone.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s not your fault.
2
SPEAKER_01
Some stuff is my fault.
2
SPEAKER_00
What was the longest one to complete for the Shady Robots that you remember?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because you spent, on a few of them, you spent quite a long time.
2
SPEAKER_00
Which is also inspiring when you take so long on a project.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think kind of in the more like fun, whimsical department rather than shitty robots, I built recently this music box.
2
SPEAKER_01
So like a small music box that kind of has a barrel with little spikes and it plays a song.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I did a large version of that that pops a sheet of bubble wrap and then like plays tones into a pan flute.
2
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, you can actually program it to play different songs.
2
SPEAKER_01
That one kicked my butt in so many creative ways and it was such a pain.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think that is probably the weird, funny project that s taken me the longest and the biggest engineering effort.
2
SPEAKER_00
Where s the sound coming from?
2
SPEAKER_01
It all came from me realizing that if you pop bubble wrap and you pop it right in front of the opening of a pamphlet or one of the pipes, you can have it play different tones.
2
SPEAKER_01
So that s what it does.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I built this music instrument off of that.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_00
If it s okay, can you describe some, like how it works?
2
SPEAKER_00
Some of the technical details here?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
So basically, I mean, one of the big issues that I had, so I worked with, as of a year and a half back, I hired an engineer, Stu.
2
SPEAKER_01
So we were collaborating on it.
2
SPEAKER_01
But a big issue that we had was feeding in the bubble wrap.
2
SPEAKER_01
sheet and making sure that it feeds in straight and doesn t get skewed because you need to make the popping feet, which is where you program this barrel to pop different bubbles, need to be so perfectly aligned on the bubble of the bubble wrap for it to pop in the right location.
2
SPEAKER_00
So there s a feeder for the bubble wrap, that s a challenge, and then you have to have a barrel with the little baby feet on it that pops the bubble wrap.
2
SPEAKER_00
Why is it so exciting?
2
SPEAKER_01
Making that barrel was a pain as well.
2
SPEAKER_01
I had to get this rotary setup for my CNC, and yeah, it was a lot of work.
2
SPEAKER_01
But that was really fun, and it s just like,
2
SPEAKER_01
This is probably my favorite privilege of my job is that I can go down any rabbit hole I think find interesting.
2
SPEAKER_00
Did you have a lot of joy from popping the…
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s fun.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s a lot of self-soothing.
2
SPEAKER_01
And like I got to spend, I think I spent a week trying to figure out the best material to pop bubble wrap with.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because if you have two, if you kind of put them two through, or through, if you put a sheet of bubble wrap through two rigid tubes, the air kind of just escapes from one side of the bubble into the other.
2
SPEAKER_01
So what I realized was that if you have a squishy material, like kind of a yoga mat material,
2
SPEAKER_01
In between it, it actually, it prevents that and pops it a lot more reliably.
2
SPEAKER_01
But like increasing the pop reliability was a huge effort as well.
2
SPEAKER_00
You have to pop a squishy thing with another squishy thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because you don t need a lot of force.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like you just need it to not, the air to not be able to escape anywhere.
2
SPEAKER_01
But then also we had, there was different qualities of bubble wrap where there was a lot of transference between different bubbles.
2
SPEAKER_01
So instead of the bubble popping, it would just seep the air into a neighboring bubble and that like membrane would kind of, so, you know, I just like getting to spend weeks on weeks of just studying bubble wrap.
2
SPEAKER_00
Did you ever think about like publishing academic work on bubble wrap?
2
SPEAKER_01
No.
2
SPEAKER_00
Wouldn t that be epic?
2
SPEAKER_00
Nobody s done this.
2
SPEAKER_00
I bet you nobody s done squishing material, squishy versus squishy for popping.
2
SPEAKER_01
I bet somebody has.
2
SPEAKER_01
But you know, I thought I was gonna go into academia.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was such an ambitious student.
2
SPEAKER_01
I loved school.
2
SPEAKER_01
I actually applied to MIT, but then I pulled out, because I was like, no, I don t wanna do it.
2
SPEAKER_01
But now I realize it s really good that I didn t, because I m too much of a spaz.
2
SPEAKER_00
too much of this past, now I m distracted, I m thinking, there must be papers about when you have two bubbles, yeah, you need to know the physics of two bubbles, when you have two bubbles colliding, one will pop first, and there has to be good models of that, but that s very, that has to do with chemistry and whatever the,
3
SPEAKER_00
about the material the bubble s made from.
3
SPEAKER_00
But then, no, there s materials in here.
3
SPEAKER_00
Somebody must understand bubble wrap deeply, like deeply.
3
SPEAKER_03
So I m just gonna take a quick restroom break because Lex is on his own train now, and I m just gonna leave you to talk about bubble.
3
SPEAKER_01
Actually, don t need to go to the restroom.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m going to insert like a two-hour instructional here with like a blackboard.
3
SPEAKER_03
It s the skill of a podcaster.
3
SPEAKER_03
I feel like I could throw you any topic and you could just go on about it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if I have that skill.
3
SPEAKER_00
I just love bubble wrap.
3
SPEAKER_00
Bubble on bubble interaction.
3
SPEAKER_00
Go.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you did mention at MIT, you went to college for physics for one year and you dropped out.
3
SPEAKER_00
What do you learn from that?
3
SPEAKER_00
Who do you think should and shouldn t go to college?
3
SPEAKER_03
I think first of all, you shouldn t listen to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
That should be the name of your autobiography.
3
SPEAKER_03
First of all, you shouldn t listen to me.
3
SPEAKER_03
You know, I realized that I was there for the wrong reasons.
3
SPEAKER_03
I had this deep, I got completely like starting to get grades in school, which in Sweden at that time, we started getting it at eighth grade.
3
SPEAKER_03
So when I was 14, it just kind of hijacked my brain because I realized that I could put a number on how smart I was and I got obsessed with it.
3
SPEAKER_03
And I wanted to study mechanical engineering because I was like, I like machines.
3
SPEAKER_03
But then physics was kind of the hardest thing you could do when I had this like deep need to prove to myself that I was smart.
3
SPEAKER_03
So I started studying physics, realized I wasn t that smart.
3
SPEAKER_03
I realized, or I mean, just mostly that I like, I love math, but I don t love math 10
3
SPEAKER_03
hours a day.
3
SPEAKER_03
And also, I think I am a generalist through and through.
3
SPEAKER_03
decent at a fair amount of things, but definitely not a specialist in any ways.
3
SPEAKER_03
And it was such a specialist type of area that I felt like the other parts of my brain kind of just dwindled and died.
3
SPEAKER_03
So I think most of all, if people are thinking about going to college, and especially if you re here in the States and it s so fucking expensive, really
3
SPEAKER_03
Okay, there s two things I want to do.
3
SPEAKER_03
One is actually go to a workplace where people are doing the job that you think you want to do if you want to become a doctor.
3
SPEAKER_03
Be at a hospital and try to see how doctors work and if you actually like it, because I feel like people have a lot of ideas of what it s going to be like and it just doesn t match with reality.
3
SPEAKER_03
And then I think when people figure out what they want to do, there s kind of
3
SPEAKER_03
That s two separate questions, or there s two questions that you can split out of that.
3
SPEAKER_03
One is like, what do you actually want to do?
3
SPEAKER_03
That for me, for the last 10 years, is building stuff.
3
SPEAKER_03
But then there s a second part to that question, which is what context do you want to do that?
3
SPEAKER_03
Do you want to build stuff at a startup or at a big corporation?
3
SPEAKER_03
Do you want to build stuff for an art gallery or for the movies or for YouTube?
3
SPEAKER_03
I think that s often like people only learn how to answer the first question, but then it s like the context means as much.
3
SPEAKER_03
Because I was building stuff at Punch Through Design and I wasn t getting that like deep fulfillment.
3
SPEAKER_03
Like I felt like I wasn t fully using myself and like hitting all of my gears because I just wasn t that motivated about building stuff for other people.
3
SPEAKER_03
And I changed the context and everything changed.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so sometimes you do need to consider a resume and stuff like that, depending on the, but I think people consider that way too much, especially in modern times.
3
SPEAKER_00
I feel like you don t need to go to college just for the resume.
3
SPEAKER_00
I feel like the biggest benefit of college, I mean, there s a bunch, but one is just to do hard things.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you could do hard things anywhere.
3
SPEAKER_00
But some people need to be, I was probably one of those people, to be forced to do hard things.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the other is to meet,
3
SPEAKER_00
fascinating humans from all walks of life, that have all kinds of different passions, and allows you to learn, depending on the major, you can learn generally.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you can search, if you re doing it efficiently, about what actually inspires you.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then the other thing is the resume thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
But ultimately, you don t need college to find your passion and to run with it.
3
SPEAKER_03
I mean, I have so much college FOMO, though.
3
SPEAKER_03
Like, I think it s, I chose a different set of experiences.
3
SPEAKER_03
And when I applied to MIT, I was, I think I was 24.
3
SPEAKER_03
because I was like, oh, maybe I should become an electrical engineer, because I really liked electronics.
3
SPEAKER_03
But then I remember seeing that the average age was 18, and I was like, oh, fuck no, I can t hang out, or be in a room filled with 18-year-olds who are smarter than me.
3
SPEAKER_03
So I think I definitely missed the train on having that experience, but at the same time, I did so many other things, and I chose other experiences, and I wouldn t trade them.
3
SPEAKER_03
But I still like, I mean, I ll go,
3
SPEAKER_03
to on a campus and I ll be like, oh.
3
SPEAKER_03
But I think it s also because I have a dreamy idea of what it is because I never had to do it in practice fully.
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s the foam wall.
3
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, a lot of people really struggle with that burden.
3
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t matter how long you go through, if you don t go all the way to the PhD, a lot of people have the FOMO.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a silly little notion, I think.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because I think you should be doing college or school until you find something that lights your heart aflame.
3
SPEAKER_00
where you re like, fuck yes, I wanna do this.
3
SPEAKER_00
And run with it.
3
SPEAKER_03
I mean, you can find that in other contexts as well.
3
SPEAKER_03
I ve found it.
3
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, definitely.
3
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, but it is a buffet of experiences that you can have.
3
SPEAKER_00
What about, what was the most fun robot to make?
3
SPEAKER_00
Or musical, artistic creation?
3
SPEAKER_00
Where the process was the most fun?
3
SPEAKER_03
Oh, they re all painful in different ways.
3
SPEAKER_00
So pain.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you find pain fun?
3
SPEAKER_03
No, but it s definitely the pride of me getting to pull something off or like managing to pull something off even when it was really difficult is very satisfying.
3
SPEAKER_00
What was the difficult thing that you pulled off?
3
SPEAKER_00
You were like, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is cool.
3
SPEAKER_03
I like working on jigsaw puzzles, but I don t like how much table space they take up because I just have one big table where I can do it.
3
SPEAKER_03
And that s also my dining table.
3
SPEAKER_03
So I made this mechanical table where you can switch between two tabletops.
3
SPEAKER_03
And that was an incredibly painful project.
3
SPEAKER_03
And I m really happy with the outcome and so proud that I managed to pull it off.
3
SPEAKER_00
How does it switch tabletops?
3
SPEAKER_03
It s a tambour mechanism.
3
SPEAKER_03
So like tambour like you ll have on like old record player.
3
SPEAKER_03
Like it s these like thin slats of wood with fabric on the back and you can kind of get them to go around curves.
3
SPEAKER_03
So basically one of the table tops or table surfaces is tambour and then there s a little crank and you can kind of roll it off to the side and it reveals another table top under it that you can lift up because it s on cams.
3
SPEAKER_03
so you can switch between the two.
3
SPEAKER_03
I think that one was both really difficult to pull off, and it s also one of few projects that I use in my everyday life.
3
SPEAKER_03
Like, I use it almost every day.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know what a really cool one was that was part of your TED Talk?
3
SPEAKER_00
Where there s a rotating thing that you wear on your shoulders.
3
SPEAKER_00
Was that hard to make?
3
SPEAKER_00
So for people who haven t seen your TED Talk, they should, of course.
3
SPEAKER_00
But it s, how would you describe that?
3
SPEAKER_03
Oh, they cut out the best joke.
3
SPEAKER_00
How would you call that device?
3
SPEAKER_03
I don t even know.
3
SPEAKER_03
I never used it beyond the TED Talk really.
3
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, but basically it s a shoulder rig and it has this like almost like Saturn ring looking platform that goes around.
3
SPEAKER_03
I can t even remember what
3
SPEAKER_03
the problem proposition was that I was trying to solve.
3
SPEAKER_00
Variety, probably.
3
SPEAKER_00
Introducing variety to your life.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, maybe.
3
SPEAKER_00
And an element of surprise, because you can put popcorn, as you did on it, and it goes around as a little hand.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why is it like a tiny hand funny?
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, but it just slams whatever is on that thing into your face.
3
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_03
I don t know.
3
SPEAKER_00
Was that easy to make?
3
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, that one was fine.
3
SPEAKER_03
I can.
3
SPEAKER_03
There was, I mean, my TED talk was so, yeah, for one, once again, they cut out my best joke.
3
SPEAKER_03
What was the best joke?
3
SPEAKER_03
My best joke, and they didn t even ask me about it.
3
SPEAKER_03
It was, so there s this whole lead up where I built a chopping machine, so it s a machine that chops vegetables, and it has two giant knives, and it goes dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, and it s kind of terrifying, and I show,
3
SPEAKER_03
a video of it, and then it ends on this gif of it chopping up a banana, and I m kind of scrunching up my face being like, ugh, ugh.
3
SPEAKER_03
And the whole reason I show that project is because I m leading it up to the punchline of, oh, and as a bonus, this gif right here is the perfect response if anyone ever sends you dick pics you don t want.
3
SPEAKER_02
which brought down the house.
3
SPEAKER_02
It does it every time.
3
SPEAKER_02
And they cut it out without asking me, because they were like, oh, but we wanted people to be able to show it in classrooms.
3
SPEAKER_03
And I was like, I have abandoned the hope of being shown in classrooms for years ago.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s a good joke.
3
SPEAKER_02
Thank you.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s a really good one.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re okay going sometimes a little bit edgy.
3
SPEAKER_03
I say that I m crude and wholesome because I can be very crude, but I also try really, really hard to be a good person.
3
SPEAKER_03
And to like, I ll say shit and fuck and all that stuff, which I don t even think is crude.
3
SPEAKER_03
But yeah, but I really, really try to wield the power that I have in a thoughtful way.
3
SPEAKER_03
So, no, I wouldn t call me edgy because I m not, I don t think it s edgy.
3
SPEAKER_03
It s all like sex and body stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
Chopping a banana with knives and saying it s a good gift response to anyone that sends you dick pics is definitely not edgy, you re correct, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_03
It s just a funny joke.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s pretty funny.
3
SPEAKER_00
I feel bad that Ted cut that.
3
SPEAKER_03
It s a decision that I made really early on where I was like, I think often people misinterpret what I m doing as being for children, which I think is part because my projects were always really colorful and fun.
3
SPEAKER_03
I think it also has some sprinkles of sexism of being like, oh, it s a woman doing something.
3
SPEAKER_03
She must be doing it for the children.
3
SPEAKER_03
Fuck the children, I m doing it for myself.
3
SPEAKER_03
So I think I was just really early on decided of like, oh no, I m not going to try to cater to that, which like still, I mean, I get a lot of messages from parents being like, can you please stop cussing in your videos?
3
SPEAKER_03
And I m also like, I get it, but also that is not what s going to mess up your kids.
3
SPEAKER_03
Like I really try to be thoughtful and a decent enough role model, but I ll also acknowledge that humans fuck.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
Somehow that you being able to say the F-U to the system.
3
SPEAKER_01
What word?
3
SPEAKER_01
Word?
3
SPEAKER_01
What?
3
SPEAKER_01
Do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I can t.
3
SPEAKER_01
I can t.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m scared.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
It sounds better when you say F-U.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a dance.
3
SPEAKER_00
I should, oh boy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Have you ever made a robot that dances with you?
3
SPEAKER_03
No.
3
SPEAKER_03
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_03
You need a task partner.
3
SPEAKER_03
I get lonely sometimes.
3
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I feel like that s the theme of this whole podcast.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_03
What s the most embarrassed you ve ever been on your podcast?
3
SPEAKER_00
So I don t know if you ve experienced this, but I m generally embarrassed by most things I say inside my head.
3
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
So like when I say something,
3
SPEAKER_00
Like now, it s just, there s a voice inside my head that goes, ugh.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like what?
3
SPEAKER_00
You re a disappointment.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like the parent petting in the back, the hand stops working.
3
SPEAKER_00
Just slows down.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then there s an awkward silence.
3
SPEAKER_00
You don t know what to say next.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s really embarrassing usually.
3
SPEAKER_03
So I used to work as a journalist, so I know how to sit with the silence and try to drag it out of you.
3
SPEAKER_00
See what I did there?
3
SPEAKER_02
You gave up!
3
SPEAKER_00
You pulled out!
3
SPEAKER_00
I quit.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was sweating.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was literally sweating.
3
SPEAKER_03
Also, because you re in a full fucking suit.
3
SPEAKER_03
What is that?
3
SPEAKER_03
Like, how did that come about?
3
SPEAKER_00
actually it was probably MIT, is because everybody was dressing in like sweatpants, the very chill wear.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, I like taking everything seriously.
3
SPEAKER_00
It just felt like a, it was my way of saying F you to the way things are.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because I like, I always admired Richard Feynman.
3
SPEAKER_00
I like it how there s like a classiness to it.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I don t know if it s for visual purposes, but it s just how I feel when I put on a suit.
3
SPEAKER_00
It makes me feel like I m gonna take this really, really seriously.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if I embarrass myself, it s all my fault.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s no excuse.
3
SPEAKER_00
I tried 100%.
3
SPEAKER_00
The interesting thing about your TED Talk, to go to a dark topic.
3
SPEAKER_03
Is it what happened when I walked off stage?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, what happened when you walked off stage?
3
SPEAKER_03
Found out that I had a brain tumor.
3
SPEAKER_03
Is that not where you re going?
3
SPEAKER_03
There s something else dark about my, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
I thought you knew through the TED Talk.
3
SPEAKER_00
You found out right after.
3
SPEAKER_03
I mean, the reason that I found out was partly because of the TED Talk, because my mom came into town to be there for it.
3
SPEAKER_03
And my right eyelid was swollen, and it had kind of been swelling over a while.
3
SPEAKER_03
And I even got in comments about it on my YouTube channel.
3
SPEAKER_03
And I thought it was allergies, because I was like, oh, it s just pollen allergies.
3
SPEAKER_03
It s just affecting my one eye, because maybe I sleep mostly on that side.
3
SPEAKER_03
I don t know.
3
SPEAKER_03
And my mom came into
3
SPEAKER_03
the States and then Vancouver for my TED Talk.
3
SPEAKER_03
And she was like, Simone, you have to have a scan or see what s up.
3
SPEAKER_03
We have to go to the doctor.
3
SPEAKER_03
And she really pushed me to do it because I was like, I m fine.
3
SPEAKER_03
And I had an MRI scan on like 5 p.m.
3
SPEAKER_03
on a Friday night.
3
SPEAKER_03
My boyfriend at the time was there and
3
SPEAKER_03
I remember like halfway through an MRI scan, they kind of pull you out and they inject contrast fluid or this like thing that, yeah, just gives them another type of scan.
3
SPEAKER_03
And the nurse looked at me in this way and was like, how long have you had symptoms for?
3
SPEAKER_03
And that s when I knew that they d found something.
3
SPEAKER_03
And then they like shove you back into the machine for another 20 minutes.
3
SPEAKER_03
And my ex was just seeing them zooming in and out of my scans.
3
SPEAKER_03
And there was this, obviously, something that just looked wrong in there.
3
SPEAKER_03
And they sent me to the ER, and I found out that I had a brain tumor the size of a golf ball that had probably been grown since I was a teenager.
3
SPEAKER_03
So it had been growing over 10, 15 years.
3
SPEAKER_03
And yeah, I had surgery to remove it.
3
SPEAKER_03
And then it kept on growing, the parts that they couldn t remove.
3
SPEAKER_03
And I went through radiation treatment.
3
SPEAKER_03
two years that just was kind of dedicated to just getting better and getting back to where I am now.
3
SPEAKER_03
And I remember, like, I was so stoked about 2020, because I was like, this is the first year that I m not held back by my health, and I m, like, finally going to be able to do everything unfeathered.
3
SPEAKER_03
And then the pandemic happens, and you re kind of just like, okay, just in the backseat of what s happening and things that are out of my control again.
3
SPEAKER_00
In your public, you made a couple of videos about it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I have a brain tumor, my brain tumor s back.
3
SPEAKER_00
You kind of, you know, you name your tumor Brian.
3
SPEAKER_00
You kind of make it a lighthearted thing, but so you don t reveal much of the darkness.
3
SPEAKER_00
But were you scared or were some low points?
3
SPEAKER_02
Of course I was, of course I was scared.
3
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it s terrifying.
3
SPEAKER_03
It s like,
3
SPEAKER_03
And also when it s in your brain, like, you know, I was like, take any other part of me, but don t take my brain.
4
SPEAKER_01
No, it s this unfathomable thing that happens and you re like, I m healthy.
4
SPEAKER_01
How could this possibly be a brain tumor?
4
SPEAKER_01
My eye is swollen.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s nothing there.
4
SPEAKER_01
I haven t had any seizures.
4
SPEAKER_01
I haven t had any cognitive issues.
4
SPEAKER_01
I haven t had any headaches even.
4
SPEAKER_01
How is that even possible?
4
SPEAKER_01
So you go through a lot of different stages of just trying to understand what it is.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think I remember
4
SPEAKER_01
being hit like right as I found out when we were in like an Uber, poor Uber driver, from where I had my MRI scan to the ER where they sent me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was really, both really grateful that I ve gotten so much more out of life than I ever thought I would.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like I ve had
4
SPEAKER_01
a hell of a life.
4
SPEAKER_01
And even if it would have ended really early, I would have done so much more than I ever thought.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I was also really, really sad that I hadn t had kids yet.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, that was my big grief of like, fuck, I haven t had time to have kids yet.
4
SPEAKER_01
But no, it s terrifying.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, the prospect of somebody cutting up your head, like, that s terrifying.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it honestly wasn t as bad as I thought it was going to be.
4
SPEAKER_00
What about the radiation treatment?
4
SPEAKER_00
What are some things that, you know, people should, you learned about it, about the process and about yourself through that, that people might be interested about?
4
SPEAKER_01
I think surgery was both harder and easier than radiation treatment because, it was harder because it was so much more intense and it s such a dramatic thing, like going to the hospital that morning and being like,
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, and you feel so awful when you wake up.
4
SPEAKER_01
But then the recovery from it was pretty linear.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like almost every week I would get a little bit better.
4
SPEAKER_01
The thing about radiation is that it was not linear at all.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it kind of drained me in this weird, like it was so hard to predict.
4
SPEAKER_01
And also they put me on these, I spent months feeling like I was high out of my mind.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I couldn t process reality in a way that I normally would.
4
SPEAKER_01
Everything just felt off.
4
SPEAKER_01
I felt like I was high on drugs.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I kept on asking my doctors what was going on.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they re like, no, I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t think it s anything related.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was on this Alzheimer s medicine that they put you on to prevent dementia from radiation treatment, like kind of as a preventative.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I found all these subreddits of people using that Alzheimer s medicine to get high.
4
SPEAKER_01
And people be like, Oh my God, bro, I was like 20 milligrams yesterday and I was high out of my mind.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m on 30 milligrams a day.
4
SPEAKER_01
Of course it feels weird.
4
SPEAKER_01
That was honestly one of the scariest parts of it because that was the first time where I felt like it genuinely affected my way of processing reality.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I was so relieved when I found out that that was what was causing it because I felt like I was going crazy.
4
SPEAKER_01
But even after surgery, like I woke up and I felt like myself, like everything was, I got no brain injury.
4
SPEAKER_01
So obviously this is like my experience from somebody who came out of it pretty unscathed, who didn t get any brain injuries and didn t have to do any of that recovery.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s more just the recovery from like the physical act of somebody cutting your skull open and taking a large chunk out.
4
SPEAKER_00
Did you research all the things that can go wrong during surgery?
4
SPEAKER_01
No.
4
SPEAKER_01
Honestly, I m a bit surprised by how I acted.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just pausing for you to pour.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re welcome, editors.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is like a commercial.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is like work injury from being a YouTuber.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s all like freeze if there s audio that comes in.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, sponsored by tap water.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was surprised by how little I was willing to think critically about what my doctors told me to do.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like I very early on, the neurologist that I worked with, he was the one who was on call at the ER the day where I came in.
4
SPEAKER_01
And he was the one who ended up doing my surgery and he kind of became like my rock in this and I just 100% trusted him.
4
SPEAKER_01
And he turned out to be an amazing doctor and like did a great job and was just like,
4
SPEAKER_01
I got so, so lucky.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I remember my mom being like, oh, but we should talk about second opinions and we should try to do more research.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was so unwilling to do that because opening up to the idea that there are multiple ways or multiple things that might be right or wrong was so terrifying.
4
SPEAKER_01
I wanted there to just be like, no, this is the only option.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is what we need to do.
4
SPEAKER_01
And if I started questioning that, then I don t know if I would have been able to go through with it.
4
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, it was a strange, I just really wanted to trust the doctors that I worked with.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was very scared to question them in any way.
4
SPEAKER_00
How did that process change your relationship with death?
4
SPEAKER_00
Are you afraid of death?
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you ponder your mortality?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think it took away a part of youth for me.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like the innocence?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, you kind of think of terrible things as something that happens to other people, and death and illness.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I think it kind of fast-tracked that for me.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it mostly changed my relationship to life.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s made me so much more gentle with myself.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, going through illness,
4
SPEAKER_01
It forces you to redefine what it means to be good.
4
SPEAKER_01
And before, being good had been pushing myself really hard and had been working.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, just being really hard with myself and disciplined.
4
SPEAKER_01
And when you re healing from something, being good is listening to your body.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s resting.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s like really being in tuned with what your health, where your health is at.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think that is something that s kind of stuck with me since then.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m like so much more gentle and delicate with myself.
4
SPEAKER_00
And with others?
4
SPEAKER_01
I think it definitely, it s like when you re young and healthy, it s really hard to know what it feels like to be ill.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I remember
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, you go to yoga class and you d be like, oh, my God, this is too slow.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have so much more energy.
4
SPEAKER_01
And when I was recovering from my brain surgery, there was this yoga studio nearby my house, and they had yoga for seniors.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was so stoked because I was like, oh, this is the yoga class I ll be able to take.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think that was really eye-opening of just like, there s no, you kind of imagine that it s just like, oh, just push yourself harder, but no, that s not it.
4
SPEAKER_01
With age or sickness or it s just, you gotta be so gentle with yourself and you have to cater to people where they re at.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and just the appreciation of this like biological vehicle you get and you should take care of it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Being sick sucks.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s awful.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I m really motivated to...
4
SPEAKER_01
postpone that for as much as I can.
4
SPEAKER_01
And also, I was so tremendously grateful when I got ill that I felt like I had so much to take from.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had so many energy reservoirs.
4
SPEAKER_01
I d spent my life taking pretty decent care of my body and exercising and eating well and not wrecking my body in any way.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I felt like this was the first time where that was so critical, and I felt like my body was ready for it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I thought you were gonna go the other way, like you can take care of your body all you want, bad stuff happens, so you should go on drug binges and go wild and do crazy things.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I also had that thought where I was like, I fucking floss every day, how do I have a brain tumor?
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve been good, like why does this happen to me?
4
SPEAKER_01
But more so, it was like my body was so resilient and ready for it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was really, really proud of it.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s amazing that the human body is able to recover from even the harshest things.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s wild.
4
SPEAKER_01
And my brain, so after surgery, because yeah, I had a brain tumor the size of a golf ball, kind of behind my right eye.
4
SPEAKER_01
And after brain surgery, you kind of just have this big hole in your head, like this void.
4
SPEAKER_01
And
4
SPEAKER_01
usually your brain stays that way, like it retains the shape even after the brain tumor is gone.
4
SPEAKER_01
But for some reason, my brain was feeling really ambitious and it has completely flopped back.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I have almost like a normal looking brain now, where doctors are like, oh, we would almost not be able to tell that you had one.
4
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, that just blew my mind.
4
SPEAKER_01
I d be like, when did it, was that why I had all those headaches after surgery?
4
SPEAKER_01
It s just my brain being like,
4
SPEAKER_01
Try working, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, pretty cool thing I wanted to ask you about is the everyday calendar that you worked on.
4
SPEAKER_00
That was a long time.
4
SPEAKER_00
That took a long time.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
So basically, I designed this calendar.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, I wanted to start meditating every day.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it s really hard to meditate every day and to, like, kind of build that habit.
4
SPEAKER_01
And what I would do is I would make these grids in my notebooks where I could, like, check a box for every day.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, I just wanted, like, a little ding.
4
SPEAKER_01
I did it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And, like, this thing of accountability.
4
SPEAKER_01
But then I was like, I don t wanna have a notebook that I do this in.
4
SPEAKER_01
I want an art piece that I can hang on my wall, like accountability art.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I made this thing called the Everyday Calendar, which has an entire year on it.
4
SPEAKER_01
So it s 365 days, and if you tap any of the days, you light it up.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we turned it into a Kickstarter campaign, and it s now a product that I m selling through my product business, The Etch Store.
4
SPEAKER_01
The Yacht Store.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that for people who are confused is the right way to pronounce your last name.
4
SPEAKER_01
Which it s right, but it s so wrong.
4
SPEAKER_01
It makes, my last name is spelled G-I-E-R-T-Z.
4
SPEAKER_00
Who does that song, if loving you is wrong, I don t want to be right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Pronouncing my last name, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s what, that s what it means.
4
SPEAKER_00
Cause what s his name?
4
SPEAKER_00
From the office, he covers it from the British office, which is the better office.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you said you created the everyday calendar to make a more beautiful, in quotes, and more sacred gold star system on a wall, not a notebook that gets thrown into a drawer.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well said past me.
4
SPEAKER_00
You said that making this calendar taught you a lot in quotes.
4
SPEAKER_00
I feel like a real investigative journalist.
4
SPEAKER_00
You ve said in 2018.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I m waiting for the gotcha.
4
SPEAKER_00
Can you share some of the lessons you ve learned?
4
SPEAKER_00
What do you mean you ve learned a lot from making this calendar?
4
SPEAKER_00
What are we talking about?
4
SPEAKER_01
As somebody who builds things, manufacturing something is such an unrelated process.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like making one of something and making 10,000s of something, like they re not even distant cousins.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like it s completely different beasts to tackle.
4
SPEAKER_01
And yeah, so that was one of it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Everything takes so much longer than you think it s going to.
4
SPEAKER_01
I did a Kickstarter campaign that we launched in 2018.
4
SPEAKER_01
After my surgery, and yeah, it s just, you know, you think you re so generous with the timelines.
4
SPEAKER_01
We still ended up being a year late, but we shipped.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re good.
4
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, I mean, I m trying to get my product business off the ground.
4
SPEAKER_01
We launched in May.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s just, yeah, it s just a pain.
4
SPEAKER_01
As somebody who s terrified of disappointing people, I m like, why have I chosen some of the jobs where it s the easiest to disappoint people?
4
SPEAKER_00
You can disappoint people at scale, no?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I can disappoint people at scale, and also them actually having paid me money to deliver on something, which is a terrible transaction.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m just stoked to realize that I love the job still.
4
SPEAKER_01
I love the product development aspect of it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I love trying to design stuff for manufacturing and figure it out and anticipate how people are going to use your products and the everyday calendar.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, we ve sold thousands of them now.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re all over the world.
4
SPEAKER_01
people actually finding something useful that I made and implementing them into their lives.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s just mind boggling.
4
SPEAKER_00
Especially because this is tracking habits, good habits.
4
SPEAKER_01
Or bad ones, you can do it however.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can use it however you want.
4
SPEAKER_00
I went in a drinking binge again today.
4
SPEAKER_00
Great success.
4
SPEAKER_01
Kicked another kid.
4
SPEAKER_00
What does it take to mass manufacture something?
4
SPEAKER_00
What did you learn about that?
4
SPEAKER_00
Can you like elucidate the gap between the one, the prototype versus the product development for mass manufacture?
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, for one of it is like, yeah, the manufacturing, the tooling that they use in manufacturing and to do things in a cost effective way is really different.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like I can make a one-off.
4
SPEAKER_01
then it s going to take me 17 hours.
4
SPEAKER_01
But obviously you can t spend 17 hours per calendar when you re doing something in factory.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think it s that like quality control is such a beast.
4
SPEAKER_01
You cannot trust
4
SPEAKER_01
anybody telling you that things are going to be okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
You have to have such trust issues.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s also terrifying.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, as somebody who s doing everything independently, I haven t raised any capital for it.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s all self-invested, and we re doing it all in-house.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s just, yeah, I could buy
4
SPEAKER_01
10,000 calendars, but then what if all of them have a manufacturing issue?
4
SPEAKER_01
It s just terrifying because the risks are so high.
4
SPEAKER_01
But also, I got to this point where, for one, this is something that I wanted to do for a long time.
4
SPEAKER_01
But something that going through health problems taught me is how fragile my business model is.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because, I mean, I m basically running an influencer business where
4
SPEAKER_01
I make videos on YouTube, and then I have an ad spot, and I talk about a brand.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I m a human billboard, which is fine.
4
SPEAKER_01
It grants me a lot of freedom to play around.
4
SPEAKER_01
But if I am not well enough to be on a stage giving talks or be in front of a camera, everything stops.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s such a pillar of a business, and it can topple over at any given moment.
4
SPEAKER_01
YouTube could change the algorithm.
4
SPEAKER_01
Legislation could catch up and change how you re able to advertise on the internet.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s so frail and I really felt like I need to diversify what I m doing and also just to keep it interesting for myself.
4
SPEAKER_01
So what I decided was to start a product business because also it s kind of this perfect combination of businesses where I can turn my YouTube channel into an R&D department because I have a reason to constantly be exploring things and churning out new products.
4
SPEAKER_01
I can also do that as early audience testing and see what people are actually excited about.
4
SPEAKER_01
And if there s something that I think would make an interesting product, I can pass that over to the product business.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then once I m ready to market that and sell it, I can pass it over to the YouTube channel.
4
SPEAKER_01
I can kind of, once I realized that YouTube didn t feel like an end goal for me, I was like, okay, then I can use it as a tool to accomplish these other things that I want to do, and this was one of them.
4
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, it s a lot that went into it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And one of the tools, like you said, is R&D, but it s also kind of advertisement for the cool stuff that you re doing.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think Mr. Beast is one of the creators that s also starting to understand this power.
4
SPEAKER_00
of this reputation that you ve built, of like people trust you, like they love you.
4
SPEAKER_00
to do cool stuff, they trust that you put your heart and soul into a thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
And they feel your pain and the struggle too.
4
SPEAKER_00
For example, say the everyday calendar, like there was issues in manufacturing or something like this.
4
SPEAKER_00
They would feel the pain of that and there was still support.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that s the beauty of it when you have the actual person right there struggling
5
SPEAKER_00
with their lows and highs.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s a decision that I made really early on where I was like, the Yetch store is supported by me, but it s separate from me.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s not merchandise.
5
SPEAKER_01
You don t have to know who I am or care about who I am to be interested in this product.
5
SPEAKER_01
And if you go on the website, yetch.store, plug,
5
SPEAKER_01
It s like if I m on the about page, y-e-t-c-h dot store, you have to go to the about page to find anything about me.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s definitely not like this is Simone s brand, and I think anybody who s followed me for a long time will see that my personality is sprinkled into it, but it s still clean off of me, and I think that s also because I wanted something that was separate from me.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m also running out of narcissism, believe it or not.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, I don t feel like I want to, I don t want it to be about me.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I want it to be something that can also run independently of me and doesn t, like, I want to be able to retire my face.
5
SPEAKER_01
And still do, like, the other stuff because I think it s fun, but I don t want that to be the core of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
What other kind of stuff have you worked on for the product design for Yech?
5
SPEAKER_01
So, I mean, a lot of the products, I decided to launch the store with a really small roster of products because developing products is such a, it s, it s such upfront heavy, like cost-wise and just investment in such a, it s very big upfront investment.
5
SPEAKER_01
So, and I know that it would take a while.
5
SPEAKER_01
Or I knew it would take a while for me to kind of find the right tonality and visual language for the brand.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I just wanted to launch it, have it be out there, start working on it, start like learning more about what it entails, even if we just had a small roster product.
5
SPEAKER_01
So we ve released it with, we have a puzzle.
5
SPEAKER_01
This is just a whim, but I wanted to release a puzzle that has one piece missing.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it s actually, as far as I can tell, it s the world s first officially incomplete puzzle.
5
SPEAKER_01
You get 499 out of 500 pieces.
5
SPEAKER_01
I keep the 500th piece.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I have a box in my workshop with everybody s missing pieces.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I don t know what to do with it yet, but someday it will come to me.
5
SPEAKER_00
Profound artistic statement.
5
SPEAKER_01
It is something.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s definitely something.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I m surprised by how many of them we ve sold, which I m also like, I kind of wanted to have that product product out there because I was like, Can you imagine having a pitch deck?
5
SPEAKER_01
If I do have a raise money of being like,
5
SPEAKER_01
You know how good I am at selling things?
5
SPEAKER_01
I sold people 5,000 incomplete puzzles.
5
SPEAKER_01
Also have, you know, it s like a lot of the products, I call them basket fillers.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like they re kind of just like stuff where I m like, yeah, this is like easy to throw into your basket.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, we have these rings, I m wearing them.
5
SPEAKER_01
So there s a screwdriver ring, which is a Phillips head screwdriver, and then a screw ring that kind of has a recess, like a Phillips head screw.
5
SPEAKER_01
I have these sawdust socks.
5
SPEAKER_01
that make you look like your feet are covered in sawdust, like you spent all day in the shop without having to put any of the actual effort in.
5
SPEAKER_01
But then we have four more products in the pipeline that we re working on and that are kind of the more, the big ambitious products that are more in line with what I want the brand to be.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like the tagline is unique solutions to everyday problems.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s just a lot of like trying to
5
SPEAKER_01
develop novel takes on existing products.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s something where the function becomes a bigger, bigger part of the design.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so what s the process of creating something like that, like even the everyday calendar?
5
SPEAKER_00
So what are some challenges that are interesting along the way?
5
SPEAKER_00
So do you have to sketch it out?
5
SPEAKER_00
Do you have to brainstorm, draw things out, and then create a schematic and see how, how do you know what it s going to look like visually?
5
SPEAKER_01
Don t.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s, I mean, I, so the everyday calendar, the first, so I just built it for myself first.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like that did not come as a, as a product idea first.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s kind of been the process that I ve had for a lot of things.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like I make it for myself and then I m like, oh, maybe other people would find this useful too.
5
SPEAKER_01
So the everyday calendar, the first prototype I made,
5
SPEAKER_01
It had actually physical mechanical toggle switches, so 365 toggle switches that you could flip.
5
SPEAKER_01
So if you worked out that day or meditated, for me it was meditating, you could just flip that switch.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that was great, but when I started evaluating it as a product, it s
5
SPEAKER_01
If you have 365 of something in a product, like the runaway cost is crazy.
5
SPEAKER_01
So the cheapest option, most reliable option we could find was capacitive touch.
5
SPEAKER_01
So basically it s a touch interface and the front plate is a circuit board itself.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it s this like circuit board that s designed in this really
5
SPEAKER_01
fancy way, so it looks like a beautiful piece of art.
5
SPEAKER_01
Not to do my own horn too much.
5
SPEAKER_01
But it s actually a circuit board, which I also thought was really interesting of like using this that people usually hide away in products.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it felt like a nod to my career in electronics as well, being like, no, let s make it pretty.
5
SPEAKER_01
Let s make it put it front and forward.
5
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, I mean, what I m realizing now more and more is like, there s so many of like, I would love to turn the puzzle table into a product.
5
SPEAKER_01
But then it s like, that would be a $7,000 table.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I don t wanna sell a table for $7,000.
5
SPEAKER_01
So you re kind of limited to the price bracket you re in.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s like, your margins are tough.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like maintaining your margins are really, really tough.
5
SPEAKER_01
And as somebody who s like, I would love to sell the stuff that we re doing cheaper, but it s just not feasible.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like you need those margins to survive.
5
SPEAKER_00
And- Well, one of the genius things in the conversations I ve had with Elon is the ability through sort of systematic
5
SPEAKER_00
questioning of how things have been done in the past to discuss what is the lowest cost way to solve a problem.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so he s very good at getting to, like with Optimus Robot, for example, the humanoid robot, how do you get the cost down?
5
SPEAKER_00
And that seems to be like one of the essential things to do in any product that you have to mass manufacture, is constantly discuss, like, how do we simplify, simplify?
5
SPEAKER_01
It s definitely a design limitation that s interesting.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s both hard and interesting to work within.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s such a different thing as well.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s like, I mean, as I talked about before, like, what is the context in which you re creating things?
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, I m still building things, I m still inventing things, but I changed the context and it has a very different set of limitations.
5
SPEAKER_01
And constantly trying to,
5
SPEAKER_01
simplify your product to make it cheaper.
5
SPEAKER_01
And yeah, it s a really interesting and different type of design process.
5
SPEAKER_00
You can lose some of the magic though, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Like people can do that a little bit too much.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think Apple is famous, like Johnny Ive is famous for sort of focusing on design first and not worrying about the cost later.
5
SPEAKER_00
Cause you don t want to sacrifice.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s some stuff that s going to cost more, but it keeps some of the magic.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think it s for some of the products that we re working on, it s like, I m like, let s just make it the best we think it can be.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then we can scale back from there.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, just like, let s not impose these limitations on ourselves up front.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, let s just make it the most beautiful version of itself.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then we can decide what we want to compromise with or compromise on.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s what I say every day when I look in the mirror.
5
SPEAKER_01
I just make the most beautiful.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then we can compromise, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you put on that suit.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and then see how shit goes wrong later.
5
SPEAKER_00
All right, back a little bit to the robots, or actually to one of your more epic projects.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, they re all epic, but Truckla.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
You cutting into a Tesla and turning into an epic truck.
5
SPEAKER_00
What was that like?
5
SPEAKER_00
Where did the idea come from?
5
SPEAKER_01
The idea came from that I really wanted an electric pickup truck.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like I ve only really driven electric because I got my driver s license pretty late and I m like one of that first generation drivers.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s like probably never going to have a gas vehicle.
5
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, this was in 2018 as well.
5
SPEAKER_01
2018 was a big year.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Or 2019.
5
SPEAKER_01
I can t remember.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I figured that we could just make our own.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you took a Tesla?
5
SPEAKER_01
Tesla Model 3.
5
SPEAKER_00
Model 3?
5
SPEAKER_01
Mm-hmm.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you cut off a piece of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Mm-hmm.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you turn it into a pickup truck.
5
SPEAKER_00
What s the... It looks pretty badass.
5
SPEAKER_00
So what are some of the challenges of doing that?
5
SPEAKER_00
It s unlike other projects you ve done.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s very much outside of my realm.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m not a car person.
5
SPEAKER_01
I haven t worked on cars before.
5
SPEAKER_01
So we brought in a big team and had another project manager for it and stuff.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because also, cars, you definitely don t want things to go wrong.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s no part of me that wants to fuck around and make something that s going to be really unsafe for me or for other people who are driving with me.
5
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, I mean, it was about a year of planning.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then we got the car, and then we spent a month just tearing it apart and trying to make it.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was so set, like, I really wanted the car just for its function.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was like, I m so fine with if it s really ugly.
5
SPEAKER_01
But then we managed to make it actually look really good.
5
SPEAKER_00
So that wasn t part of the discussion, how the final thing looks?
5
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t that fussed about it.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was like, I just want it for its function.
5
SPEAKER_01
I really want this car.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t want it because it looks cool.
5
SPEAKER_01
But then it ended up looking pretty cool as well.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, even now, a couple of years later, when there are some more options of electric pickup trucks, I still stand truck law.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like she s like Rivian, Ford F-150, like they re all great, but they re giant.
5
SPEAKER_00
You re sitting there on the porch in your cowboy hat.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Drinking whiskey and saying.
5
SPEAKER_01
With my cattle dog.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
And a shotgun saying.
5
SPEAKER_01
I want like a small 90s pickup truck.
5
SPEAKER_00
Back to shitty robots, you reused parts of previous robots a lot.
5
SPEAKER_00
What s a memorable example of that?
5
SPEAKER_00
Is it just the graveyard of parts in your workshop?
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I ve gotten better at keeping projects intact.
5
SPEAKER_01
In the beginning, I used to disassemble every project, because I was also on a much more stringent budget.
5
SPEAKER_01
So if I needed a motor, then I would steal it off of an existing robot or a previous robot.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I ve gotten really good at not doing that now.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because I m like, maybe one day I wanna have a museum exhibit, and then it would be nice to have all of those machines intact and not having to rebuild them.
5
SPEAKER_00
Centuries from now, you can look at Benjamin Franklin s house.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah, no, we re just gonna look at my house.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, just house.
5
SPEAKER_00
Just some weird shit.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that goes great with my idea of myself.
5
SPEAKER_00
with the autobiography, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
You said that people keep requesting in the comments.
5
SPEAKER_01
Did I put a dildo on it?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I have.
5
SPEAKER_01
Wait, was that actually what you were gonna ask?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I have dildo written in my notes.
5
SPEAKER_01
I thought I just made it into a raunchy punchline.
5
SPEAKER_00
Dildo.
5
SPEAKER_01
You were actually gonna get there.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that was in the early days, in the shitty robot days, but now I have.
5
SPEAKER_01
a filter on my YouTube channel for every possible spelling of dildo.
5
SPEAKER_00
So, I mean, people want to probably sexualize robots, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Or they put- They want to sexualize my relationship with them.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh.
5
SPEAKER_01
You know, because I have majority male followers, and they re so sweet and so respectful, 99%.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I realize there is a lot of
5
SPEAKER_01
I ve realized that society hasn t taught men how to have female role models.
5
SPEAKER_01
And the way that people channel it is through being like, oh, it s because I wanna fuck her, or I wanna date her, or I wanna marry her.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, I don t think you want any of those things.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think you actually just admire my work.
5
SPEAKER_01
But you don t know how to look up to a woman.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s beautifully put.
5
SPEAKER_00
What about weapons?
5
SPEAKER_00
Do you get requests to put weapons on a thing?
5
SPEAKER_01
It s interesting, I kind of started in robotics as just like a happy camper who is really into like tinkering.
5
SPEAKER_01
Now I m kind of seeing some of the darker parts of it.
5
SPEAKER_01
I remember first time I went to a proper factory and I saw like big industrial robot arms at work.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, oh wow, this is what it is about, you know?
5
SPEAKER_01
And it was almost scary where I was like, oh, I ve just been like playing around with these tiny versions of this.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, oh my God, everybody, robotics is cool and fun.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then you get in there and you re like, this is kind of terrifying.
5
SPEAKER_00
You were platforming
5
SPEAKER_00
the very things that will destroy human civilization.
5
SPEAKER_00
You re making it fun and entertaining.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m the mouthpiece, and I m getting people into robotics and engineering, and we re all just building our demise.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Accelerating speed.
5
SPEAKER_01
No, but I mean, I had that, and also with companies who are
5
SPEAKER_01
saying that they re never going to put weapons on their robots and then have military contracts and stuff like that.
5
SPEAKER_01
You re like, this is dark and scary.
5
SPEAKER_01
Fortunately, I haven t gotten a lot of requests for it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, drones are terrifying, especially.
5
SPEAKER_01
Drones are fucking terrifying.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s really,
5
SPEAKER_01
Everything, I mean, we humans are so good at creative ways of killing and fucking each other.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s like almost how everything goes.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s, yeah, I m terrified of the future where we are gonna use more robots to kill each other.
5
SPEAKER_00
And come up with new and new creative ways to kill and hurt each other.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Emotionally, psychologically, physically.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Speaking of which, what are your thoughts about, I don t know if you ve been paying attention, but Chad GPT, the advancement in language models and artificial intelligence.
5
SPEAKER_00
Have you added speaking capabilities to any of your devices?
5
SPEAKER_00
Have you played with it?
5
SPEAKER_01
I have Siri on, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
I used to have an Amazon Echo in my house, but then I removed it.
5
SPEAKER_01
It just freaked me out that I could whisper from my bed and it heard me.
5
SPEAKER_01
I d be like, Alexa, play Spotify.
5
SPEAKER_01
playing Spotify.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think it is a powerful tool that we are not fully ready for.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I don t know, I think the internet is kind of a parade of us using powerful things in harmful ways.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I think
5
SPEAKER_01
chatbots are really, really exciting.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m stoked to have a personal assistant that s like, or a virtual assistant that actually does a good job and can solve problems for me.
5
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, it also feels like it can get dark really, really quickly.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because you can form close connections like we re talking about with it, and then it can be used to manipulate you.
5
SPEAKER_00
Manipulate you in terms of what is true, and manipulate you in terms of getting you to buy stuff.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Or maybe because, at least for now, it s centralized, getting everybody to think the same way.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s the same in like algorithms being used to radicalize people or kind of having that as a consequence of the way that they work and combine that with a really advanced language model.
5
SPEAKER_01
And like you can control people s worldview in a way that you could, I mean, it s just, it s wild.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I think we re not ready for it.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I don t know if we ever would be because we re very impressionable little squishy flesh bags.
5
SPEAKER_00
which takes us back to when the squishy flash bags interact, which one pops first?
5
SPEAKER_00
It s the unbubble.
5
SPEAKER_00
We can cut to this.
5
SPEAKER_00
The bubble wrap.
5
SPEAKER_01
The bubble unbubble.
5
SPEAKER_01
New paper coming out like three minutes later.
5
SPEAKER_00
What were we talking about?
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, what about consciousness?
5
SPEAKER_00
So you never anthropomorphized the robots?
5
SPEAKER_00
Did they ever come to life for you?
5
SPEAKER_00
Where you kind of thought?
5
SPEAKER_01
No, because I built them and I know how they work.
5
SPEAKER_00
So that prevents you from being able to see the magic.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I think it s like, I definitely, when I did a lot of the shitty robot stuff, like I wanted them to move like a human or like in a more organic way and not just like point A to point B, which is the easiest way to program stuff.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I wanted other people to anthropomorphize them, but I don t think I did necessarily.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m trying to think of a piece of technology that I ve,
5
SPEAKER_01
of projected feelings upon me.
6
SPEAKER_00
But no, I can t.
6
SPEAKER_01
So sometimes what makes me anthropomorphize something, even though I built it, is there s an element of surprise.
6
SPEAKER_01
So especially with machine learning, you re surprised by the kind of things it does.
6
SPEAKER_01
Have you ever been surprised by a robot?
6
SPEAKER_00
No, because they re all pretty dumb.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like also the robots I built, it s like,
6
SPEAKER_00
they re all just servos moving from, I mean, they re, I don t think I ve built anything with a huge amount of sensors or like they re just moving in a pattern that I programmed them to move.
6
SPEAKER_01
What s the most complex thing you ve built?
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, probably truck cloud.
6
SPEAKER_00
Truck cloud.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, was complex just for the sheer scale of it and like the,
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think that was my biggest project, both in terms of build scope, but also in terms of impact that it had.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like that project just went wild.
6
SPEAKER_00
But then, yeah, then I don t know.
6
SPEAKER_00
The bubble wrap music box, I don t know.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re all complicated in different ways.
6
SPEAKER_01
That one is epic.
6
SPEAKER_01
How does the bubble wrap connect to the flute, by the way?
6
SPEAKER_01
How does that work?
6
SPEAKER_00
The flute is just right where, like mounted right where it pops it.
6
Okay.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
So fascinating, I gotta watch that video.
6
SPEAKER_01
Funny enough, in my deep investigative journalistic research of you, it says you used to be an MMA reporter.
6
SPEAKER_01
How did that happen?
6
SPEAKER_01
How did you get into it?
6
SPEAKER_00
I was really into martial arts.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was like a huge UFC buff.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, this is 2010, maybe?
6
SPEAKER_01
Did you practice martial arts yourself?
6
SPEAKER_00
I did, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was mostly stand-up.
6
SPEAKER_00
I did a lot of Muay Thai and then some Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and just, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was really, the thing is I get really intense about my hobbies and I was so into it.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was all in.
6
SPEAKER_00
Awesome.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I had worked a little bit as a journalist and I was like, oh, I should do MMA reporting.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I emailed this MMA website in Sweden.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was like, hey, can I come and write for you?
6
SPEAKER_00
And they were like, oh, actually, we re going to an event in Gothenburg tomorrow.
6
SPEAKER_00
Do you want to come?
6
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, wow, this is a lot.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s like 11 p.m.
6
SPEAKER_00
at night, but sure, I ll come.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I went there to their office.
6
SPEAKER_00
I d never really met them.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, this is kind of scary.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, I m a 20-year-old girl and going there with a group of men.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they were so rude.
6
SPEAKER_00
I went there and I was like, hey, what s up?
6
SPEAKER_00
And they were all kind of ignoring me and just like not looking at me or interacting with me until they realized that Simon was a girl, because we d only talked over email.
6
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And they re like, oh, this guy named Simon is going to come.
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And then they were like, oh, fuck, Simon.
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It s actually Simone.
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And it s a girl.
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So I kind of like slid into that in a very, very strange way.
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And I did that for a year.
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But then I got kicked out of an interview with Alexander Gustafsson.
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And I was like, your pronunciation is so good.
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And then I just kind of never went back and I was done with it.
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And now I m not allowed to do martial arts because of brain stuff.
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I ve kind of put all of that behind me.
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And it s interesting.
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It s like, I definitely see the athleticism in it and the skill that goes into it.
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I think as the older I get, the more concerned I am about the health impacts of the sport and of the people who are practicing it on an elite level.
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SPEAKER_00
And I m just not as, cannot as 100% just cheer as somebody beats somebody else up into a pulp.
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Yeah, especially considering the effects it might have on the brain.
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May I ask why you got kicked out?
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Is it the dust that s in the interview?
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Is anything fun?
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Is it embarrassing?
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What happened?
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No, it wasn t, I didn t, it was not, I didn t intend to get kicked out.
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I didn t realize I was gonna get kicked out.
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So it was, Alexander Gustavsson was gonna fight John Jones.
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And he had just, he was kind of like this golden boy in Sweden, and he had just come out to the press that he had actually been to jail for violent crimes.
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And all I wanted to ask, all I asked was, what was the reason that you wanted to bring that forward now?
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And apparently that was completely like blacklisted, but I hadn t gotten briefed about it at all.
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And the PR man, head of PR of the UFC was just yelling at me and they kicked me out of Grand Hotel in Stockholm.
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And I immediately called my mom and I was like, mom, you will not believe what just happened.
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I got kicked out of an interview at Grand Hotel.
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Because in the 90s, she got kicked out of an interview with Mel Gibson from the Grand Hotel.
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So that s like runs in the family.
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So I was just like, yeah, no, it s just this weird generational skip where we both got kicked out of interviews at the same hotel.
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You spent quite a bit of time in China as a student.
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Is there something you could speak to the differences and culturally, maybe even from like a student in engineering perspective between China and US, maybe even Sweden?
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Those are like technologically speaking just such fundamentally different places.
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I mean, I moved to China when I was 16, and I went there as an exchange student, so that is before I had ever touched upon those things.
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And then I went back when I was 19 to work as an English teacher for a little bit.
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It was incredibly challenging to be there.
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The language barrier, the language, the culture.
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All of it.
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I mean, I was like, now when I look at 16 year olds, I m like, you re a baby.
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And I moved, sorry, 10 to 16 year olds listening to this.
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But like, I just can t believe I did that.
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And yeah, I didn t speak the language.
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I got placed in like a small city with almost no foreigners.
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It s just a constant audience of people staring at you because they haven t interacted with a lot of foreigners before.
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And yeah, it definitely and then after that, I moved to Kenya.
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I think that was one of the reasons why it was so interesting to move to the States, because people were like, oh, isn t it hard with the language barrier or the cultural difference?
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And I was like, this is nothing.
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And I could speak the language, I could speak English well, and I could kind of pass as an American, even just as I moved here.
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And it was such a relief where I was like, wow, I m like an undercover foreigner.
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Because I got to a point where I realized it doesn t matter how good my Mandarin is, people are never going to
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fully accept me here.
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So, yeah.
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And you moved, you went to Kenya.
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You ve spoken about this after your parents got divorced.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
When did I talk about that?
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SPEAKER_00
I didn t realize I told that story.
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I know, I know so many things.
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What do you think this is?
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SPEAKER_00
Is it from when I have my Amazon Echo installed?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I made a few contacts.
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I came home from China first time.
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I was there for a year.
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It s one of the most turned upside down days of my life.
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I spent a year there, and I was so excited.
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I had a really rough year, and I was so excited just to come home and be a child again.
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I remember thinking and just feeling like I belonged.
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came home and I found out that my parents had separated when I was gone and they hadn t told me because they wanted to like not affect my stay there, which I think was 100% the right decision of them to make.
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But I kind of came home to a house that was starting to get picked apart and... Such a big shock to your world.
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It was both yes and no.
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I think I remember I just sat down on my bed and I was like, well, this isn t what I expected, but I guess I ll move to Kenya because that was one of the few, there were a few Swedish boarding schools in the world.
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There was one in Brussels, Paris, London, and then one in Nairobi.
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And I didn t want to miss more school because I d taken a gap year when I went to China.
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So I was like, I guess I ll go to Nairobi.
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And I m thinking now, I think if my parents had stayed together, granted, it was amazing that they made the right decision in every way, but my roots kind of never grew back after that.
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And I think I just kept on moving abroad and moving around and being really restless, and yeah.
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And- Have you ever been able to find a home, spiritually?
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Yeah, I have a home.
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Yeah, I mean, I have a home.
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in the people around me.
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And I have I have a lot of different homes.
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You know, it s I think what I m realizing more and more is like you cannot live without consequence and compromise.
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And sometimes I can envy people who have that like same friend group that they had their entire life or that, you know, just really belong in a place.
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And I realized that would be amazing, but I ve chosen different experiences.
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And one of the upsides of that is I can feel home almost anywhere.
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One of the downsides of that is that I cannot feel fully at home anywhere.
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SPEAKER_01
Wow, that s deeply and darkly poetic.
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Do you feel at home?
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Probably the way you put it is really beautifully put, yeah.
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No, I have to find home in the people I love.
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What advice would you give to young people?
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that look at your stellar life, the trajectory of your career as a human being, as a creator, as a engineer, as a designer, as a incredibly interesting personality.
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that who s working on an autobiography, what advice would you give them, like how to make their way in this life?
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Maybe high school students, maybe college students on how they can have a career they can be proud of or a life they can be proud of.
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You know, this is not the advice, but there are very few moments in a career that feel as good as you think they are going to.
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And there are very few moments of feeling really proud of yourself.
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I feel like I often just feel like I m not doing it well enough or big enough.
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And now I just had one of those moments, like hearing you say that, I m like, oh, I m actually doing okay.
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I think my main advice is enthusiasm is a much more potent fuel in life than duty.
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And just because something is boring doesn t mean that it s important.
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I kind of realized for myself that I m so much better at the things I enjoy.
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But school doesn t really teach us how to stay excited about something and how to stay enthusiastic about something.
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And if you can find that, then you ve got a goldmine of potential.
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So I kind of had to reprogram myself to be like, just because this is fun doesn t mean that it s not important.
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because I had so much guilt about it in this weird way, or where I m like, no, this is too fun, this can t be work.
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And I m like, no, it s still work.
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The boring stuff isn t more important.
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And the vice versa, as you said.
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just because it s boring and hard doesn t mean it s the right thing to do.
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SPEAKER_01
That s interesting.
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I m gonna have to take that advice and think through it.
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Genetically, I m built a little bit like if this is really unpleasant, it s probably good for me.
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And it s a dangerous thing to think.
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Sometimes it s true, sometimes it s not.
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No, and it s like what comes really easy and where do you have that kind of effortless momentum and enthusiasm and that is kind of the sweet spot.
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I think that I m also really happy that I spent time trying out so many different jobs.
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I mean, I ve had so many different jobs before I did it and I would do things for a year and then I quit.
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SPEAKER_00
And it feels like I tried on a bunch of different pants and you re like, okay, I can kind of wear this, but they re like not super comfortable or I don t love the look of them or whatever.
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And now I feel like I found this pair of pants that just like fits me perfectly.
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And that perfectly caters to my strengths and my weaknesses.
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Like I used to work as an editor for the Swedish government.
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And I remember thinking like,
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oh, I need to be okay that not a lot of things are happening and that things are moving slowly and that the work is kind of like monotonous.
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And then I realize like, or maybe I should be in a workplace where it s a benefit or strength that I want a lot of things to happen and that I can handle a high speed, you know?
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And I think that is really such a good question to ask as well.
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Like, what are my strengths?
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What are my weaknesses?
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And in what context are most of these things strengths?
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And if you know that, if you know the measurements, you can find the right fitting pants.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, or the right suit, as Lex will tell you.
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SPEAKER_01
What do you think is the meaning of life?
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, I don t think there s any meaning.
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SPEAKER_01
It s a meaningless void?
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SPEAKER_00
No, that it doesn t have any meaning doesn t mean that it s meaningless.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t think that there s this big, grand meaning.
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I think a more important question is what,
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brings you substantial joy in your life.
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To me, it s the relationships with people that I have.
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Love?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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I mean, love in all different kinds of form.
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I m really working on figuring out how to build more community, especially in a society that isn t really made for it.
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I want more passive hangouts with people where I just want people who are there.
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Together?
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SPEAKER_00
To get high?
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SPEAKER_01
No, together?
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SPEAKER_00
To get high?
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SPEAKER_01
Maybe to get high.
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SPEAKER_00
Together, yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think seeing somebody for lunch and kind of shooting the shit and what s the latest with you is great, but what I want is somebody to just roll up in sweatpants and open my fridge and be like, what are you gonna do?
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SPEAKER_00
I don t know, maybe I ll read a book.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think that- Sharing kind of like silence.
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sharing silence, being alone together.
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And that just that type of community, I think, is what I m really seeking out now.
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Because I think, yeah, and also like working on a goal, on a joint goal together with other people.
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I think being a YouTuber can be really lonely.
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I mean, as much as I m working with a team, it s like,
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Yeah, I just want to work in a bigger project and kind of have that sense of, wow, we re like doing this together.
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Because I think that accesses my pride a lot better than just being proud of myself.
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SPEAKER_00
It s so much easier for me to be proud of a team than for me to be proud of myself.
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SPEAKER_01
That s probably good advice for people who are doing creative work on YouTube, to work on a team.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and just choose, try to do things, take it from the Queen of Shitty Robots, but try to do things with integrity.
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Former Queen of Shitty Robots.
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Do things with integrity, like anything you do on the internet is kind of, I think of things as tattoos on my internet.
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and on my internet self, and I m really happy that I said no to some things early in my career that I know that I would have regretted now.
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SPEAKER_00
And, you know, just think of it in the long term.
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SPEAKER_00
Like going viral is overwhelming and so stressful and so fun, but like so intense.
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And I m really happy that I managed to build that into a more long-term career than just have it be something that passed.
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and come down from the viral moment and maintain your humanity.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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And also, really deliberately defining what success means to you.
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Because there are so many reasons or so many definitions that other people will give you.
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when you re working on the internet, there are just numbers upon numbers that are like, you re doing well, you re not doing well.
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And something I m really happy that I did was early on, I really tried to think of like, what does success look like for me?
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And I realized that it s not having the world s biggest YouTube channel.
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It s being proud of the projects that I put out and having full say in how I spend my time.
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Like that is the most important thing to me.
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And if I had a huge YouTube channel and I was making so much money, but I kind of had this machine run me rather than the other way around, like to me, it s so important to be able to wake up in the morning and be like, I don t want to do this anymore.
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And for that to be okay.
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Um, and I think I defined that for myself early on and I ve really tried to live by it and made decisions after that.
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And I m really happy that I did that.
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SPEAKER_00
And also, with the store, with the design you re doing now, you re putting a little bit of love in the products to create a scale.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, that s what Johnny and I did.
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SPEAKER_00
That s the cool thing.
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So you can create something beautiful and then people can share that love at scale.
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It s terrifying and beautiful, and I m so here for it.
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I m here for it, too.
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I m a big fan.
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I m a big fan of who you are.
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SPEAKER_00
I m a big fan of everything you do, of putting yourself out there, putting your love out there in terms of the designs you create.
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Also, just because I m a fan of robotics, I think you inspire a lot of people.
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the shitty robots are actually incredible robots.
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And it s incredible engineering, that s the best combination of design and engineering and fun, all of it together.
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So thank you for doing that.
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I m a big fan, you re an inspiration, and thank you for sitting down with me, this is awesome.
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SPEAKER_01
Thank you so much for having me.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Simone Giertz.
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To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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SPEAKER_00
And now, let me leave you with some words from Kurt Vonnegut.
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We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.