26: Cyan Banister - A Fool’s Dérive

Speaker A: I've been thinking about this, like, when did I lose my innocence? When did I start listening to adults that I should grow up and get rid of my foolish nature? When did I decide to start cosplaying? Yeah, because we all do. Yes, we all have this. I don't know if you have a mental model of what you were supposed to be when you were grown up, but if you look back, if everybody looks back, everyone would always ask you, like, what are you gonna do when you grow up?

And you might have a fantasy, and I had fantasies, and I remember those fantasies. Of what I was gonna be, how I saw myself in the future. Adults around us in society and culture stamps it out of us. They tell us that it's wrong to be foolish, it's wrong to play. At some point, it's very discouraged. And so we create these masks. I chose at a very young age to never, ever give it up. I don't want to ever lose this sense of wonder and childlike curiosity that I have. It served me well.

A lot of my success actually comes from this reckless abandon that I have, and it looks counterintuitive. Like, to a lot of people, they're like, she didn't grind away at university, she didn't follow the path that everyone's supposed to follow, but yet I ended up in the same place. That should tell you something. Am I an outlier, or is everyone cosplaying and afraid? Speaker B: Welcome to Dialectic, episode 26 with Cyan Bannister. Cyan is a hard one to pin down. Formally, she's an investor. She's invested in all kinds of startups, both as an angel investor and as a professional venture capitalist.

These days, she co-runs Long Journey Ventures, where they invest in early-stage startups at the very beginning of their journey. Cyan also spent 4 years at Founders Fund, one of the premier multi-stage venture capital firms founded by Peter Thiel. And before that, she was an angel investor. Honestly, though, that's kind of the boring part. Cyan has a truly unusual background, and she's told that story in long form in several different places. So I decided not to go too far into detail on that. But if you're interested, there are a few conversations and interviews I would highly recommend.

First and foremost, my friend Kevin Gee and his collaborator Dan Scott's piece for their publication Cloud Valley, which is a long-form piece on Cyan based on an extensive interview. She has amazing podcast interviews as well with Tim Ferriss, Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and others where she talks about growing up on a Navajo reservation, being homeless by the time she was 15 when she was abandoned by her mother, and then eventually ultimately breaking into technology. To give you a sense of who Cyan is, when she had her first exit at an information security company, she took the money, was trying to figure out what to do with it, and was advised by a few others, including her husband Scott, to try angel investing.

She decided to put all of her proceeds from the exit into one company, which at the time was a fledgling startup who had just blown up another rocket on the launchpad. Yes, she put all of her money into SpaceX. She went on to invest in Uber and many other companies and has a truly legendary track record as an angel with her husband Scott. But this conversation is much more about science philosophy than any of her work. And so I hope you can sit back and enjoy a conversation with just one of the most unique people I've ever met and somebody who truly brings an original approach to how she lives and how she shows up with other people, how she pursues randomness and opportunity and so much else.

Cyan Bannister is truly one of one. It was such a privilege. And with that, I'll turn it over to Cyan. If you enjoy the episode, please do share it. That is how dialectic spreads. Thanks again. Here's Cyan. Cyan Bannister. Speaker B: Welcome to Dialectic, episode 26 with Cyan Bannister. Cyan is a hard one to pin down. Formally, she's an investor. She's invested in all kinds of startups, both as an angel investor and as a professional venture capitalist. These days, she co-runs Long Journey Ventures, where they invest in early-stage startups at the very beginning of their journey.

Cyan also spent 4 years at Founders Fund, one of the premier multi-stage venture capital firms founded by Peter Thiel. And before that, she was an angel investor. Honestly, though, that's kind of the boring part. Cyan has a truly unusual background, and she's told that story in long form in several different places. So I decided not to go too far into detail on that. But if you're interested, there are a few conversations and interviews I would highly recommend. First and foremost, my friend Kevin Gee and his collaborator Dan Scott's piece for their publication Cloud Valley, which is a long-form piece on Cyan based on an extensive interview.

She has amazing podcast interviews as well with Tim Ferriss, Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and others where she talks about growing up on a Navajo reservation, being homeless by the time she was 15 when she was abandoned by her mother, and then eventually ultimately breaking into technology. To give you a sense of who Cyan is, when she had her first exit at an information security company, she took the money, was trying to figure out what to do with it, and was advised by a few others, including her husband Scott, to try angel investing.

She decided to put all of her proceeds from the exit into one company, which at the time was a fledgling startup who had just blown up another rocket on the launchpad. Yes, she put all of her money into SpaceX. She went on to invest in Uber and many other companies and has a truly legendary track record as an angel with her husband Scott. But this conversation is much more about science philosophy than any of her work. And so I hope you can sit back and enjoy a conversation with just one of the most unique people I've ever met and somebody who truly brings an original approach to how she lives and how she shows up with other people, how she pursues randomness and opportunity and so much else.

Cyan Bannister is truly one of one. It was such a privilege. And with that, I'll turn it over to Cyan. If you enjoy the episode, please do share it. That is how dialectic spreads. Thanks again. Here's Cyan. Cyan Bannister. Speaker A: Hello. Speaker B: It's really a pleasure to be with you. Speaker A: It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Speaker B: We met sometime in the spring through our mutual friend Kevin. I was in San Francisco and last minute notice, I think it was Sunday night.

He's like, do you want to go to this event with me tomorrow with Cyan? He didn't tell me what it was. I think he maybe told me it was musical, but I think he mainly just said it was a surprise. So I show up. It's like in Berkeley, California. We drive across the bridge and we get to this like kind of old theater. I'm very confused. We run into you guys. I still don't totally, totally know what I'm getting myself into. We walk in and there are 4 people on stage, including Bobby McFerrin, who is a legendary composer and musician, and they proceed to start singing jazz a cappella.

Speaker A: Yep. Speaker B: I then find out that this is what you call your church. And it was a, it was a really special experience. It was— I'm maybe partial. I love music, but it was a spiritual room, I think, is what I would call it. Speaker A: Absolutely. Speaker B: You've also maybe self-described as someone who is like infinitely curious and very novelty-seeking and like broadly is chasing serendipity rather maybe than consistency. And yet, I mean, you make decisions with dice to choose random things. And yet this seems to be a place that I don't know if you go every week, but you go quite often.

Speaker A: Yes. Speaker B: And so I'm curious what makes, first of all, that place so magical to you, but two, why it's the type of place that could bring you back every week and act as a sort of church for you. Speaker A: Absolutely. So I went to Bhutan recently, and a lot of the feedback that I got from the monks there was that I needed to work on consistency, that in order to progress in my practice, I had to adopt rituals that helped ground me, that helped me remember to be awake.

And because if you're— I mean, I love basically going through life by the seat of my pants. If I were a tarot card, I'm the Fool. I walk off ledges and I'm comfortable in that space. I'm deeply, deeply uncomfortable with schedules, with recurring meetings, with anything that happens with any kind of regular repetition. It's almost like an allergy. I get really upset. And but again, this is a growth area. So it started with making my bed, actually. And my co-founder and my partner at Long Journey brought up that he had talked to somebody about making beds and how every day if you make your bed, it's a transformative habit.

You can figure out how to enjoy it. And then our mutual friend Kevin played this commencement speech from, I think it's a naval officer or some military guy who talks about, "If you do only one thing to change yourself, start by making your bed." And the way that I look at bed making is that it's a love letter to your future self. And so in the morning I make my bed and then I say something to myself that's going to return in the evening about how I would like my day to go, how I would like to see myself that day, how I'd like to show up in the world.

You might call it an intention setting exercise. And at the end of the day, when I get into bed, I'm grateful and thankful for the day that I had, as well as the morning person who remembered me. And it's been a really, really fun ritual. But Mystical Magical Musical Mondays is what I call what I do on Mondays and how this happened. Is I also have another practice of talking to strangers, and I will talk to people from all walks of life. It doesn't matter to me. I think that all human beings are a portal into your inner world.

They're a mirror of sorts, and they can tell you a lot about yourself. And so I tend to be very open, probably more open than people are accustomed to, and it can be very shocking if you're hanging out with me. Speaker B: Mm-hmm. Speaker A: So I was at a concert It was a Bill Murray concert. It was— Bill Murray was playing with his Blood Brothers. I think it was like a Great American Music Hall. And at the end of the show, this guy stumbled up to me and you might have assumed that he was drinking or drunk or stoned or something like that.

And, and so everybody kind of was distant towards him and kind of moving further away from him. It was like stranger danger. But I did not get a sense from him that he was dangerous. I actually got a sense that he was really, really trying his hardest to get us to pay attention to something that he wanted to tell us that was special. Speaker B: Mm. He had something to say. Speaker A: He had something to say. And so he came over and stood next to me and he said, "Sian, that's your name, right?

Yeah. You like Bobby McFerrin?" And I was like, "Don't Worry, Be Happy, Bobby McFerrin?" He goes, "Yeah." And he goes, "He's playing." like, you know, a couple days on Monday. And if you would stop by in Berkeley, that would be awesome. And I was like, hmm, yeah, maybe. Wow. Let's exchange phone numbers. So we exchanged phone numbers and my friends are like, you're crazy. Why are you giving that guy your phone number? Are you nuts? I'm like, no, no, I have a weird feeling. I have a feeling it's going to work out beautifully.

And I'm like, I don't know why, but I just do. I get these weird feelings and I trust them. I trust my gut. I trust my North Star and my intuition. And so a week went by and I was in a bookstore and I was going through these books and I saw this little sign that said, "Don't worry, be happy." And so it reminded me of, you know, this guy Dan, who's now my friend. And so I texted him a picture of it and he was like, "So nice of you to think of me."

And he's like, "Would you come on Mondays?" And I was like, "Okay, fine. Speaker B: You got me." You got me. Speaker A: You lured me in. So I started listening to some Bobby McFerrin songs to try to get ready. Because I was like, you know, I need to, like, brush up on his cattle. Oh, I don't know a lot of Bobby McFerrin. Right. And I show up on a Monday and, well, let's just say that there's nothing that prepares you for it, as you know. And I was just changed as a person.

I cried, I danced, I sang, and I felt a, I don't know, a spiritual presence that's hard to explain, that would be very similar to what someone would describe as going to church. And so, I was like, "Wow, this is probably the closest I felt to church since I was a little kid, where I felt light, and I felt love and community and joy and all of the things that you're supposed to go to church for, without the control and the, you know, you're a sinner." And, you know, God is not even talked about.

It's not what happens there, but what happens there is a radical encouragement of being nonjudgmental towards yourself and others in childlike play. And so I think it's so important that people get in touch with that part of themselves, especially if they're creatives or if they are building something. You sometimes have to imagine a world that no one else can see, and who's better than that than kids? And so I purposely put myself in a position where I can be childlike once a week, and I've made it a practice. And I've now gone dozens of times at this point, and I try to bring people with me.

So every now and then I open it up to people, and I'll invite 20, 30 people and tell them nothing about what they're gonna experience. I don't even tell them that Bobby's gonna be there. Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't know either. Speaker A: Yeah. And some people have no idea who he is. I mean, especially the younger generation doesn't know. And so the musical performers that he performs with are called Motion. And they're some of the best musicians in the world. And so they make instruments, they make trumpets, they make, you know, drum sounds, they make guitar sounds, saxophones.

And then there's an open mic. So, I don't know what kind of open mic you experienced, but it's different every time. Speaker B: We had, I was there at the time when the, I think it was a French kid, the 5-year-old French kid got up on stage and just started singing. Speaker A: Yep. There was one where it was like, was it the, the burritos for me or tacos for me, tacos for you was one of them. Speaker B: Oh my God. Speaker A: Where a kid was singing about tacos.

But we get people who come in with drums. Sometimes people come in with something kind of rehearsed, which is discouraged. You know, you really want to feel a calling to something. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: And we just hired this group to come out for Reverie, for Long Journey, for our founders. And we did something that we don't do on Mondays, which is we took all the chairs out, all the tables, and it turned into a roving sort of circle of different people singing different parts and walking around in a circle for like 30 minutes.

Wow. And it was phenomenal. Yeah, it was everyone. There was one person at the very end who just belted out this tune. And afterwards, we're like, what was that? What was that? And he's like, I don't know. I just felt called to it. It just came out of me. And that's the thing I want people to get in touch with is there's a type of knowledge inside of all of us that's dormant because we forget that we have bodies. We forget that we have what you might call a spirit. And we spend all of our time in virtual reality.

We were talking about this before we started about, you know, we're absorbed into our phones. We're not here. And so, but it turns out we live in this amazing, incredible world, and it can be absolutely magical, but it takes a type of vision or ears or eyes or senses to experience it. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: It's like being in Plato's cave. Speaker B: That room had a vibration, and obviously it's the music, like music vibrates, but it was a you like, you couldn't— you would have to really try to close yourself off to whatever.

Oh yeah, it's happening there. Speaker A: Yeah. And, and the lessons are endless. So a lot of people, when they go the first time, afterwards they'll say, I was seated next to a person that was completely off tune and offbeat and it was driving me crazy and they were making bird sounds or what. And because trust me, it happens. And you have to remember that for some people, this is their first time expressing themselves in a long time. Yes. Or it's the only way they know how. And so it teaches you this empathy and this compassion, you know, and then all of a sudden you find it joyful and you figure out how the instrument that they're coming up with fits in oddly.

It creates a little bit of discomfort and that's okay, you know? And so there's things like that, or you, you know, you get real, like for example, children, when they get up there, they're just so, they don't care. No. You know, and they'll just belt out whatever and they'll sing about a hot dog. You know, in a truck, and they just don't care, and it's delightful. Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Bobby and his group too were so wonderful. The classic improv idea, but they were so good at receiving whatever the— when people did go up on stage, they would just go with it.

Yeah, like, just really beautiful lesson there. Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thank you for coming. That, um, it's a very special— and if, if you're listening to this and you're free on Mondays at 11:45 stop by the Freight and Salvage. I'm going to promote this because it's really a labor of love. They don't make any money. And Bobby also has Parkinson's. And so the other beautiful thing to witness when you go is how we could be treating the elderly population. We could be giving them meaning and purpose and putting them in charge of these types of community events.

So he— his strongest singing times are between 11 and 3 o'clock. And then after that, you know, he doesn't sing as well. And so this gives him a place where he can interact with the public and really enjoy himself. But you also can see how they interact with him. And so it's a really great lesson on how you could treat your parents or loved ones or family members or strangers even who are experiencing memory changes or, you know, cerebral changes of some kind. And it just again opens up your empathy for that and how we could live in a different future.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thank you for coming. That, um, it's a very special— and if, if you're listening to this and you're free on Mondays at 11:45 stop by the Freight and Salvage. I'm going to promote this because it's really a labor of love. They don't make any money. And Bobby also has Parkinson's. And so the other beautiful thing to witness when you go is how we could be treating the elderly population. We could be giving them meaning and purpose and putting them in charge of these types of community events.

So he— his strongest singing times are between 11 and 3 o'clock. And then after that, you know, he doesn't sing as well. And so this gives him a place where he can interact with the public and really enjoy himself. But you also can see how they interact with him. And so it's a really great lesson on how you could treat your parents or loved ones or family members or strangers even who are experiencing memory changes or, you know, cerebral changes of some kind. And it just again opens up your empathy for that and how we could live in a different future.

Speaker B: It's really special. You speaking of maybe spaces, you seem to be very into presence and paying attention. A couple quotes from you. I hate knowing what time it is. And then also everything I do is a waste of time. You often talk about remembering that you're going to die. And how that affects perspective and presence. One more quote: "The moment I cease running experiments on my life is when the true experiment begins. What if all my searching was merely the cosmos teaching me how to be still enough to receive what was already mine?

The dice roll themselves when I am truly present." Yeah, maybe this ties a little bit into what we talked about at the beginning with Bhutan, but how have you learned, or what have you learned, about stillness? Speaker A: Oh my goodness. One of my favorite quotes is, "Enlightenment is—" and I'm going to butcher it, but something like this, which is, "Enlightenment resides in the stillness between thoughts." And it's very true. But when you hear something like that and you get into meditation or mindfulness, your very first thing, at least for me and for many people, when I started teaching mindfulness classes and about presence, And you have a tendency to treat it kind of like a quantified thing that you're doing, and it's a little competitive because we have this with like Duolingo.

We have it with, you know, Calmness and all these other apps that we're using. And it's kind of how we're trained. Speaker B: Yeah, there's like a mindfulness score. Speaker A: Yeah, there's gotta be a score, right? And so the first mistake you'll make is I have to quiet all these thoughts. Like if I'm not, if I don't, then I'm doing it wrong. And then you get into this horrible loop where you're punishing yourself because you couldn't quiet your thoughts. And I had this realization that, I mean, I was going at it like that constantly and finally realized I needed to surrender that idea.

And I needed to instead observe my thoughts. And that was a huge shift because I started to realize and start asking questions about those thoughts, which is, How do they occur anyway? Why are they floating past like a cloud now? Um, are they my thoughts? You know, you start going down these whole, like, rabbit holes, and you turn over as many stones as you can. And I don't know if it was Plato— I think it was Plato— that said that a life, um, not examined is not worth living. And I do think that we look outside externally, uh, to the cosmos, to the world, to the ocean— well, ocean not as much as we should, but but we rarely look inside and go deep into the universe within.

And when you go inside and you start asking these questions, you start realizing there's a lot more to the world than you could even fathom. Forget about what's outside, just inside. And you start to understand, like, what the ego is, what it's not. Um, when you say I am Who is I anyway? What self is speaking then? You know, um, which of my selves? Which of my selves? Um, you could be multi-fragmented. Uh, many of us are. And then you also start to realize you're sleepwalking through life. And this introspection started about 25 years ago.

I was asked a question by my dear friend Tom here in San Francisco, over on to visit Arrow Street, there was this cafe called Cafe of Beer. I think it might be gone. They had beanbags. And so we were sitting in the beanbags, and he said, "Sian, how did you survive?" And, uh, I just lied to him. I just made something up because I actually don't know. And we do this all the time. So I go, "I'm a middle child, you know. I was mostly left to my own devices." Uh, you know, these, these, these things that you say is sort of like a social things so you can continue the conversation, but you actually don't really know, and you just kind of make it up because it seems like it makes sense.

But when I went home that night, I felt very uneasy. I was like, I actually have no idea how to answer that question because I really don't know the answer. And so I started asking myself, who along my journey helped? What were the inflection points along my life's path where if that person wasn't perfectly there at the right moment, I wouldn't have survived. And they start highlighting in the timeline. You start to see them and you're like, wow. So the first realization is we are not alone. We think that we're, you know, individuals and that everything that we do is through our own will and might.

Yeah. And our own, you know, we're geniuses. All of our thoughts are ours. These are things that the ego does to play tricks on you. And, you know, it's not like I spent every moment on this thought, but if I had an idle moment where, you know, I told you, like, when we met that I'm infinitely curious, I will sit there and ask questions and try to come up with answers because I've just, there's so much to think about, I can never be bored. And so I started going down that rabbit hole and then about, the pandemic.

So a lot of art— art is amazing, and art can often reach you at the exact right moment where you need it. So you might watch a movie and then walk out of the theater, and suddenly everything is a little brighter and everything smells a little better, and you just have this aha moment, this epiphany. And so I try to immerse myself in as much randomness and art and experiences that I possibly can so I can receive these epiphanies. And I had one such epiphany after the pandemic. And the pandemic, I like to think of as this great shock.

It's a moment where you fell into a couple categories. One, you were isolated and at home, or two, you had to work in, you know, the public or the hospital, or, and you didn't get a break at all. So you actually worked more than everybody else. And so those poor people still probably haven't had a break. Wow. So think about it. Speaker B: It was like pause for most people, and then, yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Speaker A: And no pause for some. Wow. And so you can imagine when you come out of that, you have a type of trauma and suffering that is universal, that happened to all of us at once.

And the questions that come after that are typically, if there is a God, You know, why would God create a virus? Why would we have a pandemic? Why would this even be allowed to happen? You know, and you'd think that a lot of people would turn out to be atheists, and they would be like, "There is no God." But the interesting thing is a lot of people turned to spirituality. Bible sales went through the roof because people went inward and started discovering things about themselves that they didn't even realize. Yeah.

And so I'm one of those people. I had an experience that completely shifted my view of the world and of reality. And I haven't been the same since. And so part of my, I just learned a French word, I'm probably gonna butcher it, dérive, which means to drift intentionally. Wow. And I felt very seen when I, you know, they have amazing words that we don't have that just, so beautifully describe something and be a great website. Speaker B: It's like all the words in the different languages that are only kind of captured in that language.

There's all these Japanese words, for example. Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Japanese words are amazing too. They have like words for shadows that come through leaves. Komorebi. Yeah, exactly. Like what? We don't have that. I know, you know. And then in Finland they have words for like all the sounds of snow when you walk on it. They have like 15 words. They need those words. But we don't, I mean, English is amazing, but we don't have something like "derev." And so I'm a wanderer. I am tethered by some of obviously my life's choices.

But in general, I like to roll around like a tumbleweed. And a lot of my decisions and my gut instinct and what I like to do comes out of that random space. And my mindfulness practice has taught me how to trust my instincts more. Yeah. And so that's one of the things I would love for people to realize, that a practice that is only 2 minutes a day can change your life. You don't need to meditate for hours. You don't need to go to a silent retreat for 7 days. You don't need an ayahuasca.

You don't need— 'cause I see all these people doing ayahuascas, they're not changing. They're not happier. They're not better. They're not, you know, going inward like they should and really, really surgically dissolving some of these false selves and integrating these lessons that they're getting. And so I feel it's imperative that people start being more mindful. And, you know, it can come through forms— we were talking about Bobby McFerrin— it can come through moving your body or singing. It can come through a daily exercise of walking. Making your bed, uh, in so many different ways.

And I honestly think that founders would be better leaders. They would have more clarity around their mission and purpose and be less distracted by things that don't serve them. And they'll find that probably accomplishing everything they want to accomplish is a lot easier than they think it is. Less resistance. Yeah, a lot less resistance. Speaker B: It's like all the words in the different languages that are only kind of captured in that language. There's all these Japanese words, for example. Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Japanese words are amazing too. They have like words for shadows that come through leaves.

Komorebi. Yeah, exactly. Like what? We don't have that. I know, you know. And then in Finland they have words for like all the sounds of snow when you walk on it. They have like 15 words. They need those words. But we don't, I mean, English is amazing, but we don't have something like "derev." And so I'm a wanderer. I am tethered by some of obviously my life's choices. But in general, I like to roll around like a tumbleweed. And a lot of my decisions and my gut instinct and what I like to do comes out of that random space.

And my mindfulness practice has taught me how to trust my instincts more. Yeah. And so that's one of the things I would love for people to realize, that a practice that is only 2 minutes a day can change your life. You don't need to meditate for hours. You don't need to go to a silent retreat for 7 days. You don't need an ayahuasca. You don't need— 'cause I see all these people doing ayahuascas, they're not changing. They're not happier. They're not better. They're not, you know, going inward like they should and really, really surgically dissolving some of these false selves and integrating these lessons that they're getting.

And so I feel it's imperative that people start being more mindful. And, you know, it can come through forms— we were talking about Bobby McFerrin— it can come through moving your body or singing. It can come through a daily exercise of walking. Making your bed, uh, in so many different ways. And I honestly think that founders would be better leaders. They would have more clarity around their mission and purpose and be less distracted by things that don't serve them. And they'll find that probably accomplishing everything they want to accomplish is a lot easier than they think it is.

Less resistance. Yeah, a lot less resistance. Speaker B: In this theme of sort of waking up and mindfulness. Sometimes people hear those words maybe and their eyes glaze over or they have a loaded— mine used to— connotation around meditation or whatever. You— I know you've studied Gurdjieff a little bit. I'm not deeply familiar in any way, but I know there's one idea he has that is sort of this triptych of mind or head, body, and heart. Do you have a frame you would offer people for like what captures everything you just said?

Like, Maybe people have tried meditation, they struggle. Like, what is the organizing kind of thing there that is the core part? Is it observing? Is it simply observing your own thoughts? Is it time alone? Is it— Speaker A: I think the very first step is observing your own thoughts. I think if you do nothing else, do that. Everything else comes after. So when you observe your own thoughts, and let's just say you're anxious, we'll start with anxious. Actually, start with happy. You're happy and you say, "I am happy." As soon as you have this sort of interesting, it's almost like a magic spell, "I am happy," you self-identify with happy and you will magically become happier.

It's weird. You're like, "I am happy. I am happy." Yeah, you're like hypnotizing yourself. Yeah, it's really strange. And then you have to ask yourself, but who is I? And if you do this little trick, I really love this trick, you say, "It is happy." Oh, well, that changes everything. Because then you're like, if it is happy, then who am I? Then you start to realize that you might be the observer, or you might be the true I. And I would go down that rabbit hole as far as you can go so you can figure out who yourself is so you can meet yourself.

Because you might discover that there's this self that thinks all kinds of things that are just false. It might hold on to memories or the past or projections to the future that are completely illusions. So this is why presence is so important, because presence is real. The future doesn't exist and the past is gone. And the sooner that we can realize that and realize that these are stories or fiction or part of our great work of our life, and we change our relationship to these stories and even the stuff in the future, the better off we're gonna be for each other, for ourselves, and the world.

I think I went off topic here, but— Speaker B: I think it ties in quite well. The original question was about stillness, but I think you captured stillness and presence. One, One thing I'd love to talk about too that I think relates, or at least is a core input to this, is seeing. And seeing maybe with a new perspective or a reframe. I have a— I was going through and I found when I'd first— maybe the first interview I'd ever listened to you with Patrick O'Shaughnessy, probably in early 2024. I wrote in my journal, toward the end she spoke about how the world is magical if you look.

That's been a recurring theme in various places lately. The extra sense that allows you to tune into a different frequency, or perhaps is as simple as awareness and a desire to look. Again, you've talked about this in lots of different contexts. You also, in one of the interviews, referenced The Magic Glasses by Frank Harris. Yes. There's a bit in there where he's referring to this painter who I think has like a distorted vision, who he bases an initial set of glasses on. And he's talking about the painter. He says, if my eyes had been all right from the— excuse me, the painter speaking.

If my eyes had been all right from the beginning, I might perhaps have been contented with what I saw. But as my eyes were imperfect, I tried to see things as my soul saw them, and so invented looks and gestures that the real world would never have given me. A set of questions for you here, I suppose. First and foremost, how have you learned to see? But beyond that, maybe has your— you have a unique background for sure. Do you think that has enhanced your ability to see? Do you think there are different ways of seeing more or seeing better or seeing differently?

Speaker A: Yes. So without a doubt, my background has shaped my vision. And, like, there's a lot of things I don't understand. Some people have described me as kind of like an alien creature. And— Speaker B: An alien who really likes people, I guess. Speaker A: That really likes people. I'm here on Earth and I really like you guys. But there are a lot of human behaviors that make no sense to me. And, and I kind of laugh at them, you know, because I don't know what else to do. And so a lot of people project their inner worlds on the outside to people and make assumptions about people.

Like they assume maybe that I'm judgmental when I'm not being judgmental at all, or they assume I'm aloof or I'm unhappy or all of these things because they want to please me. But that's not my reality on the inside at all. When you grow up the way that I did, I was nonverbal for the first 5 years of my life. I felt that when people spoke, words had weight to it. It had gravity. It was kind of like an adult would say something and then suddenly motion would happen or people would move or move rooms or it did.

They seem like magic spells. Commands. Commands. And I would observe people using the words and how people would react to the words. And I made a pact with myself that I just wouldn't speak. So I knew how. Speaker B: You were deliberately nonverbal. I was deliberately nonverbal. Speaker A: Wow. And it turns out there's a lot of us. When I started speaking up about this, I've had multiple engineers and people come up to me and say, wow, that was me too. Some people even chose to not speak till they were 12 or 13, some all the way into adulthood.

Speaker B: You were deliberately nonverbal. I was deliberately nonverbal. Speaker A: Wow. And it turns out there's a lot of us. When I started speaking up about this, I've had multiple engineers and people come up to me and say, wow, that was me too. Some people even chose to not speak till they were 12 or 13, some all the way into adulthood. Speaker B: Have you ever seen Little Miss Sunshine? I have, yeah. It's not exactly— he takes a vow of silence for specific reasons, but Paul Dano in that movie, it kind of reminds me.

Speaker A: Well, I took a vow of silence. Yeah. And part of it was really delightful because people— I loved watching how people would treat me. They would treat me as if I was incapable of rational thought or a lot of things. And they made a lot of assumptions, you know, about this child that doesn't speak must mean that she's slow or, you know, not very smart or incapable of understanding what you're talking about. Now, that part was really bizarre because they would just have conversations that no child should listen to.

Ah, right. And so this made me a deep observer. I learned through watching people and I still do. So a lot of the time I will go and sit at a mall or I'll sit in a park I'll sit at the airport and I will just watch people. I watch the conversations that they have, how they interact with each other, the devices they're using, how they're dressed, the phrases that they're using. It's just a fun thing to watch people because it informs a lot of my views and kind of the things I want to invest in and the things I want to work on.

And so I love to immerse myself in humanity. And that story hit me during the pandemic. So during the pandemic, I was one of those people that took a pause. And in my early life, I didn't read a lot of books. I read a few science fiction books and then mostly technical manuals for my job. So really boring, dry stuff to most people, very exciting to me. So during the pandemic, I was like, you know, I never have given myself the luxury of reading philosophy or reading classics, so I'm going to try.

And interestingly, they gripped me. I was not expecting that. And I started going down these rabbit holes of some, like, weird esoteric stuff and found that Frank Harris, uh, story. And if you look up Frank Harris, I'm going to warn you that he is a troubled individual who wrote the most famous book, smut book, of the time. Wow. Where he details all of his his, uh, loves. I think it's called My Life and Loves, and it's very graphic. Speaker B: This is like late 1800s, I think, late 1800s, early 1900s, and it was banned.

Speaker A: So this book was banned everywhere. It's one of the banned books. And, um, the other thing is he was a ranchman, and he, I think, killed people. And so if you go and you read him, you'd be like, why? Why? How did this story change your life? Speaker B: Endorsement? Speaker A: Yes, not a pure endorsement. I'll put that disclaimer out there. But this story did change my life. It, it made me realize that we all live in different realities and it really brought it home. So if you ask anyone if they have an inner monologue, you might discover that some people don't have one.

Yes. If you ask people whether they can visualize something, some people cannot. If you ask people if they see color, sometimes they see color differently. And if you're someone like me, I think in pictures and video and I have very immersive VR experiences when I think about problems. And so we're all in this very different reality and it's shaped by how we view the world, what we believe in, our ideology, our experiences in life. And so that story is really about if you could try on a new perspective, how would you see the world?

And that blew my mind. And so I threw this party with Mike Wang, who's my collaborator at Long Journey. And everyone that came to this dinner party, we had them try on a pair of spectacles and the spectacles had a role that they had to play written on the side. Oh, cool. So maybe you had to be an optimist or maybe you had to be a pessimist or maybe you had to act like you're a child or— and what was really interesting was how seriously everybody took their role and they got into it.

And so there was someone who was a critic. They were supposed to critique the food and act like they were displeased with everything. And so we gave that role to a person who's like a people pleaser. Speaker B: And then we gave someone So you handpicked every role? Oh yeah. Speaker A: So for this one, we knew the people and we knew their personalities. So we gave them a personality that didn't suit them. Speaker B: Yes. Um, one of the lovely things about games, things like this, is like the people are so willing to opt in to something so seemingly ridiculous as long as you just kind of scope it or you call it a game or you call it a party.

Speaker A: Yeah, it was so fun. So we basically had this eye doctor, um, and it's a friend of mine and she worked the eye doctor station. And what people didn't realize is that we had your prescription already filled for you. They thought it was random, which, you know, I hang out with magicians. And so you do something called magician's choice where you make it look random, but it's not random. So we had these dice that they would roll a color and it would land on a box. And so from that box, they were able to pick out a pair of glasses.

But it turned out that every box was the same and there was a pair of glasses for them in every box. Wow. And so it was a force. And so they got these, what they thought was a random prescription. Wow. And so they put them on and immediately got into character. And so there was a guy that was supposed to be 5 years old and he kept demanding bowls of sugar. He's like, I want sugar and I want it now. And, you know, there was a person that we blindfolded and so they couldn't see and they had to eat their whole meal blindfolded.

And then the person that's sitting next to them is supposed to help. So they're supposed to be one of these people that really— and this is a person that doesn't like to help anyone and is deeply uncomfortable with that role. But he got into it. Speaker B: You're sort of group therapist slash party host. Speaker A: Yeah. So I have a— I have a motto, which is you should never throw an event if it doesn't change people and doesn't at least give them a memory that will last for the rest of their lives.

It's a high bar. But you'll find that if you actually start to do that, you become an artist and you can really play with reality in a way that's just delightful and you become kind of like a fun prankster for good. And so that meal, we had this amazing meal. Everyone afterwards was like, "Wow, that was really transformative. That was crazy." And I was inspired to actually turn that short story into a movie. So it's been adapted to a full-length feature film script. No, we're almost done with it. Oh my gosh.

Speaker B: You're producing? Yeah. Yeah. Speaker A: So I'm very, very excited about it. Speaker B: Magic Glasses. Speaker A: The Magic Glasses. Wow. It's probably going to be called something else. Yeah. But right now the working title is The Magic Glasses. Wow. Cool. Any timeline? Well, right now I'm learning about scriptwriting. And so I hired an amazing collaborator, amazing scriptwriter, this man named Stephen Banks, who was one of the lead writers of SpongeBob. And he's just so fun to work with. And so I basically told him about my vision and it was my first time collaborating with someone in this way where I realized I could bring my ideas to life by working with someone who has a skill set that I don't have.

Yes. And, and so we've just been getting along great. We're on our fourth turn. And that's the other realization that I had is it's kind of like sculpting. You get a skeleton and then you start packing on meat. And then eventually you get to the finer details of the scripts. And so we're kind of in the finer details where once we're done, then we'll go into production. And I don't know who's going to direct it. And I mean, ideally it would be him, but he has to be available because it's really nice if you have your person who writes it is also your director.

Speaker B: Yeah. I want to come back to some of that later. On the last note of seeing people, there's a quote you're talking about Lawrence, who you did an interview with as well. You say, I've never met someone more astonished by the world around him. He was walking along a cart path and looking at plants with the wonder of a kid who just discovered photosynthesis when he suddenly looked up at me and smiled, then said hello. His light was and is on. His light was and is on is a pretty amazing line.

Yeah. Can you say more about what that means? Speaker A: Sometimes you meet people in life where they're present and they're really taking in something, and you know that their light is on. It's— I don't know how else to describe it, but they look out, they see you. When you walk around on the street and you try to make eye contact with people, you'll find that people will either actively avoid your eyes or they won't notice you're looking at them at all, and they're in these, like, reality tunnels where they're thinking about their to-do list or what they have to do when they get home, or someone they disappointed, or replaying a conversation.

All of these things that are not real. Speaker B: Yeah, or they have AirPods or on literally their phone in their face. Yeah, yeah. Speaker A: And so in that moment when I saw him, he was deeply involved with a plant, and, um, I was like, wow, like, he's really taking in that plant and he's really noticing everything about it. And then he looked up and he noticed me and noticed the surroundings. And it was just really delightful to see that. And I've continued to see that in him. Like, he's human, just like all people.

He falls asleep just like the rest of us. But when he is aware and awake and really looking at the world, he sees it in a way that I find profound. And so I just noticed that about him. And I was like, wow, you know, I endeavor to be like that. Speaker A: And so in that moment when I saw him, he was deeply involved with a plant, and, um, I was like, wow, like, he's really taking in that plant and he's really noticing everything about it. And then he looked up and he noticed me and noticed the surroundings.

And it was just really delightful to see that. And I've continued to see that in him. Like, he's human, just like all people. He falls asleep just like the rest of us. But when he is aware and awake and really looking at the world, he sees it in a way that I find profound. And so I just noticed that about him. And I was like, wow, you know, I endeavor to be like that. Speaker B: One more quote, kind of in this vein. It is just something you notice when you collect minds like I do.

I found a remarkable one, like a rare Pokémon, and I was excited. What does it mean to collect minds? Speaker A: Haha. Yeah, I collect minds. Look, everyone is individual and unique, but there are some people who are just more unique than others. And I don't know why. I don't know why some people give themselves permission to really discover who they are and what they're not and have a strong sense of that. And so I'll meet people and they have an essence. I, I describe it as an essence, and that it's like a unique signature to them.

It's not a smell or anything like that, but it's like a, uh, just a unique fire that every person has. And I know when I meet someone that they're different than anyone else I've ever met. And I immediately want to collect them. You know, it's one of these things where I'm just like, would you please be in my life? Because I don't have a mind like yours yet. Oh, wow. And so every mind you have to think about is, like I said, a mirror. And this is going to sound weird, but whatever, I'm just going to say it.

Ever since I was young, I used to have this space. It's kind of like a green field. I still have it, actually. A green field with a picnic table or bench that's in it. And I go to this picnic table or bench and I invite friends and they sit down with me and they model out the world with me. And so a lot of these questions I'm asking and I'm talking to people, I'm not talking to myself, I'm talking to a model of a person I'm bringing into this world. Wow.

And so every mind I collect becomes one of these. Voices. So I'll ask myself kind of like, what would Jackson think of this? Like, how would Jackson view this? Or Kevin or anyone, you know? And I mean, Kevin's very unique. Yes. And like bringing in his mind into something is a whole other toolset. And so there's like a great fiction writer. There's only one Kevin. Yes. Right. There's only one Kevin. Yes. And, and so every now and then I summon Kevin to the bench because I really want Kevin's ideas and And there's all sorts of friends that I have summoned to the picnic bench.

And obviously, you know, you can look at it a few ways, either, you know, let's get woo-woo, but the person I'm conjuring might be their higher self and they might actually be there. Okay, that's weird. Or it's obviously my mental model of them. Yeah. And how I would think that they would behave or react to something based off my observation of how they go through the world. But a lot of what I do, I sometimes summon someone I admire and I say, you know, how would my friend Penn handle this?

Or how would, you know, a child handle this? Or Marc Andreessen? Or, you know, you can, you can bring them in and then say, like, I have this, you know, uh, you do this with people you haven't met. Yeah, to some degree. I think it's harder because people don't always show you who they are in public. Yeah. And so you're not getting a real glimpse into the authenticity of that person. Whereas if you spend time with someone long enough, you start to notice the gait of how they walk. You start to notice the pauses that they take.

You start to notice when they're not, when they're putting on a facade. You start to notice like the real truth of them, which you're not going to get off Twitter or, you know, I guess. Speaker B: Yeah, Twitter is definitely not real. What's the line? Like, what would, maybe this is a silly comparison or dichotomy, but what would the line be between doing this in your head versus actually calling them? Speaker A: Oh, well, if you call somebody, you are taking up their now, you're taking up their time. And I try to be judicious with that.

Yeah, because it's life energy, it's life force. But if I'm really stumped and I can't figure out what someone would think, then yeah, I call and I say, hey, I was working through this problem and this is what I thought you might say, but I was wondering what you would actually say. Oh, cool. And, and then they'll workshop it with me and it's really delightful. And I do have a handful of those friends that I do that with. ChatGPT has actually been a great friend. I know that people are talking about ChatGPT psychosis and, and how this could go awry with a sycophantic, you know, voice that— so I always have to remember it's a sycophant.

But every now and then I'll take some text that someone sends me and run it through ChatGPT and ask it to decipher it for me, because that's how, uh, weird my mind is sometimes, is I can't even tell. I don't like to make assumptions about people, and so if I read something, I can't— if it's not very, like, direct and it's subtle, or it has any kind of ambiguity, or it could be taken 20 different ways, like I don't know what to do with that information sometimes. So, so every now and then someone will send me a text message and I'll just run it through ChatGPT and I'm like, what does this mean?

Like gut checking? Yeah. Like depending on their mental model, it could mean a lot of different things, right? And so sometimes I'll just use it as a sanity check. But yeah, collecting minds. Speaker B: One last bit here. You are someone who I think has a childlike wonder, as you have even spoken about a little bit today there in Kevin's piece on you for Cloud Valley, this amazing long, um, profile which I would recommend people read, and probably covers a lot of the stories that, uh, you've spoken about other podcasts we won't get to today.

Uh, he says, but most people whom she encounters like her, like a flame to moths, her husband Scott says. Cyan Bannister suspects it's because she reminds people of something they've lost. Everyone wants their childhood back, she says. You had a complicated and in many ways painful childhood, and yet you radiate this childlike joy and wonder. What are you pulling from? Speaker A: Hmm, I think it was those first 5 years where I was alone in my mind. And because I've been thinking about this, like, when did I lose my innocence?

When Did I start listening to adults that I should grow up and get rid of my foolish nature? When did I decide to start cosplaying? Because we all do. Yes, we all have this. I don't know if you have a mental model of what you were supposed to be when you were grown up, but if you look back, if everybody looks back, everyone would always ask you, like, what are you going to do when you grow up? And you might have a fantasy. And I had fantasies and I remember those fantasies of what I was going to be.

How I saw myself in the future. And, you know, adults around us in society and culture stamps it out of us. They tell us that it's wrong to be foolish, it's wrong to play, it's wrong. At some point, it's very discouraged. And so we create these masks. Speaker B: Stay in line. Speaker A: Yes, stay in line. And I chose at a very young age to never, ever give it up. It was one of these things where I was like, I want to be, to the best of my ability, true to myself and authentically me.

And I don't want to ever lose this sense of wonder and childlike curiosity that I have. It served me well. It's been my companion in lonely times and hard times. You know, how I got through all of those hard moments, including the stroke I had 5 6 years ago, I guess, is just looking at it with questions and just saying, why am I in this situation? You know, instead of saying I'm a victim of the situation, I would say, what are all the external factors that led to this occurring? You know, is it really just, just targeted at me?

No, it turns out I'm part of this big ecosystem, and my mother was probably, um, She probably has mental health issues. I haven't been able to identify what sort of trauma she faced in her life that turned her into who she is, but my dad's trauma is very clear. And so when you start to look at trauma is cyclical, um, and family members reenact the trauma sometimes that they experience themselves, you start to realize that they couldn't help themselves. And when you start to realize that people are mechanical and they're not even awake.

Yeah. You know, we were talking about that term. It doesn't mean a whole lot until you've experienced it. Yeah. But that means, you know, Sam Harris and a bunch of people talk about how people don't have free will. And for the most part, we don't because we're not conscious or aware of what we're doing at any given time. 99% of the time, we don't know what we're doing. Yeah. But in those rare moments where you are conscious, you are mindful, you are present, you know where you are on this planet, and you will something into existence, then at that moment you might, might have free will.

And so I think a lot of my success actually comes from this reckless abandon that I have. And it looks counterintuitive, like to a lot of people, they're like, she didn't grind away at university, she didn't follow the path that everyone's supposed to follow. But yet I ended up in the same place. That should tell you something. Am I an outlier or is everyone cosplaying and afraid? Speaker B: Maybe both, right? Could be both. Speaker A: Yeah, it could be both. I think, I think life is not as hard as people want to make it out to be.

And when I say that, people are like, say that to someone who's in prison or say that to someone who's starving. Or, you know, I've been starving. I've been homeless. Speaker B: You're a better messenger for that story than most people. Speaker A: Yeah. And it turns out You know, read Man's Search for Meaning, which is probably one of the most powerful books ever, which you can be in the darkest place and think that there's no hope whatsoever and still find joy and still find something to learn and still find your love for humanity because it's still there.

And as long as you can find those things, you can survive anything. And so for me, it's a survival tool and it's served me well. And you'll never hear me say I'm a victim of anything because I always say, wow, you know, again, look at the ecosystem, look at everything that happened to get you to where you are and you'll realize like, no, this was just some dumb luck or I got a bad luck of the draw with my parents, but now I survived and now I can take control of that and I don't have to live in that narrative anymore.

So, uh, and that my advice to people is just be infinitely curious and And I think you could turn your life around in major ways if you do. Speaker B: On that note, I was just talking about maybe the childlike wonder. You are, or at least can be, quite childlike, but you are not childish. On that note of the sort of victim mindset, you kind of are wildly accountable to yourself. Yes. There's a quote you shared recently from Kamal Ravikant who said, the hardest thing is taking responsibility for everything in your life.

It is also the most liberating thing. Much of what you were just talking about. You have another line on an interview you did where you say you're at least aiming to embody this frame of everything is my fault. Yes. Or at least the unlock of holding that view and what it kind of enables and allows you to love people and things. You were talking about it just a minute ago a little bit, but I'd be curious for you to talk or suggest maybe specifically on the point of accountability. And ownership.

It almost seems like agency is a very popular word these days. It almost seems like this kind of accountability is like upstream of, of agency. Yeah. Speaker B: On that note, I was just talking about maybe the childlike wonder. You are, or at least can be, quite childlike, but you are not childish. On that note of the sort of victim mindset, you kind of are wildly accountable to yourself. Yes. There's a quote you shared recently from Kamal Ravikant who said, the hardest thing is taking responsibility for everything in your life.

It is also the most liberating thing. Much of what you were just talking about. You have another line on an interview you did where you say you're at least aiming to embody this frame of everything is my fault. Yes. Or at least the unlock of holding that view and what it kind of enables and allows you to love people and things. You were talking about it just a minute ago a little bit, but I'd be curious for you to talk or suggest maybe specifically on the point of accountability. And ownership.

It almost seems like agency is a very popular word these days. It almost seems like this kind of accountability is like upstream of, of agency. Yeah. Speaker A: So this type of accountability is pretty radical. I recommend that you try it as a thought experiment. All these things are thought experiments, and if they don't work for you, they don't. But if you ask yourself to be really honest and you say, this situation that's causing me great pain and unrest, how was it my fault? You will discover almost without fail, it's your fault.

And so I'll give you an example. So let's say that you hire an employee and that employee is a junior employee and they, you know, for 6 months you're in the honeymoon phase, but then after the honeymoon phase, you start to see their junior-ness. It starts to grate on you. You start to be like, how could they make that mistake? Such a rookie thing. And you start this narrative. But if you stop and you realize, I'm annoyed, but I signed up for this. I chose to be a mentor for a young person who's inexperienced.

I made the bed. I made the bed. Right? And you start to realize I'm supposed to show up as a better manager. If they're not succeeding, it's because of me. And the other thought experiment I like to run is pretend that every day that you wake up and you get out of bed, you're in a movie and you're the main character. And I'm right now, Jackson, your side character. And if you're an actor and you've just been cast in a role, you could be a villain, you could be a good guy, good girl, guy, person.

You could be a comedian, you could be a lot of things. But one of the things you should look at is how do you appear in everybody else's story? Like when you're writing that story too, like how do you show up, right? So I like to think about things like this. It's just like, you know, every one of my actions and every action, uh, is something that could profoundly impact someone else's life. And am I perfect? No. But I just think that taking accountability, at least allows you to have sympathy and empathy for the human experience that's around you.

And almost without fail, you know, I will discover the truth of how somehow I was responsible for what is happening to me. Yeah. You know, and then you realize what feelings are real and not real. And you're like, okay, this frustration is just completely made up. Like I am manufacturing it. And as soon as you take accountability— It is frustrated. It is frustrated, yes, exactly. It is very frustrated right now. But once you realize that, it just, dissolves. And then you're like, wow, if that could dissolve, what else could dissolve?

What else is real and not real? So start with the thought experiment: I am responsible and to blame for everything. Speaker B: But it also, at least for you, I think it also manifests in this kind of radical freedom to act, which is why you've been able to— or one of the reasons maybe why you've been able to do so much. The— I talked about agency briefly. There's something I'd love to kind of interrogate, which is I know you love The Matrix. In The Matrix, Morpheus is kind of continually offering Neo these choices to escape or be free or whatever, be agentic.

And you clearly are a wildly agentic person. You've done amazing things. You're really good at making decisions quickly. You're wildly accountable to yourself. You also are really into randomness and coincidences. A couple of quick quotes. You say, I treat coincidences like the glitches in the matrix. If you see the same cat twice, pay attention. And that my life has only been improved by taking myself out of the decision-making process because I am a hindrance. Yes. You've talked about randomness being this way to break up our bad patterns. It's really healthy, cool thing.

You roll dice to do things. As I mentioned, you've said you don't like the word believe and you prefer suspect. Yeah. And you're wildly experimental and iterative. And so I'm not sure that they're actually at odds, but at least on the surface, there's maybe a notion that this sort of like letting go and randomness and like I'm actually not the decision maker is sort of at odds with conviction and agency. So I suppose my question, maybe that's part of the question, but my real question is like, what is your relationship to faith?

Speaker A: Is faith what's happening here? It is a kind of faith, right? You're trusting that, going back to the, if I were a tarot card, I'm the Fool. You're trusting that if you step off a ledge, you're not going to fall. Yeah, yeah. And you're also trusting your conviction in feeling or knowing on a level that defies, uh, logic. So for example, I have all of these things that just magically happen. The world speaks to me in poetry. I— if it doesn't make sense to you what I just said, that's fine, because I think that if you go back to Plato's cave, there's— if you're in a cave and everybody tells you that there's this world outside that can speak to you in poetry, um, it doesn't make any sense.

It makes zero sense. But like, Whitman used to make no sense to me in like Blades of Grass until I started seeing the poetry everywhere. And I realized like, okay, if I always say suspect because I can't tell you that I know how any of this works, but I think there's a non-zero chance that we're in a simulation. And I think that if you were to take this thought experiment out and say, if there's a simulation, then obviously there's an architect of some kind— call it God, call it an engineer, call it a magician, call it whatever you want— but there's something that started the simulation.

Something Um, what could that something be? And so you start thinking about, okay, well, the only thing that's perfect in the universe is nothing. Um, so maybe that something is nothing. And you start going down that hole and start thinking about it. But then you also start thinking, okay, well, if I'm in a game, this game called life, there's rules to this game, and I'm a hacker by background. Like, I come from a security background and I hung out with hackers and I like to poke holes in things. And so, you know, what happens if you go left instead of right?

What happens if you introduce dice? What happens if you analyze a thought and wonder if it's yours? What happens if you look at a sign and you feel something and you decide to follow whatever that sign says? What happens if you stand in a spot and you do nothing at all? But just stand in one spot for hours. Does the person that you most want an answer from suddenly walk up to you? You won't know until you try these things. And I have. And so every day— Speaker B: You choose to try them in many ways.

Speaker A: Yes. And so there is agency and there is conviction in these things because it looks like there's no conviction, but actually it's really strong conviction in something that's seemingly insane. Right? Like, I'll give you an example of what might look insane. And I decided at A16z Speedrun the other day to just say it because I was like, you know what, it's what I'm doing right now and it's working. So they're like, how do you get deals? And I said, well, I'm going to say something nutty, but lately I've been daydreaming and I think about how the world could be better and I think about what people could be creating.

And I imagine it in all the various ways I can imagine it with my perception, and then I let it go, my attachment to it, because I used to be a founder. I used to think like, oh, I want to go build that, I want to do that, or give it to a friend or whatever. Instead, maybe I'm giving it to some kind of collective subconscious and I'm putting it in a cloud, and maybe someone gets that spark and maybe they decide that that's the company they want to go do, and then maybe they show up on my doorstep And then maybe they tell me exactly what I want to hear, what I want to invest in.

And it turns out that's been happening. So I'm just like, well, I don't know if this is how this is happening, but I know that I think about something I want to invest in and it shows up. So do I really need to go out to every demo day? Do I really need to grind away and look at every presentation, or do I need to daydream? Do I need to make believe? Do I need to use my childlike mind? And then suddenly someone is inspired. By that thing, and, um, or independently has nothing to do with me and they just show up and I just happen to be good at timing.

I don't know, but I know it's way more fun to live this way and it doesn't harm anyone. And I'm finding deals and I'm writing checks and I'm really excited about these companies. And it feels a lot different than when my early career where I just went to party after party and grinded and went to Demo Day and And like, you know, you can't argue with some of my results back then. I did well, but I'm still doing well with less of that. Now, maybe it's because my brand profile is stronger.

Maybe it's because I'm more well-known. There's a lot of factors I have to factor into this. But I do think that some of the experiments I'm running have nothing to do with my job. Like, I'll just say I want to meet an artist and suddenly within a week I'm talking to that artist that I want to meet. Not because I sent an email, not because I contacted an agent, because I ran into them at Starbucks, right? When you start getting into this and it gets really weird, you're like, okay, possibly the simulation is conspiring in your favor.

Mm-hmm. And if so, how do you affect that? How do you impact that? And it turns out words, my very first observation of humanity was that words had weight. So what we say about ourselves and the world around us changes our perception of it and quite possibly the reality of it itself. Speaker B: Casting spells. Correct. Attention. Yes. And again, this is all theory. Speaker A: Yeah. I never like to say that I'm a guru or that I believe these things, but I experiment with them and I get results and they're repeatable.

So I don't know what that is. Speaker B: It's funny. There's that— there's this sort of phenomenon of like even just like with technologies or inventions where they kind of show up in a few different parts of the world on like the same time horizon arbitrarily or like without coord— it sort of feels semi-connected to that. There's one little bit of this that I'd love to ask about, which is you were telling this very crazy story about, I think, Tim Ferriss about going to Boston. Oh yeah. And there's a part in the story in particular, and this ties maybe into faith where you've— it's like after the game and you've— this whole trip is like purely you following the signs or whatever.

And you go back and you try to like charge a candy bar to the hotel room. And I was driving the car a couple of days ago, re-listening to this, and maybe this part I had hearing for the first time. And the person looks you in the eye and tells you, you don't exist. Yes. While I was listening to this, I got like a chill up my spine. And it was like the only thing I can describe it was it was a bit like the fear of when I was like alone in the house at night as a kid.

Like it was fear or like, like almost the spookiness. I guess what it prompted for me is, on one hand, you have a lot of faith and you're trusting. Goes back maybe to the cliff analogy. Like, do you— is fear a part of this? Are you just totally at ease with it? Speaker A: Like, I'm trying to ditch fear. I, you know, I'm sure you've watched Dune or Red Dune, but fear is the mind killer. Um, it limits you. And I think we have very little to fear. And the more you go down this path of self-discovery or spiritual work, you fear death a lot less.

You fear change a lot less. You embrace it. You welcome it because it's a lesson. And every bad thing that happens to me is now a lesson. And that's exciting. So it's like, whoa, okay, this shitty thing just happened. So what was I doing and how could I correct that next time? And what can I learn from this situation? Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It's more of an infinite game. Sort of an infinite game. Yeah. Yeah. One last note on the, on the kind of conviction front, you actually used the phrase a few minutes ago where you talked about feeling and knowing.

You've talked about your departure from Founders Fund and dating back to this conversation with Peter. Where he, I think, pulled you aside early on. He says, "Sian, you're really good at feeling, but I need you to get better at knowing." Yeah. Speaker A: And I've asked him for clarity on that recently, but I didn't get a response. So sometimes people can teach you with silence. Speaker B: Yeah. There's another anecdote from Founders Fund, which I think is from Kevin's piece around Niantic. You had angel invested in Niantic, Pokémon Go. And there's this back and forth, and there's this little excerpt where Peter kind of finally bends, and he says, "This is a one-time deal just for Cyan," Teal told everyone else in the room.

"No one else can ever do this again." This is like a specific allocation of how much money you got from your personal whatever. "Bannister smiled at the memory. 'People don't know what to do when you have that level of convictions,'" she says. And so— Speaker B: Yeah. There's another anecdote from Founders Fund, which I think is from Kevin's piece around Niantic. You had angel invested in Niantic, Pokémon Go. And there's this back and forth, and there's this little excerpt where Peter kind of finally bends, and he says, "This is a one-time deal just for Cyan," Teal told everyone else in the room.

"No one else can ever do this again." This is like a specific allocation of how much money you got from your personal whatever. "Bannister smiled at the memory. 'People don't know what to do when you have that level of convictions,'" she says. And so— Speaker A: It's a bit theatrical sometimes, but sometimes you've got to make a point. Speaker B: So I'm curious with those two things, I'd be curious for you to just reflect on maybe the difference between feeling and knowing to the extent you still feel there is one.

And maybe also Peter Thiel is a person who has deep, deep conviction as well. Yes. You know, well, I'm curious what your conviction and Peter's conviction— like what maybe compare or contrast or just reflect on that kind of that, that dichotomy and what you learned from that. Speaker A: Well, Peter is religious, and I think a lot of people may not know that. And, you know, if you talk to him about his beliefs, they're definitely the most unique set of beliefs I've ever encountered. And it's really interesting because when he's trying to solve a problem or he's thinking about what to do, he will often close his eyes and stay still for long periods of time, way past your comfort level, usually.

So I usually tell people, I'm like, if you meet Peter and he does that, give him space. Don't try to fill the space. Yeah. You know, let him do it because it's a gift. And when he does that, I don't know, because he's never verbalized it, what he's searching for or how his thought process works or how he arrives at something. But every now and then he'll open his eyes and he'll just be like, "We're going to do this thing." And it'll sometimes be the most jarring possibly life-altering decision with crazy amounts of money that you're just like, how did you come up with that decision that quickly?

And, uh, and I've seen him do that over and over again. But interestingly, again, people are mirrors. I do the same thing. So I think that the first thing was we were coming back from an investment meet, um, investment team meeting, and he offered to give me a ride back to the office and The ride was mostly quiet, and then he said, "Sian, I want to tell you something." And I said, "Okay." And he said, "You're really good at feeling, not so good at knowing." And he looked at me kind of, and there was this unspoken, "You got it?"

And there was nothing else said. I didn't ask any questions. I just looked at him. I said, "Got it." And he goes, "Okay." Because his house was very close to Founders' Fund. It's like a 5-minute ride. And then he dropped me off in front of Founders Fund, and he said, "See you later." And that statement kept me up for many, many nights because I was like, what kind of knowing is he talking about? And this was before my spiritual moment in Boston. This was before understanding that there is a type of knowing that is not words, that feelings can be knowing.

And how can you know if a feeling is accurate or not? Takes a level of discernment and understanding your inner world a bit more than I did at the time. So I asked him a clarifying question recently and he didn't respond yet, and maybe he'll respond someday in person. But I said, you know, were you talking about financial acumen? Because that's the way I took it. I have to become a data room junkie and I have to get better at spreadsheets and being able to rattle off numbers to justify— more quantitative— and I have to become more quantitative.

But what if he didn't mean that? Because I don't know now. So now I'm just like, well, I actually don't know what he meant, but it did result in me quitting because I— the ego gets in there and the ego is like, wow, you are terrible at, you know, looking in data rooms and quantifying your decisions. And, you know, there's this bizarre path that you take to get to where you are. And to even explain to people how I arrived at a decision is, it's just exhausting. You just can't. And so, I took it as I need to go follow my path and I need to go do what I'm good at and unapologetically so, because that's what I like to be.

And so, I resigned. And, you know, it was that one conversation. And so, Peter has this surgical precision that he can deploy at any time where he gives feedback and it's just really profound. and he's one of the best teachers I've ever, ever had. And then the Niantic thing was really great because at Founders Fund we had this thing called a sub fund and you got special privileges on anything you invested out of that sub fund if it did well. So once you were in the money and you returned the money, then there was like these hurdles.

Yeah, these multipliers that were much more attractive than the main fund. For you if you, if you did it out of there. And so I notoriously— what Kevin wrote about was I told Peter I wanted to take my whole sub fund and put it into Niantic. How long you been there at that point? 2 years, I think. 2, 3 years. And, you know, I'm not a growth stage person. And in hindsight, that probably was not— especially, I mean, Niantic's done well. It just sold to Scopely, but that investment was not a fund returner.

And really every investment you make should be a fund returner. And so the economics— he was right about the economics and I could have learned something from him in that situation. But what I did learn was how you can— I mean, they didn't lose money, they made money. But it's one of these things where that level of conviction can come across and help you when you know you're on to something and you want to move something forward. Yeah. So I definitely had a— it was kind of one of those like you're at a poker table and you go all in.

It was just like, I'm going all in. And he, he had everybody sit down. He's like, okay, sit down. And he's like, this has never happened before. And he did say that. He said, you know, never again. No one else is doing this. So one time I drove the LPAT crazy at Founders Fund. I'm notorious for being the person who broke the most rules and, you know, basically there's boundaries. I will test them all. Speaker B: I might have to come on another podcast, but I'm sure there's a lot there.

One thing that this kind of leads into a little bit is the decision to leave and maybe kind of return to what you knew or you knew you were great at. There's a bit you say, we like to think we can do anything, but at some point you have to face reality when you can't do something. And when you can't do something, you should realize what you were really good at. So today I'm going back to that. That's right when you left. This ties a little bit in, ties a little bit to what we were talking about at the beginning of the conversation.

I think you're somebody who is— you had some interview, you said, I wish I had 1,000 of me so I could— I'm just so curious. I wish I could live all these lives. I wish I was scalable. I still wish that. I'm sure you do. On one hand, I don't think it's obviously mutually exclusive, but on some level returning to what you know, returning to seed investing. Obviously you're building a new firm and you guys are doing great and it's, I'm sure, new in a lot of ways, but it was kind of like returning to something.

And so I'm curious what that was like to return to something you knew. And maybe I'm conflating a lot of things, but it's sort of like this notion that it can be easy to get into this notion of life where you're like, you keep climbing the ladder and you keep climbing new ladders. And this was maybe a horizontal ladder rather than a vertical one. Yeah. So that was like— Speaker A: this was a strange shift because as an angel investor, for the most part, I can get on any cap table.

There's no competition. Like, I can just walk in and say, I want to be in this company. And most people are excited or happy to have my name on the company, which is great. And it's such a privilege and an honor to be that person. But when you're with a fund, it's different. Because a fund has a lot of responsibility for whether they follow on or what kind of signal that sends. Or, you know, it implies that there was a consensus between the partners and it implies a lot. And so, you know, the deciding to strike out and start a venture fund with Lee was a decision I had to make because I wanted to grow.

I wanted to Obviously I could be solo. I can deploy my own capital and run my own fund. But you don't get that water cooler thinking. You don't get that team that you can bounce ideas off of and you don't get a chance to have people point out your flaws. Yeah. And so one of the things I love about Long Journey is we have a coach and we are constantly pushing each other to be better people, to resolve conflicts, to think about, you know, our egos and the things we want to invest in and the types of things we want to invest in.

Even the LP base that we have is all intentional. And so a lot of this is an exercise in consistency, which I told you I'm terrible at. And so like I have to show up every Wednesday. I have to be in the, in the standup TAC meetings is what we call them, the absurd committee where we decide what we're investing in. I have to show up on Mondays for the standup. I have to I have to do things that are very uncomfortable and unnatural for me in order to build this organization.

And I do want it to exist long after I'm gone, if it's possible. You know, those, those types of institutions are hard to build, and everything's impermanent, so eventually everything will be gone. But at the same time, if I could infuse some of this randomness and this thinking and my spirit into a form of capitalism, that would be really cool, you know, because I do think I'm a contradiction. People like me typically are not capitalists. They don't love, uh, venture. They, you know, I, I'm deeply aware that normally like an artist-type person like me does not get involved in a field like this.

Yeah. And so I think there could be a different way way to do it and there could be a different way to enjoy and love capitalism and to see it in a different light through a different set of lenses of how it can actually reshape the world. Speaker A: this was a strange shift because as an angel investor, for the most part, I can get on any cap table. There's no competition. Like, I can just walk in and say, I want to be in this company. And most people are excited or happy to have my name on the company, which is great.

And it's such a privilege and an honor to be that person. But when you're with a fund, it's different. Because a fund has a lot of responsibility for whether they follow on or what kind of signal that sends. Or, you know, it implies that there was a consensus between the partners and it implies a lot. And so, you know, the deciding to strike out and start a venture fund with Lee was a decision I had to make because I wanted to grow. I wanted to Obviously I could be solo. I can deploy my own capital and run my own fund.

But you don't get that water cooler thinking. You don't get that team that you can bounce ideas off of and you don't get a chance to have people point out your flaws. Yeah. And so one of the things I love about Long Journey is we have a coach and we are constantly pushing each other to be better people, to resolve conflicts, to think about, you know, our egos and the things we want to invest in and the types of things we want to invest in. Even the LP base that we have is all intentional.

And so a lot of this is an exercise in consistency, which I told you I'm terrible at. And so like I have to show up every Wednesday. I have to be in the, in the standup TAC meetings is what we call them, the absurd committee where we decide what we're investing in. I have to show up on Mondays for the standup. I have to I have to do things that are very uncomfortable and unnatural for me in order to build this organization. And I do want it to exist long after I'm gone, if it's possible.

You know, those, those types of institutions are hard to build, and everything's impermanent, so eventually everything will be gone. But at the same time, if I could infuse some of this randomness and this thinking and my spirit into a form of capitalism, that would be really cool, you know, because I do think I'm a contradiction. People like me typically are not capitalists. They don't love, uh, venture. They, you know, I, I'm deeply aware that normally like an artist-type person like me does not get involved in a field like this. Yeah.

And so I think there could be a different way way to do it and there could be a different way to enjoy and love capitalism and to see it in a different light through a different set of lenses of how it can actually reshape the world. Speaker B: I think there's something too that's cool, which is investing for yourself, investing your own money and joining an existing firm are both great, but there, there isn't that thing you spoke to, which is like, I'm actually going to start something and build something that might be able to endure and compound.

Which is, which is cool. I call it— Speaker A: when I'm getting ready to write a value around this for our site and for our firm, which is called Win-Win-Win. And the idea is that every minute that you spend in your life, what if you could compound it and make it more impactful? So for example, if I'm investing a dollar into a company, I'm not just investing a dollar, I'm investing a dollar on behalf of institutions and nonprofits that are trying to solve some of the world's most difficult problems. And that could be my dollar, and then I could get the returns.

And then maybe I am a philanthropist and I can give that money away in the end of my life, which I plan on doing anyway. So there's another compounded win. Then you think about all the people that are going to have jobs because of that dollar or what that company is going to solve because of that dollar. And then you've added another win. And you just write down all the wins and the more wins, the better. And then you're like, okay, great. So then you're really, really maximizing your time for the dent you're going to leave in the universe.

Speaker B: I want to talk a little bit about art. It came up earlier. You've talked a lot about it. You brought up even the notion that kind of art has this way of finding you when it's supposed to. I think the first time I heard you mention that was about American Beauty, which is a crazy movie and I think had an impact on you. You've also— I think it was specifically Bill Murray, or I don't know if it was a specific film, but you talked about it sort of being this feeling of like seeing yourself in a painting.

Yes. How rich that is. Two other bits of quotes. One, you say art moves the needle on culture and opens people's minds and hearts to subjects they otherwise might not have thought about. And then you say business is art. The US Constitution is art. Contracts and code are art. Capitalism isn't just an idea, it's art. What are the bounds of art? What, what, what kind of art moves you most? Speaker B: I want to talk a little bit about art. It came up earlier. You've talked a lot about it. You brought up even the notion that kind of art has this way of finding you when it's supposed to.

I think the first time I heard you mention that was about American Beauty, which is a crazy movie and I think had an impact on you. You've also— I think it was specifically Bill Murray, or I don't know if it was a specific film, but you talked about it sort of being this feeling of like seeing yourself in a painting. Yes. How rich that is. Two other bits of quotes. One, you say art moves the needle on culture and opens people's minds and hearts to subjects they otherwise might not have thought about.

And then you say business is art. The US Constitution is art. Contracts and code are art. Capitalism isn't just an idea, it's art. What are the bounds of art? What, what, what kind of art moves you most? Speaker A: I mean, I really like sort of the unsung hero art that's on the fringe, that doesn't see the light of day, that hardly anyone knows. That stuff I really, really like. And in that sense, for example, the US Constitution is something that impacts us all day to day. It is a conspiracy that everyone in this country, for the most part, agrees to.

And it is the prevailing laws that keep everything in order to some extent. But really, it's just a document with some words written in ink. And we've all decided that, you know, we're going to uphold it with something called belief, I guess. We believe in this document. And, you know, if you think about the power of that, it is one of the most powerful pieces of art on the planet. And it's worth defending. It's worth interpreting. It's worth valuing because there's no other country in this world that has something like it.

And so America is an art experiment. It is an experiment. We're young. We have not been around as long as other countries. And we are now reaching a point in history where we're going to have to test that document. And we're going to have to see whether or not the branches of government we have and the types of powers that were envisioned by our forefathers actually holds and whether or not we will have freedom of speech. We can't have freedom of art without that document. And so, um, I, I think very deeply about, about the Constitution and about how it gives us certain freedoms that I think are human rights and that don't extend to other places, and how those freedoms are being eroded and what are, what are the implications of that.

But, um, because I view everything as art Everything. Just about everything. Yeah. I think if you look around this room, everything in this room was created by a human being, and that human being contributed their experience of it potentially to a collective subconscious. And so they made it a reality. But it's kind of like if the tree falls in a forest and no one's around to hear it, did it actually fall? Does this room really exist or are we conspiring to keep it in place? Because we accept it as reality.

And but this is art too. You know, you may say it's uninspired, you may say it's— it lacks meaning, but, but that's not true. Someone could come in here and the walls remind them of something from their past, and it opens up a whole new gateway and an understanding of life that they never had before. And so it's such a subjective experience, art, that I'm hesitant to say what's good art or bad art or what's art and what's not, which is one of those like arguments that everyone has. But, you know, some art is more impactful than others, and some of it deeply, deeply moves us and changes us as humans and allows us to try on those different lenses to perceive life in a different way.

And I think that the most successful art can do that. And so I'd rather talk about art as successful art versus unsuccessful art, because some of it's just unsuccessful. It's an attempt. And prompt something. Yeah. And it didn't, it didn't land. But sometimes it gives birth to its final form. You know, maybe it's just the throwing of the clay and eventually it becomes the pot. But you've got to start somewhere. You've got to throw. I always marvel at like ceiling fans, right? Like there's some person who looks at a ceiling fan and says, you know what the world needs?

Another ceiling fan. And it's a problem that we've solved. But yet we somehow aesthetically want a different one or a spoon or a glass. Those are the entrepreneurs that blow my mind. It's like, who are you and why are you doing this? Because it's really a race to the bottom. And so you're just like, wow, I marvel at you. I want to meet these people. But, but there's an example. That's a piece of art that someone wanted to will into existence into the world, the ceiling fan. Speaker B: John Collison has this line that the world is a museum of passion projects.

Yes. Which I think maybe captures the upper echelon of that. But it's true. Speaker A: It's very true. It's very, very true. Speaker B: Why do you love performance art? Speaker A: Oh my gosh, I love performance art because it goes back to that childlike wonder. So when you start to realize that we are wearing clothes that allow people to form a quick opinion of you, so if you wear a suit, you might be a professional. If you wear a doctor's outfit, you might be medical. If you, uh, are wearing a fast food uniform, you— somebody might make assumptions about you, you know.

And so I really, really like challenging people's assumptions and, um, pushing people to, to really wonder, you know, these things that you use just to get along in society, to get along with culture, with people around you, and to be a neighbor. You sometimes have to make very quick judgments. Yeah, but which judgments should you challenge? Like, sometimes I'll go into a really fancy store in Rodeo Avenue wearing like clothes that look like I'm a bum, um, to challenge their assumptions about me. Yeah, uh, or I will— I mean, I, I wear like fast food uniforms on golf courses, you know?

Speaker B: It's like, yeah, you know, like specific brands. Speaker A: Yeah, IKEA. Well, IKEA's meatballs, but But IKEA uniforms are the best. They're the funniest and they're blue and yellow and you can really see me out there. But this was inspired by a friend of mine who played golf with us one day in Las Vegas and he didn't have an outfit. And so he wore this red polo and my friend kept calling him Target. And so I thought to myself, what's wrong with Target employees' outfits? And I was like, oh, that could be a whole thing.

So I started buying all these Target employee outfits and then I have Wendy's, now I have Taco Bell. So Taco Bell is a really good one. So I have like a bunch of McDonald's uniforms. Wow. Speaker B: It's like, yeah, you know, like specific brands. Speaker A: Yeah, IKEA. Well, IKEA's meatballs, but But IKEA uniforms are the best. They're the funniest and they're blue and yellow and you can really see me out there. But this was inspired by a friend of mine who played golf with us one day in Las Vegas and he didn't have an outfit.

And so he wore this red polo and my friend kept calling him Target. And so I thought to myself, what's wrong with Target employees' outfits? And I was like, oh, that could be a whole thing. So I started buying all these Target employee outfits and then I have Wendy's, now I have Taco Bell. So Taco Bell is a really good one. So I have like a bunch of McDonald's uniforms. Wow. Speaker B: And talk about cultural appropriation. Speaker A: Wow. But if you— yeah, but exactly. If you go into a golf club wearing a McDonald's fast food drive-in outfit, yeah, they're going to tell you that you can't have it.

But if you actually push them on it, you're like, it has a collar, these are chinos, you know, if it's good enough for McDonald's, it's good enough for here. Yeah. And, and it doesn't break any of the dress codes. And maybe you have to force them to update the dress code that says no fast food uniforms. And that's your contribution. But I just really feel like I'm not always doing performance art, but every now and then I am. And it just allows you to play with the world a little bit and to bring some levity to a situation or to teach people how they can play.

Speaker B: Did you get into golf after you met Bill Murray? Speaker A: Yeah, the day I met Bill Murray. Speaker B: But I believe in that story, you were like, I'd never played golf before. Never played. You now play. Speaker B: Did you get into golf after you met Bill Murray? Speaker A: Yeah, the day I met Bill Murray. Speaker B: But I believe in that story, you were like, I'd never played golf before. Never played. You now play. Speaker A: Well, play is a— Speaker B: you play enough to have robust, uh, fast food uniforms.

Speaker A: Yes, I play enough to be silly and to have fun on the golf course. And I'm, I'm— I've made 2 pars in my life so far, which is not a lot. Speaker B: We'll take it. Yeah. Uh, somewhere you said, uh, I want to make a piece of art, something like Song of the Lark, which is a reference to this painting that Bill Murray talks about. I don't know if it's a building, a painting, a film, a sculpture, a piece of theater, or what. Something that moves people. We talked a little bit about this with Magic Glasses.

I know you've been working, I think, in a number of film projects. You could answer literally to the question, what are you hoping to make? But I think more specifically, I'm curious what you're hoping to say. Speaker A: I don't even know what I'm hoping to say yet. I, with Magic Glasses, I really want the end result to be that you wonder which pair of lenses you're looking at the world through, and could you change them? And if you just walk away with that concept alone, then we've done our job.

Or if you just said, that's the weirdest movie I've ever seen, what did I just watch? That also could do the job. You know, there's other stories that I am exploring around euthanasia. So I am fascinated by this concept of the right to die. And when, when do you have that right? And how does, what are the religious implications, the spiritual implications, societal implications, contract implications,, of an adult person deciding that they want to do this? So a couple of the stories I'm working on explore those topics pretty deeply.

And I'm really excited about those. Why are you drawn to that? Because I'm, I'm really curious about life and mortality in general, and I don't fear dying. I don't welcome it. I don't want it. I want to experience as much of this life as possible, but I'm very comfortable with it because I have an understanding of what my life is now that's pretty unique, and I, I understand why I'm here. At least I think I do. And so because of that, I, I want to explore If someone's just ready to check out and they're done, you know, if they waited 5 years and they could convince a psychiatrist over 5 years that they've really thought about it, should we allow them to do it?

And under what circumstances should that be allowed? You know, terminal illness, deep amounts of pain, suffering. Uh, you know, we, we allow it for animals, but we don't allow it for humans. So is there an honest exchange, um, in which two people, two consenting adults, could, like Romeo and Juliet, take each other's lives? And, uh, I'm exploring it with a story that involves an elderly couple as well as a young woman where you would think that she has absolutely no reason to take her life. She's not sick, she's not anything that you would imagine.

And it explores the moral implications behind that and kind of, you know, will hopefully challenge somebody's feelings, if nothing else, about mortality and when is it okay to take a life or your own. So, you know, it's a little Dextery. So, there's a— and it's not a horror film, but it does involve some horror. But that's one that I'm working on. And then The other thing is I really like the idea of creating fake stores. I haven't done this yet, and this is a fantasy that I want to do, which is I really like the idea of a shopping experience that isn't what it seems.

Okay. And so maybe it even takes a while, like Boiling the Frog, for you to realize you're in something that's not real. And then you're just like, okay, wait, are these products real? Is this something I can actually use? Is it? You know, or it makes you question reality or your, your purchasing choices or something. So there's some vein there that I'm kind of exploring. The most controversial thing I've come up with is a robot brothel. Okay. And I think someone has tried that in Japan or somewhere. Yeah. Speaker B: Now's the time.

Speaker A: But the idea is that it's not real, but I see I'm giving it away, so it doesn't really matter. I probably will never do this. I'll just give it away because this is this fantasy that I had. Which is you rent a space in like San Francisco, someplace where there's libertine people, where it would be expected to exist. Um, not like Marfa, Texas, or something like that, but you put it here, and, um, if you look through the window, it looks really legit, and it's got a phone number for making appointments.

And then maybe people come and go and they act really weird, and, and so you create this lore that this thing exists, but it really doesn't. It's just to test the idea of how would society feel about legalization of an AI robot who is not human. Is there a rights issue? Like, just to really explore that concept ethically. It's performance art. Exactly. So those are the types of things, and I've got a long list of them. That's just one of the many things I would like to try, including parties that are fake, protests that are fake, um, you know, just to start a conversation.

I really love billboards. There's a group of artists that make these like I like really confrontational and funny billboards that make you think. I like confusion marketing. It's like a type of marketing that makes no sense. Like some religious person put up these signs that said they were from God. And it was like, "You think it's hot here? Try hell. God." But it doesn't say which church did it. It doesn't say like what, but it really gets you thinking. You're like, "Who did this and why?" And why that font and why here?

And so, Anything that jolts someone out of the reality they think they're in into a new one. Yeah. Is kind of my goal. Speaker B: You would— my friend Peter, you would like him. He started this thing called Birds Aren't Real. Oh, I love Birds Aren't Real. Speaker A: I discovered them because of a sign on a, on a, like a telephone pole and it said Birds Aren't Real. And I was just— I think it was in Flagstaff, Arizona. Yeah. And I was like looking at it and I was like, that is hilarious.

And I went to the website, I bought all the shirts. Yeah, it's worldbuilding, right? Speaker B: Stickers. Very Andy Kaufman. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great artist group. Speaker A: I mean, hats off to your friend. Big fan. You guys have to meet sometime. Speaker B: Yeah. All right. I have just a kind of a smattering of miscellaneous topics before we wrap up. Okay. When we met, we talked about boredom, and I think we kind of disagreed a little bit. You have a line from your sister, I think, where you say she says being bored is an insult to your intelligence.

Yes. I think I had brought up the notion that I'm trying to be bored more. And you— I think you even said it earlier in the conversation that you're never bored. Why are you against boredom? Can we redeem boredom? Speaker A: Yeah, you know, I've been thinking about that conversation since we had it, because I was very combative with you and very adamant that being bored was not a good thing. And then I have to question that because again, every belief that you hold or any assumption that you hold, you should challenge it.

And so you were challenging it and I'm challenging yours, right? And so it's a fascinating exchange where there's this tension. And both of those things could be true, and we have to hold them in tension. So I think that, um, I was very bored when my sister said that, and I really wanted to be intelligent, and I prized that as a trait that I should have and should strive to be intelligent. And so when she told me that, I was determined from that day forward to never be bored. Because I realized it was a choice.

Speaker B: Yeah, to be bored. It is critically. Speaker A: So I do things that other people would find boring, which is like the Derive I was telling you about, where you drift and you walk around. Um, because I'm always observing, it's almost nearly impossible for me to be bored, right? But somebody else might call that boredom. It's just I don't have the feeling of boredom. I'm not even sure I can get it anymore. Like, I'm not even sure it's possible for me. Speaker B: I think, to be honest, when I say boredom, I'm pointing at something more like doriv.

Like, okay, I am pointing at this deliberate idleness, um, that can open up. Yeah. Speaker A: And I think what we've determined, at least right now, is that we agree that intentional idleness, intentional drift, is a very good thing. I think when you, um, sit around and you allow yourself to wait and procrastinate and feel all these horrible feelings that come along with boredom, um, just to get that epiphany of what you should be doing, uh, to me is self-destructive. But maybe someone could make an argument that it's not, because it gets you— you basically have limited yourself so much that you're waiting for that aha.

As long as you get it, I suppose. Speaker B: You're never bored when you're like meditating. I think you said you can meditate for like 6 hours. 6 hours or more. Not bored at all. Speaker A: Not bored at all. Because there's so much to observe. Your discomfort. Speaker B: That I think is the difference between you and the normal person is that you can, you can find something to observe in any context, even if you're alone with yourself in the dark. Speaker B: You're never bored when you're like meditating.

I think you said you can meditate for like 6 hours. 6 hours or more. Not bored at all. Speaker A: Not bored at all. Because there's so much to observe. Your discomfort. Speaker B: That I think is the difference between you and the normal person is that you can, you can find something to observe in any context, even if you're alone with yourself in the dark. Speaker A: I love things where people are like, I'm late for the meeting. I'm like, great, because I can spend all this time observing and being with myself and I love it.

So I love it when people— not that I want everyone to cancel meetings with me, but I do love it when it happens. And I love that time being reclaimed where I can do what I love the most. So I— it's impossible for me to be bored. Speaker B: Oh, you live with a bunch of 70 to 90-year-olds, or maybe used to. I still do. Still do. Yeah. You said, this is perfect content for my retirement community. Yes, I deliberately live among some 79-year-olds. There's another story, but picture an intentional living space where artists and free thinkers can keep being reborn, which is beautiful.

Um, what has been unexpected about living with a group of people in that age group? Speaker A: Um, some people don't plan well for their end of life, and so they're financially insecure. So there's that. You see that across the board. Or, you know, sometimes they can model behaviors for you. Like, there was this woman who— she died when she was 93— named Jane, Jane Anderson, who's an amazing woman. And she was fiercely independent to the very end. And you could not take her keys away for her golf cart. The biggest danger was trying to keep the keys away from her car.

Because at some point she drove the car on the golf course. And yeah, that's a little dangerous. Like, eventually you start to, like, lose touch with what you can or should or not do. So there's that problem that happens in communities like this, is sometimes you lose touch with reality, um, or you're seeing it. So the other thing is, I've witnessed, like, with Jane, she saw people, um, she was able to predict that someone was coming over before they came over. She was talking to people that we couldn't see as if they were there.

She was saying really profound things that were very meaningful. And I feel like you can't get those experiences unless you're in that community and you can kind of just be there at the right time to witness these amazing end-of-life stories. Yeah. And she was so inspirational to me because I mean, she was the first female golfer to ever play, I think, co-ed competitive golf. So she broke ceilings, right? And she, if you asked to carry her bag, she's like, "No, thank you." You know, like, she was just like, "I am me."

She was unapologetically Jane, you know, and she was fierce, but also very kind. She was a schoolteacher, and she taught kids, and she was just an amazing role model. And if anyone cursed around her, she would like reprimand you. And And, you know, in the end, I had dinner parties with her with invisible guests. And we, I put out plates and I put out food. Wow. And we were having the time of our life. And I really enjoy this. This is why I spend time intentionally around an aging population because we're, it's the one thing, health is the great equalizer and we are all gonna die.

And so, or at least our bodies are. And so, we could spend more time, especially as entrepreneurs or as people analyzing what that end-of-life care looks like and how much a community can take on some of it. So we, we tend to take a person who is difficult to take care of and we put them in a home and we make it someone else's problem. With Jane, that, that didn't happen. She did have an in-home caretaker, but for the most part, the community really did rise and they really did make sure that they, they everyone kind of came together, like neighbors.

One of the neighbors who was, you know, really, really valued his friendship with her, built her a big window, for example, so she could look out on the golf course. And so people could come in and say hi to her while they were out there golfing and keep her company. And then the people all through the community would bring her milkshakes or stop by and sing to her. And so I think I honestly think until her last breath, she lived a very good life. And that's what I want for myself and for all the people I love and people I don't know.

I still love you. I want it for you. I want people to experience it. If they're not going to be taken out in a car accident or something like that, and you have the privilege of being able to decide how you die, it goes back to the euthanasia stuff. Like, why wouldn't you? You know, why wouldn't you put a bit more intention into it and joy and community? And so, for example, we're building a drive-in movie theater for golf carts with the old little talk boxes that you can roll up to.

So cool. And we have like a movie theater screen. And the idea is like, you know, if every house contributed an activity like that, imagine like you won't need a clubhouse. You don't need a management team. You don't need— you could just say it's Taco Tuesdays over at Rob's house or it's You know, there's a tiki lounge in a tree that's only open on Thursdays. Someone can open an underground jazz club. And the other thing I love about older people is they remember how to be kids again. Mm. Mm. 'Cause they give no Fs.

Yeah. They're just like, we got 5 years left, let's make the most of it. Speaker B: Oh man, I mean, I think there's a lot all communities could learn, especially from those last few things you said. Like we can just do Taco Tuesday at Rob's house. You can't have to be in the old folks community either. Yeah, you just can. Speaker A: And I'm looking forward to people figuring this out. You know, these unconferences like Edge Esmeralda and like Deep Tech Week, they put together all of these events that are happening all over the city at different people's houses.

And then it, it forms like decentralized event. And there's no reason why we can't do that as a society. So what I'd like to do is to prove this out as a concept. The hardest things have been disputes between individuals. Obviously, when you form a community, there's people that you can't ask to leave. They live there. Yeah. And so if they start not getting along with you or they start drama or things like that, like, how do you navigate drama? It's tough. It's really, really tough. So that's one thing that I have not enjoyed about it, which is the people issues that can arise.

If everyone could just get along. Speaker B: That's the easy part, right? That would be really amazing. You— this is a quote, uh, "I get paid to see abnormalities in the marketplace. Pete Buttigieg is an outlier. I knew the moment I met him that he was going to be president one day." I still think he is. What's special about him? Oh my gosh. Speaker A: So I went on this, uh, tour when I worked at AngelList, um, or maybe it was at Founders Fund. It was really early there, but it was a tour of— they called it comeback cities.

And so we went to Flint, Michigan, and Detroit, and then South Bend, Indiana was one of the stops. Speaker A: So I went on this, uh, tour when I worked at AngelList, um, or maybe it was at Founders Fund. It was really early there, but it was a tour of— they called it comeback cities. And so we went to Flint, Michigan, and Detroit, and then South Bend, Indiana was one of the stops. Speaker B: This was Founders Fund because I believe in the same thing you— at least I think it's in Kevin's piece.

Apparently you tried to get a Founders Fund office in South Bend. Speaker A: Oh yeah, I did. I did. I tried. Okay, so it was Founders Fund. You're right. And so I went to South Bend and part of the tour was meeting Mayor Pete, and he showed us these data centers he was building at the time to mine Bitcoin. He turned a Peugeot— or not Peugeot, I forget, it starts with a P— car company plant into a data center. And so we went in there and it was just so great to see a public official like understand how technology works and how he should be investing in Bitcoin back then and think about what it's worth now.

Yeah. And the other thing was getting rid of— and this is controversial, but at the same time, You know, he would, I think the city would buy back certain types of land that was in disrepair so that they could free it up to become yards for buildings that were actually better looking aesthetically so that you could get rid of the blight. Because if people don't live around blight, they naturally care for their communities more. And so you start to see the quality of those communities go up because there's not a pile of rubble that no one can afford to take away.

So he took away all of these dilapidated homes that were falling apart and they buy them and take them out. And then the other thing is he became kind of a, a beta test city. He was very proud of it. So Lime Bike, a lot of the scooter, you know, share programs started out in South Bend and he quickly identified that the unbanked couldn't use them. And so like, how can you develop a solution for the unbanked? Wow. Then there's like college kids that wanted to figure out how to do water filtration.

So he gave them use of the entire city's water filtration and very experimental. Very experimental. Exactly. But the thing that impressed me the most was his ability to say, I don't know. So I would ask him like, how are you going to solve this problem? And he'd look at me and he'd go, Sayan, you know, that's a very good question. I would bring in panels of experts. I would talk to as many people as possible and I would try to get to the bottom of it. And he goes, but to be honest with you, I don't know.

And I was like, wow, how refreshing. Yeah, pretty rare. It's so rare. Most politicians will tell you whatever it is they think you want to hear and they lie. And, you know, all politicians are flawed, including Pete. But I'll take a person who will admit that they don't know any day over anyone else. And the other thing is he was a military person. So he understands what it means to carry a firearm and also what it means to be sent off to war and possibly killed. And so if we're going to be sending our sons and daughters and children off to war, we should at least understand what it's like.

And so I really would love our commander-in-chief to be trained by the military and have served. You know, Trump did not serve. And so it makes me uneasy when someone can make decisions that cost taxpayers tons of money and also cost lives without ever having to experience that themselves. Speaker B: There's— I don't know where I found it, but you, uh, were talking about Halt and Catch Fire and seeing yourself in Cameron Howe. My hero is a woman on the show Halt and Catch Fire named Cameron. She's the first character I've ever seen that when I'm watching her, I feel like I'm watching myself.

Speaker A: Yeah, it was really jarring. Speaker B: You've talked about— and I think it's pretty clear you have a lot of mentors. I don't know, maybe that you've had as many role models, at least that look like you or that represent maybe where you've been or whatever. And so I'm curious what it feels like. I think my suspicion is that you are the real version of Cameron Howe to a lot of young people today. And I'm curious what that feels like. Speaker A: Oh, that's— I'm always shocked when people read anything that I write or pay attention to anything that I do because I don't do it for that reason.

And so When people comment on it, or they see me, they see themselves in me. I'm always— it's like breaking the fourth wall. You're like, "Oh, that's right. I exist and I'm doing this. That's right." But with Cameron, one, her background really echoed mine. Her behavior, how she acts echoed how I act. I remember watching it and just being like, "Wow, this just really hits hard." It's like, little too close for comfort. And, but it was remarkable to see myself reflected in some way in art. You know, and the only other experience I've had like this was meeting Bill Murray.

You know, it was the first time that I saw myself reflected in someone I admired and looked up to. And I wanted to know, how could someone like him navigate a world and still remain human and present and be among us when everyone wants a piece of him? You know, when everyone's clamoring for his attention, you know, how is it that he's able to really be in it with us? And why? And so that was my interest in him. And probably the one living being And I have met Cameron Howe, which is Mackenzie Davis.

I did axe throwing with her. I went through some axes with her. Of course you did. Yeah, it was fantastic. She was in Terminator also. And, you know, her real life persona is not really like me at all. It's just her fictional persona is. Speaker B: You've talked about helping Gen Z and Gen Alpha feel like they have a future. Mm-hmm. I'm curious what you'd tell them, maybe especially for those who are feeling lost in 2025? Speaker A: I think that we need to embrace change because the one thing that's constant is change.

And every time that we hold something dear, we try to become protective of it, it gets ripped from us. And this has been repeated throughout history. And so there have been entire industries that have been displaced by technology or advancements in, in something. You know, there's the printing press, there's The Industrial Revolution, there's the train, there's the car, got rid of the horse buggy. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. Photoshop, you know, disrupted photographers. And, and so AI is going to— we didn't predict that AI would come after knowledge workers first.

If you were to go back in time and ask people which jobs would be displaced first, that was not what people thought. And so I think what we're going to experience is ego disruption on a massive scale, probably the biggest ego reset ever, where people are going to cling on for dear life to some concepts that will be, uh, ultimately challenged. Because we do live in a world where there are different ecosystems, different governments, different rules. So if we don't build something or we outlaw something, it really doesn't ultimately matter because someone else will build And so when you, when you're in a petri dish like that and it's going to be done anyway, my recommendation is to accept it and to try to figure out in a post-scarcity world what matters.

And so there's a book called The Diamond Age that I would recommend that all kids read. I think it came out in 1999, written by Neal Stephenson. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things he predicts is Everything has AI. There's these Matter compilers. You can print this table. I can print a microphone. I can print a chair. Like, it's free. You don't even have to pay for furniture. They can print food. Pure abundance. Yeah, pure abundance. And so in a world of pure abundance, which is probably what we're heading towards, what truly matters?

And I would argue that being an artist matters and the age of the artisan is coming. So human creativity and human innovation and human production is finite, like gold. There's only so many of us on this planet. And so when we make things by hand, it's going to be kind of like going to the store and buying organic. So I really think there's going to be organic human-made stuff. Yes. And we're obsessed with ourselves. Exactly. We're obsessed with ourselves. So I actually think, you know, there's going to be more like millionaires, people who create Instagram, TikTok, whatever feeds selling some niche product that they make at home with their hands.

I see, I see it all the time. I see people who launch these like jewelry brands, pants brands, knitting shops, all of these things. And you see these micro-entrepreneurs. Yeah. And so I think we're going to see more of that and we should celebrate it. Not everyone needs to create a venture return business like they can create a lifestyle business that supports them and their family and gives them abundance and joy and a sense of purpose because they're whittling spoons or whatever it is that they want to do. Not everyone's going to want something created by an AI that looks too polished or is too perfect.

You know, human imperfection is actually a beautiful thing. And so I would recommend that young people do not despair and instead look at the world differently and how they can reimagine it. If those— if your needs are met, what's next? So yes, there's going to be a lot of disruption, there's going to be a lot of displacement, there's going to be a lot of potential poverty. And these are all things that we can get together and try to solve together. And I'm hoping that we do. You know, it's going to be interesting to see how potentially these multi-trillion-dollar businesses contribute to UBI through taxes or something like that.

Like, I don't know how this is all going to play out, But it's definitely gonna— the world's about to change in a drastic way. Yeah. Speaker B: What's your favorite quality of Scott Bannister's? Speaker A: Aha! Scott Bannister. I think of him as like a grandfather clock. He's stationary, dependable, reliable. And, you know, he's an expert at what he does. And if he breaks down, you need a specialist. And so that's kind of how I view him. I view him as my grandfather clock. He's my anchor, my tether to this earth.

So he's the opposite of me. He does not wander around. He's a bit random in his decision-making and he has a very good intuition and very good gut, but he's also really, index is high on the logic and financial acumen, for example, that I thought I lacked. Speaker B: Pretty good pairing between the two. Speaker A: It's a really good pairing actually. Yeah. Because I'm front desk. The results are pretty good too. Speaker B: Exactly. Speaker A: When we pair us together, it's phenomenal. And so that's one of our strengths is because he's back in back office, compliance, legal, all of the various things that I don't enjoy that would take, you know, consistency and repetition.

And instead, I get to wander around and come back with all these crazy ideas. And, you know, our idea of a good time is sitting around eating and talking about businesses and how they work or don't work or You know, like, we'll talk about how much we love Chipotle because of how many SKUs it has. And, you know, these are just things that we enjoy doing. And then the other thing I can say about Scott is he's very principled. He's almost like an immovable object, again, like a grandfather clock. You know, once he's got his mind set on something, there is no moving that man.

And I do like that because it means there's boundaries. There's things, lines I can't cross. There's You know, he has a compass and you know what it is. Like, you know what he stands for. You know what he fights for. You know every morning what he does anything for. And I think that's remarkable. Speaker B: Is there a quality you most hope to instill in your children? Speaker A: How to learn. I think I've done a good job at that. So as long as they can figure out how things are done and how things work, then I think they're set.

So if they can just figure that part out, then it's just to keep them off drugs until later in life and to prevent them from dying. And then you've pretty much done your job. The rest of it is, you know, I hear all these parents are like, I hope I don't fuck up my kids too much. It's like, we all fuck up our kids. Like, no matter how hard you try, you're gonna fuck up your kids on some level, in some way, because that's our job. Our job is to experience trauma on Earth.

And if we don't experience it, we will invent it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker B: Part of Earth School. Yep. We will just invent it. My final question. I have a few things for you before I ask it. First, a quote from you. I think you texted this to Lee. A traveler lost in a land of endless mirrors only begins the true long journey when she sees not her reflection, but the string— the strings that move her limbs. I was thinking about this quote and I was like, what does it mean?

And then I was thinking about your favorite line from Bill. It just doesn't matter. Yes. Which comes across, comes up all the time in Bill Murray movies. And maybe you had this very specific moment with The Razor's Edge. There's another line from Bill, I think in a Charlie Rose interview where he says at the end of it, we used to tell my brother, this is not a dress rehearsal. This is your life. Yes. And so I was reflecting on all of this and obviously I think the— on the surface it just, it just doesn't matter is this nihilistic, nothing matters.

As you've noted, that is not what Bill is getting at. If anything, he's getting at the stakes of all of this. It's, it's, it's more like everything else doesn't matter because this does. Correct. Yeah. Speaker A: What is the opposite of what people think it means? I had to trying a lot of perspectives to figure that one out. But when you realize, like, the aha moment I had with one of his "it doesn't matters" was from The Razor's Edge, was there was a moment where he could have identified with the pain, the suffering, the sorrow of losing a loved one, and he could wallow in it, and that could become his identity.

But then he decided, she's gone, she's dead, it just doesn't matter. What matters is right now and the next step I take. And he does that. And so it's a really profound moment where you realize how much baggage and weight are you carrying around that no longer serves you? And does it matter? And if it doesn't, let it go. You know, and until you can truly let things go and you can sever those ties, you will not be free of it. It will weigh you down. And that's what I realized what he was trying to teach.

It was not nihilistic. You know, I think a lot of people hear that phrase, I used to hear that phrase and think, you know, do whatever you want because nothing matters. No, that's not what he's saying at all. He's saying be conscious about what matters and what doesn't matter. Speaker B: On that note, the strings that move her limbs, like, you know, what is it that does matter? Speaker A: So that's a statement about mechanical thinking and being mechanical. And if we go through life, um, just letting other people pull our strings and going towards the whims of others, or the whims of nature, or the whims of our sleepwalking, um, we are not the puppeteer, we're being puppeted.

And each mirror, every interaction we have with a person, is a reflection on that reality and a chance to take over to some degree. Obviously, you can't be the complete puppeteer, but to some degree take over and at least determine the outcome of your life. And so that's why I wrote it to him. And I'm really impressed that he either— he sent it to you or shared it with you or however you got it. He keeps a file of sionisms, and he— every time I say something, he files it away and keeps it and will remind me of it years later.

That's one of them. Speaker B: On that note, the strings that move her limbs, like, you know, what is it that does matter? Speaker A: So that's a statement about mechanical thinking and being mechanical. And if we go through life, um, just letting other people pull our strings and going towards the whims of others, or the whims of nature, or the whims of our sleepwalking, um, we are not the puppeteer, we're being puppeted. And each mirror, every interaction we have with a person, is a reflection on that reality and a chance to take over to some degree.

Obviously, you can't be the complete puppeteer, but to some degree take over and at least determine the outcome of your life. And so that's why I wrote it to him. And I'm really impressed that he either— he sent it to you or shared it with you or however you got it. He keeps a file of sionisms, and he— every time I say something, he files it away and keeps it and will remind me of it years later. That's one of them. Speaker B: Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.