Simone Giertz: Queen of Sh*tty Robots, Innovative Engineering, and Design | Lex Fridman Podcast #372
- It's a machine, it was my friend Daniel
Beauchamp and I, we had this long running joke
about a proud parent machine that you could give a quarter, and it pats you on the shoulder,
and says, "Proud of you." - [Lex] Yeah. - So yeah, I still have
that hanging on my wall in my workshop. So that one, I'm really happy with. I just think it's a really funny concept, and also I executed the build well. - [Lex] So it's an arm? - [Simone] Hm-mm. - [Lex] What's the build? - [Simone] I built it
off of an old lamp arm. Yeah, basically, it's
just a motorized arm, and this kind of torso of a person. - [Lex] Was this, so it's
actually a hand, right? - [Simone] It's just laser cut plywood, and it kinda has like, it looks creepy. - [Lex] Yeah. - And yeah, it's says "Proud of you, son." Because I just thought
that sounded more funny than "Proud of you, daughter," and also, "Proud of you, son," just, it immediately communicates
that it's a parent. It's not just like a
colleague or something. He's like, "Proud of you." - (laughs) Yeah. - [Simone] And it charges
you a quarter for it. - Yeah, but you add like
ChatGPT on top of that, and fine tune it on
conversations you've had with your parents, and all of a sudden, you have a thing that can fundamentally transform your psyche. - [Simone] Yeah. - The following is a conversation with Simone Giertz, and an
inventor, designer, engineer, and roboticist famous for
a combination of humor and brilliant creative
design in the systems and products she creates, including, as part of her new product
design company called Yetch, she has a popular YouTube channel, where she has demonstrated
a lot of her incredible and fun designs and inventions
from quote, "shitty robots," to a Tesla Model 3 converted into a truck, but where she also revealed
her personal journey, after having been diagnosed
with a brain tumor. Simone is a brilliant, fun,
and inspiring human being. It was truly an honor for
me to get to meet her, and to have this chat. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please
check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends,
here's Simone Giertz. What was the first cool thing you built, where you fell in love with
the process of making stuff? - You know, I think, in the
beginning of building stuff, you run into the limitations
of your skills so much. So I feel like honestly, building gets less and less frustrating, or I love it more and
more, the more I know. - So all the limitations aren't fun? Like when it's-
- The limitations are fun, but it's like when you
have an idea of something and you wanna make it a certain level, and then you just have to compromise with the materials and the
tools and the skills you have. So I can't remember first
time where I felt like- - [Lex] I'm proud of this. - Wow, this was so smooth,
I'm so proud of it. I feel like a lot of people,
I watch them build stuff, and it's just like
watching water pour down, it's just so easy, and for me, it's just like trying to
shove a toy car into a wall. - So you're not able
to step back and marvel at the early creations, even like, we're not even talking the
Arduino stuff, even before then. - I'm from Sweden, and you
have to choose either sewing or woodworking, and I chose
woodworking in middle school, and I remember the sense
of pride when I got to bring something home
and that thing of like, oh my God, I get to show my parents this. And I think that is kind of
the feeling that I've built my job around. It's the sense of pride, and wanting to show people
something that I made, and back then, it was a
little wooden spoon, and now, it's a slightly larger wooden spoon. - Wood spoon. Yeah. That is dynamic, and moves,
and has a mind of its own. You first started doing
more engineering type-stuff with Arduino boards at Punch Through Design, which
is an SF engineering firm. What are, just from your memory there, what are some cool things you built there? - So the thing is, I went
to advertising school, and I just, like a
vocational study's a year, and I realized there
that I didn't care much for advertising, but I
thought it was really fun to build stuff and program, so I just completely focused on that, and there I built my
first hardware project or electronics project,
which was this iPhone case with retractable guitar strings. - [Lex] Yeah, yeah. - So basically, I imagined
that you could pull out guitar strings from
the bottom of your iPhone, and you could pluck it to your belt, and then you could hold
a chord on the screen. And I built that together
with my friend Jonathan. And I was like, oh, this is dope. I thought it was so much
fun, and I considered, oh, should I go to school for this? But then I thought, hmm,
maybe I can get a job, and I could get paid to
learn about electronics. So, just based off of that one project, I got the job at Punch Through
Design, where actually, it was a one-year internship. - Can you explain what
we're talking about here? So it's a case. - [Simone] Hm-mm. - With guitar strings attached to it. - [Simone] Yeah. - Does it actually work at all? - It does. - These are not on the
screen guitar strings? - No, so they're actual
strings that you pull out. So there's a mechanism that's almost like a seatbelt mechanism
and, yeah, you pull them out from the bottom of your phone, and you can attach them to your belt. I mean, it's terrible. There's a few different ways to decide if somebody's touching a guitar string. And what you do in a real
guitar is, you have the little, it's like measuring the
vibration or the change in the, yeah, you're measuring how
the guitar is vibrating, and you can't really do that, because I can't have a receiving sensor, because the guitar strings are gonna move in relationship to that
because you don't have this rigid neck. And this is, yeah, this was
my first electronics project. I was a little fledging baby maker, but what I decided was
to use capacitive touch, 'cause that is independent
on if the guitar strings are moving in relationship to something, or in relation to something. So basically, there was just this little Bluetooth Arduino board that this company, Punched Through Design made,
so that was how I found them. And I measured the capacitive touch. So like whenever the
guitar string was measured, there was this little
microcontroller that was like, oh my god, a guitar string
got measured, or it touched, and then that sent a signal
over Bluetooth to my phone, and I'd built a little
iPhone app that interpreted those Bluetooth signals,
and then checked what type of chord I was holding on the screen, and then played the coherent sound. - So you holding the chords on the screen. - So you're doing the
multi-touch sensing there. - [Simone] Hm-mm. - That's incredible. - I honestly cannot believe
that I pulled it off, because I think I was,
ignorance was definitely bliss, because that was like, yeah, the first hardware project I'd ever built, the first iPhone app I'd ever programmed. And now, if somebody was like, "Hey, I want this to be my first project," I would probably be
like, "Oh, that's a lot," but I pulled it off. - That's such an interesting
thing for people to hear, because it's your first project, and a lot of people stop
because of the difficulty of their first project. They never truly discover
their own genius, because they stop at the
first, and you didn't stop. So it'd be interesting
to kind of psychoanalyze you on the couch, of why you didn't stop. 'Cause you have to build an app. - [Simone] Yeah. - To figure out how to, did you know how to program much, or no? - [Simone] No. - Okay.
- I mean a little bit, but I never programmed
in or done any iOS apps. - Okay, so you have to
figure out how to get, forget what the app does, just get the app running and
working and then you have to figure out how to get
the sensors in real time, the finger touching,
and you have to connect how to get the capacitor touch working with the microcontrollers. Do you know anything about
the capacitor touch sensors at that time? - No, I mean, it's pretty easy now. It's basically-
- Everything's easy. You know, rockets are pretty easy. - Hey, you sound like my grandma. She's like, I have an Italian grandma, and I'm always trying to get her, we're trying to get
her to tell her recipes and every recipe starts
with, "It's very simple." And then there's 45 minutes of
her explaining it. (laughing) - It's like with gymnastics
at the Olympics, they make it look easy. The best people in the world always make the impossible seem easy. - I pride myself with making
buildings look really hard, 'cause I feel like I'm
always struggling so much. - [Lex] You make the easy seem impossible. - Yeah, yes. - [Lex] No. So how many strings was it? Was it just one? - Oh gosh, I mean this
is such a long time ago. No, it was six. - Six strings, and you could
touch it, and then there's, wow, and it can, and then the
phone itself makes a sound? - Uh-huh, and I still think
it's such a cool concept to have this mobile, I'm
not even a guitar player. I don't know, I mean I got
the idea because I was kind of strumming on my
charge cord of my phone. - Oh, like an air guitar, but on a cord? - Yeah, but I've been thinking
about it 'cause I'm like, oh man, it would be really fun to go back to that project with what I know now, but the problem with it is
that when you're producing the tension in your
string just with your arm, you can't make it taut
enough to actually play. It kinda becomes playing
these saggy strings. - [Lex] Yep. - So as you're not really
getting that experience. And I think that's why, I mean I, yeah. I haven't really pursued it. I wonder if there's a way
to generate the tightness from the case itself, get a
device that unfolds, and then, with some kind of tightening mechanisms. - Yeah, but then it kind of
becomes this whole thing- - [Lex] A guitar. - A guitar, then it just
becomes a really shitty guitar. - [Lex] Yeah. - Which, this is a really shitty guitar, but it's also not a guitar. - But it's so shitty, It's awesome. - Yeah, I don't know.
- But it's cool that you have an interface between a device that's capable of incredible computational power, and an actual hardware thing. Is there something that
you can psychoanalyze that made you finish, that others could hear in
their own struggle to do their first project like that? Because you were a non-engineering
person, technically, and you did a pretty cool
renegade, out-there, wild, no-instructions engineering project. - No, it definitely was an off-road build, where it's like if you're
building a Lego kit, it's very much on the road, and you're following
instructions and this is like, you have no idea if
you're headed for a cliff or a dead end, or you're gonna get stuck. I think it had a natural pressure to it, because it was a school project. - [Lex] Yeah. - So, it did have deadlines built into it, and stuff like that, so
that definitely helped. But I think also, it was just so incredibly
motivating when I realized that I might be able to pull it off. - [Lex] Yeah. - Like that was, I felt like a bloodhound, you're just like, "Oh my God, I can actually make this happen." And I think if I hadn't
seen that at the horizon, it would've been harder to stick through. - Were you able to see
the end of the tunnel pretty early on? - No, not really. (laughs) - So there's something to
just suffering for a while. - I don't know how your
brain works, but it's like, if I have a problem, I can't
stop thinking about it. It's so fun to think about it. I spent two and a half years
designing a coat hanger, and I just can't stop thinking about it. I get so into it, 'cause
I think it's so much fun. - Take me to this two-year
journey of the coat hanger. - (laughing) The coat hanger. - [Lex] How did it begin? - How did it begin? It began with a corner in
my home where I couldn't fit a coat rack. The thing is, I shouldn't
have brought this up, because I'm gonna release it as a product, probably in a year. - Oh, an actual product.
- Mm-hm. - Okay, well let's view it as a mystery. - [Simone] It's a mystery, yeah. - It's what it is, it solves a fundamental
problem in the human condition. - Yes, and I am so excited
about it, and I cannot, I don't think, yeah, but this
is, I get so pumped about it, because I see, it's just this issue, or this problem that I wanna solve, and I can't put it to rest until I have. - Speaking of coat hangers, doorknobs have always
been interesting to me. Is cool how there's
things that everybody uses that somebody designed. - [Simone] Lex. - Yeah? - Oh my God, so, okay, so
this is, so I have two big, so basically, I started on
YouTube, and I have been doing that for the last
seven or eight years. And I've been thinking of,
okay, what's next for me? 'Cause I wanna keep on
trying out new things. And I'm kind of going into
two different avenues. One is the product
business that I started, coat hanger is TBD, and then I am working on a pilot episode of a show, where each episode is
about an everyday object, and why they look the way that they do. So we've written a pilot
episode about forks, and it's all about, why do
they look the way that they do? - [Lex] That's awesome. - Why did this became the
eating implement of the West? Why are we ruled by an iron
fork? How did that happen? And everyday object that you have, and that you just take for granted, somebody's just made it up. - Yeah, we're all sheep.
We all keep using it. - [Simone] Yeah. - Even if it's not, I mean, presumably most objects
are optimal, you hope, or at least-
- But they're not, yeah. And that's what I think is
so like the world around us, and this is why I love building things, is because it just opens up this idea that the world around us is so malleable, and you can make objects
work for you better. I spent, I made this fruit
bowl, I had a fruit bowl, and I was always annoyed
that I had either too little or too much fruit for it. So I made a fruit bowl where
I can change the diameter of it, has a mechanism so you
can make it bigger or smaller. And that's just the thing
of being like bowls. Why are they the way that they are? I can make them different. And I think like I wanna make
an episode about doorknobs. I think it's so interesting,
why are they the way they are? Why are they placed
the way where they are? - I think that's gonna be a rabbit hole from which you'll never return. - I would happily live in
that rabbit hole forever. Like if I can like dig out a
little niche for myself there, because I think it's like... They go so deep. - They're also on
different sides of doors. You never, like the push/pull
situation on doors in general? That's one of the main
problems of humanity is figuring out-
- Push/pull doors? (laughs) - [Lex] Figuring out which- - Is embarrassing, yeah. - Okay, how many, there's
8 billion people on Earth. Every single second, there
is millions of people being embarrassed by the confusion... - Real life stats. - Right now there's somebody, some guy, first time in college, he's trying to be impressive
to everybody, he pushes on it, and he plays it off like it's
cool, oh, shit, I knew that, over and over. - And it affects our behaviors. That was why I think it's
so interesting with forks, is that forks actually
affect our eating behaviors, and they can get you to
eat faster or slower, take bigger bites or smaller bites. And they're all these
ways, or like the social, I mean the reason that chopsticks work is because they do the food
chopping in the kitchen, rather than on the plate. And also you have a bowl
that you bring to your mouth, whereas a plate you keep on the, there are just all these ways in which these objects
affect our behavior, opening and closing doors. And I think it's such an
interesting take on culture, and human behavior, through these objects that we use every day, and we
never question them really. - Yeah, and then there's
institutions that are controlling our mind that don't
want us to know the truth. Why are sporks not more popular? Have you asked yourself that question? - Yeah, no, it's all Big
Utensil is behind all of it. (both laughing) - All right, so, in those early days, did you suffer from imposter syndrome? That leap to being an engineer? Was there, especially when
you started working on parts of the design on a team of
engineers, was there insecurity? - Both yes and no. I think I always try to
flip my flaws into selling points and for that, so
getting that job, I was like, oh, you're a team of engineers. Everybody working here is an engineer. Your customers are not all engineers. You need somebody who can
be your filter and tell you when something's gonna be too hard for your customers to understand. So it was more me being like, oh no, it might seem that me not
having skills is a bad thing, but actually, it's a
great thing, you need it. - I represent the everyday person. I understand deeply what
everybody needs and wants. - Yes, that is me, the
representation of the average human. But I mean, I remember that, so I studied physics for
a year in college and then I dropped out, and I had
this rule for myself, that whenever I did not
understand something, I would ask a question. So I was always raising my hand in class, and it's this room, entire auditorium, filled with incredibly intelligent people who are mortified of seeming stupid. And I think that was really, and I remember people at the
end of the year coming up to me and being like, "Thank you so much for all
the questions you asked, because whenever there was
something that I was too scared to ask, you
always raised your hand." So I think it is a bit of a skill, and I think that is kind of how I channel my imposter syndrome is, I'm just like, no, let's lay it all out there. (laughs) - So you're okay being
almost self-deprecating, just coming off, I mean,
I'm definitely that, I kind of lean into it,
I call myself an idiot. I lean into being stupid. I
think not all heroes wear capes. And the guy and girl who
asks the stupid question is everybody's hero. Including the poor teachers. - Yeah, I think it's both.
It's a double-edged sword. I started out on the internet,
I kind of got the moniker, the Queen of Shitty Robots
because I posted a lot of stuff on /r/shittyrobots
on Reddit, and people started calling me the
Queen of /r/shittyrobots, and then, the /r kind of dropped. So what I'm trying to say is, I did not come up with that myself, but I did happily adopt it. So I definitely came from
a place of like building things that didn't
work, and kind of, yeah, everything going wrong every time. Like happily failing. And
I think that was amazing. It was a really powerful
tool for me to not get my perfectionism in the way, because if I set out to
do something that's great, then I'm never gonna start. And I was like, no, I just need
something that looks funny. But what I've realized
now is that it was also a defense mechanism. Being self-deprecating
is always beating people to the punch. It kind of was a survival
tactic on the internet, of being never daring
to set out as an expert. And I still do that, I'm terrified to tell
people how to do something, even if I know, because it opens
you up for being shot down, so I think I definitely have a conflicted relationship with it. And now especially, as I'm getting older, I am more skilled than I was before, I mean I'm a CEO of three
businesses, and I'm like, I don't need to keep on talking
myself down all the time. So yeah, I think it's
definitely something that has served me really, really well, and that is still a thing
that I have in my work life and in my relationships, but I'm also trying to only
do it when it's beneficial to me and not when it's harmful. - Yeah, but when you're
as successful as you are, I feel like people like it when you're self-deprecating and you don't take yourself seriously. You have that humility.
- Yeah. - I think it's probably the hardest when you're starting out. - Yeah? No, I think it
was easier then, almost. I dunno. - But nobody takes you seriously, right? When you're starting
out, when you're young. - You know, I just realized
that I played a lot more stupid than I was. And I think it's also, oh gosh, I can't believe I'm
the one bringing this up, but being a woman in a
male-dominated field, and you're like, I was
just trying to make myself the least amount threatening
or really unthreatening, because people are threatened
by you in different ways, and it's like, you have such
a thin line that you can walk where you're like, okay, I need to be just attractive
enough for people to not be offended by my appearance, but just unattractive enough for people to not sexualize me. I have to be just smart
and witty enough for people to be like, "Oh my god,
that's really cool." But also shoot myself down
enough for other people not to be able to do it or be like, oh yeah, watch this woman try, thinking that she knows
how to build electronics. So it's like... - That's an interesting skill to build, especially when you put yourself
out there on the internet. - [Simone] Yeah. - Unfortunately, that's the
reality of the internet, and it's a skill you have to develop, and it's actually why a
lot of really brilliant people avoid the internet. - [Simone] Yeah. - There's not many people,
like at MIT for example, there's not many brilliant
professors or PhD students and so on, just putting
their stuff out there, because if they really put their heart and soul into a thing, first of
all, that's really hard, and nobody sees it, and
then everyone's like, "Eh, this is boring." So there's so many failure
modes like, "This is boring." Or, like, like you said, you're coming off as
too much of an expert, you're not self-deprecating enough or there's just so many failure modes and it's terrifying for people. But I feel like that's a
skill you should learn, because most people, like at
MIT, at university, and so on, are doing a lot of awesome stuff. - [Simone] Yeah. - And they should show it off. But I feel like you figured out a really good
process of showing it off, of when you fail, when
you succeed, all of it. Not taking yourself too seriously, but also revealing through the humor and the self-deprecation a kind of genius, a kind of intelligence and curiosity. - Okay, I just wanna snapshot that quote, and put it on my LinkedIn,
and the back of my book. - [Lex] When is your
autobiography coming out? - Oh, never. (laughs) - You don't wanna say that,
because a year from now. - Oh God, I don't wanna
shit on autobiographies. - Yeah.
- No. But even, just by saying that, I'm on shitting on autobiographies. I just, me being interested
enough in somebody to wanna read 600 pages about them talking about themselves, it's a... - No, well, (laughing) that's
exactly the kind of person that should write one. - But also I'm fucking 32 years old, what do I have to write about? I went through puberty,
I lost my virginity, and here we are, I dunno,
it's such a... (laughs) - Three chapters, it's a
coloring book (laughing). - Chapter seven, I learn
to tie my own shoelaces. - I feel like it would be
awesome. Anyway, what's the Queen? So how did you achieve
the status of royalty? The Queen of Shitty Robots?
What's the origin story there? - I have officially
renounced my title now. - Can you still speak
of the time when you- - I can still speak of the time. - [Lex] Your kingdom? - Yes. No, I mean it started on because I- - Did you rule by love or fear? - By fear of rejection, from me, that people would reject me. So I, yeah, I started
making these little gifs. The early projects that I
did were very gif-forward. It was always like, I only did it because they
could be translated into a gif. - Gif-forward. I like it. - Yeah, but honestly it was like, it's a really good mental exercise, to vet if your project is
easy enough to be explained by a seven-second looping
video without audio, and because nobody's gonna care
that it also has Bluetooth. It's really like, is it
self-explanatory enough to be explained through a gif, so yeah. - Could I just pause, I'm
sorry to interrupt but- - [Simone] No, go for it. - I feel like all scientific
papers and projects should go through that exercise. - Can it be explained as a gif? - Yeah, actually, Deepmind
does a good job of this. Like, we saw a protein
folding, here's a gif, that's literally what they do. - [Simone] Yeah. - Because who's gonna
read the Nature paper? So, you have to like, how do
we communicate this visually, in a sexy, clean way, where people can intuitively understand, even if you don't know what a protein is, even if you don't know what
protein folding is, yeah. It's a cool exercise. - No, it's very like, yeah, if somebody comes outta context, and that's been really interesting, also, building this product
business and trying to do the marketing around that. And I'm like, if somebody comes in, and they have no idea
about what this product is, will they get it explained
to them in this ad? And I don't know, but it's definitely a
worthwhile exercise to do. So I started making
these projects that got translated into gifs, and I posted them on /r/shittyrobots on Reddit. - So that subReddit existed? - Yeah, and I loved it. I thought it was really
fun and I was like, I wanna contribute with content here. - [Lex] Conquer it. - I don't, I mean, I don't know. I was voted, I think I was
voted top user of 2015. So yeah, that's an old merit. - Once you win a Nobel
Prize, you always have the Nobel Prize.
- (laughing) Yeah. - Okay, so what was the first, do you remember the early
gifs that you created? - So this is when I was at Punch Through Design in
San Francisco, I was building a lot of hardware projects for them. But I also felt, and they
were so supportive of me, but I also, it's such a different way, representing a brand versus
representing yourself. So there were some projects
that I just ruled out, 'cause I was like, this feels
too weird for this brand. And I started building them on the side. One of them was a
toothbrush helmet, and yeah, so it's like a skateboard
helmet with a robot arm on the forehead, kind
of like a unicorn horn, and it brushes your teeth for you. - Was that the first
YouTube video you uploaded? - It was the first gif that I uploaded. So actually, I wanted to... I wanted to do a kids'
show about electronics in Sweden, 'cause I was
like, I love electronics, I think it's fucking dope. I could do a kids' show about it. So I filmed this terrible,
terrible pilot episode in my bedroom in San Francisco, and that's when I built the toothbrush helmet
and I emailed it to them, I mean just cold email,
I had no in or anything, but I was like, "Hey, I wanna do this," and they didn't get back
to me, nobody surprised, and I was like, well I
have this thing I built, I might as well post it on the internet. So that's why I made the little gif, and I posted it on /r/shittyrobots. I think it got like 50,000
views, and I was like, wow. And from there, I just
kept on building things, and I think within six months,
it was my full-time job. - Can you go through the detailed design of this toothbrush helmet? So it's a motor, it's like
a servo, what's the motor? Is an Arduino involved? - Yeah. So I built it off of
this robot arm called MeArm. So it's just this acrylic robot arm, and I think it has three servomotors, and it's all controlled by an
Arduino, all the electronics. - The arm's already prebuilt? - It was a kit, so I assembled it. - How do you make sure the
length of the arm is the proper? - I mean the arm came down so it's like, I mean I just programmed it
to come down to my mouth, and then poorly brush my front teeth. - Yeah. - [Simone] Yeah. - And it was just swung
back and forth, I mean... - Trial and error, is how I did that. - What was the challenges
of that, do you remember? - [Simone] Oh gosh. - Or was that one not much of a struggle? - No, it was definitely a struggle. - [Lex] Because also, how do
you loop it with a nice gif? - I mean, it loops. It loops fine. - Yeah, it loops pretty
fine. That's not that hard? - No, I mean it doesn't
have to be perfect. It's a gif, it's the internet. Things are shitty all the time. I think the biggest struggle
of that was that I had this intention for it to be the show, and then them not giving back. And I was like, well,
if they don't want it, then maybe YouTube will have me. - They don't notice my genius yet. - [Simone] Yep. - What was so bad about
the pilot, do you remember? What's the most embarrassing? - It's so cringey. Yeah, I mean it's thankfully
not on the internet, so nobody can find it. But it's very much me being
in what I called host mode, which is where I'm like, "Okay, so what we're
gonna learn today is that, we're gonna look at this is
something called a servomotor," and the intonation and
everything is really different. And I'm actually, I mean
thinking back on that, I'm so happy that they
didn't get back to me, because it's such a
different thing to start your career in your living room, running back and forth
to the camera and filming something and then looking at it, and I got to really find my
own voice in a different way. And then a year later,
they offered me a show, but then I was so off
and running, I was like, no, I don't wanna do this. - You didn't fall into that
place of being a actor, like a YouTuber, where you're presenting
a kind of personality. You're more focused on the
product you're creating. - I mean, I think it's
a combination of it. I think of it as acting sometimes, but I only play the role of myself. But of course it's like when
you're shooting something for the seventh time, like you have to be able
to muster that enthusiasm. But no, it's not a kind of, think of everyday life me
as a watered-down version of the YouTube version. It's like-
- It's a cheap knockoff? - Yeah, (laughing) the wish.com version. No, it's just like, add a few
parts water, and you have me. But on YouTube, it's just so condensed, 'cause you have jump cuts, and yeah, I'll script jokes and make
sure that everything lands, and there's music and stuff,
and then in real life, you don't have any of that. But it's still me. - What are some other cool
robots in the early days that stand out to you? I mean there's a million we
can go through, but what, maybe, what was a challenging one? Like a really challenging
one, in the early days? - I mean I remember the breakfast robot, which was my second project,
was a challenging one, so... - Was it eating cereal? - Yeah, it's a robot that
pours milk and cereal, and feeds me with a spoon. It was mostly challenging
because it was so, everything had to be
in the right location, and there were so many takes
before I got everything right. And by right, I mean it
makes an absolute mess. Yeah, that one was challenging. - [Lex] How many takes was that one? - I don't know, probably 12, 10 something. - [Lex] Just a mess everywhere. - It was a mess, and also, I
used Cheerios for the cereals, and it's shot in my old bedroom in San Francisco, and
the floors were sticky for weeks afterwards. - See, this could go
into your autobiography. - [Simone] (laughing) Yeah. - It's nice. - We can just type out this podcast. - [Lex] Make a transcript. - And I'll release it, my
manager would be stoked. - We'll fix it in post. Yeah, the feed, 'cause you have a couple
of feeding ones, right? There's soup, isn't there a soup one? - Yeah, there's a soup robot.
There's a beer-pouring robot. - I mean, that's awesome. That's a difficult robotics problem, in the shitty and the perfect version, of having an arm that interacts intimately with a human being. And one of the most
intimate things you can do with a human being
that's PG is to feed it. - That's what I was thinking,
(laughing) don't go there. - [Lex] Where is he going with this? - Oh my God, he's a YouTube
comic come live. Like, dammit. - So, to me there's a, feeding is tricky, or even like getting a beer,
even pouring a beer, is tough, into a glass.
- Yeah, it's trickier than anyone
who hasn't tried it thinks. And even making it, I think what I realized
is that making things really shitty, or failing
in a spectacular way is also its own sort of skill, because, the shittiest robot is the
one that doesn't turn on, but that isn't much to watch. So it was always wanting
for it to fail in these kind of spectacular ways. No, there's a lot of stuff to be said about engineering in it. - Is there something to
be said on a philosophical level about the value of a flawed robot? So like... The kind of robots you want
is to be partially flawed? Do you think the kind of
robots we'll have in the home, that are friends and, you
know, almost like pets, wouldn't they need to be kind of shitty, because we can love, somehow
we humans love the shitty. - I mean it's kind of endearing, and 'cause I think it kind of, I'm gonna mess up this word,
anthropomorphizes them. I mean, I never feel as deeply connected to my Roomba as when it's
like, "I'm on a cliff." I'm like... - Have you had Roombas talk-
- This tiny ledge. - No.
- I really, yeah, I've done that a lot. - Yeah?
- When they talk to you. Yeah. And you immediately anthropomorphize them. - Yeah. - [Simone] And then you
have, if they have a name, which is why most
roboticists don't give names or gender to robots. 'Cause you become connected to them. I'm of the opposite mind. You should have like, an intimate
relationship sounds weird, but you should have a
close connection to robots. I mean there's power in that. There's a social element
of robotics, even an arm. I don't know, there's
something about us humans that gains so much value
from our interaction with dynamic objects
and we should like lean into that as opposed to run away from it. That was always the confusing thing to me about robotics is that most
roboticists run away from that. - Yeah.
- It's weird, 'cause it's obviously gonna be, robots are obviously gonna be everywhere. - Yeah.
- Obviously. - But it's also humans
are sensitive and squishy and there's so much liability. - Oh.
- Yeah. - Yeah. But humans are sensitive and squishy when they interact with
each other and they hurt each other all the time. Like sometimes they get
together and they're like, oh you're the best, no you're the best. And then they leave each
other and then they break each other's heart. - Sorry about your breakup, Lex. - Yeah, I'm just trying to get over this. I'm actually drunk for this interview. (laughs) Haven't been able to sleep- - Have you slept all night? - But from a safety protocol perspective, people think about like physical damage, not emotional damage. I know this sounds ridiculous, I know this sounds
ridiculous, but it won't be. It's already happening. There's an app called
Replica where people have an intimate relationship
with an AI chat bot and they hurt themselves. - I was thinking about this. - Yeah.
- Okay. In dating... What if you, 'cause you
can drain like a chat bot to kinda mimic the way
that you talk to people and interact with people. - Go on.
- Yeah. But then I'm like, okay, but what if we could all
make AI versions of ourselves and have them date... - Yeah.
- Like thousands of thousands of other AI people and have that as a way to
turn out potential candidates. Like I feel like that's
gonna be, what's the... Yeah. - What's the, what?
- No, but what's the point of
like meeting 20 people if you're like, oh, but if we just had our AI
versions of ourselves interact, they'd be like, oh, your method of conflict
is not gonna match. Or... - What if the AI version
of you like sleeps around with all the other AI
and it becomes famous for that and it starts
this on OnlyFans and then it become, and you're
like, what did you do? You come back home you'd
realize like, I don't, I didn't want any, I... - Created a monster?
- Created a monster. - I mean, do I get a cut? - Exactly. That's the
question I'd be asking. - But I think it's definitely like, yeah the human technology interaction is really interesting because
I feel like I don't love any of the machines
that I have in my life. - [Lex] Oh really? You haven't... - I mean, I don't love my phone. I touch it all the time and it's there and it's like constantly, it's a constant presence, but there's nothing than
me that feels like, oh, I love this object. Like I kind of despise it. - Well, that might be the way
you show love. I don't know. Yeah. That's a deeper, that's
another psychoanalysis thing. So you don't, there's not
robots whom you've taken apart that you miss? - No, they're all terrible. I mean I have objects
that I built that I love, none of the robots I think. But that's also because
there was a different, that was a different era
where I wasn't really putting a lot of care into the projects I built. - So the more care you put into it, into the design to actually make it look, to make it functional and look good, that's where you put the love in. - Yeah. I mean it is, it's like I feel like
any technology company that figures out a way
to get you to actually genuinely love your Roomba
or like love it in the way that you would love a pet
has a lot to be gained. - Yeah. And I think it's scary,
depending on who the company is, because then they can manipulate you. - Yeah.
- If you love your Roomba and all of a sudden your Roomba starts telling
you to buy stuff... - Yeah.
- Or it's leaving. - To put lotion on Jeff Bezos's head. - Yeah. I don't know where
the lotion came in, but yes. Maybe buy certain-
- I just... I just imagine my Amazon
Echo being like, "Hey..." - Hey.
- Jeff Bezos, he is really a great guy. - (laughs) But even though you haven't, do you think it's possible
to fall in love with a robot? - Yeah. I mean people fall in
love with things all the time. - Well people have fallen in love with your shitty robots, probably. I guarantee you there's people listening to this that are a little
bit heartbroken saying that you've never fallen in
love with your shitty robot. They're like, but I had a relationship. Like I have an emotional
connection to that robot. Like the one with a parent,
pats you on the back. - Oh, that one. That one I do like. I like that one a lot. That's probably my favorite,
like, shitty robot. - Can you explain it?
- So it's a machine, it was my friend Daniel
Beauchamp and I, we had this long running joke
about a proud parent machine that you could give a quarter, and it pats you on the shoulder,
and says, "Proud of you." - [Lex] Yeah. - So yeah, I still have
that hanging on my wall in my workshop. So that one, I'm really happy with. I just think it's a really funny concept, and also I executed the build well. - So it's an arm?
- Hm-mm. - What's the build? - I built it off of an old lamp arm. Yeah, basically, it's
just a motorized arm, and this torso of a person. - Was this, so it's
actually a hand, right? - It's just laser cut plywood,
and it kinda has like, it looks creepy. - Yeah.
- Which I like. - Yeah. The creepy helps with the... - And yeah, it's says "Proud of you, son." Because I just thought
that sounded more funny than "Proud of you, daughter," and also, "Proud of you, son," just, it immediately communicates
that it's a parent. It's not just like a
colleague or something. He's like, "Proud of you." - (laughs) Yeah. - [Simone] And it charges
you a quarter for it. - Yeah, but you add like
ChatGPT on top of that, and fine tune it on
conversations you've had with your parents, and all of a sudden, you have a thing that can fundamentally transform your psyche.
- Yeah. - That's all it takes.
That's a beautiful creation. How'd you come up with that creation? - Oh it was my friend Daniel and I who had a long-running joke about it. - High level, can you speak
to your creative process? - I think a lot of it,
I mean it's changed... - [Lex] For the shitty
robots. That's actually- - For the shitty robot. Yeah. I mean it has a lot of overlap, so it's identifying everyday problems and in the shitty robot
era I would kind of take an everyday problem like oh
I have a hard time getting up in the morning and I would solve it in the most ridiculous, spectacular way I could think of. So if we're waking up in the morning, it was having an alarm clock that slaps me in the face with a rubber hand. And what I'm doing now
is still identifying everyday problems, but I'm actually trying to like product design my way out of it. - What in your experience
was the funniest thing? Is it violence? Like
the hand slapping you? Food eating? Is there is, or
is it just case dependent? - I think the funniest is... No, I think it's more like
the proud parent machine. It's not violent. It doesn't,
yeah, there's no nothing. It's just emotional and
it's kind of a commentary on this fraught relationship
that we sometimes have with our parents and they're proud of us. - Sometimes? Every time.
- Sometimes. My dad visited like last
week and he was like, "I just wanna say I'm so
proud of you and for the life you've built for yourself." And that was really sweet.
- Yeah. Really good. - I'll put that on the back
of my autobiography too. - Yeah, it's not your fault,
Simone. It's not your fault. - Some stuff is my fault. - What was the longest one to complete for the shitty robots that you remember? 'Cause you spent on a few of them, you spent quite a long time. - [Simone] Mm-hm. - Which is also inspiring
when you take so long on a project. - Yeah, I think kind
of in the more like fun whimsical department
rather than shitty robots. I built recently this music box. So like a small music box
that kind of has a barrel with little spikes and it plays a song. But I did a large version
of that that pops a sheet of bubble wrap and then like
plays tones into a pan flute. So yeah, you can actually program it to play different songs. That one kicked my butt
in so many creative ways and it was such a pain. I think that is probably
the like weird funny project that's taken
me the longest and like the biggest engineering effort. - [Lex] Where's the sound coming from? - So if you, it all came from me realizing
that if you pop bubble wrap and you pop it right
in front of the opening of a pan flute or like one
of the pipes you can have it play different tones. So that's what it does. So I built this music
instrument off of that. - Okay. If it's okay, can you
describe some something like how it works, some of the
technical details here? - Yeah.
- It's fascinating. - So basically, I mean one
of the big issues that I had, so I worked with as of
a year and a half back, I hired an engineer, Stu, So we were collaborating on it. But a big issue that we had
was feeding in the bubble wrap sheet and like
making sure that it feeds in straight and doesn't
get skewed because you need to make like the popping feet, which is where you
program this barrel to pop different bubbles need to
be so perfectly aligned on the bubble of the
bubble wrap for it to pop in the right location. - So there's a feeder for the bubble wrap. That's a challenge. And then you have to have
a barrel with the little baby feet on it.
- Yeah. - That pops the bubble
wrap. Why is it so exciting? - That barrel was a pain. - Yeah.
- As well. I had to get a, like this rotary set
up for my CNC and yeah, it was a lot of work, but that was really
fun and it's just like, this is probably my
favorite privilege of my job is that I can go down any rabbit hole I think find interesting. - Did you have a lot of
joy from popping the... - Yeah. That's-
- The bubbles. - That's a lot of self soothing,
and like I got to spend, I think I spent a week trying to figure out the best material
to pop bubble wrap with, because if you have two, if you kind of put them
two through or through, if you put a sheet of bubble
wrap through two rigid tubes, the air kind of just escapes from one side of the bubble into the other. So what I realized was that if
you have a squishy material, like kind of a yoga mat
material in between it, it actually, it prevents that and pops
it a lot more reliably. But like increasing the
pop reliability was a huge effort as well. - You have to pop a squishy thing with another squishy thing. - Because you don't need a lot of force. - Yeah.
- Like you just need it to not, air to not be
able to escape anywhere. - Wow.
- But then also we had, there was different
qualities of bubble wrap where there was a lot of transference between different bubbles. So instead of the bubble popping, it would just seep the air
into a neighboring bubble and that like membrane
would kind of, so, you know, I just, like getting
to spend weeks on weeks of just studying bubble wrap. - Did you ever think about
like publishing academic work on bubble wrap? - No.
- Wouldn't that be epic? 'Cause nobody's done this. I bet you nobody's done squishing, Squishy versus squishy for popping. - I bet somebody has. But you know, I always, I thought I was gonna go into academia. Like I was such an ambitious
student. I loved school. I actually applied to
MIT but then I pulled out 'cause I was like,
no, I don't wanna do it. But now I realize it's
really good that I didn't because I'm too much of a spaz. - Too much of a spaz? Now I'm distracted. I'm thinking, there must be
papers about when you have two bubbles, yeah. You need to know the
physics of two bubble, when you have two bubbles colliding, one will pop first and there
has to be good models of that. But that has to do with chemistry and whatever the material
the bubble was made from. But then, no, there's materials in here. Somebody must understand
bubble wrap deeply. Like deeply. - So I'm just gonna take
a quick restroom break because Lex is on his own train now. And I'm just gonna leave
you to talk about bubble. Yeah. Actually don't need to go
to the restroom. (laughs) - I'm gonna insert like a
two hour instructional here with like a blackboard where I... - It's the skill of a podcaster. I feel like I could throw you any topic and you could just go on about it. - I don't know if I have
that skill. I just... I love bubble wrap. (laughs) Okay. - Bubble on bubble interaction. Go. - So you did mention
MIT, you went to college for physics for one year
and you dropped out. What do you learn from that? Who do you think should and
shouldn't go to college? - Hmm. I think first of all,
you shouldn't listen to me. - That should be the name
of your autobiography. - First of all, you
shouldn't listen to me. I, you know, I realized that I was there for the wrong reasons. I had this deep, I got completely, like starting to get grades in school, which in Sweden at that
time we started getting it at 8th grade, so when I was 14, it just kind of hijacked my brain because I realized
that I could put a number on how smart I was and
I got obsessed with it. And I wanted to study
mechanical engineering because I was like, I like machines. But then physics was
kind of the hardest thing you could do when I had
this like deep need to prove to myself that I was smart. So I started studying physics, realized I wasn't that smart. I realized, or I mean
just mostly that I like, I love math but I don't
love math 10 hours a day. - [Lex] Yeah. - And also I think I am a
generalist through and through. Like I'm decent at a
fair amount of things, but definitely not a
specialist in any ways. And this, it was such a
specialist type of area that I felt like the other
parts of my brain kind of just dwindled and died. So I think most of all, if people are thinking
about going to college and especially if you're here in the States and it's so
fucking expensive, really... Okay, there's two things I wanna do. One is like actually go to
a workplace where people are doing the job that
you think you wanna do. If you wanna become a doctor, like be at a hospital and
like try to see how doctors work and if you actually like it, because I feel like
people have a lot of ideas of what it's gonna be
like and it just doesn't match with reality. And then I think when people
figure out what they wanna do, there's kind of, that's
two separate questions or there's two questions that
you could split out of that. One is like what do you actually wanna do? That for me for the last
10 years is building stuff. But then there's a second
part to that question, which is what context
do you wanna do that? Do you wanna build stuff at a startup or at a big corporation? Do you wanna build
stuff for an art gallery or for the movies or for YouTube? And I think that's often
like people only learn how to answer the first question, but then it's like the
context means as much. Because I was building stuff at Punch Through Design
and I wasn't getting that like deep fulfillment. Like I felt like I
wasn't fully using myself and like hitting all of my gears because I just wasn't that
motivated about building stuff for other people. And I changed the context
and everything changed. - And so sometimes you do
need to consider resume and stuff like that,
depending on the, but some, I think people consider that way too much, especially in modern times. I feel like you don't
need to go to college just for the resume. I feel like the biggest
benefit of college, I mean there's a bunch, but
one is just to do hard things. But you could do hard things anywhere. But some people need to be, I was probably one of those people, to be forced to do hard things. And the other is to
meet fascinating humans from all walks of life that are pursuing, that have all kinds of
different passions and allows you to learn, depending on the major, you can learn generally
and you can search, if you're doing it efficiently, about what actually inspires you. And the other thing is the resume thing. - [Simone] Yeah. - But ultimately you
don't need college to find your passion to run with it. - I mean I have so much
college FOMO though. Like I think it's, I chose a different set of experiences and when I applied to MIT I was, I think I was 24, 'cause I was like, oh, maybe I should become
an electrical engineer because I really liked electronics. But then I remember seeing
that the average age was 18 and I was like, oh fuck
no, I can't hang out, or like be in a room
filled with 18 year olds who are smarter than me.
- Yeah. - So I think I definitely
like missed the train on having that experience. But at the same time I
did so many other things and I chose other experiences
and I wouldn't trade them. But I still like, I mean I'll go to on a campus
and I'll be like, oh... - [Lex] Yeah. - But I think it's also
because I have a dreamy idea of what it is because I never had to do it and practice fully. - Exactly. It's the FOMO. - Yeah.
- Huh. Yeah. A lot of people really
struggle with that burden. They'll go, it doesn't matter
how long you go through, if you don't go all the way to the PhD, a lot of people have the FOMO. It doesn't, it's a silly, silly, silly little notion I think
'cause I think you should be doing college or school
until you find something that lights your heart aflame,
where you're like, fuck yes, I wanna do this. - Yeah.
- And run with it. - I mean you can find that
in other contexts as well. I've I found it.
- Yeah. Exactly. - Yeah. But it is a buffet of
experiences that you can have. - What about what was the
most fun robot to make or musical artistic creation, where the process was the most fun? - Oh, they're all painful
in different ways. - So pain.
- Yeah. - Do you find pain fun?
- No, but it definitely, the pride of me getting to pull something off or like
managing to pull something off even when it was really
difficult is very satisfying. - What was the difficult
thing that you pulled off? You were like, yeah, this is cool. - Mm... I like working on jigsaw puzzles, but I don't like how much
table space they take up because I like just have one
big table where I can do it. And that's also my dining table. So I made this mechanical
table where you can switch between two tabletops and that was an incredibly painful
project and I'm really happy with the outcome and like
so proud that I managed to pull it off. - How does this switch tabletops? - It's tambour mechanism. So like tambour, like
you'll have on like old record player, like it's
these like thin slats of wood with fabric on
the back and you can kind of get them to go around curves. So basically one of the
tabletops or table surfaces is tambour and then there's a little crank and you can kind of
roll it off to the side and it reveals another
tabletop under it that you can then lift up 'cause it's on cams, so you can switch between the two. I think that one was both
really difficult to pull off and it's also one of
few projects that I use in my every day life. Like I use it almost every day. - You know what a really
cool one was that, that was part of your TED talk, where there's a rotating
thing that you wear on your shoulders. Was that hard to make? So for people who haven't
seen your TED talk. They should of course.
But it's how you describe- - [Simone] Oh, they cut out the best joke. - You put, how would you call
that device? Sorry I have. - I don't even know. I never used it beyond the
TED talk, really. Yeah. But basically it's the shoulder
rig and it has this like, almost like Saturn ring looking
platform that goes around. I can't even remember what
the problem proposition was that I was trying to solve. - Variety, probably, introduce
variety into your life? - [Simone] Yeah, maybe. - And the in an element of
surprise because you can put popcorn as you did
on it and it goes around as a little hand. Why is the like a tiny hand funny? I don't know, but it just slams whatever is on that finger into your face. - Yeah. I don't know.
- Was that easy to make? - Yeah, that one was fine. I can't, there was, I mean
my TED talk was so, yeah, for one, once again they
cut out my best joke. - [Lex] What was the best joke? - My best joke. And they
didn't even ask me about it. It was, so there's this
whole lead up where I built a chopping machine. So it's a machine that
chops vegetables and it has two giant knives and it goes dun-dun-dun and it's kind of terrifying. And I show a video of it
and then it ends on this gif of it chopping up a banana
and I'm kind of scrunching up my face being like, ugh, ugh. - [Lex] Yeah. - And the whole reason I show that project is because I'm leading it
up to the punchline of, oh, and as a bonus, this gif right here is the
perfect response if anyone ever sends you dick pics you don't want, which brought down the
house, it does it every time. And they cut it out without asking me. 'Cause they were like, oh, but we wanted people to be
able to show it in classrooms. And I was like, I have abandoned the hope of being shown in classrooms for... Years ago. - I think that's a good joke.
- Thank you. Thank you. - That's a really good one.
- Yeah. - So you're okay going
sometimes a little bit edgy? - I mean, I say that I'm
crude and wholesome... Because I can be very crude,
but I also try really, really hard to be a good person. - [Lex] Yeah. - And to like, I'll say shit
and fuck and all that stuff, which I don't even think is crude. But, yeah. But I really, really try to
wield the power that I have in a thoughtful way. So no, I wouldn't call
me edgy because I'm not, I don't think it's edgy. It's all like- - Chopping a banana with
knives and saying it's a good gif response to anyone
that sends you dick pics is definitely not edgy. You're correct. Yeah. - I think it's funny. It's a funny joke. - Yeah, it's pretty funny.
- Yeah. - I feel bad that TED cut that. - I mean it's fine. It's like, it's a decision
that I made really early on where I was like, I think often people misinterpret what I'm doing as being for children, which I think is part
because like my projects were always really cool, colorful and fun. But I think it also has some sprinkles of sexism of being like, oh,
it's a woman doing something, she must be doing it for the children. And I'm like, oh, fuck the children. I'm doing it for myself.
- Yes. Good. - So I think I was just really
early on decided of like, oh no, I'm not gonna try to cater to that. Which like still, I mean
I get a lot of messages from parents being like, can you please stop
cussing in your videos? And I'm also like, I get it, but also that is not what's
gonna mess up your kids. - Yeah.
- Like I really try to be- - Yeah.
- Thoughtful and a decent enough role model, but I'll also acknowledge
that humans fuck. - Yeah.
- It's okay. - Somehow that you being
able to say the F you to the system.
- What word? Word? - F.
- What do... - I can't. I'm scared.
(Simone laughing) It sounds better when you
say F you, it's a dance. I should, oh boy. Have you ever made a robot
that dances with you? - No.
- Okay. - You need a dance partner. (laughs) - [Lex] I get lonely sometimes. - Yeah. I feel like that's the
theme of this whole podcast. Yeah. - Oh. (laughs) - What's the most
embarrassed you've ever been on your podcast? - So, I don't know if
you've experienced this, but I am generally embarrassed
by most things I say inside my head.
- Yeah. - So like when I say
something, like now, it's just, there's a voice inside
my head that goes, oh... - Yeah.
- Like what... (laughs) You're a disappointment. Like the parent patting you on the back, the hand stops working. - Yeah.
- Just slows down. Yeah. And then there's an awkward silence. You don't know what to say next. That's really embarrassing usually. - Yeah. So I used to work as
a journalist so I know how to sit with the silence
and try to drag it out of you. - [Lex] See what I did there? (laughs) - You gave up. You pulled out. - I quit.
- You're like... - I'm sweating. I quit. I'm literally sweating. Okay. - Also 'cause you're
in a full fucking suit. What is that, like, how
did that come about? - Actually it was probably
MIT is because everybody was dressing in like
sweatpants, a very chill wear, and I was like, I like
taking everything seriously. It just felt like a, it was my way of saying F
you to the way things are. 'Cause I like, I always admire Richard Feynman and I
like it how there's like a classiness to it. So I don't know if it's
for visual purposes but it's just how I feel
when I put on a suit. It makes me feel like I'm gonna take this really, really seriously. - Yeah.
- And if I embarrass myself, it's all my fault 'cause I tried... There's no excuse. I tried 100%. The interesting thing about your TED talk, to go to a dark topic... - Mm. This is what happened
when I walked off stage? - [Lex] No, what happened
when you walked off stage? - Found out that I had a brain tumor. Was that not where you're going? - Yes.
- There's something else dark about my, yeah.
- Well, yes. I thought you knew through the TED talk, you found out right after. - I mean the reason that
I found out was partly because of the TED talk
'cause my mom came into town to be there for it, and my right eyelid was
swollen and it had kind of been swelling over a while. And I even got comments
about it on my YouTube channel and I thought it was
allergies 'cause I was like, oh, it's just pollen allergies, it's just affecting my one
eye 'cause maybe I sleep mostly on that side. I don't know. And my mom came into the States and then Vancouver for my TED talk and she's like, Simone, you have to like
have a scan or see what's up. Like, we have to go to the doctor. And she really pushed me to do it 'cause I was like, I'm fine. And I had an MRI scan on like 5:00 PM on a Friday night. My boyfriend at the time
was there and I remember like halfway through an MRI scan, they kind of pull you out and they inject contrast fluid or this
like thing that, yeah, just gives 'em another type of scan. And the nurse looked at me
in this way and was like, how long have you had symptoms for? And that's when I knew
that they'd found something and then they like shove
you back into the machine for another 20 minutes. And my ex was just seeing
like them like zooming in and out of my scans and there was like this obviously something
that just looked wrong in there and they sent
me to the ER and I found out that I had a brain tumor
the size of a golf ball that probably had been growing
since I was a teenager. So it'd been growing
over like 10, 15 years. And yeah, I had surgery to
remove it and then it kept on growing, the parts
that they couldn't remove and I went through radiation treatment. So that was like two years
that just was kind of dedicated to just getting better and getting back to where I am now. And I remember like I
was so stoked about 2020 'cause I was like this is
the first year that I'm not held back by my health and
I'm like finally gonna be able to do everything I'm better, and then the pandemic happens and
you're kind of just like, okay, just in the backseat of
what's happening and things that are outta my control again. - In your public, you made
a couple of videos about... - Yeah. - About it. I have a brain
tumor, my brain tumor's back. You kind of, you know, you name your tumor
Brian, you kind of make it a light-hearted thing, but so you don't reveal
much of the darkness. But were you scared? What
were some low points? - Yeah, of course I was scared. I mean it's terrifying. It's like, and also when
it's in your brain, like, you know, I was like
take any other part of me but don't take my brain. No. It's this unfathomable thing
that happens when you're like, I'm healthy, how could this
possibly be a brain tumor? Like my eye is swollen.
Like there's nothing there. I haven't had any seizures, I haven't had any cognitive issues, I haven't had any headaches even, like how is that even possible? So you go through a
lot of different stages of just trying to understand what it is. And I think I remember being
hit like right as I found out when we were in like
an Uber, poor Uber driver, from where I had my MRI scan
to the ER where they sent me. And I was really both really
grateful that I've gotten so much more outta life
than I ever thought I would. Like I've had a hell of a life and even if it would've
ended really early, I would've done so much
more than I ever thought. But I was also really, really sad that I hadn't had kids yet. Like that was my big grief of like, fuck, I haven't had time to have kids yet. But no, it's terrifying. I mean the prospect of
somebody cutting up your head, like that's terrifying. But it honestly wasn't as bad
as I thought it was gonna be. - What about the radiation treatment? What are some things that,
you know, people should, well you learned about it, about the process and about yourself through that that people
might be interested about? - I think surgery was
both harder and easier than radiation treatment because... It was harder because it
was so much more intense and it's such a dramatic thing, like going to the hospital
that morning and being like, I don't know, and you feel so
awful when you wake up and... But then the recovery
from it was pretty linear. Like almost every week I
would get a little bit better. The thing about radiation is
that it was not linear at all, and it kind of drained me in this weird, like it was so hard to predict. And also they put me on these, I spent months feeling like
I was high out of my mind, and I couldn't process reality in a way that I normally would. Like, everything just felt
off, like I felt, yeah, I felt like I was high on drugs, and I kept on asking my
doctors what was going on and they're like, no, no, no, no, don't think it's anything related. And I was on this Alzheimer's
medicine that they put you on to prevent dementia
from radiation treatment, like kind of as a preventative. And I found all these
subreddits of people using that Alzheimer's medicine to
get high, and people be like, "Oh my god bro, I took like 20 milligrams
yesterday and I was high out of my mind," and I'm like,
I'm on 30 milligrams a day. Like of course it feels weird. And that was honestly
one of the scariest parts of it because that was the
first time where I felt like it genuinely affected my
way of processing reality. And yeah, I was so relieved
when I found out that that was what was causing it. 'Cause I felt like I was going crazy. But even after surgery, like I woke up and I felt like myself. Like everything was,
I got no brain injury. So obviously this is like
my experience from somebody who came out of it pretty unscathed, who didn't get any brain
injuries and didn't have to do any of that recovery. It's more just the recovery
from like the physical act of somebody cutting your
skull open and taking a large chunk out. - Did you research all the
things that can go wrong? - No.
- During surgery? - No. I honestly am, I'm a
bit surprised by how I acted. Just pausing for you to pour.
You're welcome, editors. - This is like a commercial. - (laughs) This is like work
injury from being a YouTuber. This all like freeze if
there's audio that comes in. - Ah...
- Ah. Yeah. Sponsored by tap water. I was surprised by how
little I was willing to think critically about
what my doctors told me to do. Like I, very early on, the neurologist that I worked with, he was the one who was
on call at the ER the day where I came in and he was
the one who ended up doing my surgery and he kind
of became like my rock in this and I just 100%
trusted him and he turned out to be an amazing doctor
and like did a great job and was just like, and... So I got so, so lucky. But I remember my mom being like, oh, but we should like talk about
second opinions and like we should try to do more research. And I was like so unwilling
to do that because opening up to the idea that there are multiple ways or multiple things that might be right or wrong was so terrifying. Like I wanted there to just be like, no, this is the only option,
this is what we need to do. And if I started questioning
that then I don't know if I would've been able
to go through with it. So yeah, it was a strange, I just really wanted to trust the doctors that I worked with and I
was very scared to question them in any way. - How did that process change
your relationship with death? Are you afraid of death? - No.
- Do you ponder your mortality?
- Yeah, I think it took away a part of youth for me. - [Lex] Like the innocence? - Yeah, I mean you kind of
think of terrible things as something that happens to other people, and death and illness... So I think it kind of
fast tracked that for me, but it mostly changed
my relationship to life. It changed, it's made me so
much more gentle with myself. Like going through illness, it forces you to redefine
what it means to be good. And before being good had been
pushing myself really hard. It had been working, and I don't know, just being really hard with
myself and disciplined, and when you're healing from something, being good is listening to
your body, it's resting. It's like really being in tune with what your health,
where your health is at. And I think that is something
that's kind of stuck with me since then. I'm like so much more gentle
and delicate with myself. - And with others? Are you? - Ah fuck it. I think it definitely, it's like when you're young and healthy it's really hard to-
- Yeah. - Know what it feels like to be ill. And I remember, you know, you like go to yoga class
and you'd be like, oh my god, this is too slow. Like I want it to be, I have so much more
energy like I need to... And when I was recovering
from my brain surgery, there was this yoga studio nearby my house and they had yoga for
seniors and I was so stoked 'cause I was like, oh, this is the yoga class
I'll be able to take. - [Lex] Yeah. - And I think that was really
eye-opening of just like, there's no, you kind of imagine
that it's just like, oh, just push yourself harder. But no, that's not it. With age or sickness or it's just, you gotta be so gentle
with yourself and you have to cater to people where they're at. - Yeah. And just appreciation of
this like biological vehicle you get and you should take care of it? - Being sick sucks. - Yeah.
- It's awful. And I really am really
motivated to postpone that for as much as I can. And also I was so tremendously
grateful when I got ill that I felt like I
had so much to take from, like I had so many energy reservoirs, I'd spent my life taking
pretty decent care of my body and like exercising and
eating well and like not wrecking my body in any way. And I felt like this was the
first time where that was so critical and I felt like
my body was ready for it. You know? - I thought you were
gonna go the other way. Like, you can take care of your
body all you want and it's, bad stuff happens. So you should go on drug
binges and go wild and do crazy things and... - I mean I also had that
thought where I was like, I fucking floss every day. How do I have a brain
tumor? I've been good. Like why does this happen to me? But more so it was like
my body was so resilient and ready for it, and I was
really, really proud of it. - Yeah, it's amazing that
the human body's able to recover from even the harshest things. - Yeah, it's wild. And my brain. So after, after surgery, 'cause yeah, I had a brain tumor the
size of a golf ball kinda behind my right eye. And after brain surgery
you kind of just have this big hole in your
head, like this void, and usually your brain stays that way. Like it retains the shape
even after the brain tumor is gone. But for some reason my
brain was feeling really ambitious and it has
completely flopped back and I have almost like a
normal looking brain now, where doctors are like, oh, we would almost not be able
to tell that you had one. So yeah, that just blew my mind
of being like, when did it, was that why I had all those
headaches after surgery? It's just my brain being like, ah. - Trying, working. Yeah. Oh, pretty cool Thing I wanted to ask you about is the Every Day
Calendar that you worked on. - [Simone] Mm-hm. - That was a long time.
That took a long time. - Yeah, so basically I
designed this calendar, like I wanted to start
meditating every day, but it's really hard to
meditate every day to like kind of build that habit. And what I would do is
I would make these grids in my notebooks where I
could like check a box for every day. Like I just wanted like a little, ding, I did it and like this
thing of accountability, but then I was like, this is, I don't wanna have a
notebook that I do this in. Like I want an art piece
that I can hang on my wall, like accountability art. And I made this thing called the Every Day Calendar, which
has an entire year on it. So it's 365 days and if
you tap any of the days you light it up and we
turn it into a Kickstarter campaign and it's now a
product that I'm selling through my product
business, the Yetch Store. - What's it called?
- The Yetch Store. - Yeah. And that for people who are
confused is the right way to pronounce your last name. - It's right but it's so wrong. It makes, my last name
is spelled G-I-E-R-T-Z. - Who does that song? "If Loving You Is Wrong I
Don't Want to Be Right." - Yeah. Pronouncing my last name, yeah. - That's all makes
because, what's his name? From the Office. He covers it... From the British Office, which
is the better Office. Okay. Tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent. So you said you created the
Every Day Calendar to make a more beautiful, in quotes, and more sacred gold
star system on a wall, not a notebook that gets
thrown into a drawer. - Yeah. Wow. Well said, past me. - (laughs) You said that
making this calendar taught you a lot, in quotes. I feel like a real
investigative journalist. You've said, in 2018- - Yeah, I'm waiting for the gotcha. - Can you share some of
the lessons you've learned? Like what do you mean you've learned a lot from making this calendar.
- Oh. - What are we talking about? - As somebody who builds things, manufacturing something is
such an unrelated process, like making one of
something and making 10,000 of something, like they're
not even distant cousins. Like it's completely
different beasts to tackle. And yeah, so that was one of it. Everything takes so much
longer than you think it's going to. I did a Kickstarter
campaign that we launched in 2018 after my surgery and, yeah, it's just, you know, you think you're so
generous with the timelines, we still ended up being a
year late but we shipped. We're good. But yeah, I mean I'm trying
to get my product business off the ground. We launched in May and it's
just, yeah it's just a pain. As somebody who's terrified
of disappointing people, I'm like why have I
chosen some of the jobs where it's the easiest
to disappoint people? - [Lex] You can disappoint
people at scale. No. - Yeah, I can disappoint
people at scale and also them actually having paid me
money to deliver on something, which is a terrible transaction, but it's, I am just stoked to realize
that I love the job still. Like I love the product
development aspect of it. I love trying to design
stuff for manufacturing and figure it out and like
anticipate how people are gonna use your products and like the Every Day Calendar, I
mean we've sold thousands of them now, they're all over the world and it's like people
actually finding something useful that I made and
implementing them into their lives. It's just mind boggling. - Especially 'cause this is
tracking habits, good habits. So this is... - Or bad ones, you can do it wherever. You can use it however you want. - I went in a drinking binge again today. - Yeah.
- Success. Great success. - Kicked another kid. - What does it take to
mass manufacture something? What did you learn about that? Like what are, can you
like elucidate the gap between the one, the
prototype versus the like product development for mass manufacturer? - I mean for one of it is
like, yeah, the manufacturing, the tooling that they use in manufacturing and to do things in a cost effective way is really different. Like I can make a one-off, then it's gonna take me 17 hours, but obviously you can't
spend 17 hours per calendar when you're doing something in factory. I think it's that, like quality
control is such a beast. You cannot trust anybody
telling you that things are gonna be okay. Like you have to have such trust issues, and it's also terrifying. I mean as somebody who's doing
everything independently, I haven't raised any capital for it. Like it's all self
invested and we're doing it all in-house. It's just, you know, yeah, I could buy 10,000 calendars
but then what if all of them are, have a
manufacturing issue or, you know, it's just terrifying because
the risks are so high, but also I got to this
point where, for one, this is something that I
wanted to do for a long time, but something that going
through health problems taught me is how fragile my business model is. Because, I mean, I'm basically running an influencer business where
I make videos oh YouTube, and then I have an ad spot
and I talk about a brand. So like I'm a human
billboard, which is fine, it grants me a lot of
freedom to play around. But if I am not well enough to
be on a stage, giving talks, or be in front of a
camera, everything stops. Like it's such a pillar
of a business and it can topple over at any given
moment or like YouTube could change the algorithm, like legislation could catch up and change how you're able to
advertise on the internet. Like it's so frail and I
really felt like I need to diversify what I'm
doing and also just to keep it interesting for myself. So what I decided was to
start a product business because also it's kind of
this perfect combination of businesses where I can
turn my YouTube channel into an R&D department
'cause I have a reason to constantly be exploring
things and turning out new products. I can also do that as early
audience testing and see what people are actually excited about. And if there's something
that I think would make an interesting product, I can pass that over to the product business and then once I'm ready to market that and sell it, I can pass it over to the YouTube channel. So it's like, I can kind of, once I realized that YouTube
didn't feel like an end goal for me, I was like, okay, then I can use it as a tool to accomplish these other things that
I wanna do and this was one of them. So yeah, it's a lot that went into it. - And one of the tools, like I said, is R&D but it's also kind of advertisement for the cool stuff that you're doing. I think Mr. Beast is one of the creators that's also starting to
understand this power of this reputation that
you've built of like people trust you, like they love
you, to do cool stuff, they trust that you put your
heart and soul into a thing. - Yeah.
- And so like, and they feel your pain
and the struggle too. You know? Like if a product, like, for example, say the Every Day Calendar,
like there was issues in manufacturing something like this- - It would be hard. Yeah. - They would feel the pain of that and they would still support. I mean that that's the
beauty of it when you have the actual person right there struggling with their lows and highs. - That's a decision
that I made really early on where I was like, the Yetch Store is supported by me but it's separate from me. It's not merchandise. You don't have to know who
I am or care about who I am to be interested in this product. And if you go on the website, yetch.store, plug, it's like it's, I'm on the about page, Y-E-T-C-H.store, like you have to go to
the about page to find anything about me. Like it's definitely not
like this is Simone's brand, and I think anybody who's
followed me for a long time will see that like my
personality is sprinkled into it, but it's still like clean off of me. And I think that's also
because I wanted something that was separate from me. 'Cause I am also running
out of narcissism, believe it or not. I'm like, I don't feel like I wanna, I don't want it to be about me and I want it to be something that
can also run independently of me and doesn't, like I wanna
be able to retire my face, and still do like the other
stuff because I think it's fun, but I don't want that
to be the core of it. - What other kind of stuff have you worked on for the product design, for Yetch? - So I mean a lot of the products, I decided to launch the
store with a really small roster of products because
developing products is such a, it's such upfront, heavy, like cost-wise and just
investment, such a, it's very big upfront investment. So, and I know that it would take a while, or I knew it would take a
while for me to kind of find the right tonality and visual
language for the brand. So I just wanted to launch
it, have it be out there, start working on it, start like learning more
about what it entails, even if we just had a
small roster of products. So we've released it with,
we have a puzzle... (laughs) - Yes.
- This is just a whim, but I wanted to release a puzzle that has one piece missing. So it's actually, as far as I can tell, it's the world's first
officially incomplete puzzle. You get 499 outta 500 pieces.
I keep the 500th piece. So I have a box in my workshop with everybody's missing pieces. - [Lex] Yeah. - And I don't know what to do with it yet, but someday it will come to me. - Profound artistic statement. - It is something, it's definitely something
and I'm surprised by how many of them we've
sold, which I've also like, I kind of wanted to have
that product out there. 'Cause I was like, can you
imagine having a pitch deck, if I do ever raise money of being like, you know how good I am at selling things? I sold people 5,000 incomplete puzzles. - Incomplete puzzles.
- Yeah. Also have, you know, it's
like a lot of the products, I call them basket fillers, like they're kind of just like
stuff where I'm like, yeah, this is like easy to
throw into your basket. I mean we have these
rings, I'm wearing them. So there's a screwdriver ring, which is a Phillips head screwdriver, and then a screw ring
that kind of has a recess, like a Phillips head screw, have these sawdust socks
that make you look like your feet are covered in sawdust. Like you spend all time
in the all day in the shop without having to put any
of the actual effort in. But then we have four more
products in the pipeline that we're working on and
that are kind of the more, the big ambitious products
that are more in line with what I want the brand to be. Like the tagline is unique
solutions to every day problems. And it's just a lot of
like trying to develop novel takes on existing products. - So something where the
function becomes a bigger part of the design?
- Yeah. - And so what's the process of creating something like that? Like even Every Day Calendar? So like what are some challenges that are interesting along the way? So you have to sketch it out,
you have to like brainstorm, draw things out and then
create a schematic and see like how, how do you know what it's
going to look like visually? - You don't. So the Every Day Calendar, the first, so I just built it for myself first. Like that did not come
as a product idea first. And that's kind of been
the process that I've had for a lot of things. Like I make it for myself
and then I'm like, oh, maybe other people would
find this useful too. So the Every Day Calendar,
the first prototype I made, it had actually physical
mechanical toggle switches. So 365 toggle switches
that you could flip. So if you worked out
that day or meditated, for me it was meditating, you can just flip that
switch and that was great. But when I started evaluating
it as a product, it's, if you have 365 of something in a product, like the runaway cost is crazy. So the cheapest option, most reliable option we could
find was capacitive touch. So basically it's a touch
interface and the front plate is a circuit board itself. So it's this like circuit
board that's designed in this really fancy way. So it looks like a beautiful piece of art. Not to toot my own horn too much, but it's actually a circuit board, which I also thought was
really interesting of like using this that people
usually hide away in products. And it felt like a nod to
my career in electronics as well of being like, no, let's make it pretty and let's make it, put it front and forward. But yeah, I mean what I'm
realizing now more and more is like, there's so many of, like I would love to turn the
puzzle table into a product, but then it's like that
would be a $7,000 table. And I don't wanna sell a table for $7,000. So you're kind of limited
to the price bracket you're in and it's like
your margins are tough. Like maintaining your margins
are really, really tough. And as somebody who's like, I would love to sell the stuff
that we're doing cheaper, but you just, it's just not feasible. Like you need those
margins to survive. And... - Well one of the genius
things in the conversations I've had with Elon is
the ability through sort of systematic questioning
of how things have been done in the past to discuss
what is the lowest cost way to solve a problem. And so he's very good at getting to, like with Optimus robot for
example, the humanoid robot, how do you get the cost down? - [Lex] Yeah. - And that seems to be like
one of the essential things to do in any product that
you have to mass manufacture is constantly discuss like
how do we simplify, simplify? - It's definitely a design
limitation that's interesting, it's both hard and interesting to work within and that's such a
different thing as well. It's like, I mean as
I talked about before, like what is the context in
which you're creating things? Like I'm still building things,
I'm still inventing things, but I change the context
and it has a very different set of limitations and
constantly trying to simplify your product to make it cheaper and, yeah, it's a really interesting
and different type of design process. - You can lose some of
the magic though, right? Like people can do that
a little bit too much. I think Apple is famous, like Jony Ive is famous
for sort of focusing on the design first and not
worrying about the cost later, 'cause you don't wanna sacrifice... There's some stuff that's gonna
cost more, but it keeps... - Yeah.
- Some of the magic. - I think it's for some of the products that we're working on,
it's like, I'm like, let's just make it the best
we think it can be and then we can scale back from there. Like, just like let's not
impose these limitations on ourselves upfront. Like let's just make it
the most beautiful version of itself and then we
can decide what we wanna compromise with or compromise on. Yeah. - That's what I say every day
when I look in the mirror. You just make the most beautiful... - And then we can compromise. Yeah. - [Lex] We'll just discuss- - It's why you put on that suit. - Yeah.
- Yeah. - And then see how goes
wrong later. All right. Back a little bit to the robots just, or actually to one of
your more epic projects. I mean they're all epic, but Truckla. - [Simone] Yeah. - You cutting into a Tesla and turning it into an epic truck. What was that like? Where
did the idea come from? - The idea came from that I really wanted an electric pickup truck.
- Yeah. - Like I'm only really
driven electric because I got my driver's license pretty
late and I'm like one of that first generation drivers, it's like probably never
gonna have a gas vehicle. But yeah. This was in 2018 as well. 2018 was a big year.
- Yeah. - Yeah. Or 2019, I can't remember. And I figured that we
could just make our own. - So you took a Tesla?
- Tesla Model 3. - Model 3.
- Mm-hm. - And you cut off a
piece of it and you turn into a pickup truck. What's the, (laughs)
it looks pretty badass. So like what are some of the
challenges of doing that? It's unlike other projects you've done. - Yeah, it's very much
outside of my realm. Like I'm not a car person. I haven't worked on cars
before so we brought in a big team and had
another project manager for it and stuff. 'Cause also like, cars, you definitely don't
want things to go wrong. Like there's no part of me
that wants to fuck around and make something that's
gonna be really unsafe for me or for other people who
are driving with me. So yeah, I mean it was
about a year of planning, and then we got the car
and then we spent a month just tearing it apart
and trying to make it... I was so set like I really wanted the car just for its function, and I was like, I'm so fine
with it if it's really ugly. But then we managed to make
it actually look really good. - Oh so that wasn't
part of the discussion, like how the final thing looks? - I wasn't that fussed about it. I was like I just want
it for its function. Like I really want this car, I don't want it because it looks cool. But then it ended up
looking pretty cool as well. And I'm really, I mean
even now a couple of years later when there are some
more options of electric pickup trucks, I still stan Truckla. Like, she's, like Rivian, Ford F-150, like they're all great but they're giant. - You're sitting there on a
porch in your cowboy hat... - Yep.
- Drinking whiskey and saying- - With my cattle dog. Yeah. - Shotguns... - I wanted like small '90s pickup truck. - Back to shitty robots. You used parts of previous robots a lot. What's like a memorable example of that? It's just the graveyard
of parts? In the workshop? - I've gotten better at
keeping projects intact. In the beginning I used to disassemble every project 'cause it was also a much more stringent budget. So if I needed a motor then
I would like steal it off of an existing robot or a previous robot. But I've got a really good
at not doing that now, because I'm like, maybe
one day I wanna have a museum exhibit and then
they would be nice to have all of those machines
intact and not having to rebuild them. - Centuries from now, they'll, you know, you can look at Benjamin
Franklin's house... - [Simone] Oh yeah, nobody's
gonna look at my house. Yeah. - Simone Giertz's house. - No.
- Just some weird shit. - Yeah. That goes great
with my idea of myself. - (laughs) With the autobiography? Yeah. - Yeah. - You said that people keep requesting in the comments that... - That I put a on dildo on it?
- Yeah. - [Lex] I have- - Wait was that actually
what you were gonna ask? - Yeah, I have dildo written in my notes. - I thought I just made it
into a raunchy punchline. You were actually gonna get there. Yeah, that was in the early
days in the shitty robot days. But now I have a filter
on my YouTube channel for every possible spelling of dildo. - So I mean, people want to probably
sexualize robots, right? Or they put-
- They wanna sexualize my relationship with them. Yeah.
- Oh... - You know, 'cause I have
majority male followers, and they're so sweet and
so like respectful, 99%. But I realize like, there is a lot of, I've realized that
society hasn't taught men how to have female role models, and the way that people channel
it is through being like, oh, it's because I wanna
fuck her or I wanna date her or I wanna marry her. And I'm like, I don't think
you want any of those things. I think you actually just admire my work, but you don't know how
to look up to a woman. - Yeah. That's beautifully put. What about weapons? Do you get requests to
put weapons on a thing? - No. It's interesting, I kind
of started in robotics as just like a happy camper who is really into like tinkering and
now I'm kind of seeing some of the darker parts of it, and I remember first time
I went to a proper factory and I saw like big industrial
world robot arms at work and I was like, oh wow, this
is what it is about, you know? And it was almost scary
where I was like, oh, I've just been like playing around with these tiny versions of
this and I'm like, oh my god, everybody, robotics is cool and fun! And then you get in there and you're like, this is kind of terrifying. - You were platforming
the very things that will destroy human civilization.
- Yes. - You're making it fun and entertaining. - I'm the mouthpiece and
I'm like getting people into robotics and
engineering and we're all just building our demise. - Yeah.
- At accelerating speed. No, but I mean I had
that in like as the same with also with like
companies who are saying that they're never gonna
put weapons on their robots and then have military
contracts and stuff like that and you're like,
this is dark and scary. Fortunately I haven't gotten
a lot of requests for it. - Yeah. Drones are terrifying. Especially... - Drones are fucking terrifying, and it's really, everything... I mean we humans are so
good at creative ways of killing and fucking each other. It's like almost how everything goes. It's like, and it's, yeah, I'm terrified of the future
where we are gonna use more robots to kill each other. - And come up with new and
new creative ways to kill and hurt each other.
- Yeah. - Emotionally,
psychologically, physically. - [Simone] Yeah. - Speaking of which, what
are your thoughts about, I don't know if you've
been paying attention, but ChatGPT, the advancement
in language models and artificial intelligence. Have you added speaking
capabilities to any of your devices? - I have Siri on. Yeah. I used to have an Amazon Echo in my house, but then I removed it. It just freaked me out
that I could whisper from my bed and it heard me. - Yeah.
- I'd be like, "Alexa, play Spotify." It'd be like, "Playing Spotify!" - Yeah.
- Oh fuck. I... I think it is a powerful
tool that we are not fully ready for. - Yeah.
- And I don't know, I think the internet is
kind of a parade of us using powerful things in
harmful ways and I think chatbots are really, really exciting. I am stoked to have a
personal assistant that's like a virtual assistant that
actually does a good job and can solve problems for me. But, yeah, it also feels like it can get dark really, really quickly. - Yeah. 'Cause you can form close connections like we're talking about with
it and then it can be used to manipulate you. Manipulate you in terms of what is true and manipulating you in terms of getting you to buy stuff.
- Yeah. - Or maybe because at least
for now it's centralized, getting everybody to think the same way. - I mean for, I mean it's the same in like algorithms being used to radicalize people or kind of having that as a consequence of
the way that they work and combine that with a
really advanced language model and like you can control
people's worldview in a way that you couldn't. I mean it's just, it's wild and I think
we're not ready for it. And I don't know if we ever would be because we're very impressionable, little squishy flash bags. - [Lex] Takes us back to the one, the squishy flesh bags interact. Which one pops first, still- - Oh yeah, the bubble.
- The bubble wrap. - Bubble on bubble. New paper coming out. - What we were talking about.
Oh, what about consciousness? So you never anthropomorphized the robots? Did they ever come to life for you? Where you kind of thought... - No, 'cause I've built them
and I know how they work. - [Lex] So that prevents you from being able to see the magic? - I don't know. Yeah. But I think it's like, I definitely when I did a lot
of the shitty robot stuff, like I wanted them to
move like a human or like in a more organic way and not
just like point A to point B. - [Lex] Yeah. - Which is easiest way to program stuff. So I wanted other people
to anthropomorphize them, but I don't think I did necessarily. I'm trying to think of
a piece of technology that I've kind of projected
feelings upon, but no, I can't. - So sometimes what makes me
anthropomorphize something, even though I built it, is
there's element of surprise. So especially with machine learning, you're surprised by the
kind of things it does. Have you ever been surprised by a robot? - No. 'Cause they're all pretty dumb. Like also the robots I built, it's like they're all
just servos moving from, I mean they're, I don't
think I've built anything with a huge amount of sensors, like they're just moving in
a pattern that I programmed them to move. - What's the most complex
thing you've built? - I mean, probably Truckla.
- Truckla. - Yeah. Was complex just for the sheer
scale of it and like the, I mean both, I think that
was my biggest project both in terms of build scope
but also in terms of impact that it had. Like that project just
went wild. But then, yeah. Then I don't know. The
bubble wrap music box? I don't know. They're all
complicated in different ways. - That one is epic. How does the bubble wrap
connect to the flute by the way? How does that work? - The flute is just right where, like mounted it right where it pops it. - Okay.
- Yeah. - [Lex] That's so fascinating.
I gotta watch that video. - Yeah. Have fun. - Funny enough, in my, in deep investigative
journalistic research of you... - [Simone] Yeah? - Says you used to be an MMA reporter. - Yeah.
- How? How? How? How did that happen? How'd you get into it? - I was really into martial arts. I was like a huge UFC buff.
I mean, this is 2010, maybe. - [Lex] Did you practice
martial arts yourself? - I did, yeah. I was,
mostly stand up, I did. Or like, I did a lot of
Muay Thai and then some Brazilian jujitsu and
just, yeah, I was really, the thing is I get really
intense about my hobbies and I was so into it.
- So you went all in. - I was all in.
- Awesome. - And I had worked a
little bit as a journalist and I was like, oh, I should like do MMA
reporting and I emailed this MMA website in Sweden. I was like, hey, can I
come and write for you? And they were like, oh, actually we are going to an
event in Gothenburg tomorrow, do you wanna come? - [Lex] Yeah. - And I was like, wow, this is a lot. It's like 11:00 PM at
night, but sure, I'll come. And I went there to their office, I'd never really met them. And I'm like, this is kind of scary. Like I'm a 20 year old
girl and going there with a group of men,
and they were so rude. They'd like, I went there and
I was like, "Hey, what's up?" And they were all kind of
ignoring me and just like not looking at me or interacting with me, until they realized that Simon was a girl because we'd only talked over
email and they were like, oh, this guy named Simon is gonna come. And then they were like, oh, fuck, Simon. It's actually Simone. - Yeah.
- And it's a girl. So I kind of like slid
into that in a very, very strange way. And I did that for a year, but then I got kicked out of an interview with Alexander Gustafsson,
and I was like, oh- - Your pronunciation is so good. - Yeah. (laughs) And then I just kind of
never went back and I was done with it and now I'm
not allowed to do martial arts because of brain stuff. So, I've kind of put
all of that behind me. And it's interesting. It's like I definitely see the athleticism in it and the skill that goes into it. I think as the older I get, the more concerned I am
about the health impacts of the sport and of the
people who are practicing it on an elite level. And I'm just not as, cannot as 100% just cheer
as somebody beats somebody else up into a pulp. - Yeah. Especially considering
the effects you might have on the brain.
- Mm-hm. - May I ask why you got kicked out of this Alexander
Gustafsson interview. Was it anything fun? - So, it is, no, it wasn't. I didn't intend to get kicked out. I didn't realize I was
gonna get kicked out. So it was, Alexander Gustafsson
was gonna fight Jon Jones. - Yeah.
- And he had just, he was kind of like this golden boy in Sweden and he had just
come out to the press that he had actually been
to jail for violent crimes, and all I wanted to ask, all I asked was what was
the reason that you wanted to bring that forward now? And apparently that was
completely like blacklisted, but I hadn't gotten
briefed about it at all. And the PR man, head a PR of the UFC
was just yelling at me and they kicked me out of,
Grand Hotel in Stockholm. And I immediately called my
mom and I was like, "Mom, you will not believe what just happened. I got kicked out of an
interview in at Grand Hotel." Because in the '90s she got
kicked out of an interview with Mel Gibson from the Grand Hotel, so that's like runs in the
family. So I was just so... - Like she proud of you?
- So yeah, no, it was just this weird
generational skip where we both gotten kicked out of
interviews at the same hotel. - You spent quite a bit of
time in China as a student. Is that something you could speak to? The differences in culturally, maybe even from like a student in an engineering perspective
between China and US, maybe even Sweden. Those are like technologically speaking just such fundamentally different places. - I mean I moved to China when I was 16. - Yeah.
- And I went there as an exchange student. So that is before I had ever
touched upon those things. And it was, and then I went
back when I was 19 to work as an English teacher for a little bit. It was... It was incredibly challenging to be there. - The language barrier,
the language, the culture? - All of it. I mean I was like, now when
I look at 16 year olds, I'm like, you're a baby. And I moved, sorry, 10 to 16
year olds listening to this. But like, I just can't believe I did that. And yeah, I didn't speak the language, I got placed in like a small city with almost no foreigners. It was just a constant audience
of people staring at you, because they haven't interacted with a lot of foreigners before. And yeah, it definitely, and then after that I
moved to Kenya and I think that was one of the reasons
why it was so interesting to move to the States
because people were like, oh, isn't it like hard with
the language barrier or the cultural difference? And I was like, dude, this is nothing. And I could speak the
language like I could speak English well and I could kind of pass as an American even just as I moved here. And it was such a relief
where I was like, wow, I'm like an undercover foreigner, because I got to a point
where I realized like, it doesn't matter how good my mandarin is, people are never gonna
fully accept me here. So, yeah.
- And you moved, you went to Kenya,
you've spoken about this, after your parents got divorced? - Yeah. When did I talk about that? Didn't realize I told that story. - [Lex] I know... I know so many things. What do you think this is? - Is it from when I have
my Amazon Echo installed? - Yeah-
- Yeah, so... - [Lex] Made a few contacts. - I came home from China first
time I was there for a year. It's one of the most turned
upside down days of my life. I spent a year there and I was so excited. I had really rough year
and I was so excited just to come home and
like be a child again. I remember thinking and just
like feeling like I belonged. And then I came home and I
found out that my parents had separated when I was gone. And they hadn't told me
because they wanted to like not affect my stay there, which I think was 100% the
right decision of them to make. But I kind of came home to
a house that was starting to get picked apart. And- - Such a big shock to you world. - It was, both yes and no. I think I remember I
just sat down on my bed and I was like, well, this
isn't what I expected, but I guess I'll move to
Kenya because I was one of the few, there were a
few Swedish boarding schools in the world. There was one in Brussels, Paris, London, and then one in Nairobi. And I didn't wanna miss more
school because I'd taken a gap year when I went to China. So I was like, I guess I'll go to Nairobi. And I'm thinking now, like I think if my parents
had stayed together, granted, it was amazing that they did, made the right decision in every way. But my roots kind of never
grew back after that. And I think I just kept on
moving abroad and moving around and being really
restless and, yeah... And... - Have you ever been able
to find a home, spiritually? - No, I have a home. Yeah. I mean I have a home in the
people around me and I have a lot of different homes. You know, it's, I think
what I'm realizing more and more is like you cannot live without consequence and compromise. And sometimes I can envy
people who have that like same friend group that they
had their entire life or that, you know, just really belong in a place. And I realize that would be amazing. But I've chosen different experiences. And one of the upsides
of that is I can feel home almost anywhere. One of the downsides of
that is that I cannot feel fully at home anywhere. - Wow. That's deeply and darkly poetic. - [Simone] Yeah. Do you feel at home? - Probably the way you put
it is really beautifully put. Yeah. No, I have to find
home in the people I love. - [Simone] Yeah. - What advice would you give
to young people that look at your stellar life, the trajectory of your
career as a human being, as a creator, as a
engineer, as a designer, as a incredibly interesting personality, who's working on an autobiography. What advice would you give them? Like how to make their way in this life? Maybe high school students,
maybe college students, on how they can have a
career they can be proud of, or life they can be proud of? - Oh my god, Lex. Hmm... You know, it's, this is not the advice, but there are very few
moments in a career that feel as good as you think they are going to. And there are very few
moments of feeling really proud of yourself. Like, I feel like I often
just feel like I'm not doing it well enough or big enough or, and now I just had one of
those moments like hearing you say that I'm like, oh,
I'm actually doing okay. I think my main advice is
enthusiasm is a much more potent fuel in life than duty. And just because something
is boring doesn't mean that it's important. I kind of realized for
myself that like I'm so much better at the things I enjoy, but school doesn't really
teach us how to stay excited about something and how to stay enthusiastic about something. And if you can find that, then like you got a
gold mine of potential. So I kind of had to
reprogram myself to be like, just because this is fun, doesn't mean that it's not important, because I had so much guilt
about it in this weird way or where I'm like, no, this is too fun. This can't be work. And I'm
like, no, it's still work. The boring stuff isn't more important. - And the vice versa as you said, just because it's boring
and hard doesn't mean it's the right thing to do? - Yeah.
- That's interesting. I'm gonna have to take that
advice and think through it. 'Cause I'm, genetically, I'm built a little bit like
if this is really unpleasant, it's probably good for me. - [Simone] Yeah. - And it's a dangerous thing to think. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not. - Yeah. No. And it's like what comes
really easy and where do you have that kind of effortless momentum and enthusiasm and that
is kind of the sweet spot. I think that I'm also really
happy that I spent time trying out so many different jobs. I mean, I've had so many
different jobs before I did it and I would do things
for a year and then I quit and it feels like I tried
on a bunch of different pants and you're like, okay,
I can kind of wear this, but they're like not super
comfortable or I don't love the look of them or whatever. And now I feel like I've
found this pair of pants that just like fits me
perfectly and that perfectly caters to my strengths and my weaknesses. Like I used to work as an editor for the Swedish government,
and I remember thinking like, oh, I need to be okay
that not a lot of things are happening and that
things are moving slowly and that the work is
kind of like monotonous. And then I realize like, or maybe I should be in a workplace where it's a benefit or
strength that I want a lot of things to happen and that
I can handle a high speed. - [Lex] Yeah. - You know, and I think
that is really such a good question to ask as well. Like what are my strengths?
What are my weaknesses? And then what context are most
of these things strengths? - If you're know that, if
you know the measurements, you can find the right fitting pants? - Yeah. Or the right suit,
as Lex will tell you. - What do you think is a meaning of life? - [Simone] Oh, I don't
think there's any meaning. - It's a meaningless void? - No, just that it doesn't
have any meaning doesn't mean that it's meaningless. I don't think that there's
this big grand meaning. I think a more important question is what brings you substantial
joy in your life? To me it's the relationships
with people that I have. - [Lex] Love? - Yeah. I mean love in all
different kinds of form. It's, I'm really working on
figuring out how to build more community, especially
in a society that isn't really made for it. I want more passive hangouts with people, where like I just want
people who are there. - Together?
- To get high? - No, together.
- Okay. To get high? - Together?
- Yeah. I mean, I, like, I think seeing somebody for
lunch and kind of shooting the shit and what's the
latest with you is great, but like what I want is
somebody to just roll up in sweatpants and open my
fridge and like be like, what are you gonna do? I don't know. Maybe I'll read a book. Like, yeah. I think that... - Just sharing kinda like silence. - Sharing silence, being alone together. And that just, that type
of community I think is what I'm really seeking out now. 'Cause I think, yeah. And also like working on a goal, on a joint goal together
with other people. And I think being a YouTuber
can be really lonely. I mean, as much as I'm working
with a team, it's like, yeah, I just wanna work in
a bigger project and kind of have that sense of, wow,
we're like doing this together. 'Cause I think that accesses
my pride a lot better than just being proud of myself. It's so much easier for
me to be proud of a team than for me to be proud of myself. - That's probably good
advice for people who are doing creative work on YouTube too. To work on a team. - Yeah. And just choose, try to do things, and take it from the
Queen of Shitty Robots. But like, try to do things with integrity. - [Lex] Former. - Former Queen of Shitty Robots.
Do things with integrity. Like anything you do on
the internet is kind of, I think of things as
tattoos on my internet and on my internet self. And I'm really happy that
I said no to some things early in my career that I know that I would've regretted now. And you know, just think
of it in the long term, like going viral is
overwhelming and so stressful and so fun, but like so intense. And I'm really happy
that I managed to build that into a more long-term
career than just have it be something that passed. - And come down from the viral moment and maintain your humanity? - Yeah. And also really deliberately
defining what success means to you, because
there are so many reasons or so many definitions that
other people will give you. And especially when you're
working on the internet, there are just numbers
upon numbers that are like, you're doing well, you're not doing well. And something I'm really
happy that I did was early on, I really try to think of like, what does success look like for me? And I realized that it's
not having the world's biggest YouTube channel, it's being proud of the projects that I put
out and having full say in how I spend my time. Like that is the most
important thing to me. And if I had a huge YouTube
channel and I was making so much money, but I kind
of had this machine run me rather than the other way around, like to me it's so important
to be able to wake up in the morning and be like, I
don't wanna do this any more. And for that to be okay. And I think I defined
that for myself early on and I've really tried
to live by it and made decisions after that. And I'm really happy that I did that. - And also you're, with the store, with the design you're doing now, you're putting a little
bit of love in the products you create at scale. I mean, that's what Jony Ive
did. That's the cool thing. So you can create something
beautiful and then people can share that love at scale. - It's terrifying and beautiful
and I'm so here for it. - I'm here for it too. I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of who you are, I'm a big fan of everything you do, of putting yourself out there, putting your love out there in terms of the designs you create. Also, just because I'm a fan of robotics, I think you inspire a lot of people. Like the shitty robots are
actually incredible robots, and it's incredible
engineering, that's all, that's the best combination
of design and engineering and fun, all of it together. So thank you for doing that. I'm a big fan. You're an inspiration. And thank you for sitting
down with me. This is awesome. - Thank you so much for having me. - Thanks for listening
to this conversation with Simone Giertz. To support this podcast
please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Kurt Vonnegut. "We have to continually
be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down." Thank you for listening and
hope to see you next time.