Simone Giertz: Queen of Sh*tty Robots, Innovative Engineering, and Design | Lex Fridman Podcast #372

Simone Giertz 0:00 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 Fridman 0:10 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 0:11 Um, so yeah. I still have that hanging on my wall in my workshop, so that one I'm- I'm- I'm really happy with. I just think it's a really funny concept, and also, I executed the build well.

Lex Fridman 0:22 So it's an arm?

Simone Giertz 0:23 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 0:24 Like, what's the build?

Simone Giertz 0:25 Yeah, 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 Fridman 0:33 Mm-hmm. Was it... So, it's actually a hand, right?

Simone Giertz 0:35 It's just laser cut plywood, and it kind of has, like... I think it looks creepy.

Lex Fridman 0:39 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 0:40 And yeah, it 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. It's like, "Proud of you."

Lex Fridman 0:54 (laughs) Yeah.

Simone Giertz 0:56 And it charges you a quarter for it.

Lex Fridman 0:58 Yeah. But you add a, like, ChatGPT on top of that, and, uh, 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 Giertz 1:09 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:11 The following is a conversation with Simone Giertz, 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 Yetz. 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 the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Simone Giertz.

Lex Fridman 2:06 What was the first cool thing you built where you fell in love with the process of making stuff?

Simone Giertz 2:10 You know, I think in the beginning of building stuff, you- you run into the limitations of your skills so much, so I feel like, honestly, building gets less and less frustrating, or, like, I love it more and more the more I know.

Lex Fridman 2:23 So, the limitations aren't fun? Like, when is it frustrating?

Simone Giertz 2:26 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-

Lex Fridman 2:33 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 2:33 ... have to compromise with the materials and the tools and the skills you have. Um, so I can't remember first time where I felt like-

Lex Fridman 2:41 I'm proud of this.

Simone Giertz 2:42 ... "Wow, this was so smooth. I'm so proud of it." Like, I feel like a lot of people, I watch them build stuff, and it's just like watching water pour down, you know? It's just, like, so easy. And for me, it's just like trying to shove a toy car into a wall.

Lex Fridman 3:00 So, you're not able to step back and marvel, like, at the early creations, even like- even like, um... We're not even talking Arduino stuff. Even before then.

Simone Giertz 3:09 I'm from Sweden, and you have to choose either sewing or woodworking, and I chose sew- like, 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 like the sense of pride and wanting to show people something that I made. And, like, back then, it was, like, a little wooden spoon, you know?

Lex Fridman 3:37 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 3:38 And now, it's a slightly larger wooden spoon.

Lex Fridman 3:40 Wooden spoon-

Simone Giertz 3:41 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 3:42 ... that is dynamic and moves and has a- a mind of its own. Um, you first started doing more engineering type stuff with, uh, Arduino boards at Punch Through Design, which is an-

Simone Giertz 3:53 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 3:53 ... SF engineering firm. What are, just from your memory there, what are some cool things you built there?

Simone Giertz 3:58 So, the thing is, I- I went to advertising school, and I... Just, like, a v- vocational studies, a year. And I realized there that I didn't care much for advertising, but I thought it was really fun to build stuff in program. So like, I just completely focused on that, and there, I built my first hardware project, or like electronics project, which was this, uh, iPhone case with retractable guitar strings.

Lex Fridman 4:23 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 4:23 So basically, I imagined that you could, like, pull out guitar strings from the bottom of your iPhone, and you could pluck it to your belt, and then you could hold the chord on the screen.

Lex Fridman 4:33 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 4:34 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, like, "Oh, should I go to school for this?" But then I thought, "Hmm, maybe I can get a job, and I can get paid to learn about electronics." So, just based off of that one project, I got the job at Punch Through Design where it's actually was a- a one-year internship.

Lex Fridman 4:59 Can you explain what we're talking about here? So, it's a case-

Simone Giertz 5:01 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 5:02 ... with guitar strings attached to it.

Simone Giertz 5:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 5:04 Does it actually work at all?

Simone Giertz 5:07 It does.

Lex Fridman 5:08 These are not on the screen guitar strings.

Simone Giertz 5:10 No.

Lex Fridman 5:10 They're actual-

Simone Giertz 5:11 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, uh, your phone, and you can attach them to your belt. I mean, it's terrible.

Lex Fridman 5:26 How do you keep track? Okay.

Simone Giertz 5:26 There's a few different ways to decide if somebody's touching a guitar string.

Lex Fridman 5:31 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 5:32 And what you do in a real guitar is you have the little, it's like measuring the vibration or the change in the... As- as the... Yeah, you're measuring how the guitar is vibrating, and you can't really do that because I can't have a- a- a receiving sensor, because the guitar strings are gonna move in relationship to that because you don't have, like, a s- rigid neck. And this is like, 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, Punch Through Design, made. So that was how I found them. And I measured the capacitive touch, so like whenever, um, the guitar string was measured, there was this little micro-controller that was like, "Oh my God, a guitar string got measured or 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 cord I was holding on the screen and then played the coherent sound.

Lex Fridman 6:43 Oh, so you're holding the cords on the screen?

Simone Giertz 6:46 Screen. And then-

Lex Fridman 6:46 So you're doing the multi-touch sensing there?

Simone Giertz 6:49 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 6:50 That's incredible.

Simone Giertz 6:52 I honestly cannot believe that I pulled it off, because I-I think I was, 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 like now, if somebody was like, "Hey, I want this to be my first project," I would probably be like, "Oh, that's a lot." But I pulled it off.

Lex Fridman 7:13 Well, can you keep... Because that's a f- 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 kinda psychoanalyze you on the couch of why you didn't stop, 'cause you have to build an app.

Simone Giertz 7:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 7:35 You have to figure out how to... Did you know how to program much or no?

Simone Giertz 7:38 No.

Lex Fridman 7:38 Okay.

Simone Giertz 7:39 I mean, a little bit, but I'd never programmed and, or done any iOS apps.

Lex Fridman 7:44 Okay, so you have to figure out how to get... Forget like what the app does, just get the app running and working.

Simone Giertz 7:49 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 7:50 And then you have to figure out how to get the sensors in like real time, the finger touching, and you have to connect how to get the c- the capacitive touch working with the micro-controllers.

Simone Giertz 7:59 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 7:59 Do you know anything about the c- capacitive touch sensors at that time?

Simone Giertz 8:02 No. I mean, it's pretty easy, um, now.

Lex Fridman 8:04 Okay.

Simone Giertz 8:04 It's basically this-

Lex Fridman 8:05 Everything is easy.

Simone Giertz 8:06 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 8:07 You know, rockets are pretty easy.

Simone Giertz 8:08 Hey, you sound like my grandma. She's, I have an Italian grandma, and, uh, I always trying to get her, we're like trying to get her to tell her recipes, and every recipe starts with, "It's very simple."

Lex Fridman 8:23 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 8:23 And then there's like 45 minutes of her explaining it. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 8:26 It's like with gymnastics at the Olympics. They make it look easy. The best people in the world always make the th- the impossible seem easy.

Simone Giertz 8:34 I pride myself with making buildings that look really hard. (laughs) 'Cause I feel like I'm always struggling so much.

Lex Fridman 8:40 (laughs) You make the easy seem impossible.

Simone Giertz 8:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 8:42 No, uh...

Simone Giertz 8:43 Yes.

Lex Fridman 8:44 So how many strings was it? Was it just one?

Simone Giertz 8:46 Oh, gosh, I mean, this is such a long time ago. No, it was six.

Lex Fridman 8:49 Oh. Six strings and you could touch it.

Simone Giertz 8:51 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 8:51 And then there's... Wow. And it can, and then the, the phone itself makes a sound?

Simone Giertz 8:56 Uh-huh.

Lex Fridman 8:58 Wow.

Simone Giertz 8:58 And I still, I still think it's such a cool concept to have this like mobi- you know, I'm not even a guitar player. I don't know. I was, I mean, I got the idea because I was, uh, kind of strumming on my charge cord of my phone.

Lex Fridman 9:11 Oh, like a air guitar but on a cord?

Simone Giertz 9:13 Yeah. But I-

Lex Fridman 9:14 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 9:14 ... I've been thinking about it, 'cause I'm like, "Ah, 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, like you can't make it taut enough to actually play.

Lex Fridman 9:33 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 9:33 Like it kind of becomes playing these like saggy strings.

Lex Fridman 9:36 Yep.

Simone Giertz 9:37 So it's, you're not really getting that experience, and I think that's why, I mean, I... Yeah, I haven't really pursued it.

Lex Fridman 9:44 I wonder if there's a way to generate the tightness from the case itself. So like a device that unfolds and then with some kinda tightening mechanisms tightens.

Simone Giertz 9:53 Yeah, but then it kinda becomes this like-

Lex Fridman 9:55 A guitar.

Simone Giertz 9:55 ... whole thing, and a guitar.

Lex Fridman 9:57 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 9:57 Then it just becomes a really shitty guitar.

Lex Fridman 9:59 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 9:59 Like which this is a really shitty guitar, but it's also not a guitar.

Lex Fridman 10:02 But it's so shitty, it's awesome.

Simone Giertz 10:05 Yeah. I don't know. Um...

Lex Fridman 10:07 But it's a cool, it's cool that you have an interface between a device that's capable of incredible computational power-

Simone Giertz 10:15 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 10:15 ... and an actual hardware thing.

Simone Giertz 10:16 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 10:17 Is there something that you can psychoanalyze that made you finish that others could hear in, in their own struggle to, uh, do their first project like that? Because you were n- you were a non-engineering person, technically.

Simone Giertz 10:32 Um...

Lex Fridman 10:32 And you did a pretty cool, renegade, out there, wild, no instructions engineering project.

Simone Giertz 10:42 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. Um, I think it had an natural pressure to it because it was a school project.

Lex Fridman 11:01 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 11:01 So it did have deadlines built into it, and, 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 Fridman 11:14 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 11:14 Like that was, I, I felt like a bloodhound, you know? (laughs) You're just like, "Oh my God, I can actually make this happen." And I think if I hadn't seen that, the horizon, it would've been harder to stick through.

Lex Fridman 11:27 Were you able to see the end of the tunnel, um, pretty early on?

Simone Giertz 11:31 No, not really.

Lex Fridman 11:33 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 11:33 I mean,

Narrator 11:34 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 11:34 ... really lately.

Lex Fridman 11:34 So there's something to just suffering for a while.

Simone Giertz 11:36 I don't know how, how your brain works, but it's like if I have a problem, I can't stop thinking about it. Like it's so fun to think about it. Like I spent, I spent two and a half years designing a coat hanger, and I just can't stop thinking about it. Like I get so into it, 'cause I think it's so much fun.

Lex Fridman 12:02 Take me to this...... two-year journey of the coat hanger.

Simone Giertz 12:06 (laughs) Of the coat hanger.

Lex Fridman 12:07 What-

Simone Giertz 12:08 I'm like-

Lex Fridman 12:08 How did it begin?

Simone Giertz 12:09 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.

Lex Fridman 12:20 Oh, an actual product?

Simone Giertz 12:21 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 12:21 Okay. Well-

Simone Giertz 12:22 So that's the difference.

Lex Fridman 12:22 ... that's, leave it as a mystery.

Simone Giertz 12:24 It's a mystery, yeah. What it-

Lex Fridman 12:25 But it, it solves a fundamental problem in, in the human condition.

Simone Giertz 12:29 Yes! And I am so excited about it, and I cannot, I don't th- yeah, but this is, I get so-

Lex Fridman 12:35 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 12:35 ... pumped about it because I see... It's just this issue or, like, this problem that I wanna solve, and I, I kinda can't put it to rest until I have.

Lex Fridman 12:46 It's, I mean, speaking of coat hangers, um, doorknobs have always been interesting to me. Eh, it's cool how, how there's things that everybody uses that somebody designed.

Simone Giertz 12:58 Lex.

Lex Fridman 12:58 Yeah?

Simone Giertz 12:59 Oh my God. So, okay, so this is, I, so I've, I've two, like, big... So basically, I started on YouTube, and I'm, uh, been doing that for, like, the last seven or eight years, and I've kind of been thinking of, like, "Okay, what's next for me?" 'Cause I wanna keep on trying out new things, and I've, I'm, I'm kind of going into two different avenues. One is the product business that I started, Coat Hangers TBD, um, and then I am working on a pilot episode of a show where each episode is about an everyday object and why they look-

Lex Fridman 13:30 Oh, nice.

Simone Giertz 13:30 ... the way that they do. So we've written a pilot episode about forks, and it's all about, like, why do they look the way that they do?

Lex Fridman 13:37 That's awesome.

Simone Giertz 13:37 Why did this became the, like, eating implement of the West? Why are we ruled by an iron fork? How did that happen?

Lex Fridman 13:44 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 13:44 And every everyday object that you have and that you just take for granted, somebody just made it up.

Lex Fridman 13:49 Yeah. We're all sheep. We'll all keep using it-

Simone Giertz 13:52 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 13:53 ... even if it's not opti- I mean, presumably, most objects are optimal, you hope, or at least a local optim-

Simone Giertz 13:59 They're not.

Lex Fridman 13:59 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 14:00 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.

Lex Fridman 14:09 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 14:09 And you can make objects work for you better. Like, I spent... I, I made this f- fruit bowl. I had a f- fruit bowl, and I was always annoyed that I had either too little or too much fruit for it.

Lex Fridman 14:20 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 14:20 So I made a fruit bowl where I can change the diameter of it. It has a mechanism so you can, like, make it bigger or smaller, and that's just, like, the thing of being like, bowls, why are they the way that they are?

Lex Fridman 14:31 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 14:31 I can make them different, and I think, like, I want to 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? What-

Lex Fridman 14:40 I, I think that's going to be a rabbit hole from which you will never return.

Simone Giertz 14:43 I would happily live in that rabbit hole forever. Like, if I could, if I can, like, dig out a little niche for myself there, because I think it's like... Uh, uh, uh, you know-

Lex Fridman 14:56 'Cause it-

Simone Giertz 14:56 ... they go so deep.

Lex Fridman 14:57 They're also on different sides of doors. You never... Like, the push-pull situation-

Simone Giertz 15:01 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 15:01 ... on doors in general-

Simone Giertz 15:03 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 15:03 Like, that's one of the main problems of humanity, is figuring out-

Simone Giertz 15:07 Push-pull doors (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 15:08 ... the push-pull, figuring out which-

Simone Giertz 15:09 Yeah (laughs) , it is embarrassing, yeah.

Lex Fridman 15:10 It's, it's just... Okay. I mean, there's 8 billion peoples on, people on Earth. Every single second, there is millions of people being embarrassed by the confusion of whether it's a push-

Simone Giertz 15:21 Real live stats from Lex (laughs) yeah.

Lex Fridman 15:22 ... or pull. Right now, there's somebody, some guy, first time in college, is trying to be impressive to everybody, p- pushes on a p-

Simone Giertz 15:29 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 15:29 And, and he plays it off like it's cool. "Oh, sure. I, I knew that."

Simone Giertz 15:32 No, but that's the thi-

Lex Fridman 15:33 Over and over.

Simone Giertz 15:33 And it affects our behaviors.

Lex Fridman 15:35 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 15:35 That was why I think it's so interesting with forks, is that forks actually affect our eating behaviors.

Lex Fridman 15:40 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 15:40 And they can get you to eat faster or slower, take bigger bites or smaller bites, and there are all these ways, or, like, the social... I mean, the reason that, um, chopsticks work is because they do the food chopping in the kitchen-

Lex Fridman 15:58 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 15:59 ... rather than on the plate, and also, you have a bowl that you bring to your mouth with... whereas a plate, you keep on the... Uh, like, there are just all these ways in these objects affect our behavior, opening and closing doors, and I think it's such an interesting take on culture through an, like, human behavior through these objects that we use every day and we never question them really.

Lex Fridman 16:22 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-

Simone Giertz 16:30 I do-

Lex Fridman 16:30 ... that question?

Simone Giertz 16:31 Yeah. No, it's all big utensil-

Lex Fridman 16:33 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 16:33 (laughs) ... is behind all of it (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 16:35 (laughs) All right. Tha-

Simone Giertz 16:36 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 16:36 So, I mean, in those early days, um, did you suffer from impostor syndrome? Like, the, that leap to being an engineer, was, was there, especially when you started, uh, working at Point C The Design on a team of engineers, was there insecurity?

Simone Giertz 16:54 Both yes and no. I think I've, um, I always try to flip my flaws (laughs) into selling points, and for that, so getting that job, I, 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 is gonna be too hard for your customers to understand." So it was more m- me being like, "Oh, no, it might seem that me not having skills is a bad thing, but-"

Lex Fridman 17:28 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 17:29 "... actually, it's a great thing."

Lex Fridman 17:30 I'm (laughs) -

Simone Giertz 17:30 "You need it."

Lex Fridman 17:31 "I represent the everyday person."

Simone Giertz 17:33 Y-

Lex Fridman 17:33 "I understand deeply"-

Simone Giertz 17:34 Yeah (laughs) , deeply.

Lex Fridman 17:35 "... what everybody needs and wants." Yeah.

Simone Giertz 17:37 Yes, that is me, the representation of the, of the average human. Um, but I mean, I, 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 any- something, I would ask a question. So I was always raising my hand in class, and it's this room, entire, like, m- auditorium filled with incredibly intelligent people who are mortified of seeming stupid.

Lex Fridman 18:05 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 18:05 And I think that was really, like... And I remember people at the end of the year coming up to me (laughs) 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 impostor syndrome, is I'm just like...Nope, let's lay it all out there. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 18:26 So you're okay being almost like self-deprecating, just coming off... I mean, I'm definitely that. I- I kinda lean into it, call myself an idiot.

Simone Giertz 18:34 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 18:34 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-

Simone Giertz 18:43 I th-

Lex Fridman 18:43 ... including the pro- teachers.

Simone Giertz 18:45 Yeah. I think it's- it's both. It's a double-edged sword. I started out on the internet kind of, I kinda got the moniker the queen of shitty robots because I posted a lot of stuff on

Simone Giertz 18:58 /r/shittyrobots on Reddit and people started calling me the queen of /r/shittyrobots and then the /r kind of dropped. So I, what I'm trying to say is I did not come up with that one myself. (laughs) Um, 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, like, not get my perfectionism in the way because if I set out to do something that's great, then I'm never gonna start.

Lex Fridman 19:34 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 19:34 And I was like, "No, I just need something that looks funny." Um, but what I've realized now is there's also a defense mechanism, being self-deprecating is like always beating people to the punch. It kind of was this survival tactic on the internet of being like never daring to set out as an expert, and I still do that. Like, I'm terrified to tell people how to do something even if I know, um, because it kind of opens you up for being shot down. So I think I have, I definitely have a conflicted relationship with it, and now especially as I'm- 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, like, 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, like, a thing that I have in my work life and in my r- relationships, but I'm also trying to only do it when it's beneficial to me and not when it's harmful.

Lex Fridman 20:40 Yeah, I mean, 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.

Simone Giertz 20:48 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:48 Uh, I think it's probably the hardest when you're starting out.

Simone Giertz 20:51 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:51 'Cause...

Simone Giertz 20:52 I don't know.

Lex Fridman 20:53 You know?

Simone Giertz 20:53 I think it was easier then almost, I don't know.

Lex Fridman 20:55 But nobody takes you seriously, right? When you're starting out, when you're young. Like...

Simone Giertz 21:00 You know, I just realized that I played a lot more stupid than I was, and...

Lex Fridman 21:07 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 21:07 I think it's also... oh, gosh, I can't believe I'm the one bringing this up. Uh, but like being a woman in a male-dominated field and you're, like, try, I was just trying to make myself the least amount threatening, or like really unthreatening because m- 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 to thinking that she knows how to build electronics.'" You know? So it's like...

Lex Fridman 21:57 Well, that's a interesting skill to build, especially when you put yourself out there on the internet.

Simone Giertz 22:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 22:01 Like y- unfortunately, that's the reality of the internet and it's a skill you have to kinda develop. And it's actually why a lot of really brilliant people avoid the internet.

Simone Giertz 22:10 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 22:11 Like, there's not many peop- like at MIT, for example, there's not many brilliant professors or PhD students and so on just putting their stuff out there because, like... (laughs) um, if they wa- like if they really put their heart and soul into a thing, first of all, that's really hard.

Simone Giertz 22:29 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 22:29 And nobody, uh, nobody sees it and e- 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.

Simone Giertz 22:42 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 22:42 Or, like, 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 Giertz 22:54 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 22:55 And they should show it off. But I feel like you figured out a really good process of, of showing it off. You, 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.

Simone Giertz 23:16 Can, um, just wanna snapshot that quote and put it on my LinkedIn profile.

Lex Fridman 23:19 On the back of your book.

Simone Giertz 23:20 In the back of my book.

Lex Fridman 23:20 When is your autobiography coming out?

Simone Giertz 23:22 Oh, never. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 23:24 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 23:24 I...

Lex Fridman 23:24 You don't wanna say that because, like, a year from now...

Simone Giertz 23:27 Oh, gosh.

Lex Fridman 23:27 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 23:27 I don't wanna, I don't wanna shit on autobiographies.

Lex Fridman 23:30 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 23:30 No.

Lex Fridman 23:31 No. Nope.

Simone Giertz 23:31 But even just by saying that, I'm shitting on autobiographies. I just... me being interested enough in somebody to wanna read 600 pages about them talking about themselves is a lot.

Lex Fridman 23:42 No, well... (laughs) Well, that's exactly the kinda person that should write one.

Simone Giertz 23:46 But yeah... but also, I'm fucking 32 years old, what do I have to write about? Like, I went through puberty, I lost my virginity, and here we are.

Lex Fridman 23:52 A pretty good biography.

Simone Giertz 23:52 Like, I don't know. (laughs) It's like such a... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 23:57 Three chapters, it's a col-

Simone Giertz 23:58 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 23:58 It's a coloring book. (laughs)

Simone Giertz 24:01 Chapter seven, I learned to tie my own shoelaces.

Lex Fridman 24:05 (laughs) I feel like it would be awesome. Anyway, what's the, uh...

Simone Giertz 24:08 Great.

Lex Fridman 24:08 ... the queen... so how did you achieve the status of royalty, the queen of shitty robots? What's the origin story there?

Simone Giertz 24:14 I've, I mean, I have o- officially renounced my title now.

Lex Fridman 24:18 Can you still speak of the time when you led...

Simone Giertz 24:20 I can still speak of the time. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 24:21 ... your kingdom?

Simone Giertz 24:22 Yes. Uh, no, I mean, it started on... because I...

Lex Fridman 24:25 Did you rule by love or fear?

Simone Giertz 24:27 By fear of rejection.... from me, that people would (laughs) reject me. So I, um, yeah, I started making these little GIFs. Like my- the early projects that I did were very GIF forward. It was always like, I only did it because it could be translated into a GIF.

Lex Fridman 24:46 GIF forward? I like it.

Simone Giertz 24:48 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 24:48 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 24:48 But honestly, it was like, it's a really good mental exercise to vet if your project is easy enough to be explained by like a seven-second looping video without audio. And... Because like, nobody's gonna care that it also has Bluetooth.

Lex Fridman 25:07 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 25:07 Like it's really like, is it- is it self-explanatory enough to, um, be explained through a GIF? So yeah.

Lex Fridman 25:14 Can I just pause? I'm sorry to interrupt, but-

Simone Giertz 25:15 No, go for it.

Lex Fridman 25:16 ... I feel like all scientific papers and projects should go through that exercise.

Simone Giertz 25:20 (laughs) Can it be explained as a GIF?

Lex Fridman 25:22 Yeah. Actually, DeepMind does a good job of this. Like, you know, this- "We've solved protein folding. Here's a GIF."

Simone Giertz 25:28 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 25:29 That's literally what they do.

Simone Giertz 25:30 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 25:30 Because who's going to read the Nature paper?

Simone Giertz 25:32 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 25:33 So like this- 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.

Simone Giertz 25:46 No, it's very like, yeah. If somebody comes out of context... And that's been really interesting also, like building this product business and trying to do the marketing around that. And I'm like, if somebody comes in and they have no idea about what this product is, will they get it explained to them in this ad? And I d- 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.

Lex Fridman 26:16 So that subreddit existed?

Simone Giertz 26:17 Yeah. And I loved it. I thought it was really fun, and I was like, "I want to contribute with content here."

Lex Fridman 26:22 Conquered it?

Simone Giertz 26:23 I don't. I mean...

Lex Fridman 26:24 Okay.

Simone Giertz 26:25 I don't know. I was voted-

Lex Fridman 26:27 Through fear of rejection.

Simone Giertz 26:27 I think I was voted top user of 2015. So yeah...

Lex Fridman 26:31 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 26:31 That's an old merit. But ƒ

Narrator 26:33 (music plays)

Simone Giertz 26:36 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 26:36 Okay. So what was the first... Do you remember the early GIFs that you created?

Simone Giertz 26:41 So this is when I was at Punch Through Design in San Francisco. I would kind of building a lot of hardware projects for them, but I also felt... And they were so supportive of me, but I also- it's such a different way representing a brand versus representing yourself. So there were some projects that I just like ruled out because 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.

Lex Fridman 27:10 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 27:11 And it brushes your teeth for you.

Lex Fridman 27:13 Was that the first YouTube video you uploaded?

Simone Giertz 27:15 It was the first GIF that I uploaded. So actually, I wanted to, um... I wanted to do a kids' show about electronics in Sweden, because I was like, "I love electronics. I think it's fucking dope. I could do a kids' show about it." So I sh- filmed this terrible, terrible pilot episode-

Lex Fridman 27:36 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 27:36 ... 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 emailed them. Like I had no in or anything, but I was like, "Hey, I wanna do this." And, um, 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. And 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.

Lex Fridman 28:11 Can you go through the detailed design of this toothbrush helmet?

Simone Giertz 28:15 No. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 28:15 There's a motor. There's like a server. Like what- what- h- what's the motor? What's the- is an Arduino involved?

Simone Giertz 28:21 Yeah. So I built it off of, um, this robot arm called the Me Arm. So it's just this acrylic robot arm.

Lex Fridman 28:30 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 28:31 And, um, I think it has three server motors, and it's all controlled by an Arduino, all the electronics.

Lex Fridman 28:38 So the arm was already pre-built?

Simone Giertz 28:39 It was a kit, so I assembled it.

Lex Fridman 28:41 How do you make sure the- the length of the arm is the proper...

Simone Giertz 28:47 I mean, the arm came down, so it's like-

Lex Fridman 28:49 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 28:50 I mean, I just programmed it to come down to my mouth and then poorly brush my front teeth.

Lex Fridman 28:55 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 28:55 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:56 And it would just swung back and forth. I mean... (laughs)

Simone Giertz 28:59 Trial and error is how we did that.

Lex Fridman 29:00 Trial and error?

Simone Giertz 29:00 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 29:00 What was the challenges of that? Do you remember?

Simone Giertz 29:03 Oh gosh.

Lex Fridman 29:04 Or was that one not much of a struggle?

Simone Giertz 29:06 The challe- no, it was definitely a struggle. Um, but-

Lex Fridman 29:09 Because also how do you loop it with a g- nice GIF?

Simone Giertz 29:12 I mean, it loops- it loops fine.

Lex Fridman 29:13 Yeah, it loops pretty fine.

Simone Giertz 29:14 It's like... Yeah.

Lex Fridman 29:15 Is that- that's not- that's not that hard?

Simone Giertz 29:17 Uh, 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- I mean, I think the biggest struggle of that was that I had this intention for it to be this show, and then them not giving...

Lex Fridman 29:32 Oh yeah.

Simone Giertz 29:32 Yeah, giving back. And I was like-

Lex Fridman 29:34 How bad was the pilot?

Simone Giertz 29:34 ... "Well, if they don't want it, then maybe YouTube will have me."

Lex Fridman 29:38 They don't notice my genius yet. What was-

Simone Giertz 29:40 Yep.

Lex Fridman 29:40 What was so bad about the pilot? Do you remember?

Simone Giertz 29:42 Oh, it's just so cringey.

Lex Fridman 29:42 What's like the worst, most embarrassing?

Simone Giertz 29:45 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-"

Lex Fridman 29:56 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 29:56 "... is that we're gonna look at this. This is something called a servo motor." And it's like the intonation and everything is really different. And I'm actually, I mean, I- thinking back of that, I'm so happy that they didn't get back to me, because it's such a different thing to kind of start your career in your living room, running back and forth to the camera and like filming something and then looking at it. And like, I got to really find my own voice in a different way. And then like 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."

Lex Fridman 30:32 Mm. You didn't fall into that place of being like a-... actor, like a YouTuber where you're presenting a kind of personality, you're more focused on the product you're creating.

Simone Giertz 30:44 I mean, I think it's a combination of it. I mean, I- I- 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-

Lex Fridman 30:57 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 30:57 ... like, you have to be able to muster that enthusiasm. But no, it's not... I kind of think of everyday life me as a watered-down version of the YouTube version. It's like...

Lex Fridman 31:10 It's a cheap knockoff? (laughs)

Simone Giertz 31:12 Yes, a

Lex Fridman 31:12 .com version. (laughs)

Simone Giertz 31:13 No, it's just like add two parts water-

Lex Fridman 31:16 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 31:16 ... and you have me. Uh, but like on YouTube, it's just so condensed 'cause you have jump cuts and, you know, like-

Lex Fridman 31:21 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 31:21 ... I'll script jokes and make sure that everything lands, and there's music and stuff. And then, like, in real life, you don't have any of that, but it's still me.

Lex Fridman 31:29 Uh, what are some other cool robots, uh, in the early days that stand out to you? I mean, there's a million we can go through.

Simone Giertz 31:35 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 31:35 But like what, um, ma- maybe what- what was like a challenging one, like a really challenging one in- in the early days?

Simone Giertz 31:44 I mean, I remember the breakfast robot, which was my second project, was a challenging one. So-

Lex Fridman 31:48 Is it eating cereal?

Simone Giertz 31:50 Yeah. It's a robot that, like, pours milk and cereal and feeds me e- with a spoon. It was mostly challenging because it was so, like... Everything had to be in the right location, and there were so many takes before I got everything right. And by right, I mean it makes an absolute mess. Um, yeah, that one was challenging. I don't-

Lex Fridman 32:10 How many takes was that one? (laughs)

Simone Giertz 32:12 I don't know. Probably 12, 10, something.

Lex Fridman 32:15 It's just a mess everywhere.

Simone Giertz 32:16 It's a mess, and also I used, like, Cheerios for the cereal in my... It's shot in my old bedroom in San Francisco, and it, the floors were sticky for weeks afterwards.

Lex Fridman 32:27 Dude, this should go into your autobiography.

Simone Giertz 32:29 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 32:30 It's, it's nice. This is chapter two.

Simone Giertz 32:31 Maybe we can just type out this podcast, and-

Lex Fridman 32:33 (laughs) Get a transcript.

Simone Giertz 32:34 ... I'll release it as a... My manager would be stoked.

Lex Fridman 32:36 And ChatGPT. We'll fix it in post. Um, yeah, this... The- the feed, 'cause you have like a couple of feeding ones, right? There's soup. Isn't there a soup one?

Simone Giertz 32:43 Yeah, there's a soup robot, um, there's a beer-pouring robot.

Lex Fridman 32:48 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 32:49 Because-

Lex Fridman 32:49 I mean, that's f- that's awesome. That's a difficult robotics problem. In the shitty and the, and the perfect version of having an arm that interacts intimately with a human being.

Simone Giertz 33:03 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 33:03 And one of the most intimate things you could do with a human being that's PG is to feed it.

Simone Giertz 33:08 Yes. (laughs) I was like, don't go there.

Lex Fridman 33:09 Where- where is he going with this? Uh. (laughs)

Simone Giertz 33:12 Oh my God, he's a YouTube comment come live. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 33:14 Yeah. (laughs)

Simone Giertz 33:14 Like, damn it.

Lex Fridman 33:16 So, (laughs) like, uh, uh, to me, there's a... Like, feeding is tricky. Or even like getting a beer. Even pouring a beer is, is tough, into a glass.

Simone Giertz 33:25 Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's trickier than anyone who hasn't tried it thinks. And even making it... I think what I realized is that, like, making things really shitty or, like, failing in a spectacular way is also its own sort of skill. Because, like, the shittiest robot is the one that doesn't turn on.

Lex Fridman 33:43 Right.

Simone Giertz 33:43 But like, that isn't much to watch. So it was always, like, wanting for it to fail in these kind of spectacular ways. Um, no, there's a lot of stuff to be said about engineering

Simone Giertz 33:56 in it.

Lex Fridman 33:56 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. Like, do you think the kind of robots we'll have in the home-

Simone Giertz 34:10 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 34:10 ... that are friends and, um, you know, almost like pets, wouldn't they need to be kinda shitty? Because we can love the... Somehow we humans love the shitty.

Simone Giertz 34:23 I mean, it is kind of endearing and... 'cause I think it, it kind of... I'm gonna mess up this world- word. It anthropomorphizes them.

Lex Fridman 34:30 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 34:31 I think it's... I mean, I never feel as deeply connected to my Roomba as when it's like, "I'm on a cliff." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 34:38 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 34:38 I'm like, "Babe-"

Lex Fridman 34:39 Have you had Roombas talk?

Simone Giertz 34:40 "... let's go climb the ledge." No.

Lex Fridman 34:42 'Cause I really... Yeah, I've done that a lot.

Simone Giertz 34:44 Yeah?

Lex Fridman 34:44 When they talk to you. Yeah. And it... I- and you immediately anthropomorphize them.

Simone Giertz 34:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:50 And then you have... If they have a name, which is why most roboticists don't give names or gender to robots, 'cause you just, you- you become connected to them. I'm of the opposite mind. You should have like an im... Intimate relationship sounds weird.

Simone Giertz 35:05 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 35:05 But you should have a close connection to robots. I mean, there- there's power in that. There's a social element to robotics. Even a 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. Like, that was always a confusing thing to me about robotics, is that most roboticists run away from that.

Simone Giertz 35:31 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 35:32 Weird. 'Cause it's obviously gonna be... Robots are obviously going to be everywhere.

Simone Giertz 35:37 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 35:38 Obviously.

Simone Giertz 35:39 But it's also humans are sensitive and squishy, and there's so much liability.

Lex Fridman 35:43 Oh. Okay.

Simone Giertz 35:45 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 35:45 Yeah, but the... Humans are s- uh, sensitive and squishy when they interact with each other and they hurt each other all the time.

Simone Giertz 35:51 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 35:52 Like, sometimes they get together and they're like, "Oh, you're the best." And you know, "You're the best," and then they leave each other, and then they break each other's heart.

Simone Giertz 35:59 Sorry about your breakup, Lex. (laughs) I didn't know you were-

Lex Fridman 36:02 Yeah. Just trying to get over this.

Simone Giertz 36:02 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 36:03 I'm actually drunk for this interview.

Simone Giertz 36:05 (laughs) Oh, my God.

Lex Fridman 36:06 (laughs) I haven't been able to sleep at night.

Simone Giertz 36:08 Have you slept all night? (laughs)

Lex Fridman 36:09 I have not. But

Lex Fridman 36:11 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 Replika where people have an intimate relationship with an A- AI chatbot and they hurt themselves.

Simone Giertz 36:27 I was thinking about this.

Lex Fridman 36:29 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 36:29 Okay. In dating...

Lex Fridman 36:32 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 36:32 What if you... 'Cause you can train...... like, a chatbot to kind of mimic the way that you talk to people and interact with people.

Lex Fridman 36:40 Go on.

Simone Giertz 36:41 Yeah. But then I'm like, "Okay, but what if we could all make AI versions of ourselves and have them date-

Lex Fridman 36:47 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 36:48 ... like, thousands of thousands of other AI people, and have that as a way to turn out potenti- potential candidates?" Like, I feel like that's gonna be... What's the, what's the... Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:01 What's the wha- what? (laughs)

Simone Giertz 37:02 No, but what's the point of, like, meeting 20 people if you're like, "Oh, but if we j- just had our AI versions of ourselves interact," they'd be like, "Oh, your, your method of conflict is not gonna match," or...

Lex Fridman 37:15 What if the AI version of you, like, sleeps around with all the other AIs and it becomes famous for that, and it starts its own OnlyFans, and then it become... And you're like, "What did you do?"

Simone Giertz 37:26 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:26 You come back home, you realize, like, "I don't, I didn't want any of this."

Simone Giertz 37:28 I've created a monster?

Lex Fridman 37:29 You created a monster, and then-

Simone Giertz 37:30 I mean, do I get a cut?

Lex Fridman 37:32 Exactly. That's the question I would be asking.

Simone Giertz 37:34 (laughs) But I think it's definitely, like, yeah, the, 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 Fridman 37:45 Oh, really? You haven't, you haven't...

Simone Giertz 37:47 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 in me that feels like, "Oh, I love this object."

Lex Fridman 37:57 Just-

Simone Giertz 37:57 Like, I kind of despise it.

Lex Fridman 38:00 Well, that, that might be the way you show love. I don't know.

Simone Giertz 38:02 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 38:02 That's deeper. That's another psychoanalysis thing. Uh, so you don't... There's not robots whom you've taken apart that you miss?

Simone Giertz 38:11 No, they're all terrible. I mean, I, I have objects that I built that I love.

Lex Fridman 38:16 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 38:16 Um, none of the robots, I think. But that's also because it was a different, that was a different era where I wasn't really putting a lot of care into the projects I built.

Lex Fridman 38:25 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.

Simone Giertz 38:33 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, there's a lot to be gained.

Lex Fridman 38:48 Yeah. And I think it's scary-

Simone Giertz 38:50 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 38:51 ... depending on who the company is.

Simone Giertz 38:52 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 38:53 'Cause then they can manipulate you.

Simone Giertz 38:55 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 38:56 If y- if you love your Roomba, and all of a sudden, your Roomba starts telling you to buy stuff-

Simone Giertz 39:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 39:02 ... or it's leaving.

Simone Giertz 39:03 To put lotion on Jeff Bezos's head.

Lex Fridman 39:06 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 39:06 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 39:07 I don't know where the lotion came in, but yes, maybe buy certain things. (laughs)

Simone Giertz 39:10 (laughs) I just imagine my Amazon Echo being like, "Hey."

Lex Fridman 39:14 (laughs) Hey.

Simone Giertz 39:15 "Jeff Bezos is really a great guy." (laughs) You're just...

Lex Fridman 39:19 (laughs) But even though you haven't, do you think it's possible to fall in love with a robot?

Simone Giertz 39:23 Yeah. I mean, people fall in love with things all the time.

Lex Fridman 39:26 Well, people have fallen in love with your Shitty Robots, probably.

Lex Fridman 39:30 I, 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.

Simone Giertz 39:36 (laughs) Right.

Lex Fridman 39:37 They're like, "But I had a relationship..."

Simone Giertz 39:39 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 39:39 "Like, I have an emotional connection to that robot." Like, the one with the, with the parent pats you on the back?

Simone Giertz 39:44 Oh, that one. That one I do like. I like that one a lot. Um, that's probably my favorite, like, Shitty Robot.

Lex Fridman 39:50 Can you explain it?

Simone Giertz 39:51 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 Fridman 40:02 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 40:03 Um, so yeah, I still have that hanging on my wall in my workshop. So, that one, I'm, I'm, I'm really happy with. I just think it's a really funny concept. And also, I executed the build well, so that was...

Lex Fridman 40:18 So, it's an arm?

Simone Giertz 40:19 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 40:20 Like, what's the build?

Simone Giertz 40:21 Yeah, I built it off of an old lamp arm. Yeah, basically, it's just a motorized arm and this kind of torso of, of a person.

Lex Fridman 40:30 Mm-hmm. Well, so it's actually a hand, right?

Simone Giertz 40:33 It's not a-

Lex Fridman 40:34 Did I wrap it correctly? It's a hand on top of-

Simone Giertz 40:35 ... it's like a laser cut. It's just laser-cut plywood, and it kind of has, like... It looks creepy.

Lex Fridman 40:40 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 40:40 Which I like.

Lex Fridman 40:41 Yeah, the creepy helps-

Simone Giertz 40:42 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 40:42 ... with the...

Simone Giertz 40:43 Yeah. And yeah, it 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. It's like, "Proud of you."

Lex Fridman 40:59 (laughs) Yeah.

Simone Giertz 41:00 And it charges you a quarter for it.

Lex Fridman 41:02 Yeah, but add a, like, ChatGPT on top of that and, uh, 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 Giertz 41:13 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 41:14 That's all it takes. That's a beautiful creation. How'd you come up with that creation?

Simone Giertz 41:18 Oh, it was my friend Daniel and I who had a long-running joke about

Simone Giertz 41:21 it.

Lex Fridman 41:21 High level, can you speak to your creative process?

Simone Giertz 41:24 I think a lot of it... I mean, it's changed-

Lex Fridman 41:26 For the Shitty Robots, let's actually separate.

Simone Giertz 41:27 For the Shitty Robot, yeah. I mean, it, it has a lot of overlap. Um, 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, for waking up in the morning, it was having an alarm clock that slaps me in the face with a rubber hand.

Lex Fridman 41:50 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 41:52 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.

Lex Fridman 42:00 What, in your experience, was the funniest thing? Is it violence, like the hand slapping you? Food eating? Is there... It's, or is it just, uh, case dependent?

Simone Giertz 42:08 I think the funniest is... No, I think it's more like the proud parent machine. It's not violent. It doesn't-

Lex Fridman 42:15 Yeah, emotional.

Simone Giertz 42:15 There's no, nothing. It's just emotional, and it's kind of-

Lex Fridman 42:18 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 42:19 ... mm, a commentary on this fraught relationship that we sometimes have with our parents and their pride of us.

Lex Fridman 42:27 Sometimes? Every time.

Simone Giertz 42:29 Sometimes. My dad visited, like, last week, and he was like, "I just wanna say I'm so proud of you and for the built, life you've built for yourself." And that was really sweet.

Lex Fridman 42:38 Yeah, three times.

Simone Giertz 42:39 I'll put that on the back of my autobiography too.

Lex Fridman 42:41 Yeah. It's not your fault, Simone.

Simone Giertz 42:43 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 42:44 It's not your fault.

Simone Giertz 42:45 Some stuff is my fault.

Simone Giertz 42:47 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 42:47 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 Giertz 42:55 Mm-hmm. Mm...

Lex Fridman 43:00 Which is also inspiring when you take so long on a project.

Simone Giertz 43:03 Yeah. I think, um, kind of in the more, like, fun, whimsical department, rather than Shitty Robots, I built, recently, um, this music box, so like a small music box that kind of has a barrel-

Lex Fridman 43:15 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 43:16 ... 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 we ac- 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 Fridman 43:41 Where's the a- sound coming from?

Simone Giertz 43:43 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-

Lex Fridman 43:57 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 43:57 ... (laughs) music instrument off of that.

Lex Fridman 44:00 Okay. I- ooh- if it's okay, can you describe some- some, like, how it works, some of the- the- the technical details here?

Simone Giertz 44:06 Yeah, so-

Lex Fridman 44:07 It's fascinating.

Simone Giertz 44:07 ... basically, I mean, one of the big issues that I had, so I worked with, um... As of a year and a half back, I hired an engineer, Stu, so we were collaborating on it. Um, but a big issue that we had was feeding in the bubble wrap sheet and, like-

Lex Fridman 44:24 Uh-huh.

Simone Giertz 44:24 ... 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-

Lex Fridman 44:34 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 44:34 ... need to be so perfectly aligned on the bubble of the bubble wrap for it pop in the right location.

Lex Fridman 44:41 So there's a feeder for the bubble wrap, that's a challenge-

Simone Giertz 44:43 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 44:43 ... and then you have to have a barrel with a f- a little baby feet on it-

Simone Giertz 44:47 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:47 ... that pops the bubble wrap?

Simone Giertz 44:48 So that m-

Lex Fridman 44:48 Why is this so exciting?

Simone Giertz 44:49 ... making that barrel (laughs) was a pain-

Lex Fridman 44:52 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 44:53 ... as well. I had to get a, like this rotary set-up for my CNC and, yeah, it was- it was a lot of work. Um, but that was really fun. And it's just like, th- this is probably my f- favorite privilege of my job is that I can go down any rabbit hole I think find interesting.

Lex Fridman 45:14 Did you have a lot of joy from popping the-

Simone Giertz 45:19 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 45:20 ... the- the-

Simone Giertz 45:20 Yeah. It was fun.

Lex Fridman 45:20 ... bubbles?

Simone Giertz 45:21 It's a lot of self-soothing. And, like, I got to spend-

Lex Fridman 45:23 Self-soothing. (laughs)

Simone Giertz 45:23 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- two through, uh, or through, if you put a sheet of bubble wrap through two rigid tubes-

Lex Fridman 45:38 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 45:38 ... the air kind of just escapes from one side of the bubble into the other.

Lex Fridman 45:42 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 45:42 So what I realized was that if you have a squishy material, like kind of a yoga mat material-

Lex Fridman 45:46 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 45:46 ... in between it, it actually, it prevents that and pops it a lot more reliably.

Lex Fridman 45:52 So you-

Simone Giertz 45:52 But, like, increasing the pop reliability was a huge effort as well.

Lex Fridman 45:57 You had to pop a squishy thing with another squishy thing?

Simone Giertz 45:59 'Cause you don't need a lot of force.

Lex Fridman 46:01 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 46:01 Like, you just need it to not, the air to not be able to escape anywhere.

Lex Fridman 46:06 Wow.

Simone Giertz 46:06 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- I just th- like getting to spend weeks on weeks of just studying bubble wrap. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 46:25 Did you ever think about, like, publishing academic work on bubble wrap?

Simone Giertz 46:29 No.

Lex Fridman 46:30 Wouldn't that be epic? 'Cause nobody's done this, I bet you nobody's done squishing it, squishy material on sq- squishy versus squishy-

Simone Giertz 46:38 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 46:39 ... for popping.

Simone Giertz 46:40 I bet somebody has. But, you know, I- I always, I thought I was gonna go into academia. Like, I was such an ambitious student. I loved school. I- I actually applied to MIT, but then I pulled out 'cause I was like, "No, I don't wanna do it." Um, but now I realize it's really good that I didn't because I'm too much of a spaz.

Lex Fridman 47:00 Too much of a spaz?

Simone Giertz 47:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 47:01 Now I'm- I'm distracted. I'm thinking there must be papers about when you have two bubbles...

Simone Giertz 47:07 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 47:07 Yeah. You would need to know the physics of two bubble, when- when you have two bubbles colliding, one will pop first. And there has to be good models of that. But that's very, that has to do with chemistry and whatever the- the material the ball was made from. But then, no, there's materials engineering, there's got... Somebody must understand bubble wrap deeply. Like, deeply.

Simone Giertz 47:31 So I'm just gonna take a quick restroom break because, uh, Lex is on his own train now. (laughs) And I'm just gonna leave you to talk about bubble.

Lex Fridman 47:38 And we're g- (laughs)

Simone Giertz 47:39 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 47:39 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 47:39 Actually, don't need to go to the restroom. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 47:43 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 47:43 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 47:43 I'm gonna insert, like, a two-hour, uh, instructional here with, like, a- a blackboard where I...

Simone Giertz 47:48 It's the skill of a podcaster. It's, I feel like I could throw you any topic and you could just go on about it.

Lex Fridman 47:55 I don't know if I have that skill. I just- me and my little bubble wrap. (laughs)

Simone Giertz 48:00 Yeah, you do. Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 48:01 Okay. Um...

Simone Giertz 48:02 Bubble on bubble (laughs) interaction.

Lex Fridman 48:05 And p-

Simone Giertz 48:05 Go.

Lex Fridman 48:06 So you- you did mention, um, a- MIT,

Lex Fridman 48:09 uh, you went to college for physics for one year.

Simone Giertz 48:12 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 48:12 And you dropped out.

Simone Giertz 48:13 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 48:13 What did you learn from that? Who do you think should and shouldn't go to college?

Simone Giertz 48:17 Hmm. I think, first of all, you shouldn't listen to me. Um...

Lex Fridman 48:22 That should be the name of your autobiography.

Simone Giertz 48:24 First of all, you shouldn't listen to me. (laughs) 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 eighth 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, and I had this like deep need to prove to myself that I was smart. So, I started studying physics, realized (laughs) I wasn't that smart. (laughs) I realized, or I mean, just mostly that I like, I love math, but I don't love math 10 hours a day.

Lex Fridman 49:19 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 49:19 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, um, that I felt like the other parts of my brain kind of just dwindled and died. So, I think, 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, there's two things I wanna do. One is like actually go to a workplace where people are doing the job-

Lex Fridman 49:59 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 49:59 ... that you think you wanna do. If you wanna become a doctor, (laughs) 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?

Lex Fridman 50:32 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 50:32 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 th- 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.

Lex Fridman 51:09 And so sometimes you do need to consider resume and stuff like that for-

Simone Giertz 51:13 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 51:13 ... depending on the... But some, I think people consider that way too much, especially 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.

Simone Giertz 51:30 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 51:31 But you could do hard things anywhere. But, um, some people need to be, I was probably one of those people, to be forced to do hard things.

Simone Giertz 51:39 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 51:40 And, um, the other is to meet fascinating humans from all walks of life that are pursu- they have all kinds of different passions and allows you to learn. Depending on the major, you can bec-, you can learn generally, and you can search if you're doing it efficiently about what actually inspires you. Um, and then the other thing is the, the resume thing.

Simone Giertz 52:02 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 52:03 But ultimately, you don't need college to find your passion, to run with it.

Simone Giertz 52:08 I mean, I have so much college FOMO though.

Lex Fridman 52:11 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 52:11 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."

Lex Fridman 52:25 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 52:25 Because I really liked electronics. Um, 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."

Lex Fridman 52:38 Yeah. And I-

Simone Giertz 52:39 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 Fridman 52:54 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 52:54 But I think it's also because I have a dreamy idea of what it is-

Lex Fridman 52:58 Yeah, exactly.

Simone Giertz 52:58 ... because I never had to do it in practice fully.

Lex Fridman 53:00 Exactly. It's the FOMO.

Simone Giertz 53:02 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 53:03 Huh. Yeah, a lot of people really struggle with that burden. They'll, they'll go, it d- and n- doesn't matter how long you go through, if you don't go all the way to the PhD, you, a lot of people have the FOMO. It doesn't, it's a silly, sil- 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."

Simone Giertz 53:31 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 53:32 And run with it.

Simone Giertz 53:32 I mean, you can, you can find that in other contexts as well. I've, I found it.

Lex Fridman 53:37 Yeah, exactly.

Simone Giertz 53:38 But, yeah. But it is a buffet-

Lex Fridman 53:40 I mean-

Simone Giertz 53:40 ... of experiences that you can have.

Simone Giertz 53:43 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 53:43 What about, what was the most fun robot to make or, um, musical, artistic creation? Where the process was the most fun.

Simone Giertz 53:53 Ah, they're all painful in different ways.

Lex Fridman 53:55 So, pain.

Simone Giertz 53:56 Yeah, pain.

Lex Fridman 53:56 Do you find pain fun?

Simone Giertz 53:58 No, but it's, uh, definitely the pride of make, getting to pull something off or like managing to pull something off even when it was really difficult is, is very satisfying.

Lex Fridman 54:10 What was the difficult thing that you pulled off, that you were like, "Yeah-"

Simone Giertz 54:13 Mm.

Lex Fridman 54:14 "... this is cool"?

Simone Giertz 54:15 I like working on jigsaw puzzles, but I don't like how much table space they take up, 'cause 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.

Lex Fridman 54:29 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 54:29 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.

Lex Fridman 54:36 How does it switch tabletops?

Simone Giertz 54:38 It's a tambour mechanism. So, like tambour, like you'll have on like old record player. Um, 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. Um, 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 everyday life. Like, I use it almost every day.

Lex Fridman 55:13 You know what a really cool one was that, uh, that was part of your TED Talk? Where there's a rotating thing that you wear on your shoulders.

Simone Giertz 55:23 Oh, (laughs) yes.

Lex Fridman 55:23 Was that hard to make? So for-

Simone Giertz 55:24 Um...

Lex Fridman 55:24 ... for people who haven't seen your TED Talk, they should, of course, but it's a... How would you describe that?

Simone Giertz 55:29 Oh, they cut out the best joke.

Lex Fridman 55:31 So you put... How would you call that device? Sorry, I'm trying to-

Simone Giertz 55:34 I don't even know. I never used it beyond the TED Talk really. Um, yeah, but basically it's this shoulder rig, and it has this, like, almost like Saturn ring-looking platform that goes around. I can't even remember what the-

Lex Fridman 55:48 You-

Simone Giertz 55:48 ... problem proposition was that I was trying to solve.

Lex Fridman 55:51 Variety probably, introducing variety-

Simone Giertz 55:53 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 55:53 ... into your life.

Simone Giertz 55:53 Yeah, maybe.

Lex Fridman 55:54 And this, and an element of surprise because you can put popcorn as you did on it-

Simone Giertz 55:58 Uh-huh.

Lex Fridman 55:58 ... and it goes around as a little hand. Why is a, like a tiny hand funny? I don't know. But it just slams whatever is on that thing-

Simone Giertz 56:07 On it, yeah.

Lex Fridman 56:07 ... into your face.

Simone Giertz 56:08 Yeah. I don't know.

Lex Fridman 56:10 Was that easy to make?

Simone Giertz 56:11 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 Fridman 56:20 What was the best joke?

Simone Giertz 56:21 My best joke, and they didn't even ask me about it. It was, um... So there's this whole lead up where I built a chopping machine. So it's a machine that chops vegetables and has-

Lex Fridman 56:32 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 56:32 ... two giant knives and it goes, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk.

Lex Fridman 56:34 Yep. That's a good one.

Simone Giertz 56:34 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 Fridman 56:45 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 56:46 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 because they're 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."

Lex Fridman 57:10 I think that's a good joke.

Simone Giertz 57:12 Thank you.

Lex Fridman 57:12 That's a really-

Simone Giertz 57:13 Thank you.

Lex Fridman 57:13 That's a really good one.

Simone Giertz 57:14 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 57:15 You're, you're, you're okay going sometimes a little bit edgy.

Simone Giertz 57:18 I mean, I'm, I'm, I, I say that I'm, I'm crude and wholesome-

Lex Fridman 57:23 Hm.

Simone Giertz 57:23 ... because I can be very crude, but I also try really, really hard to be a good person.

Lex Fridman 57:30 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 57:30 And to... Like, I'll say shit and fuck and all that stuff, which I don't even think is crude. Um, but yeah, but I really, really try to wield the power that I have in a thoughtful way. So no, I c- I, I wouldn't call me edgy because I'm not. I don't think it's edgy. It's all like sex and body joke.

Lex Fridman 57:51 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.

Simone Giertz 58:00 I, I think it's pretty... It's a funny joke.

Lex Fridman 58:03 Yeah, it's pretty funny.

Simone Giertz 58:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 58:04 I feel bad that Ted cut that.

Simone Giertz 58:06 I mean, it's fine. It's like, it's a decision that I made really early on where I was like, what I'm... 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 colo- 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-

Lex Fridman 58:29 Oh, yeah.

Simone Giertz 58:30 ... "Fuck the children. I'm doing it for myself." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 58:32 Yeah. Good.

Simone Giertz 58:33 So I think I, I would just really early on decided I 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."

Lex Fridman 58:49 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 58:49 Like I really try to be-

Lex Fridman 58:50 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 58:51 ... thoughtful and a decent enough role model. But I'll also acknowledge that humans fuck.

Lex Fridman 58:59 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 58:59 It's okay.

Lex Fridman 59:00 Somehow that, you being able to say the F you to the system-

Simone Giertz 59:05 (laughs) What word? Word?

Lex Fridman 59:06 F-

Simone Giertz 59:07 What? Do it. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 59:08 I can't.

Simone Giertz 59:09 I can't. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 59:10 I'm scared.

Simone Giertz 59:10 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 59:11 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 59:14 I can't.

Lex Fridman 59:14 It sounds better when you say F you. It's, it's, it's, it's a dance. I should... Ah, boy. Um, have you ever made a robot that dances with you?

Simone Giertz 59:25 No.

Lex Fridman 59:25 Okay.

Simone Giertz 59:26 You need a dance partner. (laughs) Is that, is that a personal request?

Lex Fridman 59:28 I get lonely sometimes.

Simone Giertz 59:30 Yeah. I feel like that's the theme of this whole podcast, yeah.

Lex Fridman 59:34 Oh. (laughs)

Simone Giertz 59:36 What's the most embarrassed you've ever been on your podcast?

Lex Fridman 59:43 So I, I don't know if you've experienced this, but I'm generally embarrassed by most things I say inside my head.

Simone Giertz 59:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 59:51 So like when I say something, like now, it's, there's, there's a voice inside my head that goes, "Ugh."

Simone Giertz 1:00:00 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:00:00 Like, "Wha-..." (laughs) You're a disappointment. Um, like that, the parent petting you in the back, the, the, the hand stops working.

Simone Giertz 1:00:08 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:00:09 Just slows down. Um... Yeah. And then there's an awkward silence, you don't know what to say next. That's really embarrassing usually. Um...

Simone Giertz 1:00:19 Yeah, and also 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 Fridman 1:00:34 See what I did there? (laughs)

Simone Giertz 1:00:36 You gave up. You-

Lex Fridman 1:00:37 I took it...

Simone Giertz 1:00:37 You pulled out. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:00:38 I quit.

Simone Giertz 1:00:39 You blanked. "I win."

Lex Fridman 1:00:40 I was sweating. I was literally sweating. Okay, uh-

Simone Giertz 1:00:43 Also because you were in a full fucking suit.

Lex Fridman 1:00:45 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 1:00:45 What is that? Like, how did that come about?

Lex Fridman 1:00:48 Actually, it was probably MIT is... Because everybody was dressing in like sweatpants, very chill wear.

Simone Giertz 1:00:56 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:00:57 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 because I like... I always admired Richard Feynman. I like it how there's like a classiness to it.

Simone Giertz 1:01:12 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:01:13 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, it makes me feel like I'm gonna take this really, really seriously.

Simone Giertz 1:01:21 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:01:22 And if I embarrass myself, it's all my fault, 'cause I tried, there's no excuse. I tried 100%.

Lex Fridman 1:01:30 The interesting thing about your TED Talk, to go to a dark topic ...

Simone Giertz 1:01:34 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:01:36 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 1:01:36 Is what happened when I walked off stage?

Lex Fridman 1:01:39 No. What happened when you walked off stage?

Simone Giertz 1:01:40 Found out that I had a brain tumor. Was that not where you were going?

Lex Fridman 1:01:44 Yes.

Simone Giertz 1:01:44 There's nothing else dark about my ... Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:01:46 Well, yes. Um, I thought you knew through the TED Talk. You found out right after.

Simone Giertz 1:01:52 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'd even gotten 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, um, 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. Well, like, we have to go to the doctor." And she really pushed me to do it, 'cause I was like, "I'm fucking fine." Um, 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 kinda pull you out, and they p- inject contrast fluid or this like thing that, yeah, just gives them another type of scan. And the nurse looked at me in this way and was like, "How long have you had symptoms for?"

Lex Fridman 1:03:07 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 1:03:07 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, uh, 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 w- was kind of dedicated to just getting better and getting back to where I am now. (laughs) 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, unfeathered." And then the pandemic happens and you're kinda just like, "Okay," just in the backseat of what's happening and things that are out of my control again.

Lex Fridman 1:04:06 In your public, you made a couple of videos about-

Simone Giertz 1:04:09 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:04:09 ... uh, about it. "I have a brain tumor." "My brain tumor is back."

Simone Giertz 1:04:12 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:04:14 You kinda, you know, you name your tumor Brian.

Simone Giertz 1:04:16 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:04:17 You kind of make it a lighthearted thing, but so you don't reveal much of the darkness. But were you scared? What were some low points?

Simone Giertz 1:04:27 Yeah. Of course I was, of course I was scared. I mean, I w- 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." Um, no, it's this unfathomable thing that happens and you're like, "I'm healthy. I've had ... 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? Um, 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 out of 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 have 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, had, had time to have kids yet." Um, 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.

Lex Fridman 1:05:57 What about the radiation treatment? What, what are some things that, you know, people should, well, you learned about it, about the process and about yourself through that-

Simone Giertz 1:06:06 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:06:06 ... that, that people might be interested about?

Simone Giertz 1:06:09 I think surgery was both harder and easier than radiation treatment because it was, 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, uh, 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, um ... 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, it felt like I was high on drugs. And I kept on asking my doctors what was going on, and they're like, "No. I don't know. 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.

Lex Fridman 1:07:23 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 1:07:23 And people would be like, "Oh my God, bro-"

Lex Fridman 1:07:25 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 1:07:25 "... 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."

Lex Fridman 1:07:32 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 1:07:32 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 had gotten 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.

Lex Fridman 1:08:16 Did you research all the things that can go wrong-

Simone Giertz 1:08:18 No.

Lex Fridman 1:08:18 ... with brain surgery?

Simone Giertz 1:08:19 No. I, honestly, I'm, I'm a bit surprised by how I acted. (water pouring) Just pausing for you to pour. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:08:31 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 1:08:31 You're welcome, editors. (laughs) I-

Lex Fridman 1:08:35 This is like a commercial.

Simone Giertz 1:08:36 (laughs) Yeah. This is like work injury from being a YouTuber. (laughs) This will, like, freeze if there's audio that comes in. Ah, yeah. Sponsored by-

Lex Fridman 1:08:46 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 1:08:47 ... tap water. Um, 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, I, I... 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 an... 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

Simone Giertz 1:10:07 way.

Lex Fridman 1:10:08 How did that process change your relationship with death? Are you afraid of death?

Simone Giertz 1:10:14 No.

Lex Fridman 1:10:15 Do you ponder your mortality?

Simone Giertz 1:10:17 Yeah. I think it took away a part of youth for me.

Lex Fridman 1:10:21 Like the innocence?

Simone Giertz 1:10:23 Yeah. I mean, you kind of think of terrible things as something that happens to other people, and death, and illness. Um, 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, 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 tuned with w- 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.

Lex Fridman 1:11:23 And with others? Or y- you-

Simone Giertz 1:11:24 Ah, fuck of it. (laughs) No. I think it definitely...

Lex Fridman 1:11:27 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 1:11:28 It's like, when you're young and healthy, it's really hard to-

Lex Fridman 1:11:31 (laughs) Yeah.

Simone Giertz 1:11:32 ... um, know what it feels like to be ill.

Lex Fridman 1:11:37 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 1:11:38 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 wanted 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, uh, yoga for seniors, and I was so stoked, 'cause I was like, "Oh, this is a yoga class I'll be able to take."

Lex Fridman 1:12:02 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 1:12:02 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.

Lex Fridman 1:12:21 Yeah, and just the appreciation of this, like, biological ve- vehicle you get, and you should take care of it.

Simone Giertz 1:12:28 Being sick sucks.

Lex Fridman 1:12:30 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 1:12:30 It's awful. And I really, I'm 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, 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?

Lex Fridman 1:13:05 I thought you were gonna go the other way, like, um, you can, you can take care of your body all you want and it's, um, bad stuff happens, so you should, you should go on drug binges and-

Simone Giertz 1:13:15 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:13:15 ... go wild and do crazy things and...

Simone Giertz 1:13:18 I mean, I also had that, that thought where I was like, "I fucking floss every day. How do I-"

Lex Fridman 1:13:22 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 1:13:22 "... 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, um, I was, I was really, really...... Proud of it.

Lex Fridman 1:13:36 It's amazing that the human body's able to recover from even the harshest things.

Simone Giertz 1:13:40 Yeah, it's- it's wild. And my brain... So after- after surgery, 'cause, yeah, I had a brain tumor the size of a golf ball, kind of 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-

Lex Fridman 1:14:14 Hmm.

Simone Giertz 1:14:15 ... where doctors are like, "Oh, we would almost not be able to tell that you had one." Um, so yeah, that just blew my mind being like when did it... Was that why I had all those headaches-

Lex Fridman 1:14:24 Yes. (laughs)

Simone Giertz 1:14:24 ... after surgery? It's just my brain being like, "Ugh!"

Lex Fridman 1:14:28 Trying-

Simone Giertz 1:14:29 Ugh!

Lex Fridman 1:14:29 ... working. Yeah.

Simone Giertz 1:14:32 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:14:32 Oh, a pretty cool thing I wanted to ask you about is the, uh, Everyday Calendar that you worked on.

Simone Giertz 1:14:36 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:14:37 That was a long time. That took a long time.

Simone Giertz 1:14:40 Yeah. So basically I- I designed this calendar... Like, I wanted to start meditating every day.

Lex Fridman 1:14:46 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 1:14:47 But it's really hard to meditate every day and 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, uh, this thing called The Everyday 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.

Lex Fridman 1:15:19 Mm-hmm.

Simone Giertz 1:15:19 And we turned it into a Kickstarter campaign and it's now a product that I'm selling in my- through my product business, The Giertz Store.

Lex Fridman 1:15:25 What's it called?

Simone Giertz 1:15:27 The Giertz Store.

Lex Fridman 1:15:28 G- and, uh, that, for people who are confused, is the right way to pronounce your last name.

Simone Giertz 1:15:32 Which does it, it's right but it's so wrong. It makes... My last name is spelled G-I-E-R-T-Z.

Lex Fridman 1:15:40 Who does- who does that song, uh, "If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right"?

Simone Giertz 1:15:44 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:15:45 That's funny.

Simone Giertz 1:15:45 Pronouncing my last name, Giertz.

Lex Fridman 1:15:48 That's what, that's what makes me think... 'Cause, uh, what's his name?

Simone Giertz 1:15:51 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:15:51 Uh, D- uh, the- the- from The Office, he covers it, um, from the British Office, which is the better Office. Ah. Okay, uh, tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent, so you said you created The Everyday Calendar-

Simone Giertz 1:16:05 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:16:05 ... to make a more "beautiful", in quotes, and more sacred goal star system on a wall.

Simone Giertz 1:16:09 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:16:10 Not a notebook that gets thrown into a drawer.

Simone Giertz 1:16:12 Yeah. Wow, well said, past me.

Lex Fridman 1:16:15 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 1:16:15 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:16:16 You, uh, you said that making this calendar "taught you a lot", in quotes. I feel like a- like a real investigative journalist.

Simone Giertz 1:16:23 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:16:23 Uh, c- c- (laughs) you've said in 2018-

Simone Giertz 1:16:26 Yeah, I'm waiting for the gotcha.

Lex Fridman 1:16:28 C- can you share some of the lessons you've learned? Like, what- what do you mean you've- you've learned a lot from making this calendar?

Simone Giertz 1:16:32 Oh.

Lex Fridman 1:16:33 Like, what are we talking about?

Simone Giertz 1:16:34 As somebody who builds things, manufacturing something is such an unrelated process. Like, making one of something and making ten thousands of something, like they're not even distant cousins, like it's completely different beasts to tackle. And, um, 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- we're good. Um, 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 (laughs) have I chosen some of the jobs where it's the easiest to disappoint people?"

Lex Fridman 1:17:28 You can disappoint people at scale now.

Simone Giertz 1:17:30 Yeah, I can disappoint people at scale and also them actually having paid me money-

Lex Fridman 1:17:36 Yeah.

Simone Giertz 1:17:36 ... to deliver on something, which is a terrible transaction. But it's... I'm 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 Everyday 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.

Lex Fridman 1:18:12 Especially 'cause this is tracking habits, good habits, so this is-

Simone Giertz 1:18:15 Or bad ones. You can do it, (laughs) whatever.

Lex Fridman 1:18:18 (laughs)

Simone Giertz 1:18:20 You can use it however you want.

Lex Fridman 1:18:21 "I went on a drinking binge again today."

Simone Giertz 1:18:24 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:18:25 Success. Great success.

Simone Giertz 1:18:25 Kicked another kid. Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:18:28 (laughs) What does it take to, uh, mass manufacture something? What did you learn about that and like what- what are... C- can you, like, uh, elucidate the gap between the one- the prototype versus the- the- the, like, product development for mass manufacture?

Simone Giertz 1:18:41 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 and then it's gonna take me 17 hours, but obviously you can't spend 17 hours for a calendar when you're doing something in a factory. Um, 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're- 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