Simone Giertz: Queen of Sh*tty Robots, Innovative Engineering, and Design | Lex Fridman Podcast #372
Simone Giertz (guest), Lex Fridman (host), Narrator, Narrator, Narrator, Lex Fridman (host), Narrator
In this episode of Lex Fridman Podcast, featuring Simone Giertz and Lex Fridman, Simone Giertz: Queen of Sh*tty Robots, Innovative Engineering, and Design | Lex Fridman Podcast #372 explores simone Giertz on shitty robots, mortality, and meaningful design Lex Fridman talks with inventor and YouTuber Simone Giertz about her journey from 'queen of shitty robots' to thoughtful product designer and entrepreneur. Simone explains how playful, deliberately flawed robots helped her overcome perfectionism, build an audience, and explore the human–technology relationship. They dive into her battle with a brain tumor and radiation treatment, and how that reshaped her relationship with work, health, and gentleness toward herself. The conversation also covers manufacturing challenges, design philosophy, AI, community, and what it means to build a life and career around genuine enthusiasm rather than duty.
Simone Giertz on shitty robots, mortality, and meaningful design
Lex Fridman talks with inventor and YouTuber Simone Giertz about her journey from 'queen of shitty robots' to thoughtful product designer and entrepreneur. Simone explains how playful, deliberately flawed robots helped her overcome perfectionism, build an audience, and explore the human–technology relationship. They dive into her battle with a brain tumor and radiation treatment, and how that reshaped her relationship with work, health, and gentleness toward herself. The conversation also covers manufacturing challenges, design philosophy, AI, community, and what it means to build a life and career around genuine enthusiasm rather than duty.
Key Takeaways
Use ‘shitty’ projects to bypass perfectionism and actually start.
Simone intentionally built robots that were doomed to fail in funny ways, which lowered the stakes, made experimentation safe, and allowed her to learn engineering by doing instead of being paralyzed by the need to make something impressive.
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Ambitious first projects can work if you let curiosity pull you through.
Her first hardware project—a Bluetooth guitar-string iPhone case with an app—was objectively too hard for her skill level, but the thrill of realizing it might be possible kept her going through ignorance, frustration, and a steep learning curve.
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Design everyday objects as if they’re malleable, not fixed.
From adjustable fruit bowls to bubble-wrap music boxes and a two-surface puzzle table, Simone treats mundane objects as starting points, asking, “Why are they like this—and could they be better or weirder for how humans actually behave?”
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Building products at scale is a completely different skill from prototyping.
The Everyday Calendar taught her that mass manufacturing requires different materials, tooling, quality control, risk tolerance, and timelines than one-off builds, and that margins and reliability often dictate design choices as much as aesthetics.
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Serious illness can rewire your definition of ‘being good.’
Her brain tumor and radiation shifted her from equating goodness with overwork and discipline to seeing it as listening to her body, resting without guilt, and recognizing that prior self-care gave her crucial resilience during recovery.
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Define your own success metrics before the internet defines them for you.
Instead of chasing maximum views or fame, Simone decided success meant being proud of her output and keeping control over how she spends her time, then built her YouTube and product businesses around that, not algorithmic validation.
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Enthusiasm is a more powerful long-term fuel than duty.
She argues that people vastly overestimate the moral value of doing boring ‘important’ things, and underuse their natural excitement; she’s found that aligning work with genuine curiosity makes sustained high effort and skill development far likelier.
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Notable Quotes
“Enthusiasm is a much more potent fuel in life than duty.”
— Simone Giertz
“Just because something is boring doesn’t mean that it’s important.”
— Simone Giertz
“I used to think being good meant pushing myself really hard. Getting sick taught me being good can mean listening to my body.”
— Simone Giertz
“I kind of had to reprogram myself to think: just because this is fun doesn’t mean it’s not work.”
— Simone Giertz
“I’m the former queen of shitty robots, but I’m still trying to do things with integrity.”
— Simone Giertz
Questions Answered in This Episode
How do you personally decide when a ‘shitty’ or playful idea is worth turning into a serious product, and when it should just stay a one-off art piece?
Lex Fridman talks with inventor and YouTuber Simone Giertz about her journey from 'queen of shitty robots' to thoughtful product designer and entrepreneur. ...
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What specific mental habits or routines helped you keep building and creating during and after your brain tumor treatment?
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How do you balance making products affordable with keeping the design magical and not over-simplified for the sake of cost?
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In a future of emotionally compelling robots and AI assistants, what boundaries would you want designers to respect to avoid manipulating users?
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If you could completely redesign one ubiquitous everyday object from scratch—ignoring all legacy constraints—what would it be and why?
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Transcript Preview
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."
Yeah.
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 it's an arm?
Mm-hmm.
Like, what's the build?
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.
Mm-hmm. Was it... So, it's actually a hand, right?
It's just laser cut plywood, and it kind of has, like... I think it looks creepy.
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."
(laughs) Yeah.
And it charges you a quarter for it.
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.
Yeah.
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. What was the first cool thing you built where you fell in love with the process of making stuff?
You know, I think in the beginning of building stuff, you- 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.
So, the limitations aren't fun? Like, when is it frustrating?
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-
Yeah.
... 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-
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