West Coast Skies

We start with garage-life banter and accidentally wander into Frank Lloyd Wright, Aldo Leopold, and why certain landscapes make us feel more alive. We end with a surprisingly practical story about building a tiny contract R&D company that helps pay for med school and sets the stage for early self-driving tech. 

• half-story houses, attics, and the strange logic of real estate listings 
• Taliesin and building on the brow of a hill 
• Aldo Leopold, land stewardship, and the Wisconsin savanna idea 
• whether conversations can be graphed and why Poisson shows up 
• Claude vs ChatGPT vs Gemini and refusing unpaid beta testing 
• garages as storage for deferred projects and “suspended dreams” 
• Seattle versus San Francisco light, color, and messiness 
• Sea Ranch, seasonal mood shifts, and the relief of sun 
• why meadows feel like home and forests feel like introspection 
• “make it real” as a rule for poetry, storytelling, and improv 
• BlueSky as a place to release thoughts without dumping them on family 
• Triple Vision, contract R&D, and early freeway car detection systems 
• med school logistics, pickups at HCMC, and the calm of being late together 

Transcript

Garages And Half-Story Houses

Scott 0:09

Good morning.

Ben 0:12

Good morning. Or whenever you're listening to this.

Scott 0:18

You we're looking good in our garages and attics.

Ben 0:23

Oh yeah. I found out recently that this is a two and a half. No. Or is it I think this is a one and a half story house, according to redfin.com.

Scott 0:37

I haven't heard I've heard of a half bath, but I haven't heard of a half story.

Ben 0:42

Yeah, I haven't either.

Scott 0:44

So crawl space. I've heard of crawl space.

Ben 0:50

So whenever you read that on a Zillow posting, it says, Oh, I need to duck when I when I go into my kids' playroom. Got it. Okay. Which might be actually perfect for it for a child.

Scott 1:04

Yeah. And what is the fabric of hanging down from the I covered my overhead light with a tapestry of sorts. I see. So this shade is shade for you. Yeah, a friend may or may not have given me. I think she let me use it and I just ended up keeping it up. I see. Oh, nice. See? Because it gives orange. Listener. Listener, the the light over his head is glowing this yeah, nice orange color.

Ben 1:41

See how that turns on and off with just like a flick of a wrist.

Scott 1:45

Yes.

Ben 1:46

That's how they should check out this company. It's doing amazing things. You just like wick your finger and light.

Scott 1:55

If you go see Frank Lloyd Wright's uh, you know, original place in Frank Lloyd White. In Spring Green, Wisconsin, they explain how they there is a half story on top of his building where he like uh his raised his daughter, and his daughter didn't know that this was all shorter than the rest of the house as a kid. It was just like, oh, this is my room up there.

Ben 2:22

Because he never let her out.

Scott 2:26

Well, she just seemed the right size, seemed the right size to her. Yeah. And then later as an adult, I guess she realized, oh, that was.

Ben 2:35

And then when she was 18, she was allowed downstairs. I always knew that guy was fucked up.

Scott 2:43

She might have moved to Arizona with him. I don't know how the timeline works. Or maybe there's a lot of there's a there's a whole biography there that's a bunch of dramatic twists and turns. But did I tell you like going to Spring Spring Green?

Ben 3:04

Spring Green.

Scott 3:06

Yeah. Tally Essen, Tally Essen, I think, in Wisconsin. You could see how he sort of like created this monster as an influencer. He created this, you know, mid-century ranch house sort of aesthetic.

Ben 3:28

You know, he just he just did it for the TikTok. He just did it for the TikTok.

Scott 3:34

No, no, he had a career out of it.

Ben 3:37

But well TikTokers make a career out of it.

Scott 3:42

The reason why was he was trying to, in my interpretation, he was trying to balance his love for this hill, which is at like a bend on the Wisconsin River near where his family's farm was, and his desire to build his home there.

Ben 4:04

It's like all of Leopold.

Scott 4:07

He had both those things. It's like, oh, this is such a beautiful hill. It's like a it was a savannah, right? So it was like had a bald top, but surrounded by oak trees all over the place. You know, and he didn't want to dominate the hill. So the ranch house is the brow, the tallyesin means brow in Gallic.

Ben 4:30

Talahasin means brow in Gallic.

Scott 4:33

Tallyesin.

Ben 4:34

Talahasin means brow. It sounds like you're speaking Gallic.

Scott 4:38

Taliesin means anyways. He built a one-story house around the brow of this hill, and in the center of the house is the is the bald top of the hill still there.

Ben 4:55

Define br brow. Well, just think of a it's like the inflection point towards the top of a hill.

Scott 5:03

It's not the top of the hill, it's the edge of the hill.

Ben 5:08

Right which is where it's the inflection, probably, where like Yeah.

Scott 5:12

Sure. Yeah, that's it. It's the edge. Yeah.

Ben 5:16

So where the the slope is slightly more shallow as opposed to further down the hill.

Scott 5:22

Right.

Ben 5:23

So you build the the first in between the middle of the hill and the top of the hill.

Scott 5:29

The first story doesn't dominate the top of the hill because it's built on the brow. Did he retire there? No, he moved uh had some personal tragedies and ended up moving to his daughter died in the attic. No, there's a fire or something.

Ben 5:48

At the house?

Scott 5:49

Yeah. But I I don't know if that's what drove him. But he went to Arizona. So there's a this other tally S in is in near Phoenix. I keep saying this word. What is this word? Tali S, tally S and T A L I E S I N. Anyways, why are we talking about him? Because uh oh, you brought up the thing about the short people, and then I wanted to like fill the air with like, oh, I gotta tell you myself.

Ben 6:14

I said children. Is that what you call children? Short people? God, they are just miniature humans in a way, yes. Yeah, but are they miniature if they're just on their way to growing out? I don't know. Well, this is interesting though, because it's I didn't wait. Did you go visit Spling Glean or Spring Green?

Scott 6:44

Spring Green, yeah. Yeah, yeah, okay. That was what I meant.

Ben 6:48

That sounds cool. I want to see the McGee. It kind of sounds like, you know, you just described like my my my uh wildest dreams of living in a beautiful house on a hill in a savannah.

Scott 7:03

Savannah.

Ben 7:04

That's kind of life goal right there.

Scott 7:06

Did you say in savannah?

Aldo Leopold And Savannah Living

Ben 7:07

Oh, oh, oh, not in a savannah, like or a prairie or a yeah, open woodland ecosystem. That's that's yeah. Yeah, although Leopold kind of did the same thing, who's kind of just as famous, but in his own world, in the world of conservation, uh natural resource conservation. Who is this Leopold? What? Well, who is Leopold? Aldo Leopold, he wrote the book The Sand County Almanacs, Almanac, and he's often credited as the father of the modern-day environmentalist movement. Like him, you know, he was a contemporary with Rachel Carson, who wrote Silent Spring. He he spent he spent like the world in, I don't know if it was the Forest Service, I can't remember, but he was like a land manager. He got really into I think it might have been the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Like he got to a point where he was like a regional like director for some big federal conservation land management organization. And then later in life, he started writing these books about like, wow, we're we're going about this all wrong. And he settled on a like on a farmhouse in the savannas of Wisconsin and just managed that land in his later years, and that's where he ended up writing books and stuff. Um kept a couple kids in the attic. You do a you do you do have a landing pad there if uh you know you want to follow him but you have to you have to you have to secure that land across the street in order for it to become a savannah. If you do that, then then we'll manage it as a savannah.

Scott 9:06

It's possible.

Can You Graph A Conversation

Ben 9:07

Chestnuts. No. Although chestnuts might not do that well because it gets too cold. Well, yeah, so that's where that tapestry came from. It's cool. I I don't know if I've ever actually done the podcast. Maybe once I've done the podcast from this room, but it might it was probably really uncomfortable. It came from a savannah? Well, what? I'm yeah, that tapestry came from a savannah. No, I was yeah, we yeah, that tangent went far. So no, the tap I was just saying the tapestry came from a friend. That's what you asked me about. Oh, okay. I lost it. The tapestry was it is it's was its own tangent.

Scott 9:57

So I wonder if you could graph out like a conversation in a in a podcast. You probably could.

Ben 10:05

I don't know why why you'd want to, but yeah, you need the right statistical statistical test for that. I don't know. I'm not a Poisson or something, like a like a like a Poisson bandana test or something like that. That's probably right. I'm in grad school, so I know these things. Yeah, you're thinking about these Poisson bandana distribution is what it's called.

Scott 10:32

And what it what is Poisson?

Ben 10:34

A Poisson distributions.

Scott 10:36

Yeah, I know it's fish. It's a fish distribution, and it's more natural, and I forget what else. But it's not Gaussian, which is just a made-up fantasy.

Claude, ChatGPT, And Free Labor

Ben 10:50

Hey Claude. Hey Claude. Yeah, Claude, can you can you make us can you make us a side-by-side comparison?

Scott 10:59

Of Poisson.

Ben 11:00

Poisson Poisson bandana distribution and a fish distribution, and represent it graphically for this conversation. You don't have to do it now, but you know, yeah, you know, get the get the wheels, get the juices flowing so that after this conversation, you can you can give us a give us a graphical representation.

Scott 11:21

Claude. Is Claude listening to our our podcast?

Ben 11:25

Claude is always listening. No, I don't think so because I didn't give him my email, so I don't think he can. I just yeah, yeah.

Scott 11:36

I have not used Claude. I I have not. I hear he's good for coding. Yeah.

Ben 11:44

Which is like but I honestly wouldn't probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference if I started chatting with Claude versus all the others I chat with, which is mostly Gemini and Chat GPT. Well, Gemini's not as good as Chat GPT, or maybe that's because I'm not as I'm not actually engaging with it. It just shows up in Google. So it's I'm not giving it the same prompt. So that might be why it's not behaving as well. But sometimes Chat GPT does the thing where it's like, you're testing two different versions of ChatGPT. Which version do you like more? It's like, well, I'm gonna stop and like read both of these that really at the end of the day, maybe one gives me two percent more information. They give me slightly different. Like, I'm not gonna tell you which I think is better because they're indistinguishable. It's like I just it's like they're just like two answers from two different parallel universes. It's like I'm not gonna spend the extra 15 minutes to try to decide. And I'm not gonna answer your question because I don't actually it's it's not clear to me which is better, you know.

Scott 12:51

Anyway, you don't want to work for them. What? You don't want to work for them. Why?

Ben 12:58

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're asking me to do this free labor for you. I'm not I'm not your fucking beta tester. Jesus. Just like go go figure it out. Fuck. If you want to charge me 20 bucks a month to use your product, then I'll then we can talk and I can think about it, but don't don't make me do this free labor. Nice, you know, your background reminds me of like when when like uh when like a CEO or something has like a fancy fancy library in the back. Or yesterday I was listening or I was watching one of those Nova documentaries that PBS does. I think it's PBS, and everybody that's in there is in this like like beautiful library background. I'm like, why is everybody in the same? Is it I guess that's what their background is. The set is is a little like reading nook.

Scott 13:57

I'll I'll I'll let you get a complete look at it, see. Yeah.

Ben 14:01

So it kind of gives the same kind it's like a similar tone and mood. Yeah. And yet the content is totally, you know, it's just a bunch of uh giant Tupperware totes of camping gear and Christmas decorations.

Garages As Storage For Dreams

Scott 14:16

Bunch of, yes.

Ben 14:19

It's it's the populist version of suspended suspended dreams. Populist version of a Nova Nova interview. Suspended dreams. Some realize we talked about that.

Scott 14:33

But that's the garage and realized the garage is storage for the dreams you're not working on at the moment.

Ben 14:40

Well, that's I used that uh tarp that's behind you last week.

Scott 14:44

Yeah, okay.

Ben 14:45

I sh I shredded a bunch of uh uh woody material with with the help of that tarp.

Scott 14:51

Yeah, maybe maybe it's that was a dream realized.

Ben 14:53

You have a wood chipper, and I used the wood chipper, and now those now those wood chips are currently being eaten by microorganisms underneath the elderberry and blueberries. Some things are actually that doesn't sound suspended to me. That is some things are pretty currently not just on the ground.

Scott 15:10

You know, maybe too much for the neighbors, like that drum set over there. Yeah, the neighbors. Oh, the neighbors.

unknown 15:20

Yeah.

Scott 15:21

Yeah, they tell us we can't buy a row house in San Francisco.

Ben 15:24

Well, they keep their children in the attic, so they got nothing on us.

Scott 15:27

You don't want to share walls with a with a drummer. It's like, eh, okay. We probably want to have uh an air gap between us and neighbors, anyways, but an air gap would be nice, but yeah.

Ben 15:46

Otherwise no air between you and neighbors. That's that's a living in an apartment.

Scott 15:57

It's living in an apartment, kind of yeah. You share the same airspace. Yeah. But in San Francisco, they there are a lot of houses that are just no room between them on purpose.

Ben 16:15

Yeah.

Scott 16:19

What is it that Seattle feels I guess dreary?

Ben 16:25

Yeah, I well, maybe it's just that it feels more dreary. It feels more messy than San Francisco. But I guess that's just like California. It's like you're just right next to the beach, things are sunny, and it's just it just seems like like Seattle, it's like I'm like even when I'm on the sidewalk, it's like there's twig, muddy twigs and like torn-up grass just everywhere. Ask yourself. Everybody's garden is like torn up by crows and raccoons. Oh, really?

Scott 16:58

Well, that's an exaggeration when it feels that way. Where I think here it's just dry, so it doesn't seem it's yeah, you think of that just ask yourself your brain to like conjure up the average image of like Seattle, and not like conjure up the average image of San Francisco.

Ben 17:19

Yeah, that's a reason why they call it.

Scott 17:22

What were they how are they different in color? Right. Like Seattle's more greenish blue, you know.

Ben 17:29

There used to be those, I don't well, they might still be there, but there are those like paintings that were at uh the San Francisco airport for a while. I don't know what terminal, but they were just like images of the sunset district, and those like captured the feeling really, really well. Where it's just like ang, it's not just angular because the houses are angular, and they're actually probably less angular than they are because they're like more adobe, and I feel like there are like looser edges versus Seattle, which is has a lot of like square rectangular houses or sharp triangles. But the but because the sun the sun goes doesn't have many clouds, the like angles of the sun are sharp, and so they're like straight lines, and so there's like contrast between shade, sun on the houses. Whereas in Seattle it's just like overcast almost every day, at least for a lot of the year.

Scott 18:27

I'm sure the image you had if it if it wasn't completely overcast, there were a lot of clouds in the sky, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, there's it's often not it's off it's partly cloudy at best. Yeah.

Ben 18:43

Yeah. I I guess I've realized that I'm like, I guess going to California, I think I've known this before, but it was most it was most obvious to me this time. Of this how how much seasonal effective how that the seasonal effect impacts me. Like going to C Ranch and visiting California last week. Yeah is just so and then coming back here, it was like a pretty stark contrast.

Scott 19:15

Oh wow, that I think that's you know, I miss my family, but it's also partly what what were the things you liked about the transition? You know, what what what ex you know excites you about being in Sea Ranch or being back in Seattle?

Ben 19:35

What excites me about being in Sea Ranch and Seattle?

Scott 19:40

You come to Northern California, you feel the weather in and you go, ah, I like this because well, jumping in the ocean and having like waves just like roll over you.

Ben 19:53

That was fun. You don't really get that in Washington, or at least at the Puget Sound, you have to go pretty much to the Olympic coast to get that sensation. So that coupled with the sun, the openness of the landscape. Like forest meets grassland meets savanna. It's kind of like my first just walking along a trail, and there are tadpoles just like soaking up the sun, just like in this little like pond made by just like you know, just just like a depression in the middle of the hiking trail, full of tadpoles. Uh-huh. But it does it feel like you the way you're you're moving back and forth, you're like leaning forward on the couch, and then the camera's like, okay, we're gonna back up and then you like go back, and then the camera gets confused, and then like zooms right into your teeth. And I'm like, I can't your fucking MacBook figure that out. I think not used to people uh moving back and forth. Yeah, zoom's camera AI is like trying to as soon as I started. I was like, I hate this, I need to turn this dynamic, whatever the hell this is called.

Scott 21:24

Do you feel like you've like come out of the woods? No. What do you in what way? When when you come from the Pacific Northwest to Northern California.

Meadows, Forests, And Sightlines

Ben 21:38

Oh, yeah. Definitely that feeling. Yeah, it's kind of like, oh, we made it through winter. Or like I just I made it out of the the dark, foreboding forest, and like we finally made it into this. Now you're gonna laugh every time the camera. Unnoticed. Yeah, I definitely got that sense that I was like coming out of the forest. Because, you know, from a purely like evolutionary perspective, too, it's like humans, we really, I think, although it's not necessarily proven, but I think we have a tendency to really want open space. And that's why it's always been kind of confusing to me that people are so obsessed with Pacific Northwest forests. I've because I just don't feel that. I mean, I I love the forest, but it's it doesn't feel like home and like I'm where I'm meant to be when I'm like out in a meadow. It just like it feels like I want to live in a meadow. The forest is more like, oh, time for introspection, time to like go to these giants and like ask them for their advice.

Scott 22:51

It's always that's the whatever the archetype is you go from the clearing into the forest to to deal with your hero's journey. Right.

Ben 23:02

And then you when you stumble upon the next clearing, you feel like, oh my god, I finally made it out. I made it like now I can rest for a bit, you know.

Scott 23:11

Yeah. You should we should, you know, talk to your grandmother next. Because she grew up in the in the clear and you know, moved to the forest, which also my first dorm roommate, he grew up like Fargo, or no Fergus Falls, Minnesota, which is pretty much prairie. And he felt claustrophobic coming to the Twin Cities. It's like, oh no, it's too many trees.

Ben 23:46

Well, because of the trees, not because of the buildings. Because for me, I think a big reason Seattle, I mean, would be had its own challenges, but you know, Seattle is totally different because the trees are buildings.

Scott 23:59

I mean, there are a lot of trees, but it's not I think the trees really matter in terms of sightlines. They take they take away all the other that's true. Sight line.

Ben 24:13

Looking out my window, I can see the skyline of downtown Seattle.

Scott 24:17

Wow.

Ben 24:18

But I see it through bare trees. So in a couple in a month or two, when those trees fill out, I won't be able to see the skyline anymore. And it'll just be like I'm enclosed by a canopy, even though I'm in the middle of the city.

Scott 24:32

You you you win a badge for like most appropriate segue, you know. We're talking about this concept, and you just looked up and and and saw it.

Poetry And Improv Make It Real

Ben 24:48

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's that's the first rule of poetry. Poetry. Make it real. Good pocket. Make it real. Storytelling, you know. Gotta give people like an actual like what happened? What am I looking at? What am I feeling? What am I seeing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rule of improv. I was just thinking about that. One time I was in improv class. I can't remember what the prompt was, but I went out there to start a scene with a partner, and we were just like both looking at the ground, and I turned to him and I was like, and I said, What is it? And then like the scene was just horrible. And then the the improv teacher afterwards, his note was like, You don't do that in improv. You don't look at something and then ask your partner, what is it? You know, that's just like such a cop out. Like, make it up. Tell us what you're looking at. Don't make your partner do all the fucking work. Give him an offer. That is not an offer. Yeah. Give someone to actually see in their mind.

Scott 26:04

Yeah, imagination like that. Yeah.

Ben 26:09

Yeah. Help people do the work of their imagination. You know, like they're they're here to listen to you, and you're the storyteller here. It's not like I'm good at that, but I understand it. That it's a it's uh it's a it's a concept.

Scott 26:25

It's nice to have an outlet. I I kind of need outlets to like, you know, oh, I thought of this witty thing to say. I, you know, so I put some on blue sky, but you know, so nobody has to read them. My family doesn't read them.

Ben 26:42

But they're out there in the world. You just flew them into the big blue sky.

Scott 26:47

No, I've paid attention to everything I've done since the usenics existed before the internet. It's like, yeah, no, this goes on my permanent record. The usenics. The usenics.

Ben 27:03

I think I got a pretty interesting history of things put out on the internet. Yeah, I say so. Interesting, interesting history, yeah. But maybe that's for another podcast.

Scott 27:29

What is a good question?

Ben 27:34

I was wondering what your also brought to you by brought to you by Blue Sky, where if you feel like you just need to get something where you have an idea, your imagination is churning.

Scott 27:52

You just want to send a paragraph.

Ben 27:56

Yeah, just send it out into the big blue sky. Just let it go. Just just send it out there.

Scott 28:04

Why why provoke your children with your witty sayings?

Ben 28:10

And this this applies this applies to both the website as as well as just the big blue sky, you know, just like let it let it go, give it to the trees, give it to the top of the trees, and let it fly.

Scott 28:25

That's a good analogy, actually.

Ben 28:28

That's what someone at the Whidby Institute once once told me at the beginning of a program I was doing. He was like, you know, when things are too heavy, just you know, let it move through your body, and then just give it to the top of the trees and just let it float away. Give it give it to the elements, give it to blue sky, and it's too much to bother your children with your spouse.

Med School Years And Startup Life

Scott 29:04

Your um you're you're kind of preaching it. Thanks for I yeah, I I I don't I don't actually know what I I'm not sure I know how to do that, everything I just described, but you know but but that's why that's why the more like ASMR techniques to to to pitch it, I think. Yeah, yeah. So you're still using it. Okay. And then good question.

Ben 29:40

What was your uh what was your day-to-day like when when mom was in bed school? You were living in Minneapolis, yeah?

Scott 29:49

Yeah, what most of it I was trying to I was involved in creating a company and doing contract RD.

Ben 30:02

Contract R D. Yeah, and so I looking for people that knew how to do work that you knew needed to be done for the business.

Scott 30:12

We were we're a small company. There was four of us, but we came three and called it triple vision before we knew it was just three of us. We developed like the first system to detect cars on freeways using video.

Ben 30:40

But you knew that or didn't probably not you didn't know that. Wasn't that like a well that that was like a was that a contract you landed with a different company? Or no, you founded this?

Scott 30:51

Uh there's a civil engineering department at the University of Minnesota who subcontracted it to us. So it's like took took stuff we learned how to do at Honeywell doing DARPA RD.

Ben 31:06

Well, this is this is like when I was just at San Francisco and we were driving down the freeway and you and we saw a Waymo car. Yeah, then it spurred this memory in you where you said Oh, this is reminding me of the time I was like driving home one day after landing this contract where we were going to be like working on what would become self-driving car technology, and you were feeling optimistic because, like, oh, like we're getting I'm getting money to do this thing I think is fun to do.

Scott 31:41

Yeah, I'm gonna have a career in self-driving cars. It's like, well, it's just a little too early.

Ben 31:48

Just a little too early.

Scott 31:50

Yeah, yeah. All we did was make maps for the vehicle that was a self-driving Hum V that was like the only one in the world that DARPA was like setting up to demonstrate the possibility of self-driving.

Ben 32:05

Scott Johnston and the Department of Defense walked so Waymo could run.

Scott 32:13

Yeah, kind of.

Ben 32:15

So inspired.

Scott 32:16

Yeah, yeah.

Ben 32:18

So what did you do in the morning? You woke up. How early did mom go to med school?

Scott 32:26

So get up early, figure out transportation because we only had one car.

Ben 32:31

So would you drop her off? She wouldn't transit.

Scott 32:34

We'd bike in the summer. One of us would bike, or maybe we'd both bike. So yeah, two bikes, that's all or or we'd want to have a car and one bike, or we'd use a car and I'd uh the part that's biggest to me in my mind is the picking her up all of her time. Yeah, mom took buses sometimes, but I'd just go to work whenever she had to be wherever she needed.

Ben 33:05

And because you were more or less self-employed. No, we had an office in in Triple Vision had an office.

Scott 33:16

Yeah, in in uh north northeast Minneapolis.

Ben 33:22

Was this like an LLC and you rented out the office space you and uh two other two or three others?

Scott 33:29

Yeah, it was a corporation. Yeah. Got it.

Ben 33:32

Why did you start? So you were subcontracted. Were you able to make money before the subcontract?

Scott 33:40

No. We had to had to like win a you know, but there were there's also these small business innovation uh re SBIR awards. We got we got some of those.

Ben 33:52

So you like wrote a business plan and then you said like and then you sent these different like no, we didn't take any investing, we just won contracts. But wasn't that but didn't you have to like put together like business proposal materials to win those contracts?

Scott 34:09

No, you just have to propose to do the work.

Ben 34:12

Oh, like a request for proposal sort of thing. Yeah, I guess you need this. We are this agency and we need this contractor to do this thing. Yeah.

unknown 34:21

Yeah.

Scott 34:25

Yeah, that paid for mom's med school.

Ben 34:30

Wow, I didn't know that it was a company that you started that paid for mom's med school. Yeah. I always thought that you were employed by some giant company.

Scott 34:42

No. Not not during med school.

Ben 34:46

Okay, okay, okay. So that's the morning. You would just go to you would go to work. What did you eat for lunch? Did you eat lunch?

Scott 34:53

Oh, lunch would be I don't know, going to the Taco Bell or the McDonald's.

Ben 35:00

Crunch wrap supreme.

Scott 35:02

Yeah. Must have been other places.

Ben 35:08

Mom probably butterfingers for lunch or something.

Scott 35:11

Sometimes the sportsman bar, sometimes. I guess it must have brought in food.

Ben 35:19

Maybe that's why I'm fairly cool because I'm eating an actual lunch that I make myself. Just it's just like just enough to just like knock me off course every day. Like, oh, you made your own sandwich? No, that means you know, you don't want this enough. You want to eat a real thing that you saved money.

Scott 35:45

But the one thing I wanted to comment before you run out of time. Let me start that timer now.

Ben 35:53

Three minutes, three minutes. You're wasting good time.

Pickup Karma And Goodbye

Scott 35:56

Okay. Is that we had an amazing sort of karma about pickup times. Like you'd say I'll pick you up like outside the HCMC Hennepin County, right?

Ben 36:12

H CMC H and Henne County.

Scott 36:15

Henman County Medical Center, the county in Minneapolis.

Ben 36:18

Oh, I thought it was a hotel. I thought it was a clothing store.

Scott 36:21

It's right next to the you know Viking Stadium. Current Viking Stadium. And the previous Viking Stadium when it was a big blow-up blimp thing.

Ben 36:33

Okay, so they didn't dare tear down a hospital in order to build a new Viking stadium.

Scott 36:39

When I was 45 minutes late, she was 45 minutes late. And it's even though we were both like this never this was always the case for all the years of medical school.

Ben 36:50

How long is medical school? Two years?

Scott 36:55

Four years.

Ben 36:56

Four years? Medical school is four years.

Scott 36:58

Two years of in in the hospital work where you're doing rounds, two years of all bookish stuff, just going to school and back. Yeah. And two years of mostly going to different hospitals around the pla around the area. So I was yeah, so when I was on time, she was on time. And when I was late, she was late. And it was like after a while, I just kind of marked.

Ben 37:23

Are you sure there weren't some days where she was just like, well, I got plenty of homework to do, so I'll just like sit in this chair in the waiting room and just like wait for Scott.

Scott 37:32

No, the emotion is that neither of us were bothered by the other being late.

Ben 37:37

And that's that's when you knew that that's really how you knew you were gonna marry each other.

Scott 37:42

Oh, we were married.

Ben 37:43

This is flawless.

Scott 37:45

We were married.

Ben 37:46

We were already, okay. That's right. I forgot you got married when you were 17.

Scott 37:51

Forgot about that.

Ben 37:54

No. Uh good. That's cool. That's good karma. That that's good karma.

unknown 38:04

Yeah.

Ben 38:05

Can't say can't say it follow followed you and your kids into I can't say it translated into you and your kids' relationship, but oh why whenever I'm late, you know, you're just waiting for me. So it's okay. That's okay. It's okay. Something optimistic to end the podcast with. Good karma.

Scott 38:28

I see. You feel like you feel like you've been late. Well, no, it's fine.

Ben 38:34

No, no, I'm pretty not the worst, that's for sure.

Scott 38:38

Gave me time to think about things. There's always something to do.

Ben 38:41

Yeah, yeah. That's what monks say. It's like, no, no problem that you're late. Just gave me more time to sit. Seven. Oh, bye. Bye. Enjoy study.