Latest / Oxide and Friends / Diving In with Robert Bogart

Transcript

Diving In with Robert Bogart · Oxide and Friends

• 0:00
  Adam Leventhal: We're recording. You may be alive now, Bryan. No. No. No.
• 0:05
  I can't hear you. You're muted.
• 0:07
  Bryan Cantrill: I'm muted. That's why you can't hear me, because I'm muted. Yeah. It's true.
• 0:12
  Oh, Robert was just here. There he is. Robert. Howdy.
• 0:16
  Hey. How are you?
• 0:18
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. I'm doing phenomenal. How are you guys doing? Thank you for inviting me.
• 0:22
  Bryan Cantrill: Oh my god. Thank you so much. Oh, it's been it's it's been a long time. I it's great to hear your voice.
• 0:31
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. Yeah. Likewise.
• 0:33
  Bryan Cantrill: So but we but, Robert, I I I don't know if you're a frequent listener or not, and it's okay. You don't you you don't have to you don't have to answer that question. The we it's very important to our listenership that we not rush right into the topic. So really, people have really come to value the banter at the top of the the the podcast. Actually, I think that people just, like, assume they're gonna fast forward over ads.
• 0:52
  It's this is like look. It doesn't have ads, but it just has this kind of, like, pretty much at the beginning. You have to and to any I would also add so, Robert, one of the things we we we've, done is there's a little there's a little chime that rings, although you will not hear it here. Whenever we reference a previous podcast episode, something we started doing recently, Adam, you would be right to think, when you say we've started doing it, you're talking about, like, I am the one that's pouring over my hands and knees on the over the recording.
• 1:19
  Adam Leventhal: No. No. That's that is a weed thing.
• 1:20
  Bryan Cantrill: I mean, it was it
• 1:21
  Adam Leventhal: was your idea, and I think you you cribbed it from the changelog.
• 1:25
  Bryan Cantrill: From the changelog. Yeah.
• 1:26
  Adam Leventhal: And and no. No. I I feel good about Wii there. That's fine.
• 1:30
  Bryan Cantrill: Okay. So because I was I was listening to last week's episode, I noticed that I okay. Do you know what this is about?
• 1:37
  Adam Leventhal: No. I don't. But I I I did ring about quite a bit.
• 1:41
  Bryan Cantrill: We rang about quite a bit. I mentioned an episode and no chime rang. Oh. And I'm like, oh, we we and I'm like, okay. I get it.
• 1:50
  Like, I'm get it it I just thought, like, you'd missed one. That makes sense. And then I we were obviously we had Dave on, Dave Pacheco. Robert, you've been our
• 1:58
  Robert Bogart: Oh, yeah.
• 1:59
  Bryan Cantrill: And our shared former colleague, Robert and Dave worked very close closely together at JoAnnd.
• 2:04
  Robert Bogart: Oh, way back.
• 2:06
  Bryan Cantrill: And then Dave mentioned the same episode and the chime did ring. And I'm like, wait wait a minute. This is like a but then I'm like, you know you know what? You know what? I get it.
• 2:16
  I get it. Like, I need it it like, I need to be like, the chime does not always do not ask for for whom the chime tolls.
• 2:25
  Robert Bogart: That's weird.
• 2:26
  Adam Leventhal: Look. We chime the chime. That's the important question.
• 2:28
  Bryan Cantrill: We chime the chime. Does the chime always get no. The chime doesn't always get chimed. It's it is there there's there's a there's an element of the supernatural in the chime that I I really need. That that sounds right.
• 2:40
  That that I that I've really come to like. And Robert, the chime you should know is the sound of a Mac SE booting. Is that correct?
• 2:45
  Adam Leventhal: Plus. Excuse me. Mac Plus.
• 2:47
  Bryan Cantrill: I'm I am sorry. I'm already I'm sure being a bit of a pain in that. How dare you confuse, sir, a Mac SE with a Mac Plus?
• 2:54
  Adam Leventhal: Is it the same? I think they might be the same chime. I don't I that one, people definitely let me up.
• 2:59
  Bryan Cantrill: But it no can be confused with the emergency broadcast system, which is what it definitely sounded like, I feel, the the the first as we were, as Ada Chime was getting its legs underneath it.
• 3:08
  Robert Bogart: That's right.
• 3:09
  Bryan Cantrill: That's right. I think but there's some people working on, like, complaining about the Chime, and I would like to say we are the only thing on the Internet that has no ads associated with it.
• 3:20
  Robert Bogart: I would
• 3:20
  Bryan Cantrill: just like to
• 3:20
  Robert Bogart: say that.
• 3:21
  Bryan Cantrill: Unless you this entire thing is one big ad, which is not wrong. But in which case, like We're all concerned. Conversely, these
• 3:28
  Adam Leventhal: are hour and a half long ads.
• 3:30
  Bryan Cantrill: It's like, are you so you guys are bragging about the fact that your ad does not have ads.
• 3:35
  Robert Bogart: Like, yeah. Yeah. We're watching
• 3:37
  Adam Leventhal: the Home Shopping Network. Okay.
• 3:40
  Bryan Cantrill: I'm saying there's no crass commercialism on the Home Shopping Network. Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. I think the I I think the chime has been delightful. That was a great conversation last week.
• 3:50
  So, Robert, we had Dave on and talking. Actually, we were talking about Kang from from Manta days, which you may remember from your time at Joynt.
• 4:03
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. You know? That was man, that was feels like another lifetime ago almost.
• 4:08
  Bryan Cantrill: It does feel like another lifetime ago. I know. It was a while ago at this point, which is somewhat I mean, it was a while ago, but, okay. So we we talked about today. So I had and, Adam, I think I had warned you that I had this blog entry was Yeah.
• 4:23
  Was was burning within me, that at some point, I was gonna really need to get this whole thing out there.
• 4:29
  Adam Leventhal: Yeah. No. No. No. I I I definitely had fair warning on this.
• 4:33
  Kinda brought us all inside the editing process, your your back and forth with your pal chat GPT. Yeah. No. I knew this was brilliant.
• 4:40
  Bryan Cantrill: Well, look. And and and Google Gemini. I will have, know, I've got two friends. Wow. GPT is not my only friend.
• 4:47
  I also, the but this was a this was many years in the making. My son's a college baseball player, and I his odyssey is so uncannily like raising around that I just I I had to get the parallels out there, at the raising around a venture capital. And in in ways like good and bad, I guess, mainly. I know. Bad.
• 5:15
  I don't if you actually is gold or bad or just like is it okay. Here's actually just a a a meta question for you because, Adam, you've raised venture capital. Yeah. It is I mean, it first of all, am I wrong that this is this is an unusual human experience in terms of, like, ups and downs? Right?
• 5:34
  A 100%. And it it I mean on that one.
• 5:37
  Adam Leventhal: And I was only, you know, I feel like a bystander to a bystander, like, know, kind of experiencing your son's experience of college baseball, you know, third hand, I guess. But, yeah, the the parallels, I think, are striking. And it and it did make me wonder, you know, how many you know, the, you know, high talent pool. Right? You assume that founders are highly talented or or at least unusual.
• 6:01
  And, you know, not that many opportunities, just like not that many college baseball teams in division one, not that many venture firms, not that much money. I mean, all all I mean, there's a ton of money, but, like Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right.
• 6:14
  Right. Right. Not much aspiring acquirer of said money. So yeah. I it it it seems like a really unusual phenomenon and an interesting kind of class of problems.
• 6:26
  So the connection I thought was really interesting.
• 6:28
  Bryan Cantrill: Well, and then that you you know, wonder, like, how many other things are like this?
• 6:32
  Robert Bogart: That's exactly what I was
• 6:34
  Bryan Cantrill: thinking. Okay. Oh, so so, Robert, you obviously, saw this piece last night. And, you know, when you you left a comment, I'm like, kinda almost like, of course, like, Robert's got the perfect perspective on this. Because I was trying to think of people that have truly lived in both worlds, and I would only give myself kind of, you know, a third credit for I mean, it's my son who's the college baseball player, not me.
• 7:01
  But, Robert, you've truly lived in both worlds. So would you like could we would you mind telling I have retold your story many times over the years, and I'm sure that details are becoming incorrect in my retelling. But would you mind telling your your own story with with respect to how you got to Texas on an NCAA championship swim team?
• 7:24
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. It's, it it it's kind of a Cinderella story. Really, to be honest, it was, you know, it's so swimming for Texas was kind of always a dream of mine, even as a kid. And, although it's not wasn't nearly as easy to get ahold of coaches back then, like, think email was sort of, like was was was mainstream used, like, maybe towards the late nineties, which was around the time I was applying for, you know, for for college. And, I just said, you know, I I'd actually reached out to a number of other division one programs, and nobody had any interest in talking to me.
• 8:03
  You know?
• 8:03
  Bryan Cantrill: It's sort of like a junior in high school at this point. And you're a swimmer in a junior in high school, something like that? Senior in high school?
• 8:08
  Robert Bogart: I was I was a senior. Yeah. Back then Yep. You know, NC2A rules forbid coaches from having contact with athletes as a junior. You had to be there was a special day that happened in the fall.
• 8:18
  And from that point forward, you could have a conversation, but anything before that, you you know, NC2A forbid it. Back then, we used to call them the, National Confederacy Against Athletes. That's that's that's great. So many restricted rules. Yeah.
• 8:33
  And, you know, in in my case, it you know, I I was was I was slower than than a number of my peers, but I just need I just said, just shoot your shot. Email this guy anyway. And I, you know, I grew up in Colorado Springs, which was the last place that my dad was stationed before he retired. He was in the Marine Corps. And, you know, he this guy emailed me back and said this the head coach at Texas named Eddie Reese.
• 9:01
  And he basically he did answer me, and he said, well, I, you know, I come up there regularly for business trips to the Olympic Training Center, which is headquartered in Colorado Springs. So he said, when's your next duel meet? I'll just fill up and watch it. Oh, wow. And so yeah.
• 9:17
  Yeah. And so he did, and, he did show up as promised. And he he he offered me a scholarship and a spot on the team pretty much, like, on the spot. And and and then said, you could take a recruiting chip if you want, but, you know, like, it's more for you to see whether or not this is what you really wanna do. And, you know, I've been in conversations with other, like, some d two and d three programs, and a lot of them said you know, by the way, this goes back to your point about go somewhere where you're wanted, you know, and but also go somewhere where your goals and and, objectives align with, you know, theirs.
• 9:57
  And, you know, a lot of other coaches try to talk me out of committing to Texas, and they said, oh, man, you don't wanna go there. Like, you probably want to make a travel team. Like, you you know, why do you wanna be a small fish in a big pond? Like, these guys win the national championship every year. What's the likelihood of you actually making a relay going you know, what's the likelihood of you traveling and and, you know, all these things like, you know, come to our school instead.
• 10:20
  And I said, you know, I I I I just wanna see how good I'm gonna be regardless. Like, for me, it wasn't about being the best. It was about going somewhere where I I basically left ended my collegiate career without any potential remaining. And that was one of the things Eddie used to always say is that, you know, at the end of the day, potential is the worst thing to still have. And, yeah, he had a lot of those really deep proverbs that that he ingrained in us over the years, but so that was sort of how If
• 10:52
  Bryan Cantrill: I recall and and hadn't you improved, look, quite a bit your senior year in high school? Or am I remembering that correctly?
• 11:00
  Robert Bogart: You are. Yes. You are remembering that very well, actually. So, like, as a as a junior, I hadn't even qualified for state. But within about eighteen months, I had gone from, like, qualifying for, like, state championship in my event.
• 11:12
  I got second once I got there. And then I qualified for for junior nationals in that same year, which is like a it's it's like a US nationals for anyone who's 18 and under. And I went to junior nationals, which was in Clovis that summer. I won it. I won the 50 and ended up with, like, a top 16 ranking, but that was that was just after I had already signed to Texas.
• 11:37
  Bryan Cantrill: But but so just to just to take that apart. So so you went from not make it not qualifying for the state meet in the 50 in the fifty fifty three percent away Yep. To winning junior nationals in eighteen months. I mean, that is man, when the the puberty train was obviously, like, a little behind schedule, but when that thing showed up, it was obviously a loaded freight. I mean, that is just and that is talk about, like, late development.
• 12:06
  Were you surprising even yourself with that?
• 12:09
  Robert Bogart: 100%. Like, a lot of a lot of people were trying to come up with explanations for why this was happening around me, And I got accused of, like, you know, taking performance enhancing drugs and things like that. And to be honest, I was flattered because I I just thought, wow. So so so if I'm understanding this right, you can't believe it either. Okay.
• 12:27
  Cool. That's both of them.
• 12:30
  Bryan Cantrill: Oh my gosh. And what and I assume this is just like this is like when I mean, obviously, like, people at that age are still there's so much physical development going on. I mean, it's kind of like 18 is such an arbitrary line in the sand to draw. And there I mean, it's actually not unrelated to kind of the theme of the piece is that, like, there are plenty of people that develop that are physically developing past 18.
• 12:53
  Robert Bogart: Oh, yeah. Yes. And and in in this you know, in our case, like, this this particular coach, Eddie, he he actually preferred those guys. So he, you know, he would go out. I mean, he had a big budget, and he would go out and and get a couple of rock stars, guys that he knew would immediately contribute, like, day one.
• 13:12
  They're gonna make n c two a's, and they're probably gonna final, if not win it. But then he you know, with about 25% left over, he always bought what I I used to call penny stocks or, you know, he he he took in guys like me that no one had ever heard of. And, man, I'm telling you, like, his his ability to see what somebody's capable of was, eerie. Bordering on the the biblical, really, is almost like he could see it in the future. I mean, he said that he made a number of bold claims when he recruited me that I didn't even believe myself, and every single one of them turned out to be true.
• 13:47
  And that was fighting against him the whole way too. And he was still right. I mean, he said some really strange things that were really hard to believe, but, yeah, he was and I think that that's really where, you know, really where, what made him different than a lot of coaches and why he'd won so many years in a row was because he could see beyond what's on paper and and beyond what's necessarily in front of him. That's a that's a tough thing to do, to recruit based on perceived potential, but he could do it. He was one of the few, I think.
• 14:18
  Bryan Cantrill: And what were the kinds of things that he was seeing? Were they purely kind of mechanical? Were they character? What is he seeing?
• 14:26
  Robert Bogart: That's a good question. So so a couple of things he had told the number one was he said he he there was a condition that that he had proposed. Like, he said, you have have a spot on the team, spot on the roster. I'm gonna guarantee that on one condition, and that is you have to red shirt red shirt your freshman year because you need to gain some weight. Oh, yeah.
• 14:50
  Yeah. I think at the time, I was you you ever heard that what's the name of that song by Santana? Like, I ain't got nobody. You you know which one I'm talking about? It's an old, old song.
• 15:01
  And he had said, basically, he had said when he hears that song, he thinks of me except it's I ain't got no body. Like and so And you and and
• 15:13
  Bryan Cantrill: you want me on the team. Okay. I mean, this is hey.
• 15:16
  Adam Leventhal: Because our listeners may not be college sports fans, you wanna talk about what redshirting means?
• 15:20
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. So so redshirting essentially means, like, so the NCAA says you get four years of eligibility where you can compete for the team in NCAA sanctioned events. But if you take a red shirt year, it's essentially where you you're allowed to be on the team, you're allowed to train with the team, and you get a scholarship like anyone else on the team would get. You just aren't allowed to compete. And so it allows you basically a fifth year.
• 15:47
  So for me, my my real freshman year of competing was actually my second year at Texas, not my first. That's a tough year, though, because you don't travel. When dual meets are at home, you're not competing with the rest of the team. You're sitting there watching, and then you have to race exhibition during, like, a diving break. So, usually, there's, like, a number of events that take place, and then they go to diving, and that lasts about thirty minutes.
• 16:11
  And then they'll come back and and do a few more events and then, like, one more diving break and then then a relay at the end, and it's over. And so I I had to race during the diving break. And and sadly, this to make betters even worse, it's been my freshman year. The like, I was kind of in a pool by myself during the race. And once in a while, there were a few postgraduates that stuck around on the women's team, and sometimes, like, that's who I would race is Which is whoever
• 16:38
  Bryan Cantrill: drifting around on the deck who was like, yeah. Wow. Yeah. And this during that red shirt year and you kinda didn't mention this in in in your reply to my post, like, red shirt year, there's there was, like, psychologically really tough, it sounds like.
• 16:54
  Robert Bogart: Oh, really tough. You just wanted to be a part of the team, and you felt like you weren't. You know? You felt like, you you know, you were sitting out while these guys were actively doing doing the heavy lifting during and it was tough, especially at home when all of all of your friends and the fans and stuff show up and the stands are packed and you're sitting there dry or, you know, you're getting ready for your time trial that's in a pool by yourself so you don't get anyone to race. It's it can be a drag.
• 17:21
  And and, you know, when you start to get down when I start to get down about things like that, I just had to think to myself, like, why am I the reason I'm doing this is because I'm this is supposedly going to lead to something really amazing if I stay the course. And and I had to stay stay focused on that and kinda forget about how much this sucks right now and let that motivate me instead. And that was kinda how I got through it. I saw a lot
• 17:47
  Bryan Cantrill: of people self doubt during that year?
• 17:50
  Robert Bogart: Oh, yeah. I mean, for sure. I think for me, the biggest the biggest problem was that, I I kinda felt like I was at a place I didn't belong. That's how it felt. You know?
• 18:01
  It wasn't necessary. Alright. You know, it's tough, when you actually when when you think you're really good because where I came from, I was the best. But then, of course, when you get on a team like that, then everybody was the best where they came from. Yeah.
• 18:14
  And Yeah. Yeah. Oftentimes, those guys are better than me. I mean, in my my class alone, I wanna say there were six guys in my class. I wanna say four of them actually to the Olympics.
• 18:23
  Yeah. So it was really competitive. Yeah. It was really competitive. Yeah.
• 18:28
  Lots of doubt.
• 18:30
  Bryan Cantrill: Because when because it my, my son red shirted know, of his own volition, but for the similar reasons. Like, I I know I I need to get bigger. And, like, I just need if I can just if I can just hang out a little bit longer, I know the puberty train is still coming still.
• 18:48
  Robert Bogart: 100%.
• 18:50
  Bryan Cantrill: And, I mean and and, you know, I didn't really take it apart with him about any he didn't have I I mean, if he had self doubt, he wasn't he he would talking about it with dad was not on the agenda. But I think it's it's I I I kinda I really did I admired it when he made the decision because it required I mean, it required this really I mean, you on the one hand, your identity is very much a part of being on this team, being an athlete on this team, and you're, like, by a real definition, like, not. Like, you know, you are That's
• 19:26
  Robert Bogart: how it feels precisely. And that takes immense in my opinion, especially for your son to to make a decision like that unilaterally, like, without somebody trying to talk him into it. That is just, that's
• 19:39
  Bryan Cantrill: actually Oh, they tried to talk him out of it. They they tried to talk him out of it, actually, because
• 19:43
  Robert Bogart: Wow.
• 19:44
  Bryan Cantrill: They, needed him that season. He's a lefty pitcher. And, but he had already done the calculus that, like, I I've gotta get bigger.
• 19:56
  Robert Bogart: Okay. Your son is special. Extraordinarily special. So to to to be able to do something like that with without being told? And and or I mean, because really, Eddie would say all 18 year old boys should redshirt.
• 20:08
  He wish he could redshirt something small.
• 20:10
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. Yeah. He was I mean, just to give you some perspective, so he was I graduate when he was first starting in junior college, he I I was looking at the roster, and it had him listed as six two one seventy. And I told Mike, well, I'm like, Tobin, that's a this is a really bad habit to get into because you and I both know, like, you're not one seventy. Like, you're you're one fifty.
• 20:33
  Robert Bogart: And That's what I want too.
• 20:34
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. And he's like, dad, that's what I told him. I said, I'm one fifty. And the coach said, I ain't putting that. I'm putting three seventy.
• 20:42
  Robert Bogart: Wow.
• 20:43
  Bryan Cantrill: So I'm like, oh, okay. I guess they I guess he didn't want you to be publicly humiliated by your weight, I guess. I'm not sure where to where to go on that one. But
• 20:50
  Robert Bogart: So it sounds like he's got the Santana song as his theme too.
• 20:54
  Bryan Cantrill: Oh, a 100%. Yeah. I mean, he was I mean, one fifty soaking wet.
• 20:58
  Robert Bogart: Oh, yep. Yep.
• 21:01
  Bryan Cantrill: And he and he told me, I and this is like, you know, you kinda look back as a parent because, like, you'd I I would like to believe I've been really supportive, but I think along the way, I I probably have snickered along the way in ways that have been but he's like, I'm gonna be a hundred and ninety five pounds. And I'm like, I mean, not with my DNA on board. You're not. But he but he they he's that's what he's done. He's a 190.
• 21:22
  You know? He's six four one ninety. But the but it it was the so it he knew that he needed that his body needed to develop, but it's I think it's really hard. It must be very hard to, like, to to both be waiting on that, but then also you gotta be working incredibly hard that year to get yourself kind of physically ready.
• 21:43
  Robert Bogart: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 21:45
  Especially, like you said, late on the puberty train, there's a big you can see like, I, for for example, always could see this obvious strength disparity between me and my teammates. And so I did a lot I did a lot to try and and close that gap. More than I felt like I had to do more than them because I was behind. So I was beating a lot, and I was lifting a lot, just working as hard as I possibly could. It was just and I was doing CS at the time, so there was just no time for no time for fun.
• 22:16
  I mean,
• 22:18
  Bryan Cantrill: true and I I think, like, truly very few people understand. I mean, so you are at the University of Texas, which is the top swimming program in the country. Also a top computer science program in the country. I mean, this is it is exceedingly hard to do both of these things.
• 22:37
  Robert Bogart: I felt like it was. Yeah.
• 22:40
  Bryan Cantrill: I mean, it must have been like every waking second is swimming or your academics. It must have been.
• 22:47
  Robert Bogart: 100%. And that got tough too because it was just yet one more way, which I was, like, a little different than my teammates. You know, a lot of these guys I mean, the athletic department, which is the thing you have to be careful of when you're a student athlete is their goal is is really to keep you eligible to compete. And, you know, as far as what you study, it's not really their concern or that big of a deal. And so I saw them push a lot of my teammates into degrees that were just easy.
• 23:14
  Yeah. Just the so, you know, so, like, after practice, so, like, a typical day for me looked like this. It was like, you know, you get up at six, get to the pool by six three, and from 06:30 to eight, I'm training. I'm swimming. And then, you know, I have enough time to go by and grab some food.
• 23:30
  My first class is at nine. I'm at class up until about 2PM, and then I go to the room for an hour. And then at 3PM from three to five, I'm swimming again. After swimming, everybody, you know, they leave the pool. We all go to the dining hall.
• 23:46
  And then after that, they go to sleep to take a nap. I went to the double e lab.
• 23:53
  Bryan Cantrill: So Oh, man. Yeah.
• 23:54
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. And and there were times when I was there. Honestly, there were times I was there all night, and I would just grab my books and walk to the pool in the morning. There weren't many of those, but it did happen, and sucks.
• 24:05
  Bryan Cantrill: Is I mean, to the degree that this was barely possible when you did it, do you think this is still possible today?
• 24:12
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. I think so. I Okay. I mean because Yeah. Well, it depends.
• 24:16
  You know? Okay.
• 24:17
  Bryan Cantrill: Looking at the demands on these these athletes, I'm like, I don't understand how you do this and something that is academically really demanding. I don't understand how you did it, like, in my day, let alone no. I think that the the time demand seems to have only grown.
• 24:30
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. I if if I had I'll so okay. You want the brutal honest truth? I'll tell you how you do it. You do it by getting a lot of b minuses and c pluses.
• 24:39
  That's how Yeah. It's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the truth.
• 24:43
  I mean, it's tough. You just don't give up. It takes freaking tenacity. You know? You know, just being unwilling to give up.
• 24:53
  And and and the other thing is, like, for me, I never really thought about I tried not to think about the very, very end during those times. It was usually just like one foot in front of the other. Because if you if I tried to look you know, you've heard people talk about, like, summiting k 2. They almost say, like, when you get to that part where that bottleneck is, that it's almost like that you see a mountain on top of a mountain, and you're like, holy crap. I thought I was getting close, but I Yeah.
• 25:18
  You know, it could be really demoralizing. So sometimes it was just, you know what? Get to tomorrow. Get to the next exam. Get to the next swim meet.
• 25:25
  Worry about things after that. Yeah. And that's pretty much how it went for a while. But, you know, you do adjust. It's crazy.
• 25:33
  You do adjust. You start to get more stamina, and your body gets kinda used to some of these things. Lack of sleep for me was always a that's my Achilles heel. So no matter what, I always tried to get at least seven hours. Sometimes I got more or something about less, but sleep is huge.
• 25:47
  I'd say that's the big thing. You have
• 25:49
  Bryan Cantrill: to Right. Right. Right. Yeah. That's yeah.
• 25:52
  Because, I mean, it's like sleep is so important for for athletes.
• 25:56
  Robert Bogart: That's everything. Yeah.
• 25:58
  Bryan Cantrill: And, like, that's the part that is, you know, you kind of I mean, even if you're a non athlete in a really demanding academic program, sleep is often the thing that gets tossed out.
• 26:07
  Robert Bogart: Oh, yeah.
• 26:09
  Bryan Cantrill: And that was just been outrageously challenging. The the so then I and tell me about in terms of the the progression of your collegiate career because then you obviously, you have your red shirt year, but then you are swimming on Yeah. On that team as they are winning national championships?
• 26:28
  Robert Bogart: That was so at the end of my freshman year, I still got a chance to shade and race. Shaving is is something that we do in swimming. It's it's there was a period where this we have these full body boots, and so shaving wasn't quite as important. And and by the way, just to let everyone in on a little swimming terminology, when when I say shave, what I really mean is shave and rest for about four or five weeks. Like, when someone says you know, in the swimming world, someone says, oh, they were shaved.
• 26:56
  What that really means is they were tapered and fully rested for a good five weeks, and they also happen to shave their legs. But that's the the shave is really, like honestly, it's the least important part of the whole process. It's maybe it cultivates a little more feeling in the water, but it's the five weeks of rest.
• 27:14
  Bryan Cantrill: And then yeah. What's kind of going on from a muscle perspective there? I mean, what what's the why this one feeling?
• 27:21
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. So so, like, you know, we did, you know, we did a lot of heavy yardage, and and maybe some of that's changed since then. But, you know, we were like, there were days when I would swim, say, 4,000 yards in the morning and then another 7,000 at night. And and during the summer, was even worse. Sometimes we do 10,000 in the morning and 10,000 at night.
• 27:42
  But that, you know, as a sprinter, that just totally destroys your fast twitch muscle.
• 27:47
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. So you're a sprinter. That's a that wow. Okay. Yeah.
• 27:50
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. And so, like, at least for me, during during the resting phase, I there there's a part where at first that he takes you off of morning practices. You're not doing that anymore. You're only swimming in the afternoons, and he starts to drop the yardage down. And the kinds of things that you do are only things that are really short and fast.
• 28:08
  And you start to it's funny. At first, you're like your body's like, oh, man. Like, I'm starting to feel like I'm coming to life again. I'm feeling like I'm dead this whole time, and then, you know, you feel really good. And then next thing you know, for whatever reason, I can't explain why you feel really terrible.
• 28:23
  I think, you know, there's something going on there metabolically that, you know, is confusing your body. And and so, like, you know, maybe your nervous system is really confused for a while, because you're not getting it taking this beating. And so you kind of you you perform worse. And then but if you can stay the, you know, you stay the course a couple weeks later, usually come out of it. Man, that feeling, it's like when you take a stroke, it's like your arm is cutting through air.
• 28:48
  It doesn't even feel like water. It's it feels so thin. It feels so easy to manipulate, and you just have endurance for days. And so the theory, you know, Eddie's Eddie, the whole point behind that was Eddie used to always say that a lot of a lot of our competitors, they would basically taper twice a year. They would taper for a swim meet in December, and their goal would be to qualify for NC two eight then and then continue training and then rest for NC two eights.
• 29:14
  We we didn't do that. Eddie used to he would just say, we're not shaving in the middle of the season. We're gonna just work right through. And and and the reason why is he said, like, the longer the season is where you work like that, the longer you can rest without getting out of shape. And so we we did see that a lot.
• 29:30
  Like, a lot of our competition showed up to n c two ways, like, a little bit out of shape, and some of them didn't even repeat the times that they that got them there, which was interesting.
• 29:41
  Bryan Cantrill: And you were swimming during because you were swimming, like, on those teams that won, like, back to back national championships. Right?
• 29:50
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. I was on three of them.
• 29:52
  Bryan Cantrill: Wow. That will
• 29:54
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. That would've been
• 29:56
  Bryan Cantrill: I mean, that must have been extraordinary.
• 29:59
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. I mean, each one was each one sort of represents something different, like, special and, like, the first in situ as I ever went to. And I don't know why they don't do this anymore, but, like, every time like, if it's the year before an Olympic year, they used to host the meet in, meters as opposed to yards. Meters is cool because that's recognized internationally. What
• 30:23
  Bryan Cantrill: a compromised position. What a terrible compromised position. Like, look, we can't agree with the two meters of yards. It'll be in meters once every four years.
• 30:34
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. I I I didn't have any complaints, to be honest. And and it but it was funny because, you know, it was it was short course meters. So it was a 25 meter pool, which is recognized internationally. Like, you go to another country, they've got 25 meter pools there.
• 30:50
  In fact, even some years world championships is conducted in short course meters. But they always the reason why they did this was because it was a course that's not competed, like, super often. And so if you've got a bunch of college guys, especially, like, in their prime that that are all resting and shaving for for a meet like that, you're almost guaranteed to see world records fall. And if you do, it just brings a lot of attention to the sport, particularly in a in an Olympic year, which which is good. And I think that's one of the reasons why they did it.
• 31:22
  But look. So my first NCAA was in February. It was the first time I had made the meet. And I was on a relay. This is kinda funny.
• 31:29
  I was on a relay that year that broke the world record. And when it happened, I didn't even know it. So, like, you know, we and it was in the morning too. It wasn't even in finals at night. And, you know, swimming in the warm down pool, and one of my teammates stops me and says, hey.
• 31:44
  Nice American record. And I said, get out of here. We didn't break the American record. We did not. And he said, yeah.
• 31:50
  Yeah. We did. We did. And, so we get back to, you know, I get back to where our bags are in the stands, and I'm packing up. And Eddie says that wasn't the American record.
• 32:01
  That was the world record. And I thought I I really thought that they were joking because I hadn't you know, back then, it's like you could pull out your your, you know, your phone, open Safari, and and and do a quick search. You just didn't know. Right? So I'm like, for me, when I finally believed that they were telling me the truth was when I turned around and they were, like, three guys wearing all white outfits, which was like they were, like, officials with, a cup in their hand.
• 32:26
  And, you know, but four of them, one for each guy on the relay. And they said, come with us to the bathroom.
• 32:32
  Bryan Cantrill: Hope for a drunk guy.
• 32:34
  Robert Bogart: Oh, yeah.
• 32:35
  Bryan Cantrill: So this is how you know you've broken the world record is because they show up for a drug test.
• 32:40
  Robert Bogart: Wow. Yeah. This is why I finally believed them. Because like I said, it just wasn't that easy to figure out back then. You know, I didn't wasn't paying attention.
• 32:47
  I I was just trying to swim fast. You know? That's it. So it's
• 32:51
  Bryan Cantrill: I will acknowledge that, in my my analogy of of NCAA athletics and venture capital, don't really know what the analogy is for this one. Not really sure. For the drug test. Yeah. It's not like
• 33:02
  Adam Leventhal: you have the biggest IPO ever. They're like, alright, suck.
• 33:04
  Bryan Cantrill: Alright. You only know because they show up asking you to pee in the cup. Yeah. Don't don't don't really know what that one is.
• 33:10
  Robert Bogart: A little bit. Yeah. But it was a but it was a very strange circumstance and one of the reasons why I hear so I should probably add a little color to this because this part of the story because it is hard to believe, and there's a reason why. And that was because, UC Berkeley spanked us in that relay that morning. But the reason why they didn't get either American or world record was because, number one, their relay had some people on it that weren't American.
• 33:37
  And number two, this is an interesting statistic. I didn't know this, but in order for a relay to be eligible for the world record, all four guys have to swim under the same flag. And so ours you know, we had we had, like, four Americans and no other relay. Can you believe this? No other relay at the meet had four guys from the same country.
• 33:55
  Bryan Cantrill: Wow. That's funny.
• 33:59
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. Crazy.
• 34:01
  Bryan Cantrill: That's extraordinary. So then the, so that is in and you said that's in February. That's in your first NCAA championship.
• 34:08
  Adam Leventhal: Right. So you could hold the world record and potentially lose the meat at the same time. That'd be exciting.
• 34:14
  Robert Bogart: 100%. Yep. You could. Yep.
• 34:18
  Bryan Cantrill: You know, I I really thought when you said that the people came to present you with a cup, I really thought it was like a trophy cup. Like like a Stanley cup. You're like, oh, thank you for this. It's a little bit like it's a little bit it's plastic, but it's you know? And it's more than no literature.
• 34:34
  Adam Leventhal: Y'all gonna have an opportunity to drag it around the rest of the meet. It's a different cup.
• 34:40
  Robert Bogart: No. I, you know, I don't know what they I mean, you know, they took it and tested it presumably. You know? And it was they were pretty serious about it. You know?
• 34:48
  It wasn't one of these things where it was like go in the stall and come back out with a with a full cup. Like, they're like, we we need to make sure that this this the urine is coming from where it's supposed to. So they they they watched closely with, you know, with a watchful eye.
• 35:04
  Bryan Cantrill: Wow. And It's a little bit troubling. I infer. You you peed from the right orifice, I guess, that didn't come out your ear. No.
• 35:11
  No.
• 35:12
  Adam Leventhal: More details. Right. I need
• 35:15
  Bryan Cantrill: you're leaving too much of the imagination, Robert. Listen. This is the podcast that talks about the two headed shower. Okay? So we just we we go we could do we're gonna go there.
• 35:24
  This is what It's true. You know? It's true.
• 35:27
  Robert Bogart: I personally, for whatever reason, I think I was still I've my my mind was still on on on the race that had happened. And for me, I just stage fright just wasn't the wasn't the problem. I just wasn't even think mean, those guys almost, even though they were standing there watching for me, they weren't even in the room. I just I was still kinda trying to wrap my head around what had just happened. But, yeah, the other guys in the relay were like, yeah.
• 35:50
  I don't know about this. They were in there a lot longer than me.
• 35:55
  Bryan Cantrill: Just say, world record on the relay also won the relay in terms of being the fastest. So just like, please put another note on there.
• 36:07
  Robert Bogart: Immune to stage fright.
• 36:09
  Bryan Cantrill: There right. There you go. That's but I mean, wild for and it know, I I to have because this is the thing that I think is is so and this is maybe this is what where you do get to the analog of kind of starting a company as well in terms of, like because the the the highs the high highs have to be higher than the lows are low or you'd stop doing it. And
• 36:31
  Robert Bogart: Think so. Yeah.
• 36:33
  Bryan Cantrill: Like, obviously, for all of the low lows that you must have endured to get to that point, I mean, that's obviously a very high high. And must I mean, do you find that that kind of thing just informed the way you thought of yourself? I mean, so I I when you you you come to Texas, Eddie Reese sees something that you don't see in yourself. But, you know, fast forward only a couple of years and you've got you know, you're you're you're setting the record for being in the cup. Are you, I mean, at that point, I mean, you must think like, god, anything's possible.
• 37:07
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. Yeah. You kinda feel that way. You you start to yeah. You kinda do feel that way.
• 37:12
  I mean, you know, it's funny. Like, I you know, with with I mean, he that was and and by the way, Eddie predicted that, which is one of things I I was gonna get to was that when when I first set foot on campus and and he talked about what his plans were for me, this was one of them. He's like, in in, you know, in three years, this meet's gonna be conducted short course meters. I plan on breaking the world record and using you to do it. And I'm like, get out of here.
• 37:39
  Come on. It is insane. And and that was only one of his predictions. And and there was another one that was, in my in my opinion, just as bold, if not more, and which came true. And at the end and it's funny.
• 37:54
  I always you know, when I I told Eddie, I saw him like an alumni event a few years ago. I said, you know, Eddie? When I was 18, I thought you were you were crazy. And, you know, I said I got about halfway through swimming at Texas, not even all the way through, halfway through. And I said, okay.
• 38:08
  I think he might be right about some things, maybe some things. And I said and then by the time I had already graduated, I realized you were right about most things. And then I said, and I thought that was it. I thought that was the end of the epiphany. And I said and then the but then there was a there was there there were two more.
• 38:23
  I realized you have to write about everything. And then the final one I had was just, god, I'm embarrassed.
• 38:30
  Bryan Cantrill: And Wow.
• 38:31
  Robert Bogart: And and he said he put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, Robert, I I hate to break it to you, but there is one more level left for you. And I said, which one is that? And he goes, it's the one where you forgive yourself. Wow. Yeah.
• 38:43
  Bryan Cantrill: Oh, what what is it? What a singular person. So what I mean, other than than predicting that that, twenty five years into the future, you would be on a nerd podcast, What other predictions did he did he make?
• 38:58
  Robert Bogart: The big one was and I don't know why. I really don't know why he was so serious about this one, but he said, I I I didn't just recruit you to be a part of a relay. He said, you're gonna final at NC. He's gonna make the a final at NC two a's, the top eight in the fifties. And that was he said that one to me before we even started practicing.
• 39:18
  Like, before it was like I was on campus. We hadn't even dove into the pool yet, and he said, you're gonna final at NC two a's. And that was something he said for five years. He a matter of fact, he used to always say he would he would always tell people, like, in in these team meetings we'd have, he said, someone in here is gonna final, is gonna make the a final. So the way it works, by the way, is, like, they take the top 35 or six guys in the country, you know, given event, and they race them all in the morning.
• 39:44
  And they take the the people who placed at the top 16 that morning, and they swim them that night. And there's two heats. There's the a final, which is places one through eight, and then there's the b final, which is places nine through 16. If you get eight in the morning, it doesn't matter how slow you go at night, you're eight. Like, there's nothing those guys that were in the b final can do.
• 40:06
  They should have showed up in the morning. That's their problem, which is why Eddie always says that in c two a's, it's won and lost in the morning, really, not at night. But he he used to always say, somebody in this room is gonna make the a final. And I guarantee you, it's gonna be someone that no one has ever heard of before. And it's gonna happen when no one expect it.
• 40:26
  And in fact, even that, we have team T shirts that made that year that said John Doe on the back because, you know, somebody it's somebody it's gonna be a nobody that does it. And I I turned out to be that nobody, I guess. It was just it's a little too weird, you know, the way the way it worked out. So, you know, I think, for, you know, for me, like I said, I've been a part of three teams. But for me, what kind of always bothered me was that I've never scored points individually on my own.
• 40:56
  I was always on a relay. Always on a relay. I mean, it's just a really fast meet. Top to bottom, I would say. I'd say probably it's the fastest meet in the world even.
• 41:04
  And so but I just for whatever reason, I I to really prove it to myself that that that I belong here, I wanted to make the a final, which I which I mean, any final, really. And it was that was by the way, that was weird the way that happened too because I went in to that beat seated, like, thirtieth. Like, I was you know, they they they load so each heat has eight lanes, eight people. And the way it works is they load them full from the top down. So, you know, if if you have a number of people competing that's not a multiple of eight, it's always gonna be heat one that doesn't fill up all the lanes.
• 41:40
  Right? And so so I, you know, I swam in that first heat, and it was like one of these heats that had, like, three or four people in it. I I kinda call it the sympathy heat. Like, nobody expects them to score and, like, but everybody claps for you when it's over. And then I ended just torching my heat.
• 41:59
  And I'm sitting there with a friend of mine, and we're, we're, like, watching the rest of these heats finish, like, in the stands. And it's like, okay. Heat two happened. Nobody beat me. Heat three has gone.
• 42:09
  Nobody beat me. Heat four or five. And suddenly, my friend says, look, man. You're ranked number one, and there are two heats left. Unless all eight guys in both heats beat you, you're coming back tonight.
• 42:22
  Which I couldn't believe.
• 42:23
  Bryan Cantrill: Least the b finals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 42:24
  Robert Bogart: At least. Bare minimum. And then, like, you know, in the next heat, only, like, maybe two people beat me. And he said, oh my god. I can't believe this guy might a final.
• 42:33
  It was I still can't believe it, to be honest. I'm like, did this really happen?
• 42:38
  Bryan Cantrill: Don't When you did you have kind of a chip on your shoulder when you were or, I mean, or or was it self belief when you are I mean, because you're obviously swimming beyond your seating there for sure.
• 42:53
  Robert Bogart: Oh, yeah. Oh, man. I was shocked. So, like, I don't I don't know, like like, if you guys followed the Olympics over the over the last, few, years, like 2016, 2020, or 2021, was it? Anyway, there's a guy in 2016, American guy.
• 43:13
  His name is Anthony Ervin. He's going for Cal. He's my age, actually. He somehow managed it. He made the Olympics in 2016, and he won gold in the '50.
• 43:24
  And this guy is is, yeah. He's interesting. And he also he also won gold in Sydney in 2000 in the '50. And and between those two Olympics, he disappeared. Wow.
• 43:37
  This guy was probably the most talented, raw talented swimmer I've ever met in my life or Anthony Irvin. And I I I wish I went into NCAAs that last year thinking to myself, like, okay. You know, I hadn't swam well leading up up to this point, so I didn't expect to to do very well. But I you know, he led me off the relay. For whatever reason, he tried to lead me off the relay that morning.
• 44:01
  And I I have this thing I you know, chip on your shoulder and or expectations, confidence, all to to to put things in perspective. I decided the night before to not even look at the psych sheet. So I had no idea, like, when I got up there the next day who was even gonna be next to me. I had no clue. It was irrelevant.
• 44:18
  That's the way I saw it. Yeah. So, like, you know, you know, I go first. I'm coming off the wall at the twenty five, so I'm on my way back. And I could see out of my peripheral vision that whoever it is that's that's next to me is demolishing me.
• 44:33
  And and I'm thinking to myself, yeah. Well, this is about what I expected. And, seriously, this was the negative thought that went through my head briefly. You know? And when I get to the wall, I first thing I do is like, okay.
• 44:45
  Let's see what I want. What's the damage? And I had a best time. Like, you know, I I was it was probably it was my second time under twenty seconds for a 50 in my life, and it would been and and in particular, it was the best time. I said, woah.
• 45:00
  Like, that's that's really fast. I said, the the who the hell just destroyed me? And then when I saw Irvin on the cap, I said, oh, okay. Okay. That makes sense.
• 45:08
  I was so relieved. You know what? It was almost like I needed that. And then that I said, okay. You know what?
• 45:14
  I'm I'm I'm in this meet after all. Like, I'm here.
• 45:17
  Bryan Cantrill: Interesting. The like, actually actually, I the the fact that, like, the guy that just beat me is just extraordinary swimmer. I've actually I belong here at some level. I I I can compete.
• 45:26
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. And that's when I realized that's when I started swimming at the rest of the meet with a bit more conviction. Like, okay. Yeah. I meant to do that, but it it's like, okay.
• 45:36
  So what happened? What what happened? Like, I've and I and I look back on that all the time and I ask myself, well, what happened there? What made that what made that swim different despite the fact that, my attitude wasn't, like, that great going into it? And here's what I think it comes down to this.
• 45:51
  The one thing I learned from it was because I had sort of I had no expectations. I didn't expect. I I figured this this is my last ins you know, collegiate meet. I had no expectations, and I wasn't doing well before that, so I just let go. I slept like a baby the night before.
• 46:07
  I just didn't care. Almost didn't care. I had to I had to almost insulate myself from expectations and potential disappointment, and it was the best I'd ever slept before a race in my life. And I woke up the next morning feeling, like, really good. So I think there's some there's there's a lesson there.
• 46:24
  I mean, I think it's possible to try too hard. I don't know if that's a lot of people's problems, but it was mine. And, I almost felt free to race, you know, without any expectations.
• 46:38
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. Well, there's this whole this this aphorism. I actually don't know who it's I mean, I thought it was Eleanor Rosso, but I actually don't think it is. The what would you do if you were unafraid of failing? Yeah.
• 46:48
  Robert Bogart: It's like
• 46:48
  Bryan Cantrill: you would you would you were completely losing the fear of failure.
• 46:52
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. It's a game changer.
• 46:55
  Bryan Cantrill: It is. I do think it's a game changer. I mean, I think it's like I mean, honestly, like, that was very important for us in in starting oxide was was just like I I I was when we were kind of first conceiving of and before we had long before we had a name, the the ideas that we had were all very small ball ideas. And it was the well, like, I think I'm too fixated on, like, not failing. Yep.
• 47:22
  And Adam's like, wait a minute. Where do I work again? So what what are we doing? Sorry. Is this supposed to be inspiring?
• 47:29
  Because this is like, you're doing that thing where you do the opposite again. I but I where are you like, alright. What why maybe I need to, like maybe that's the wrong rubric here. And and I think it's actually been, like, one of the things, like, I I that's why I keep, like, a lot of my thoughts to myself or to the Internet here via the podcast. Just between just between you and me, Internet, you know, I I would have my own thoughts on my on my son playing baseball, and I just, like I learned to just, like, keep him to myself because I was I was, like, mentally optimizing for reducing likelihood of failure.
• 48:07
  And the guy's a pitcher. It's all about failure. It's like you can't you you're you're never even gonna go to the mound if you are optimizing for, for minimizing failure, and you need to, like, be in a very different mindset. So it's interesting that you you raced the best when you were just, like, released from that released from the fear of failure.
• 48:26
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. Yeah. It's huge. It's everything, especially, like and something like swimming, and I can I can equally imagine it pitching too? Like, you that's that's I mean, yes, you need some amount of strength, but you also there's some finesse required.
• 48:39
  Right? Like, there you know, there's points where you do have to be relaxed to really fling that ball and release it at just the right moment. And
• 48:48
  Bryan Cantrill: And it's very, attempt. Yeah. And it is very, very, very psychological in terms of, like, you you you need to be and this is I mean, where I just, like, got total respect for it. I mean, I just think it it so much of it is not and kinda keeping yourself calm when, you know, you've got plenty of reasons for alarm.
• 49:14
  Robert Bogart: Yeah.
• 49:16
  Bryan Cantrill: And I I the interesting there's so much kinda to that. So did you find I mean, as you kinda hit your so you have this, I mean, this, as you say, Cinderella, athletic career, and then go into your into your engineering career, how often do you do you find you're kinda tapping back into some of that of that same metal?
• 49:42
  Robert Bogart: Oh, man. All the time and and and and not just, like and and not just in other areas, but even back. So, like, when I was at Sun, like, when I was at Sun, I I actually it did I hadn't swam for for a couple of years at that point, and part of me was just curious if I could still do it. And at the time, I think I was at Broomfield. Was working for Scott Tracy.
• 50:03
  I don't remember Scott.
• 50:05
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. Sure.
• 50:05
  Robert Bogart: The Fibre Channel team. And I just got kind of bored, and I said, I I wonder if I could make Olympic trials again. I just wonder if I could, like, swimming five days a week. And I just just did it.
• 50:19
  Bryan Cantrill: And this was in, like, this 02/2008. Right? Yeah.
• 50:22
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. Yeah.
• 50:24
  Bryan Cantrill: So, I mean, you've not been swimming for, like, years at this point.
• 50:28
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. Yeah. A few years. Yeah. That's right.
• 50:31
  Yeah. I was really surprised that I it it was still that easy to, you know, to dial it in. Really surprised, to be honest.
• 50:39
  Bryan Cantrill: That is amazing. And did you and made it to the Olympic trials?
• 50:46
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. Yeah. That was my second one. I went in February, and then I went in 02/2008. I didn't go to o four, obviously, because, well, I had to get a job.
• 50:54
  Right.
• 50:58
  Bryan Cantrill: But I wanted
• 50:59
  Robert Bogart: to figure out how to balance that. Yeah.
• 51:02
  Bryan Cantrill: And I think, I mean, I have been as as recall, like, you you you you have beat Michael Phelps in a race. Is that correct? Am I am I talking that correctly?
• 51:10
  Robert Bogart: Okay. But to be fair, that's my race. Like, that's I mean, that's a 50. So, like, Michael Phelps is extraordinary. Yeah.
• 51:20
  Yeah. My 50 is is is faster than his, but that but but but let's be clear. I I think if if Phelps actually wanted to to be good at the 50, I I don't think that, I don't think I'd have a chance. Not even a chance, but but he had, you know, he had other priorities. He had this god.
• 51:37
  That guy swim, you know, the 200 freestyle, 200 fly, the 200 I'm 200 back, the 400 I'm the 100 fly. So
• 51:48
  Bryan Cantrill: But not the 50 free. 50 free. He can actually take a seat.
• 51:53
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. Yeah. He he didn't have that fast twitch, but I wouldn't underestimate him if he had put his mind to it. And for him, I think that was more of a, okay. Like, I'm bored.
• 52:02
  I'll just do a 50 at this meet kind of thing. And and I also said that, you know, I had the unique privilege of racing guys like him at at some of these grand pre meets after after I graduated college. That was that was a lot of fun. Those were good times.
• 52:15
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. That's amazing. And then so and then later went on to I mean, you did go actually because this is what makes you very unusual is because you've been at that extraordinarily elite level of athletic performance. And then you're also an entrepreneur. You've also raised venture capital, and you've you've actually been on the other side of the table in terms of raising VC.
• 52:34
  I mean, you were kind of uniquely qualified to to weigh in on this on this analogy.
• 52:39
  Robert Bogart: That's how it felt, especially when I saw your post. I I I'm like, man, this guy is talking to my soul. Like, I read every letter of every word, every line. It was you took me back. I was like, you know, I I ran out of characters on LinkedIn to to post a reply, so I had to shorten it.
• 52:54
  But, like, I I was like, there's a part of me that I'd like had in there. Hey. Thank you so much for taking me back to those days, man. That was so so much fun to relive that in my mind for a moment. It was it was fun.
• 53:07
  I'm gonna
• 53:08
  Bryan Cantrill: I'm gonna assume that these are the glory days of swimming, not the glory days of raising VC, which is a which is I mean, I don't know. Is it less fun? It is actually fun. I mean, the high the the highs when you're raising are actually very high.
• 53:20
  Robert Bogart: Oh, very high.
• 53:22
  Bryan Cantrill: And so talk about your own odyssey in terms of, in terms of that. And, I mean, were you I mean, it's a similar kind of thing in that, like, you're trying to create something out of nothing. People would rightfully dismiss what you're doing as a long shot. And Yeah. I mean, that yeah.
• 53:42
  Were you able to kinda, like, tap into some of that? Talk about those kind of overlaps.
• 53:47
  Robert Bogart: You're reading my mail because, you know, it's they always it's like they always think, you're crazy or that it's a futile effort until until it works. And then then then it's not. And so, you know, I I I've been there before. You know, a lot of people say, oh, you know, like, you won't last at Texas. And a lot of people said, oh, you know, like, nobody improves that much in such a short period of time.
• 54:10
  That's all you've got. That wasn't all I had. I knew that, but, you know, but I was used to hearing these kinds of these these these kinds of opinions that that kinda underestimate. And I'm not so sure it's really a belief out of people like that so much that was a confession. But same same thing with with with the startup, and it's I'd say, like, in some ways, I kind of enjoyed it.
• 54:36
  And I I I think that red shirt freshman year taught me a lot, most notably how to wait for gratification, how to do a lot of work without the promise of anything in return. Maybe ever, but definitely right now, you're not getting anything. But the understanding is this is this is a this is a marathon, and and, you know, you have to stay the course. You have it. And that was the other thing.
• 55:01
  Like, you know, my my my dad would always tell me, you know you know why you ended up finishing everything you did at Texas? Was because you're just so damn stubborn. And and I never really liked that I never really liked that that kind of an analogy. I mean, it really wasn't stubborn. It was one of these things where I I sat down long before any of this got emotional, and and I said, and I think it's important to do that before emotions get involved.
• 55:25
  And I said, look. This is what I want. This is what it's going to take to get it at a minimum. Am I willing to give that in exchange for what I want? And if the answer is yes, then you move forward.
• 55:37
  If the answer is no, then you don't. And, yeah, it got tough while I was in Texas, definitely, just like it got tough trying to raise money at first. And I I you know, of course, you're gonna wanna quit. I mean, I think that that goes without saying. I don't I don't I don't know anybody that hasn't been tempted to quit.
• 55:54
  And, I mean, you know, feel free to weigh in. I mean, did the doubts ever go through your mind in any of these kinds of of ventures that you've done? I think it's natural if they did. If they didn't, it'd be easy. It'd be a lot easier.
• 56:05
  You know?
• 56:06
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. You know, it, not doubt, really. And maybe this is just where it's just, like, ill informed. And it actually it was very, very helpful for me to then superimpose that on my son's experience and his, like, total conviction. And because he has had absolute conviction in himself when there's, like, really, there'd be maybe there have been plenty of times when when, there have been very few people that have had conviction on him.
• 56:37
  And and, basically, it began and end with it with him. And it's but the my own I mean, certainty is the certainty sounds too arrogant, but I I just I don't know. I just got over, like, the the what's the worst thing that happens, I guess? I the the the fear of failure is not something that I I am really, I haven't really felt. But then you you have mean, there's a which is not to say that it's not extraordinarily difficult, and you just can't take anything for granted.
• 57:07
  You have to know I mean, just what you said. It's like about, like, knowing what you want and knowing what you're willing to do to to make it happen. Yep. But then very hard for me to kinda look outside. Like, it's very clear for me in kind of my narrow domain.
• 57:22
  But then you look at me like, okay. But I don't understand that that person. I mean, like, that's that's that's crazy over there, but it's not. It's just it it's someone who's got a a different orientation and has got this that same level of conviction. And it's extraordinary.
• 57:35
  I think it's I I think it's, which doesn't mean I mean, at all. In fact, success is not assured. That's what makes it that the and I still think that with certainly with Oxide that success is not assured, but I'm not fear I'm not afraid of failure. I'm not sure where where that leaves me. I'm not maybe, like, naive.
• 57:54
  I'm not sure. Like, are you eating the cockpit right now? Like, were you what's going on?
• 57:59
  Adam Leventhal: Well, so is that Oh, you're failure. That's that's setting aside a failure. Right? Like, so so what if you're afraid of failure? And then what?
• 58:05
  Like, what's the consequence of that? Well, the consequence is, like, you do the the same things that you would be doing to to, you know, offset those chances of failure. So I I think that I don't know. I I think that with with entrepreneurship, with running a company, with constructing team, all this stuff, like, that fear of failure is kind of omnipresent until it's not. Yeah.
• 58:28
  And but also not sort of actionable in the moment that I I think in athletic issues. Right. It's sort of nipping at your heels much more, pervasively.
• 58:41
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's true. I think, also I don't know.
• 58:45
  Like, it may be maybe in a in entrepreneurship, failure is not necessarily the right word, but, you know what mean? There's when you first I mean, I think I think everybody that's ever left their nine to five gig at a big company to go off and take the, you know, destiny in their own hands. It's you know, they know that exhilarating feeling. It's I there's very little things on that that that can compare. Right?
• 59:08
  It's fresh. It's exciting. It's electric. And, you know, there there there comes a time whether it's because there's internal conflict at the company or it's because you hit some big roadblock that you didn't plan to hit, whatever it might be. And, you know, sometimes these things can drag on.
• 59:25
  They last they really test your endurance and and your your resiliency. And, you know, it's in those moments when, I mean, we're we're not digital systems. We're all, I don't know, analog at best. Squishy. It's it's Adam.
• 59:39
  It's Adam's
• 59:39
  Bryan Cantrill: term that I really like. I
• 59:40
  Robert Bogart: don't know. Yeah. Like it. I know.
• 59:42
  Bryan Cantrill: Were you what was that? Were you on the way to squishy? Is that I would make Adam.
• 59:46
  Adam Leventhal: No. I you got there first.
• 59:48
  Bryan Cantrill: What was
• 59:48
  Robert Bogart: your question? Yeah. Of course. This
• 59:51
  Bryan Cantrill: would make me feel a lot better if I just because I feel that, you know, you and I have spent so much time together and know one another so well that I was telling your wife a story about myself that I was certain that you yourself had not heard. You came in and heard one syllable like, oh, I've heard the story. Spoiler punch line. Yeah. It's it's one punch line.
• 1:00:10
  And I was like, wow. This is this wow. Okay. Never mind. Guess I am.
• 1:00:15
  Squishy.
• 1:00:16
  Adam Leventhal: You got it. A squishy human. Squishy.
• 1:00:17
  Robert Bogart: Alright. Yeah. Good.
• 1:00:19
  Bryan Cantrill: Should've written it down on a piece of paper instead.
• 1:00:22
  Robert Bogart: And, you know, and and and there's you know, I think it's I think it's normal for for emotions to get the better of you, and they they do cloud your judgment. They you know? It's like, man, this isn't this isn't exactly what I thought was gonna happen, but, you know, do I is this really what I still wanna do kind of thing? And it's like, well yeah. I think that's I I I I think that's natural.
• 1:00:44
  And and and as far as carrying things over from from swimming to the the startup, the endeavor, I I'd say one of the big things that and this for whatever reason, this is one of the things Eddie used to always say. He would say, it's not adversity by itself that really can discourage you. It's when you experience a type of adversity that wasn't planned for. There's expected adversity, and then there's, like, bizarre, unex like, I'm talking completely unrelated types of adversity that you you almost think you shouldn't have. And he said, those are the ones that really mess with you.
• 1:01:22
  That's what really tests you. But if you realize that whatever it is you're experiencing is actually it actually is part of of the plan. It is by design. Just knowing that by itself can make it more manageable.
• 1:01:38
  Bryan Cantrill: Did did his coach I mean, because, I mean, you you had the the I mean, really, just, you know, not really knowing that much about any reason for this conversation, but this is like, you had the opportunity to have this, like, this close relationship with one of the all time great coaches of any sport effectively. Yeah. Did how did that inform the way that you lead a team, participate in a team? And what did are there is there specific things that you took specifically from that experience or from him?
• 1:02:05
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. A few things. I think I think for me, at least, one of the big ones is because I spent a lot of time, like, especially the last two years, volunteer coaching high school kids. And I try always try to look for the ones that, you know, are are more like me, the ones that get overlooked by everyone else. And I
• 1:02:24
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah.
• 1:02:24
  Robert Bogart: I think one of the big things I learned from from watching Eddie do what he does is that greatness can be found in some of the most unlikeliest of places. And, look look look below the surface if you wanna find it. It's there, but you have to you have to be willing to look. And so it's I think that's that's one of the big things. I I would never underestimate a kid that was really hungry, especially one that was really responsible like your son.
• 1:02:53
  Right? Like, holy crap. I I just I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that an 18 year old is like, I'm gonna redshirt because I need to develop more for a year. Who does that? I mean, that's hard.
• 1:03:05
  That's really hard. I probably wouldn't have done it unless someone had made me. That's that's another level, Brian. Like, that's that's really impressive.
• 1:03:15
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. And with it it that whole path mean, because the thing that I think when you get to this level that I think people don't necessarily realize is, like, that has to come that is all him. Right? It has to be elective from like, the parents can kinda put their thumb on the scale to a point, but, boy, that point ends after high school. I mean, there's just no way like, parental and, I mean, that is that is a 100% intrinsic motivation.
• 1:03:42
  That is just not the it it because it has to be. There's just no way that's gonna be.
• 1:03:49
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. You can't talk someone into doing that No.
• 1:03:52
  Bryan Cantrill: You sure. You really can't. That's gotta and I I think it's also part of the reason why you gotta when someone feels that kind of intrinsic motivation, even if it's not, like, you you do have to kinda get out of the way, I feel. You know? I mean Little bit.
• 1:04:09
  Robert Bogart: Which has
• 1:04:10
  Bryan Cantrill: been as a parent, has been a big adjustment for me because this is not I mean, I as I said in the piece, like, this is not what I did, and his path through college looks nothing like my path through college. But I you know, in many ways, the the the the commonality is that he and I at age 17, 18 did not wanna be told what to do. And Yep. Had or be like, that is the real commonality.
• 1:04:36
  Adam Leventhal: That's how strange.
• 1:04:37
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. I I just Oh, well, as Adam cancels the order for the paternity test. Yes. But the but the
• 1:04:50
  Robert Bogart: the specifics are very,
• 1:04:51
  Bryan Cantrill: very different. And I think that, you know, you've gotta I think this is this is all I mean, I think this is, like, the great thing and the great challenging challenge of parenting is your child is not you. This is like a total news flash, is that
• 1:05:05
  Adam Leventhal: you But like, god. So, I mean, advice that you need to give yourself, daily, I feel
• 1:05:10
  Bryan Cantrill: like in certain phases. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, and I don't feel mean, this is like now this is like the complimentary parenting podcast. But, you know, I always tell people, like, you know, when you when you got like a, you know, a newborn, what do you want for your child?
• 1:05:22
  Oh, you know, I want them to be happy and fulfilled. I'm like, okay. Write that down on a
• 1:05:26
  Robert Bogart: piece of
• 1:05:26
  Bryan Cantrill: paper, put it in a drawer where you can find it when they're 18 years old, and the path that they have chosen to be exactly what you want them to be is absolutely not the path that you would choose for them. And because you're gonna need to reread that piece of paper. And maybe you get lucky in the path that they'll take is one that's like, oh, this is great. Like, this is one that I recognize, but more likely than not, it's like, no. It's gonna be a different path.
• 1:05:51
  And you've gotta it can be a it can be a a real challenge. Easier said than done,
• 1:05:58
  Robert Bogart: for sure. Yeah. No. For sure. But for what it's worth, like, everything you're saying, I think, makes complete sense as far as, like, how you're supporting your your son right now.
• 1:06:09
  I, you know, almost all one of the things my dad used to always say to me, like, much later in my life was, you know, I came to this realization at some point when you were maybe 17 or 18. Whenever I tried to tell you what to do, you would do the opposite, or at the very least, you wouldn't do what I said. But if I left you alone and gave you the choice, you always did the right thing. And, you know, I think that's I would say, like, if if if I could use one word to to describe, like, my dad's interaction in in my swimming career, particularly in college and later, because I did end up swimming for I ended up swimming at the national level up till I was, like, in my early thirties. I would just say he was he was an enabler.
• 1:06:51
  He enabled, but he didn't direct. He didn't really advise. He just he enabled. He he got out the way. But, you know, he's obviously like, at that point, he was he knew a lot about swimming at that point, so it was easy for him to he knew what kinds of things, like, I needed, what I didn't need.
• 1:07:09
  He didn't always try to give advice. Sometimes you don't need advice. Sometimes just, you know, it was enough to listen. You know? You have a bad race or whatever.
• 1:07:18
  You wanna vent about it. You know? And and, so I I don't know. I like I
• 1:07:23
  Bryan Cantrill: agree with all that. And then maybe some free commentary for the occasional umpire is what I'll say. I I really try to resist that. There's sometimes I always it's a question. Where did that miss?
• 1:07:33
  It's a question. It's not a statement. I understand that you feel you feel that that miss. I wanna know where that miss.
• 1:07:38
  Adam Leventhal: You're just voicing putting voice to the question everyone has.
• 1:07:41
  Bryan Cantrill: Do the question that I feel we all have, which is where the hell did that miss? But, yeah, I would try to really try to actually, long as I'm on this, you will appreciate this. Robert, although, again, totally different domain. But I was, years ago, with our but the now defunct Oakland A's, now the the athletics of Oakland A's or whatever they are, but the, at an a's fan fest where they had the the bullpen up there. And the, and they there was a a woman there who was asking a question.
• 1:08:14
  They kind of opened up the audience for questions. And she said, hey, Mike. You know, my son is a pitcher in high school, and I find it to be really difficult to watch him pitch. It's very anxiety producing to watch him pitch, which aside, it's extremely anxiety producing to watch your child pitch. I mean, because he what do we want for our children?
• 1:08:31
  We want them to we want them to ideally not fail. And if they do fail, we want them not to fail in public. Well, I've got some very bad news for you about pitching. Pitching is when it is successful, it is the absence of public failure. So as as a parent, it is it is it is very hard to watch a child pitch.
• 1:08:48
  But she said, you know, it's very anxiety producing to watch, you know, my, my child pitch and and but your parents have obviously dealt with it for your entire professional career, and how do they deal with it? And then basically, the entire bullpen is like, no. I'm none of our parents are able to deal with it. They're all basically a wreck. Sean Doolittle said that his mother records all of his outings, but only watches the saves, which is an act of genius, I think.
• 1:09:11
  That that is like, I'm just like, the bad stuff just didn't ever happen to William Warts. But the but one of the the thing I thought was really interesting is Jesse Chavez, who's a journeyman pitcher who I love. This is a guy who's who throws heat and is like a hundred and sixty pounds and it's kind of amazing. And Jesse Chapman said, know, okay. So are you you're a parent of a pitcher.
• 1:09:30
  That's interesting to know. Are there any other parents of pitchers? Know? A bunch of people are kind of nodding along. He's like, can I ask you, may I make a request?
• 1:09:39
  Could you please never say just throw strikes? What do you think I'm up here doing out of curiosity? Like, I'm actually and I remember thinking like, oh, I have definitely said just throw strikes, and I have said that for the last time in my life. But it was kind of an interesting insight into, like, how you can be valuable as and look, I try to keep most of my commentary to the strikes on about my to myself. Okay?
• 1:10:04
  I really try to, like I I try to make that my inside voice. But how as a parent you can support someone doing something so outrageous at some level? And, I mean, it's like like, what are the pathways for that kind of support? And, you know, Robert, I the what you're describing about your father is very I mean, obviously, follow swimming very closely. He's following everything you're doing very closely, but has that right distance to be an enabler, you say?
• 1:10:33
  Robert Bogart: Yep. Yeah. He's supportive and enabled, but he wasn't trying to necessarily tell me what wasn't giving me his analysis necessarily. Unless I asked, then then he would offer it. And and I think even more than than than even saying, like, what it is that he thought he may have seen that I did wrong, it was how to how to remediate that, which he was he was really good.
• 1:10:54
  I mean, he would offer these things if I asked. If I didn't ask, he wouldn't offer, but I knew he always had it in there. So, you know, when I thought I needed it, I would ask. He was always available. It's funny you touched on something else, though, that that I think is it it's it's like it's intangible, but it's very serious.
• 1:11:11
  It's a it and it's one of the things that makes whether starting a company or being a a d one athlete really hard. And Eddie used to refer to swimming, and I think this is also the case with baseball, but more so as swimming, and you'll hear what you'll know why in a second. He referred to our sport as the naked evaluation. Yeah. One.
• 1:11:30
  Yeah. Yeah. One for the obvious reason. Right? Like, you know, you're standing there basically making it in front of a pack stands.
• 1:11:38
  But the bigger, more important you know, the more profound reason is because when your hand touches that electronic pad at the end, you know, the numbers show up on the electronic scoreboard and on the Internet, and the whole world can see it, and there's no hiding. And that's also very much the case with the pitcher. And, I mean Oh, yeah. You know, when I watch a baseball game, I'm watching the pitcher most of the time, to be honest with you. There's you just you got a laser beam on you.
• 1:12:02
  Really stressful. Really, really stressful. And that takes time for sure.
• 1:12:08
  Bryan Cantrill: It's gotta be light that you are and then the other I mean, the the other kind of psychological challenge of that is it's a spotlight that's on you. And then it's and then it's every pitcher, even the best pitchers in the game, spend more of their time watching baseball than playing baseball.
• 1:12:23
  Robert Bogart: I believe it.
• 1:12:24
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. So you because you're only being I mean, even if you're an MLB starter, you're only being used every five days. Right? So you gotta, like that's the other part of it. I that I I have just is is a wonder to me.
• 1:12:36
  But I think it and just, like, to be able but then it it's like, I I I know that there are people. I obviously, like, it does not bother me to present to a room of people that I've never seen before. Although I think, Adam, between us, I think we both agree that you still hold the record for presenting to the sheer largest number of people. It is live. Yeah.
• 1:12:58
  Live. Java 1, 02/2007. Is that right?
• 1:13:02
  Adam Leventhal: Right about there.
• 1:13:03
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. You know what think? And and the great thing about this podcast, Robert, is we are mentioning Robert Adam's haircut for the second time. We we we there should be a separate time when we mention your haircut or decided lack of haircut during that era. I mean, it is the it is a really, it's a special time.
• 1:13:18
  It's a special time. The but I think, I mean, it's like, we you and I don't have any kind of but there are there are plenty of people who would be, I mean, frankly, like, I mean, my son honestly would be like, actually, I would much rather be on the mound than have to speak to this many people. And it's like, alright. We'll tell you what, I'll speak to the people, you go to the mound, and we'll be happy because like I did that.
• 1:13:41
  Adam Leventhal: Tell him about the time when I was coaching Little League, and I had to it was coach pitch, and I had to pull myself out. I had to call it a reliever for myself. Yeah. Brutal.
• 1:13:49
  Bryan Cantrill: You made that long walk for your for yourself. Wow. Did you did you job on yourself at all? Did you I did you get the ball going? Or how did that work?
• 1:13:59
  Robert Bogart: Very I called
• 1:14:00
  Adam Leventhal: called in my assistant coach and just walked right to the car and left and never came back. No. No. Just
• 1:14:07
  Bryan Cantrill: That that this is amazing. And so as I mean, as you're kind of going through and I I mean, I think also Adam and also not for the for the first time, the Positive Coaching Alliance. I know we've we've pitched this before, but I just think of this like, Robert, this is kind of training that you do as presumably in many sports, but definitely this is Adam, you and I both thought of it in the context of baseball, I think.
• 1:14:31
  Robert Bogart: Yeah.
• 1:14:32
  Bryan Cantrill: But this is like training that I think every human being should go through. It's just very, in terms of how you're talking about, like, how do you engage with with an athlete. And I think in it it generalizes too to, like, how do you engage with someone who is doing something that you yourself are not doing? And the I I did have we do have an investor who it was a pitcher. And as we were kind of like is he was talking to me about a period ahead that was for Oxide that was gonna be kind of perilous.
• 1:15:10
  And mean, he was he was anxious about it. And I'm like, you know, the your anxie I understand your anxiety, but, like, you have to, like, view me as, like, your starting pitcher. Like, what is the conversation you would have with your starting pitcher? Because the conversation you have with your starting pitcher is, like, not just throw strikes. Like, that's actually not a productive conversation or, like, the or even worse, like, hey.
• 1:15:30
  I'm really worried you're not gonna throw strikes there. That's right. Like, hey. I I I You might have a self doubt.
• 1:15:36
  Adam Leventhal: And I think that self doubt is very justified.
• 1:15:38
  Bryan Cantrill: I I I just don't think you're gonna find this owner at all today. I don't know. I'm just thinking about it. And also, like, that tightness in your elbow, I think that probably is something. Like, I think that that is you know what I mean?
• 1:15:47
  It's like that is that is
• 1:15:49
  Adam Leventhal: absolutely the right pep talk.
• 1:15:51
  Bryan Cantrill: Not the right pep talk. And but it was actually really helpful for him to hear that. He's like, okay. I okay. Okay.
• 1:15:57
  Yeah. Right. I get that. And then, you know, the kind of next time we had a conversation, we're kinda talking about it this, you know, upcoming. We're like, we had a lot that was going on.
• 1:16:04
  He's just like, hey. Right kid. Right spot. I'm like, give me a go. Right kid.
• 1:16:08
  Right spot. That's it. That that's that's the right, because it it can be you don't wanna give someone doubts about themselves that they don't have. You know? You That's
• 1:16:19
  Robert Bogart: a good point. Yeah.
• 1:16:21
  Bryan Cantrill: And I think it's really hard to do that. And I think this is, like, good advice too if for venture capitalists when you're when you're funding a startup. Mean, you you got this, like, shared belief or should have this shared conviction that this kind of thing is possible. And the the you you know, you are in kind of this coaching role or this I I mean, it's it the almost, you know, parental role. I'm trying to think, wait.
• 1:16:45
  Wait. What is the exact analog for an investor with a start up? But you're you're you're not the one that's in the arena, but you're supportive of that.
• 1:16:53
  Robert Bogart: Sort of an advisory role. Right? I mean, it should be if they're a good investor, I think. You know? They're there with some regularity.
• 1:17:02
  You know? And they're welcome to be, obviously, assuming they're welcome to be. They are they are advising on matters, certain matters that are within their wheelhouse. I mean Yeah. You know, we had a lot of investors that just didn't didn't contribute much beyond money.
• 1:17:16
  And, you know, that is one of the like, I was I kinda was getting at yesterday. Was, like, one of the big lessons I learned is, like, find someone that, like you'd said, has deep convictions about what it is you're doing and actually believes not just, oh, like, okay. That seems like that's good enough that I fund it, but, like, no. No. No.
• 1:17:33
  Like, you guys are gonna change the world. Like, you know, I I a lot of people say that, like, that this may not work, but I have a healthy disregard for for those kinds of opinions. I think we can I think there's a way to make this work? You know? That's that's kind of you want someone that's kind of on your team.
• 1:17:49
  They are sort of a coach. I agree with you. I think that's how it should be.
• 1:17:53
  Bryan Cantrill: Well, they need to feel that conviction pretty deeply. And I will say that, like because and it's hard it's hard to assess that. Like, it's hard to assess who has got the conviction in me, in us, in the team. You know, we've got, a good friend of my my sons is is in the very in a great position of trying to assess right now multiple offers, to play baseball. And the you know, how do you and, you know, one of the things that and and he's trying to figure out his own rubric for it.
• 1:18:28
  And, you know, one of the things that that that he wants to he's like, where I wanna go where I'm gonna be the best developed, and how do I kinda make that decision? How do I assess for conviction? And, you know, I as I was kind of noodling this back and forth with them, I think that, like, one of the questions to ask ask is, you know, where do you, investor, coach, where where do you see the most the the biggest gap? Where do you see the most room for development, the most need for development? You know, what is the answer to that question?
• 1:18:59
  Like, I I I don't need the flattery. I wanna know, like, where the gaps are. And, you know, I think if we had as I kinda think back to our own fundraising adventures, I think if we had actually asked that question to some of the firms that thought they that that were full of enthusiasm for oxide but had no no true conviction, I think they might have dropped out earlier. Because I think it would have been really I I think it would have been revealing. I wanna you know, it's hard to replay history, but I think it would have been revealing that they didn't actually understand what we were doing.
• 1:19:34
  And they couldn't actually have conviction in us because they didn't actually understand it. And you you need that conviction because when things just as an athlete too, you need the conviction because otherwise, when you hit the slump I mean, had said, you know, you weren't you know, there was a period where you weren't swimming well or when you when when you got an injury. When something goes wrong, if somebody does not have that conviction, they they'll abandon you.
• 1:20:00
  Robert Bogart: 100%.
• 1:20:02
  Bryan Cantrill: You know, that is what you're looking for in a coach and an investor, someone who's gonna stand by you during those difficult times. So people say it, but they don't actually it's very like, how do you assess that? And that's been what has been I mean, we've been blessed with investors that have really and then you only see it at these moments that are kinda dire where they that's like, oh my god. Thank god. This is this is why I mean, you yeah.
• 1:20:25
  You were great during, like when things were going well, you you you were good. But, like, now that we've had a we we've had a kind of a moment of crisis, you're extraordinary. Yeah.
• 1:20:37
  Robert Bogart: And, ideally, the you know, those types are not like, okay. Well, give me a call when you get through that. We'll go get lunch or something like that. Talk about the next bridge round. You know?
• 1:20:46
  But they're there really thinking of ways to make this work. And that was one of the yeah. Like, yeah, they're one of your biggest supporters ideally. Yeah. And, like like, you know, and I kinda got lucky, like, with with with my coach in college.
• 1:21:04
  It's kind of the same thing. And I didn't even have to ask him. He led with it. He's like, no. I mean, he had very detailed, vivid, like, like, plans for how this was going to play out over the course of five years.
• 1:21:16
  I I you know, he led, but I didn't even get a chance to ask him. He's like, here's what we need to do, and here's what I see happening as a result. And it was like I said.
• 1:21:25
  Bryan Cantrill: I'm just dying to know what he's what he could see. I mean, like, what made him so prescient? Or did he just maybe this is, like, VC where he's like, no. I said it to everybody.
• 1:21:36
  Robert Bogart: It's just the That's what works out.
• 1:21:39
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. Right.
• 1:21:40
  Robert Bogart: He asked a lot of interesting questions, not just to me, but to my parents and and also to to the coaches, on my club team, which was one, like, one question they asked me was, like, when when did he go through puberty? When did it start? Like, how what did he look like a year ago? These kinds of kinds of things Yeah. Reference.
• 1:22:00
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. You know what's funny? I used to joke with the, the the the father of one of my son's friends in high school who is just a, like, a really well developed guy. I'm like, if any coach comes here looking for Tobin, would you be his father for purposes of any discussion? Because I'm just worried if they look at me, they're just gonna be like, okay.
• 1:22:20
  Yeah. That's a pass. Hard pass.
• 1:22:23
  Adam Leventhal: Right. Is he adopted by any chance? Right.
• 1:22:25
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. Exactly. It's just like it could be IVs or any it can we meet mom? I mean, we're just kinda holding out hope that there's there's But that's interesting. He was actually looking for that he was looking for a, actually, a delayed development.
• 1:22:39
  Robert Bogart: Oh, yeah. That's his favorite. Yeah. That's that was he loved those guys.
• 1:22:43
  Adam Leventhal: Yeah. That's true.
• 1:22:44
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. Yeah. Because you get Your penny stocks. Yeah. Yes.
• 1:22:47
  Exactly. Penny stocks. That's exactly how I think he viewed it.
• 1:22:52
  Bryan Cantrill: And, you
• 1:22:52
  Robert Bogart: know, he
• 1:22:52
  Bryan Cantrill: the pennies to penny stocks when it comes to timely arrival of pubescence. I really should have I had a lot I could really go talk about then. Adam's not noting the time for, like, complete censorship.
• 1:23:05
  Adam Leventhal: I just I just like the idea of Tobin being like, dad, why don't you come to the gym with me? I don't know. I thought we could work out together. And it's like, why is he so focused on me putting on some muscle mass?
• 1:23:15
  Bryan Cantrill: That's right. Well, I'm just like, like, I'm trying to go somewhere. Okay? I'm trying to I need you. Everyone's got a role to play.
• 1:23:22
  Adam Leventhal: Right.
• 1:23:23
  Bryan Cantrill: Okay. So, yeah, what what are the questions that he asked? So that that's interesting.
• 1:23:27
  Robert Bogart: He asked that, and then for the most part, he wanted to see me race. He wanted to see he he was doing things like he was doing things like counting my strokes during a race to see how many it took me to get to the other side. Yeah.
• 1:23:39
  Bryan Cantrill: Interesting. So looking at elements of of mechanics, is now a good time to mention that you are an extraordinary sleight of hand magician? It feels like that we can't get all the way through this without at least mentioning that.
• 1:23:51
  Robert Bogart: Oh, yeah. In fact, that's a good segue. It's kind of it's different, but it's the same in a lot of ways. So I think that's a Yeah. That's a good point.
• 1:23:59
  And, because you talked about how you might your son could could stand on that mound and, you know, just just fire those baseballs, you know, right down the middle all day long, but he may not feel comfortable speaking to a large crowd. But I I I just think it's just yet another instance of acquiring ability. And that's really the big thing that I think I learned at Texas that I use. I've applied it to almost everything I've done that I really want, that is. And, you know, like, talk about it kind of a nerve racking experience.
• 1:24:28
  Like, yeah, I I I'm definitely capable of some bastard hard sleight of hand, maneuvers, but, you know, when you go like, so, you know, Adam, for those that don't know, like, I'm a member of the Academy of Magical Arts in Hollywood, the Magic Castle. It's in it's in LA. And but to to to to actually and I would say it's probably the close-up sleight of hand magic cap of the world. But in order to become a member, you have to audition. And you can't even get into this place unless a magician invites you or you're a member.
• 1:25:01
  So I auditioned for membership, and and, thankfully, I passed. But, you know, they're performing in front of, like, centuries worth of expertise in this this judges panel. And, yeah, it was terrifying, but
• 1:25:16
  Bryan Cantrill: I kinda just This went out and obviously after your swimming career.
• 1:25:19
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:25:20
  This was something I I I had kinda it's something that's one of these things where, like, I've always wanted to do it, and I just never never had the time. And just sort figured out
• 1:25:31
  Bryan Cantrill: control time and space with your mind. It just doesn't feel like any like, I I mean, I I could not do that. I could not does not matter how much I wanna put my mind to being a sleight of hand magician. Like, these hands are not doing that. They're just not.
• 1:25:44
  I think they're not cooperative. I I just Yes.
• 1:25:47
  Robert Bogart: They are.
• 1:25:49
  Bryan Cantrill: My hands and I have a complicated relationship with with one another. We are really we're constantly, like, better.
• 1:25:55
  Robert Bogart: Oh, it could be done for sure. I think you could do it. I think I think yeah. You put in enough time, you could do it. It's yeah.
• 1:26:03
  But it's, you know, it was I I believe in passive rehearsal, not active. So for example, I don't set aside an hour or something like that and, you know, practice. I just I've always had a deck of hands a deck of card in my hands, and I'm just always kind of fiddling with it and, you know, working on some particular move. And want to have it, then move on. Just but it's it's almost more of a of a just something you kinda do all the time in the background.
• 1:26:31
  But, yeah, I'm, you know, I'm pretty sure you could you could you could do it too if you actually wanted to.
• 1:26:38
  Bryan Cantrill: Well, you it should also be said that you I mean, not hugely surprising given your your aptitude in the pool. You you've got larger hands than I do.
• 1:26:48
  Robert Bogart: Maybe. About. I think I
• 1:26:51
  Bryan Cantrill: I think Adam's your guy. I think Adam Adam could be could be a real talent.
• 1:26:54
  Adam Leventhal: I thought this is where this is going.
• 1:26:56
  Robert Bogart: Guess.
• 1:26:56
  Bryan Cantrill: No. I think you could be real I think that you got this is Robert,
• 1:26:59
  Adam Leventhal: when I've shaked Brian's hands, he refers to my hands as clown hands.
• 1:27:03
  Bryan Cantrill: That the only out of praise. You're making it sound so pejorative, and it's this is my own issue and my own like, got it to HR. They're like, well I've I've got these little doll hands. It's like, I mean, I Yeah.
• 1:27:18
  Adam Leventhal: Hand on your Diet Coke with two hands so it doesn't suck.
• 1:27:21
  Bryan Cantrill: I do otherwise, I can't lift it. Otherwise, I can't lift it. I need I need both of them here. I need yeah. No.
• 1:27:27
  It's, but it is amazing. I don't know if you've ever seen, like, close-up magic, Adam, but it's it's it's so fun to watch, Robert. I mean, I mean, I feel like Robert, I'm sorry that we I feel like we we kinda trotted you out at every all hands. Like, no. We don't need to.
• 1:27:43
  It's fine. We don't need an offside activity. Robert can just just give him back
• 1:27:47
  Robert Bogart: a card.
• 1:27:47
  Adam Leventhal: Don't worry about the projections for q four. Let's look at another magic trick.
• 1:27:52
  Robert Bogart: Oh, for sure. How about the free card Monte?
• 1:27:54
  Bryan Cantrill: For sure. Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:27:57
  Robert Bogart: We
• 1:27:59
  Bryan Cantrill: and is remarkable, though. And it's just like and, you know, I I really again, I just admire the the determination and drive. Now you can, yeah, maybe I could. Maybe I could make these little doll hands hide a thimble or two. I'm not sure what they would hide.
• 1:28:12
  I'm just like, this is not a physical place to play.
• 1:28:14
  Robert Bogart: That's what
• 1:28:14
  Bryan Cantrill: I'm saying.
• 1:28:15
  Robert Bogart: Oh, yeah. So it's it's not that hard. You start small. You work your way up. You know?
• 1:28:20
  Bryan Cantrill: I I some places, you'd start small and stay small, I think. I think it might be unimpressive. But
• 1:28:28
  Robert Bogart: Yeah. Magic is is yeah, it's it's, you know, there's this saying that we have where, you know so, like, currently currently, I'm at Google. I you know, when I started here, I was working on device drivers for the sensors that are in the Pixel Buds. And so the we have, like, a touch sensor. We have infrared for, like, on head detection, and we have a IMU inside of both buds for spatial audio.
• 1:28:54
  So you can see, like, the pitch and the of your, you know, your head as you turn it. It is so go I'm going somewhere with this. But I you know, I would say I joined Google late in Google's in Google fifth three here, but and there've been a lot of different companies over it's been a lot of different companies over the years for sure.
• 1:29:14
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. I'm sure.
• 1:29:14
  Robert Bogart: But one of the things that I heard, you know, kind of an older Googler say was that they had this they used to have this thing, at least I don't know if they still do, but it was a have a a healthy disregard for the impossible. Like, you know, just because everybody says it can't be done, it's like, oh, you know, okay. Okay. I'll I'll take that I'll take that into advisement. I'll take that with a grain of salt, and I'm gonna go out and try anyway just to see.
• 1:29:36
  You know? And I kind of I've always sort of applied that that kind of mentality with anything you do just because you could be wrong. You it is possible that it actually can be done. You just everyone else said it couldn't, so you decide to believe him. I mean, that's how I ended up submitting a text.
• 1:29:55
  You know, I didn't think he was gonna answer me back. I just emailed him. Right? And, you know, like, not not to not to make you uncomfortable, Brian, so so everyone here knows. I I I I was actually a huge fan of Brian for years before I met him.
• 1:30:11
  I, you know, I felt like I got I got to know Brian through his comments in the kernel, you know, especially type graph. There's some some solid gems, vitriolic gems in there.
• 1:30:24
  Bryan Cantrill: Ring a time for that. Yeah. Seriously.
• 1:30:27
  Robert Bogart: Dtrace.org. You know? And then, of course, all the stuff that amazing, devilishly clever things that he left behind, in in the the the AKD in the analytics. Just amazing. So I thought, like, this is I mean, you know, I had to this is still true.
• 1:30:44
  I don't know if you remember our first conversation, Brian, on the phone. I I had said, like, you know, like, my entire career, you know, ever since I was a computer scientist, there there there really there were two two people I wanted to meet in my career. I mean, I could meet more, and that'd be great, but, like, at least these two. And I said, sadly, well, I can't meet one because he's dead. And that's that that was Dennis, but you were the other.
• 1:31:06
  You know? And I it's it's a little surreal even being on the phone with you because, you know, I'm not even known how much you've done and and how busy you are. You know, I'm just just a regular software engineer, but, you know, I said, why not talk to this guy? Maybe maybe he'll answer. You know?
• 1:31:25
  Maybe he will. Maybe he did. You know? So it's
• 1:31:27
  Bryan Cantrill: it's crazy. What I remember that conversation for if it's worth is you I mean and I do always get a little bit, like, fidgety when I mean, it's very, very flattering, but I don't kinda think I'm worthy of the August company. But then I you you begin to recite blocked comments from memory
• 1:31:45
  Robert Bogart: Oh, yeah.
• 1:31:46
  Bryan Cantrill: That I had forgotten, and I'm like, okay. This this is a person who spent a lot of time in code that I've written, and I'm I'm just very sorry just in general. I I always feel like that's
• 1:31:56
  Robert Bogart: the apology. Oh, no. Nothing. Oh, man. You inspired me.
• 1:32:02
  You made me excited about about software in a way that I hadn't been before. I I mean, I know I remember you telling me you kinda felt like I remember you saying, you know, I've never really kind of walked away from a project feeling like it wasn't a 100%. I've always felt like things were a 100% done. I remember you telling me you didn't feel like this was a 100% done. That's on your mind.
• 1:32:24
  Bryan Cantrill: Yes. Yes. That's that's definitely true. And I felt yes. I felt like I was leaving behind time bobs for people that happened to be you.
• 1:32:31
  So mean, don't you feel that way?
• 1:32:33
  Robert Bogart: I mean,
• 1:32:33
  Bryan Cantrill: I feel like we were not done.
• 1:32:34
  Adam Leventhal: About Fishworks? Absolutely.
• 1:32:35
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:32:36
  Adam Leventhal: Yeah. Yeah. Mean, even the name of it, like, had we had
• 1:32:52
  Bryan Cantrill: way. That thing that you're in, I also know that it needs to be rewritten and I'm really sorry.
• 1:32:56
  Robert Bogart: You talk about analytics? You talking about the
• 1:33:00
  Bryan Cantrill: Listen. The Yeah. I'll find was writing
• 1:33:01
  Robert Bogart: for sixteen but one second time quantum networks.
• 1:33:05
  Bryan Cantrill: Oh, okay. I knew I knew I knew the praise was
• 1:33:08
  Adam Leventhal: We we get to the airing of grievances.
• 1:33:10
  Bryan Cantrill: Exactly. I knew the I I knew the praise was suspicious. You know?
• 1:33:14
  Robert Bogart: They they are not. It's not.
• 1:33:16
  Bryan Cantrill: I I knew that this is okay. This has warmed me up for the actual, like, dagger. Okay, pal. Let's talk about API What
• 1:33:25
  Robert Bogart: was it that, I'm trying to remember. Somebody had made a had made a an interesting comment out of frustration at work the other day talking about some API that just made no sense and that it's not fair that the people that make these things don't have to use them. And Yeah. It totally reminded me of something that Brian had said, like and and it was like this long rant about, well, I'm trying to think it was I think it was the Doors API. Does that sound right?
• 1:33:55
  Mhmm. And it was something like it was something like, you know, but we wouldn't have these problems if the cloistered jackassisted made these things had to use them now and again.
• 1:34:08
  Bryan Cantrill: That is a quote from a comment. Yes. That I no longer have. That's on open source. That's from my k d.
• 1:34:12
  Wow. I mean Beautiful. This is the kind of thing where someone would be looking at this comment that says, like, cloistered jackasses, for example. Like, look. I know myself well enough to know that, like, if someone is upset about a comment that says the words cloistered jackasses, we all know who wrote it.
• 1:34:28
  I mean
• 1:34:29
  Robert Bogart: Actually actually, are you ready? I think I have it.
• 1:34:34
  Bryan Cantrill: Do you really? Do you have you have you got the full promise?
• 1:34:38
  Robert Bogart: Thread if if this thread is going to be serving RPC, we want to increase the stack size by the maximum RPC size plus the maximum RPC response size. This allows a maximum sized RPC and a maximum sized RPC response to both be copied onto the stack. Why must these be on the stack? A reasonable a reasonable person might ask. The reason is yet another ill conceived notion of door servers.
• 1:35:03
  It requires that both input to and output from a door server be on the thread on the serving thread's stack. There is no way for a door server to specify either an alternate input buffer or an alternate output buffer. That doors is busted is hardly breaking news. But in a new twist, it sends us on a collision course with API brokenness elsewhere. One might think that we could get the default stack size by doing a p thread adder emit followed by p thread adder get stack size.
• 1:35:32
  That, however, would assume that the cloistered jackasses who specify these APIs actually try to use them now and again. This assumption is, of course, false. And a p thread adder gets stack size on a newly initialized p thread adder t returns not the true stack size, but rather the cheerfully inept value of null. So we are instead forced to hard code our own slot value hoping that the value is a reasonable one from platform to platform. So thanks for nothing, POSIX, and go to hell doors.
• 1:36:02
  Bryan Cantrill: Bravo. I I feel I need my lawyer. I like my lawyer. My lawyer is advising me to have
• 1:36:10
  Adam Leventhal: This is, like, from a a eunuchs posix poetry slam.
• 1:36:16
  Robert Bogart: Oh, it is. It's very poetic. Right? Beautiful.
• 1:36:19
  Bryan Cantrill: It is. But I'm impressed that you
• 1:36:23
  Robert Bogart: got that. Oh, I love these. I so say that again.
• 1:36:28
  Bryan Cantrill: Glad that you got that. However you got it, I'm not gonna ask I'm not gonna ask any follow-up questions where you might need your own lawyer, but I'm glad that you got that whole that I'm glad you got that that block comment. I remember where I was when I wrote that block comment. I that is as you I mean, I'm surprised
• 1:36:41
  Robert Bogart: at it. It was Caltrain. You had to have been on, like, Cal, like, Caltrain, right, at a certain stop.
• 1:36:46
  Bryan Cantrill: You are so close. No. I would I was in Adam, you know where I was? I was in the office of Oh, no. Nice.
• 1:36:54
  Yeah. I mean, MetaWeb later bought by Google. Right? Wasn't it the Dan Mills thing? They were they were doing, like, a whole, like, semantic web thing when the semantic web seemed like that that seemed like chasing windmills.
• 1:37:08
  Yeah. And then but importantly, they had a ping pong table. And this is where
• 1:37:14
  Robert Bogart: It's true.
• 1:37:15
  Bryan Cantrill: Another odyssey begins.
• 1:37:17
  Robert Bogart: That is fish Wow.
• 1:37:19
  Adam Leventhal: It's true.
• 1:37:22
  Bryan Cantrill: And I wanna I wanna play Michael Phelps in Fishpong. That's how I wanna that that that that's that's the other thing I wanna get out there. I and if I if I were to beat Michael Phelps in Fishpong, I would never qualify it. I would just say I have beat Michael Phelps the end.
• 1:37:32
  Robert Bogart: Put on the list
• 1:37:32
  Adam Leventhal: for the, oxide IPO. I mean, I
• 1:37:35
  Bryan Cantrill: feel like an IPO. Yeah. No. That's it. Robert, it is so great.
• 1:37:40
  Thank you very much for joining us. This is great. I was so glad to see your reaction to my piece. I was glad that I wasn't at least totally off the mark.
• 1:37:47
  Robert Bogart: Bobby, you were spot on, man. It was eerie.
• 1:37:51
  Bryan Cantrill: And I just think it's also, like, it it's just a good reminder about how, like, this kind of period of life that you have of of coming into adulthood, there are you're learning so many different things in so many different ways. And I I and I know for, like, especially for non non Americans are very confused why we have athletics associated with our our institutions of higher education. But, you know, I I it despite all the NCAA's problems, I actually I I do believe that they that it's a it's a big part of your one's education. So there's a bunch of lessons that are not in the classroom that are being learned in the swimming pool or or on the diamond. Oh,
• 1:38:29
  Robert Bogart: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And and and just, like, one last one last sort of, like, story to corroborate what you're saying.
• 1:38:38
  And then, actually, this is this is another conversation that happened between you and I, which you may or may not remember, but, like, I had said, you know, one of the things I always loved about I about reading what whether it was your comments in the code or whether it was an evaluation for a, you know, a bug that you'd closed or root caused or mediated was like you just it was like it'd be something that was really insanely difficult. And and and it would all of sudden you just see, like, boom. You would just see this evaluation in there. And I said, never seen anybody just jump from a to, like, z without having to go through, like, b, c, d, e, f, g, and, you know, it was it was it just seemed brilliant. And and you had said, see, that's the thing.
• 1:39:22
  Like, what you didn't see was the number of dead ends that I went down first before I arrived there. You know, people see the finished product, and they're like, ah, this guy's a genius. And you probably are, but it doesn't change the fact that there was a lot that went into that to make it what it was, and and, you know, and people don't see that. And it's also the case, I think, you know, with sports. Definitely the case with with being an entrepreneur, man.
• 1:39:47
  You guys you know?
• 1:39:48
  Bryan Cantrill: And in spite of hand too. Like, in fact, I've actually called that slight of hand. I think it's actually I I tried not to do that. I I used to kinda,
• 1:39:56
  Robert Bogart: like Yeah.
• 1:39:57
  Bryan Cantrill: Like to do that when I was younger of, ta da. Now I'm like, no. No. That's actually that's actually not helpful because people don't see all these elements of the process, and they think like, I can't do that. It's like, no.
• 1:40:08
  No. Sorry. I'm sorry. Please excuse my my my showmanship. I actually went through all sorts of dead ends and just was just grinding through them.
• 1:40:16
  Robert Bogart: That's right. And and maybe you said that what it takes is freaking tenacity. And I think that's the case in, you know, in our line of work and also in, you know, in being an athlete just takes tenacity and conviction and grit.
• 1:40:30
  Bryan Cantrill: That's it. Yeah. That is it. Well, Robert, thank you again for joining us. This is great.
• 1:40:36
  Great to hear your voice. Great to reminisce. Great to hear my blog comments be read back to me in a dramatic fashion. I have to say, kinda like this. I feel like we can I don't know?
• 1:40:42
  Feels like it should be a regular feature. We can, walk on
• 1:40:45
  Robert Bogart: this.
• 1:40:46
  Adam Leventhal: Yeah. We'll we'll
• 1:40:47
  Robert Bogart: we'll see. That's a good idea. I don't know if I if I'm Brian, I don't know if I'm tipping my hand too much when I say this, but there may be more where that came from. And then the non and I'm not even talking about the one I have memorized, which is the one where you go off on, glue hopping pro coating teenagers. You remember that?
• 1:41:03
  I don't know you remember that when I was a kid.
• 1:41:04
  Bryan Cantrill: Oh, god.
• 1:41:05
  Robert Bogart: I don't know. Okay. Good. Yeah. Okay.
• 1:41:07
  What is it? Indeed, it reminds one of a a reeking metropolis like Lagos or Nairobi having long since outgrown its original design such as there was one. It's now crippled and teeming, sewage, and vigilantes run amok. And yet the masses still come, not because it's utopia. No.
• 1:41:24
  They come because this dystopia is marginally better than the only alternatives they know. And in an attempt to prevent roaming gangs of blue huffing, pearl coding teenager from staging raids on my comments above, while I acknowledge that there is a way to do what I'm saying, there's also a way to live like a king in Lagos or Nairobi, but that doesn't make them tourist destinations.
• 1:41:46
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. And by
• 1:41:47
  Robert Bogart: the way, that that actually is something I just never forgot. That was just
• 1:41:50
  Bryan Cantrill: That is from memory. That is that is, yeah. That's, that may be a comment in some Perl code, actually. I believe that is that that is that has to do with the way that Perl deals with exceptions, I believe is what I'm
• 1:42:04
  Robert Bogart: commenting on. That's the one. Yep. Yep. Was very good.
• 1:42:10
  Bryan Cantrill: Well, that was brilliant. I mean, not. But, I mean, my part of that wasn't brilliant. Your part of that was brilliant. My part of that was was just very frustrated, I think.
• 1:42:17
  Robert Bogart: Hopefully, you guys don't think I'm crazy. Now you might. That's okay.
• 1:42:22
  Bryan Cantrill: Well, thank you again. It again, this has been really terrific. It's been really fun to hear about. I mean, you're really extraordinary Cinderella story, and it's inspirational in terms of that that the resilience that we can all tap. And, I'm gonna go try to do some sleight of hand magic.
• 1:42:38
  I'm gonna see who put these doll hands to work is what I gotta say. Seriously.
• 1:42:42
  Robert Bogart: Well, if you ever do decide, I would recommend Card College volume one. That's going to be easy.
• 1:42:49
  Bryan Cantrill: Card college volume one, books in the box five.
• 1:42:53
  Robert Bogart: Alright. On it. That's right.
• 1:42:57
  Bryan Cantrill: Awesome. Thank you again, Robert. Thank everyone as always.
• 1:43:01
  Robert Bogart: Pleasure. Sometime sometime I'll, come up and perform for you guys when you're, having an event or something. That would be really cool. Oh, yes. Yes.
• 1:43:09
  Yes.
• 1:43:09
  Bryan Cantrill: Oh, we need to do like an oxide friends event up here. We can have Robert perform.
• 1:43:11
  Adam Leventhal: That sounds great.
• 1:43:12
  Bryan Cantrill: Yeah. Will
• 1:43:13
  Robert Bogart: I'll do it. Awesome.
• 1:43:15
  Bryan Cantrill: Alright. Thanks, everyone. Talk to you next time.