The Top-Ranked Poker Player And Why She Gave It Up

Cate Hall was once the highest-ranked female poker player in the world. But that’s not the most incredible part of her story.

Cate was a Supreme Court lawyer before walking away to play poker full-time. Within a year, she had become the highest-ranked female player in the world. Since then, she’s led a multibillion-dollar science foundation, co-founded a pandemic medicine company, and built a Substack that has become a cult favorite for its unflinching writing on agency, addiction, and what it takes to reinvent yourself.

Join us for a searching conversation about agency and the invisible rules most people mistake for laws, what poker taught her about risk and pressure, how to tell when you’re being lied to, the acid trips that reordered her sense of self, finding God in unexpected places, and what she thinks happens when we die.

Cate’s new book, You Can Just Do Things, out July 21st. It’s a prison-break manual for anyone who has been quietly waiting for permission to live the life they actually want.

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Chai is the Founder of The Essential, an ethical commerce company funded by the leading lights of Silicon Valley.

Chai served on the board of UNICEF, and has advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Especially because it's like a very like young male kind of industry, you know. And I just kind of like deeply enjoyed the feeling of owning young men in pot.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

My guest today is Kate Hall. Kate is formerly the highest ranked female poker player in the world. That's a title that she, for good reason, feels very ambivalent about, but we'll talk about that more in the episode. The reason I wanted to have Kate on is because, like a lot of founders, I'm obsessed with the idea of risk. Not only do I take a lot of risk, I think that most people have a broken relationship with the concept of risk. I think most people see risk as something to be avoided, something to be removed from their lives if possible. But like a lot of founders, I think of risk as a currency, something you can use to get the things you want in life. And there's truly no better example of this than Kate. Kate was a lawyer in Washington, D.C. on the Supreme Court track. When one day, after doing a trip acid, she decided that was it. She didn't want to do that anymore. She went on to become one of the highest-ranked poker players in the world, to run a billion-dollar biotech company and now running an industry-known AI lab. She did all of this because Kate sees the world as malleable. Kate sees risk as something she can use to her benefit. I found this conversation to be so interesting and weird in the best possible way. I could not be more proud to present this to you. With that, I bring you Kate Hall. Kate, thank you so much for being on the podcast. One thing in sort of preparing for this that I kept thinking about that I wanted to start off with was your relationship with risk. Uh-huh. I've seen you write really beautifully about it. I've seen you, it's it obviously shows up over and over through the story of your career. Um maybe let's start here. Like what was your, what was your relationship with risk growing up? Like what was what were you taught as a kid about risk? What uh how do you remember yourself as a child of dealing with risk? Yeah, tell me about that.

SPEAKER_03 2:17

It's interesting because I definitely have had these really distinct life phases with respect to risk. So um I went to law school, which is about the least risk-averse thing you can do. And I think my whole attitude toward achievement and like picking a path through life until I was, I don't know, pretty old, like in my 30s, was um I don't play games, I can't win. I just wanted to win at things. And if I sensed that I couldn't be like national class at something, I didn't even want to try. It's so weird now to talk about. Um and I think I just like I realized around the age of 31, 32 that that had put me on a path where I was able to be really successful in a linear fashion. But I also just didn't care at all what I was working on. So I didn't like being a lawyer. I'd somehow spent like five years as a lawyer and three years before that in law school doing law, never noticing. I didn't actually enjoy it.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

Um, and so then I went in the polar opposite direction, left my law firm job shortly before I was going to make partner and became a professional gambler. And that's that was like phase two uh of my life, which I think I'm still in, um, which is like taking on a lot more risk than I was comfortable with when I was younger, and also than like most people I think that I see in like my peer demographic um typically do.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Yeah. Well, if we backtrack a little bit to that kind of early part of your life, um, you know, when you still wanted to be a lawyer, were like actively gunning for that. What uh what do you think was drive you kind of just touched on it there, but was it like purely just being competitive and like some level of ego, or was there, do you have any like high-minded ideas of what it meant to be a lawyer in America? Like what were you what were you trying to do?

SPEAKER_03 4:12

At some point, I had none. Really? I really, really didn't. I think I was motivated by a couple of things. So there is one, that like success narrative of um, I just want to do something that I can win at. I remember having this like deep conviction that seemed weird to me even at the time, but not to the point where I would really question it deeply. That like if I couldn't be the best at something, it really wasn't even worth living. Like that was all that I was going for. Um, and I think that that in turn probably had an origin in fear. Um, growing up in Southern Arizona, um, a family that had a lot of money. I had this sense that like I had a lot of potential, but that I was in danger of the world passing me by. And, you know, when I was when I was on the track to going to law school, I was just so focused on getting into a good school and going there because it was like my ticket out of Arizona. Um, and I think like if you'd sat me down when I was like 20 years old and said, this really isn't a path to being happy, I would have said, I don't care. Like, I just need to get out of here. I'll figure stuff out later. Um, but it is it was mostly fear-based reasoning and success orientation, and not like, here are all the things you can do with a law degree. Maybe I'll enjoy one of them. It was just like optionality, success. That was all I was optimizing for.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Well, I I think what's amazing to me about that is like how many people never break out of it. Like you actually broke free from that. I mean, I can tell you there's kind of nothing I can relate to harder than struggling to struggle at things. Like when I say that people think I'm saying I'm awesome at everything, I'm saying no, no, no, I'm good at like two fucking things and I just drop everything else. Um, I mean, I'm trying to get better at it and getting older, but did you play any sports or music as a kid?

SPEAKER_03 6:05

I played um softball poorly. Violin is a good example where I um I was an alternate to play a concert at Carnegie Hall when I was in in high school, and I was like, Well, I've peaked. I retire.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

That's interesting to me because I find that like normally when people like come from when they place board to play an instrument when they're younger, they usually get better and more comfortable with sucking at something. Because you have to like to play violin well, you have to first play it really badly, right? But somehow, like that didn't well, maybe maybe it was just like a just of like a virtuoso as a true prodigy from the beginning or something.

SPEAKER_03 6:45

Um, I think I was just yeah, with with music, I was just willing to work harder than anybody else. And that propelled me for a while. Um with sports, I feel like I was decently athletic as a kid, but I got so in my head about my my weaknesses that I just like could not perform under pressure at all.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Yeah. No, I you're you're you're striking a cord room maintenance. Um But do you do you think that like if you had in your early life, do you think if you had more of like a semblance of uh, you know, not reading too much into what you said, but like would that have if you had more of a semblance of like security, whether financial or just like overall, then maybe you would have done something riskier. Maybe you wouldn't have gone for this kind of like cookie cutter or not more traditionally successful path of being a lawyer.

SPEAKER_03 7:36

Um, I I do think that. And I think that's like uh I always hesitate to recommend poverty or struggle or anything negative to people as like a a way of life because um there's a lot of survivorship bias. Um, I think that uh having a really clear path where you can be successful is for many people an impediment to figuring out a life that is deeply satisfying for them. Um, I know that was the position that I found myself in when I was a young practicing lawyer. I think it was um incredibly common, certainly for people at my law school and also for successful people that I knew from elsewhere to become consultants, finance people, lawyers, do these like very well-defined career tracks because without incurring a lot of risk, you could reliably get not rich, rich, but like healthy, comfortable, you know? And it's like that is something that you have to give up if you're going to do something that is higher risk.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Like, have you heard of this? Um, it was popular in like Instagram reels a moment ago about um this Bermuda Triangle of Talent, people can talk about, but it's basically um this like unholy concoction or unholy like alliance between like Ivy League schools, just really nice schools, which of course I know you went to an Ivy League school, and then like big finance and then big tech of just like we take the hardest working, the most talented, the smartest people in America, and we just like like canon fodder, feed them into some of the least creative, least interesting fields, right? And it's because it's preying entirely on like it's an entire hiring model based around like uh preying on people's aversion to risk. Yeah. Because uh, you know, McKinsey can come around and give you a title that immediately lets you tell everybody around you that you have made it to some level. And it's such a good hack that these companies have found. But anyway, totally. I'll I'll get off my soapbox. I think the part I'm curious about. So you actually did make it, right? Like you go, um, you go to Yale, you become a lawyer, you're on the Supreme Court track, right? Like you have, you make it as a lawyer. What is the sort of the earliest moment that you start to think, yeah, I'm not this isn't it? Like I'm not gonna do this. And uh also um if it feeds into a nestly, like what uh what role did drugs play in all of that?

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Like that kind of early realization.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

It's funny because I was thinking, should I talk about drugs? Um yeah, so I think I think one thing that was sort of formative was just meeting my first husband, um, who had a more open approach to life than people that I'd met before, sort of like questioning um why people did what they did, whether there were other paths. Um I think though that that things didn't really open up for me until I did acid for the first time, um, which I I tried. Uh I I used it at first to successfully treat this paralyzing fear of death that I had. Um, at some point I read a story in the New York Times about people who'd been given uh LSD as like part of an end-of-life sort of preparation of or course of psychological treatment, um, and how transformative that had been for a lot of people. So as somebody who was totally obsessed with death and fear of dying in my like late 20s, I sought this out um in order to see if it would bring me some relief. And it did. Um, and it also allowed me to step back from other aspects of my life that I think I was more immersed in and happier to be immersed in. Um, and my career was chief on that list. Um, it was the first time where I really sat back and realized, oh, I don't, I don't like what I'm doing. I don't understand why I'm doing it. Like when I look around at the people that I work with, I don't really want their lives. Um, and it's it's interesting to think about if I never had that initial impetus, like, how long would it have taken me to extract myself from that? Would I have been able to? Um, because the path really was just very clear. I probably would have made partner in a year and then I would have been making so much money.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

And yeah, you know, um you would have been in the Bermuda Triangle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:11

Yeah, yeah. I might have gone stuck.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

It seems when I hear you uh describing I heard you in a podcast when preparing for this talk about this too. Like it seems like not the trip itself, but after that, that it was almost like a zooming out. There are all these things that had sort of been out of focus for you, maybe or you know, a little blurry in your life, and it seems like they all kind of all of a sudden, you know, you're the focus sort of widened a bit. Is that like a fair way to think about it?

SPEAKER_03 12:35

Yeah, I think so. I think it's like um I had all these constraints on my life, or it seemed like I did. A bunch of like stuff that I didn't even recognize were like choices that I was making. So like just the fact of being um being a lawyer, needing to be in a profession where I was making a lot of money to support a particular lifestyle, you know, owning a home, all of these things. Um and it was really hard for me to just think, oh, what if I don't have to do any of this? What if I just don't make that much money and I sell my house and you know, life blows up. Like, why would that be so bad? I think I I did not think to ask myself that question um until I did. And then it was just like I don't know, it's kind of hard to describe what that psychological process is like where all of a sudden you have way more variables in your life than you have have thought that you do. It's incredibly liberating, also kind of disorienting. Um highly recommend it.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Um so you go through, I want to talk more about the drug experience, but I want to kind of keep that for later in the uh in the show. Um you go through this, right? Uh, you have this like really big transformative experience. I'm curious about how the thing that comes out of it is poker, right? Like how I guess two-word question. Why poker?

SPEAKER_03 14:05

I love that. Okay. Um, I think I think it was just opportunistic to some extent. Like it could have been something else. What happened was at the same time that I was starting to really question whether I wanted to be on the life track that I was on, um, poker became legal or gambling became legal in the area of the country where I lived. So that was DC at the time. Um, first Maryland, and then I think DC proper, though I could have that wrong, um, legalized poker. I just kind of had it in my head from like having played a few times that it could be really fun and I could be good at it if I if I got into it. So I started playing casually on the weekends, and it felt like it was such a great outlet for a certain type of like creative but competitive energy that I had that didn't have a lot of other outlets. Um, and I just kind of fell in love with it. I I started playing more and more, started skipping work to play. Um, and then it just so happened that I got to the end of my time in law and thought, I can't, I can't keep doing this. I really don't want to. Um, and poker was there, and I thought, I can just do this for like a year or two, had some money in the bank, like it could only go so wrong. And I figured, I figured I would probably just like play for a bit, figure out what my next move was gonna be, presumably something outside of law. And then that would be that.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Okay, I'm curious about uh one part in particular, what you were saying. Um, you said that you had a feeling that you might be good at it. And obviously, as we will uh so at the beginning of this podcast, I will have done like a full intro, everybody will know all the incredible things about you, but you obviously were very good at it. What was before you really started to do it professionally, what did you kind of see in yourself that made you think, I think I could be a good poker player?

SPEAKER_03 16:05

It's interesting to like look back on it now and realize that the things that really attracted me to it are aspects of my personality that I no longer fully endorse.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Are interesting.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

Yeah. So I think like what I what first hooked me on poker was I loved the feeling of out-competing people. Like I loved the feeling of playing better than somebody in a hand and kind of like breaking their their model or maybe embarrassing them a little bit. Um, especially because it's like a very like young male kind of industry, you know. And I just kind of like deeply enjoyed the feeling of owning young men in path. Um, and I think that that that was like what made it so emotionally salient for me before I totally fell in love with like the game mechanics and understanding how to play well. Um and then I think I just, for whatever reason, got super obsessed with live raids. And that really became like the thing that differentiated me in Joker. Um, I I have all sorts of theories about why this is, but I just realized um relatively quickly that I was sort of keyed into certain channels of nonverbal communication that most people were not recognizing. Yeah and they were leaking a lot of information on those channels. And yeah, I think I think it's probably like has to do with being a like bullied autistic kid when I was young and being hyper aware of physical signals that people were giving off. But it's interesting because for a long time I thought people were either lying about not being able to see the things that I was talking about, or that they just weren't trying. And there's only like years into my poker career that I realized, oh, maybe they just actually can't see it.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Kate, I have about 7,000 questions for you about library eating. Um, as I imagine every person that asked you does. But I want to I was gonna get into that in a second. I I do want to, of course, acknowledge that this was uh the correct instinct because you go on, you become at some point, you're ranked the highest ranked female poker player in the world, right? Um my first question to you is like, how do you feel about that term?

SPEAKER_03 18:31

Is that is that feel like a backhanded compliment? Yeah. I have really mixed feelings about it, and I've kind of gone back and forth over time about it, the way that I feel about it. Um at the time that I like won the award for top female in in the world from the organization that does the rankings, I had a very strong viewpoint that it was bullshit, that it was a consolation prize, that um it it was sort of patronizing to have a separate category for women. Um and I don't know how I feel about it now, but but to give you a little bit of an example of why I varied over time, one, I think there are just like instrumental reasons for having the the prize that I are like the separate category that made more sense to me over time. Like it's about encouraging women to play, it's about like visibility, et cetera. I give those a little bit of credit. Um another thing that really influenced the way that I think about this though was being in my late 30s and starting uh testosterone replacement therapy and seeing how that affected me. Um that had a whole host of effects on me, cognitively, physically, everything. Um, but it definitely made me less risk averse. And that has introduced some doubt in me about this long-held belief that I had, which is there's no relevant difference between men and women.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

So it's like actually, maybe hormonal differences do matter. Um, but I'm kind of like, I think the jury is out on that because there's probably a difference between being low in testosterone, like clinically, which I was, and going up to normal, and being a normal woman and going up to a normal man. I don't know how that shakes out. I just kind of have to shrug about it.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

So I've been thinking about this term all week. And and uh, you know, a thing that happens in my life now is everybody asks me who I'm talking to that week. And I tell them, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm talking to Kate Hall. Uh, she was the number one ranked female poker player. And every woman in my life has been like, why is that even a category? Like it's every single woman in my life said that. And I um I've been thinking about this as well, of course, much, much less than you've spent uh time you've spent thinking about it. One part of this that I'm really curious about is how it intersects with the idea of live reading, right? Live reading for people like me who aren't professional poker players, of course, is tell me if I'm butchering this, but it's like it's reading physical sort of body language, right? Not just the math of the game, but also reading that. Um I'm curious about this, and I'm gonna try to do this without stereotyping men or women too much. But it does to me, leaning into this idea of like what uh if there is a difference, like uh what are the the genders, what are the sexes better at? It feels like a classic thing that dudes would be really bad at. To be like to like read these cues. To me, like it's one of the defining traits of being a man in America is both being bad at it and being allowed by society to be horrible at it. Yeah. Right. And it feels, to me, it doesn't feel like a coincidence that you were I hate to repeat it for the 17th fucking time, but you were the number one ranked female player in the world and you were also, you know, one of the best live readers out there. Like to me, does that tell me if I'm like Like off about this.

SPEAKER_03 22:01

I I don't know is the real answer. So I I had like a little click. Um three of us really studied this together and were just totally obsessed with libraries in a way that I don't think other people were, is me and and two men. Um I think that like they were both also autistic and autistic at a young age and may have had like developmentally a similar process to me. And so I'm a little bit hesitant about like drawing, drawing conclusions. Um I think it's like a low enough sample size across poker that it's just really hard to know. I do think that like I do think if you really wanted to be stereotyping about it, I think there's something to that distinction between men and women. I also think um there is something uh highly systematized and methodical about the way more men think than women that lends itself to this type of thinking, by which I mean like um what you are doing when you're picking up live reads on somebody is not you're not getting stuff that immediately. It's not just like intuition that guides it. You are basically like building up a database in your head of all of the things they did and how that correlates to different things that they were doing with their body. And so there's like the the data collection, which I think stereotypically women would be better at. And then there's the like data analysis. I feel weird even saying this because I don't really believe it, but but if you were going to stereotype, uh oh, uh you don't believe the stereotyping? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I think that that it would sort of like break down and have a mix of skills that are uh stereotypically associated with each gender.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Yeah. I think um uh I think the the the point that I was like sort of arriving at when I was thinking about it was less about like ability, uh-huh, uh, but more about just like what is societally encouraged, right? And I felt like I feel like as uh a man, very often you're encouraged to not take other people's like micro expressions into account. Uh-huh. You're encouraged to barrel right through it, and you're supposed to be this like swashbuckling, like agent of risk and like also simultaneously rain man just doing the math. Like, you know, I think that's that was like an interesting component of it to me. But I want to stick with the idea of live reading for a second, uh, because I'm, as I was saying, endlessly fascinated by this. Um let's let's if you could give me this is maybe this is a good way to do it, is if you could give me like a an example that comes to mind, right? Whatever the first one was that came to mind when we started talking of like a moment where another player did a thing and you kind of knew from all this database that you had built up, like that it gave you piece of information that if you weren't librarie and you would not have gotten.

SPEAKER_03 24:54

Yeah. Um there are probably a lot of good stories I could tell about this.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

We'll take all of them, but as many as you'll give us.

SPEAKER_03 25:02

Um so I think a an example comes from there. I I got baited into slash baited somebody else into uh playing this big battle of the sexes.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Um the coolest thing in your biography, by the way. It's in a very cool biography, it's the coolest thing.

SPEAKER_03 25:27

It was it was a real event in poker, and um thankfully it had a happy ending from my perspective to I did not acquit myself um in terms of my behavior in that situation, and I just was kind of tortured by it the whole time leading up to it and during it. Um however, the person that I was playing against was somebody that I thought had like so many very clear categories of towels um that I could have played the match almost without looking at my cards and would have known at any stage, you know, how strong his hand was. Um and I haven't I haven't talked too much about that because like I don't want it to sound like I'm gloating. He was very gracious in the aftermath of the the match. He was or wasn't? He was. Okay. He was. Um, but it was it was pretty incredible. Like there were there were actually moves that I made because the audience could see my whole cards, and um there were like professional commentators um analyzing our play. I'm I'm a little bit embarrassed to say, like there were times when I did things that I knew um were wrong based on what I knew about his cards that were more like the standard play, just because I didn't want to look like I was a total idiot. Yeah. Because like if I'd if I just folded in the spots, in a hundred percent of the spots where I knew that I should fold based on his body language, um, people would have been like, what what what the hell are you doing? You know? And it was gonna kind of like affect the way that people saw me for a long time. In retrospect, I wish I had just done that because like I would feel more complete about the experience. Yeah, but it it was just really wild.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Um can we talk about like how this match came to be? So uh for people that don't already know, right? Um, I'm sure some poker players will watch this, but uh there's gonna be a lot of founders. But uh as I understand, I'm gonna do a horrible job of like repeating the incident, but it's he basically should we even name it? Let's not even name him. You know, why even do that, right? Um, this guy, very like East Coast poker player, very like brash, kind of New York style, right? I don't know if he's actually from New York, starts talking mad shit, right? And is calling you all kinds of horrible things and like sort of like saying terrible things about you on Twitter. Um, you both like you start responding, and it's nobody's into I feel like I actually had that written down on my notes, so it felt very much like you know, Billy Jean King like battle of the sexes, right? Yeah. Because it was his energy was the same as whoever the other fucking person was that played Billy Jean King. And like, and you go in, and the even the outcome is very Billy Jean King, right? Which is like, and you swapped him. It was like supposed to be the rematch. Is it called the match? What's it a poker game?

SPEAKER_03 28:35

Um, yeah, people don't usually play like the equivalent of sets in poker, so I don't think there's a term for it, but just like best of three games.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Best of three and you went two and oh, right? Um, I guess, and I heard you say at one point that leading up to that was your lowest point in poker. That's great. I found that very interesting. Why was that? Like, why was this whole back and forth and then having to kind of go in and do that? I mean, I can think of some reasons, but I want to hear from you. Like, why was that your lowest point?

SPEAKER_03 28:59

Yeah. So I think um the the slightly larger context for the whole exchange was I was playing in a really big tournament. Um, like one of the best tournaments of the year, big buy-in. I got into a hand where I misplayed the hand, and I misplayed it fairly badly and knew that at the time. Um, it was something that like was covered quite a bit in the poker media at the time. Um just like live blogs, it was you know, videoed all of the things. Um and uh I I think that like this is somebody who had already been coming after me for probably a year, um, constantly taking every opportunity to assert the position that women can't play poker, that I was well known simply because I was an attractive woman and I would be totally irrelevant otherwise. Um and he just went to town on me over this mistake, which is fine. I did, I played the hand very badly. And that's like you open yourself up to criticism when you do that. Um, but I was just not having it that day because I was already so like emotionally riled up, you know. And I just started pushing his buttons. Um, it was somebody who clearly had like an anger management problem.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:33

I knew that he had all this sensitivity around gender dynamics. So I just started pushing the button of like, why don't we play heads up? Let's play heads up right now. Um, if you're a real man, you'll play heads up, you know.

SPEAKER_02 30:44

Did you say that?

SPEAKER_03 30:44

I think I said stuff like that. Yeah, I definitely like directly challenged his masculinity.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:49

And I kind of like baited him into the match. Um, we weren't able to arrange to play right away. So then it like snowballed really quickly into this thing where like uh Poker Night in America, which was a show at the time, was going to televise it and we were gonna have a recording. And it ended up being a thing where it was like three months between then and the time that it was recorded. And in between the two, I had like like the adrenaline of that moment wore off pretty quickly. And it was like waking up the day after a binge or something where I was just like, oh God, what did I do? And and then it was like, now I am responsible. It was right after the 2016 election. It was like now we're having a battle of the sexes in the in the wake of Trump versus Hillary. Um, I am uh people are betting a ton of money on it because they're sort of like emotionally You know what the betting odds were against you or for you? I there wasn't like an official betting exchange. So hard to say. I think it was all like um I'm guessing it was about even because uh people were probably betting based on emotions and sort of like cashed beliefs rather than thinking through who was likely to win. Um it was just like a lot of emotional pressure. Uh and that was sort of sustained through the match. I people like all these people that I liked were messaging me, like, oh, I bought so much money on you. I'm like, Oh my god, why didn't you do that?

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

Also, why are you telling me? They was like, they're trying to be supportive, and I'm like, oh God. Um, and so I was just like a wreck leading up to it. Like, yeah, like it already felt like the world was coming apart a little bit. And I was like, it is just it is only fitting that I should lose this match in a way that is really embarrassing. Um, and I was just dreaded it, and I'm so glad that I didn't lose, but uh it it really wasn't worth it emotionally.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Yeah, it just seems I think the it seems unfair on so many levels too, right? But one thing in particular is like you had to carry so much more weight on your shoulders walking up to that table than this fucking guy did, right? Like for him, it was just whatever it would have just satisfied his like awful worldview. But for you, you had to like come in and vindicate half the fucking population. It just seems so like it just purely at a poker level, it seems really shitty to have to like do that, you know? So yeah, I'm sorry you went through it, but um boy, did you kick ass.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Like that was fucking awesome.

SPEAKER_03 33:27

Yeah, I think so. Um I will say, like, I put myself in the position, you know, like you did choose to be there.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

Yeah. Um okay, I'm this is what I'm really curious about. This is the part that I've been like, in addition to live reading, that I've been like wanting to talk to you about the most, is the the many sensations, the many sort of feelings that you go through. And please be as like visceral with this as you want to be. Just talk me through like a few of the emotions that you feel sitting at a poker table. A few of the strongest emotions. And like even like physically, how that feels. Like, do you feel it in your chest? Do you feel it in your stomach? Do you feel in your head? Like, I'm just so curious about like, yeah, maybe let's say the top two or three emotions that come to mind when you think about being at a poker table. Warm Intro is brought to you by Wii Funder. WeFunder created this thing called the community round that lets you raise money directly from your community. So instead of going to VCs and rich people, angel investors, you can go straight to your friends and your family and your customers. And, you know, this is not a traditional ad read. I used Wii Funder for my company three times. We ran three rounds on Wii Fund, we raised over a million dollars. And I found that it completely changed how everybody felt about our business. Our customers all of a sudden didn't feel like they were just customers. They felt like they were owners in the business. They shopped with us more, they told their friends about us. My team felt like what we were doing was important because our community had shown up to invest in us. I tell every founder I can find to go raise a WeFund around. Especially for companies that care about community, there is nothing greater you can do than letting that community invest. Go to WeFunder.com slash join. Check it out.

SPEAKER_03 35:18

Um, it's funny, my my answer today is very different from my answer a few years ago when I was playing seriously. So, like um a few years ago, it would be by a few I mean like seven. Um, it would probably be just like excitement, um happiness to like be fully immersed in something. Um, definitely I would get nervous. Like every time I played in a tournament, even if it was for stakes that just didn't matter, I would always be really nervous at the start of it, which I think is just funny. Um, I remember like sitting down at the smallest events of the summer as a professional player and like trying to control my my shaking. And I'm like, what the hell is going on? I'm the only professional at this table. Um, but I think I just like I really loved it and I wanted to do well. And so that was that was kind of nice actually. Um I have started playing poker again very occasionally and very recreationally. Like I've I've gone out and played a couple of tournaments. Um, I've played in a couple of like uh home games recently, small ones. Um, and I have totally fallen in love with poker again in a totally different way than I used to experience it. Where now it just seems like because I don't have all of this ego wrapped up in it and all of this like performance anxiety, it feels to me just like this bizarre environment where all of the normal ego defenses that people usually use are like people are separated from their normal sources of comfort in a way where just like the the pathos of humanity is really exposed. And it's it makes me love people so much to watch people playing. Because it's just like all of all of the like patterning that we get from childhood, all of our ego defenses, they all sort of like come out in this really obvious way in this situation that is forced um and where there's a lot of conflict and adrenaline. And it's just there's something like that makes me deeply happy about it. Yeah. It's just like seeing people in a very vulnerable state in a weird way. Um, and I've I've been totally fascinated recently playing with the way that it makes me feel.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

Oh my god. See, this is this is why I wanted to talk to you about this so badly. Um, it does feel like it hearing you describe it, it's like, yeah, you um you're going through this ever the range of emotions you just mentioned, but also you're trying to like keep a straight face. And that, like, what a beautiful microcosm for life, right? Like fucking everything's falling apart, and or it's not, and like somebody is like talking shit, like having to deal with all of that, the social pressure, the financial pressure, and then having to just smile right through or whatever, you know, maintain a straight face. Um, I'm curious about this one sort of aspect of it. It's been very interesting uh doing this podcast for me because I've, you know, it was 22 or something, an episode number. And I've now had this experience of sitting down and watching, I mean, 30, 35 hours of me in conversation. Um, and sometimes re-watching it. So I watch at least a hundred hours of myself on camera. And I picked up a billion little things about how other people talk, how I talk. Like I one thing I was noticing is total sidebar. Um listening to you on a podcast, I was like, oh, she really was a lawyer because um you did this thing that I'm no one in the history of this podcast has ever been able to do, which is when somebody says, I have three things to say about that. They have not in 35 fucking hours of it have they gotten to point three. They get distracted by point number two. I'm kind of doing that right now.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

It but you like you're so tight with it, you're like, yeah, I have three things to say, and you will say the three things.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

But anyways, I've had this like experience now of listening to myself talk, and it has revealed a lot to me about myself. Yeah. The moments that make me uncomfortable, the things, the places where I feel like I have some unnatural ability, the places where I know I'm weak conversation. It's it's and it's beyond just conversations, like tells me a lot. So now, turning this on you, like you've watched a lot of game tape of yourself, presumably playing, right? In this, like literally putting yourself in like an emotional microscope, right? What is what did the experience of playing poker professionally, what did it sort of reveal to you about yourself? I mean, maybe specifically your strengths and your weaknesses. Like yeah, watching all this game tape, like how do you has your understanding of yourself changed just just from the experience of poker?

SPEAKER_03 40:01

I think the the answer is yes, but let me just let me just have a second with a question. Yeah. So I think um there's this kind of funny, almost paradoxical effect where poker um made me realize that I could be comfortable in a lot of situations that I wouldn't have thought I could be comfortable in. Um some of that is social, some of it is just playing for lots of money. Um and like at the time that I started, I never would have expected to be comfortable like sitting and playing for a bunch of money on television. Um and so there's like a certain level of adaptability that I have that I think it revealed to me. Um at the same time, I think it revealed some limitations in in that respect. Um and looking back on my poker career now, with the benefit of hindsight, I just realized it might sound funny to say, but I did not have the capacity to be truly world class at poker. I was never going to be, like, regardless of what the rankings said, because there's a lot of variance in that, I was never gonna be in the top 50 players in the world from an actual skill perspective. And that's because I was missing some essential degree of not caring about the results. Like you need to be able to play really big spots in a way where you are able to do the correct thing without regard to the emotional consequences of winning or losing in that particular spot. That's just how you maximize expected value over time. And I always cared too much about losing. I was always too, too resistant to like take the that final decisive step.

SPEAKER_02 41:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:55

Um, and when I think about the question of like, is there a difference between men and women? Is there a hormonal difference that's relevant? That's the the question that I go to is like, um, is there some marginal element of comfort with risk taking and loss that I just was not going to be able to get to? Um there have been like world-class female poker players, so I don't want to overgeneralize. Um, but it is, it is interesting. Cause I think like at the time I really had it in my head that I could be one of the the great players, you know?

SPEAKER_01 42:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:32

And looking back on them, like, nope, I was missing something.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

That is, I did not expect you to say that. Um, the other thing I've I'm curious about, maybe the other side of this, right? One is okay, well, what did playing poker reveal to you about yourself? The other side to me that's interesting is how did playing poker change who you are? One thing I I heard you talk about was the difference between deterministic and probabilistic thinkers, right? Um tell me a little bit about that. Like, tell me about how, you know, the experience of playing poker professionally for all these years changed your kind of core worldview. Where because like, I mean, spoiler alert, you've had a very successful post-poker career. Um Yeah, what did it, what did it sort of teach you about maybe the world or in what what ways did it sort of change your worldview?

SPEAKER_03 43:16

Um, I think it just showed me that the world and my life are a lot more malleable than I believed at first. Um I think getting into a new domain and succeeding quickly at it really increases your confidence and your ability to change paths. And so that confidence has served me well in switching from that to like biotech to philanthropy. It's kind of like a similar experience in certain ways, even though the subject matter is totally different. Um, each time it's about like immersing yourself in something that is totally foreign, that where you feel like really out of your depth, and you just have to kind of try. Like, I will be able to figure this out in time. And I think, like, if that first transition to poker had gone totally differently and I just flunked out of poker, I might feel differently with these additional steps that I've taken. I'm not sure. Um I think it also was really good for me in um learning how to interact with other people. Um I was exposed to a lot more people. I was put in situations where I had to interact with people that I normally wouldn't. Um and that just gave me like a fluidity and a sort of confidence in interacting with people that I never had growing up. And that's like another degree of optionality that I feel like it provided to me.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

Yeah, I I can really relate to that. Um, I think, you know, I think a lot about to me, like a couple of sort of seminal experiences in my life were moving to America as a teenager uh alone. And then uh, you know, when I was a little bit older, starting a company uh that ended up being good enough that it sort of defined the rest of my career since then. And sometimes people ask me, like, oh, if you could go back and talk to yourself at 17 or talk to yourself at 22, what would you what advice would you give? I'm always like, advice. I would like to thank that kid and like hug him and be like, thanks, man, because you're you're doing a lot for us right now. Do you feel like a sense of gratitude towards like either yourself in those sort of lawyer years or in the in the poker player years? Do you feel a sense of like, yeah, that version of Kate did something that I'm not even sure I could do now? And I'm grateful that she did it. Like, do you think about it in those terms, Ever?

SPEAKER_03 45:48

Yeah, I think that's really well put. Um, there are a lot of things that I did historically where I'm like, man, I don't know how I did that. Yeah. And like doing something that I hated, but that set me up for a lot of optionality later in life is one of those things. Um walking away from sort of the life that I had and becoming a professional gambler, like I would like to think that I would do that again, but it's a pretty wild thing to do, you know, in retrospect. Um, and I am really grateful for those prior versions of myself for putting me on the path to a life that I really enjoy now. Um, and I just wish that I could tell prior me, like, you don't have to worry so much. Like you can keep working really hard, but like things will be okay. Yeah. You don't need to like feel it to the extent that you do.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

Yeah, again, I that's exactly how I feel, Jay. I um I'll ask you one more poker question. And then I kinda I have to. I feel so corny for asking this. But like, okay, having done this and having in particular had an interest in been very good at live reading, right? Um what what are the tells that? What are the common tells? If I'm just trying to become a better poker player or just a kind of liar in life, what are the things I should be, what are the parts of my body I should be paying the most attention to? I can lie for you if you want. Like it's I don't know if that would be helpful, but what is it more generically? Not less about me, but like what what should one pay attention to? What are what are the easy tells?

SPEAKER_03 47:19

I think as a very general rule, um, and again, it's all about like correlating actual behavior with actual like hand strength for a given person, people have different patterns. Um, very broadly speaking, the most common pattern is that when people are when they have a weak hand, they will subtly do things that are designed to convey strength and confidence and vice versa. So, for example, when somebody um this is one that came from that that thought of the sexes I mentioned. Um, when somebody has a weak hand, they will just like slightly puff out their chest and become like a little bit more like forward, you know. Um, maybe make a little bit more eye contact. Um, and then when they have a stronger hand, they'll they'll wanna like on some level, they'll want to look a little defeated. So they may just like fold in a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 48:17

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_03 48:18

But people can also have the opposite pattern where like what they look like is actually just the hand strength that they have. And that's why correlation is important. But that that like body posture or like leaning forward and back thing is one. Um how much people are trying to disguise their uh their actual hand strength is a is a good indication. So, like when somebody is trying to convey ease and fluidity with their movements and they're not quite succeeding, like they're a little bit um like jerky for something, that's generally a really good tile. Um, there's a surprising amount that you can do just with hand motions because it's just like it's easier to smile when you're actually confident, which it's much easier to smile when you're confident. So it's good to sometimes try to get people to smile if you're trying to get a read. Um, it's it's also really hard to um behave in a totally fluid manner physically when you're actually uncomfortable. And so a lot of it is just like looking for a little bit of stiffness in people.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

It's so interesting. Again, I the only reason I'm moving on from it is because uh I have to be mindful of the the length of the podcast. But I I truly like, if you'll allow me, I just want to email you like 500 questions about this.

SPEAKER_03 49:37

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

You don't have to answer them. No, totally.

SPEAKER_03 49:39

Yeah, I'd be happy to.

SPEAKER_01 49:40

Um okay, I want to exit the the poker section. And I specifically want to actually exit it with the story of you exiting poker, right? Um yeah, I guess tell me about that. Again, what role did drugs play with that in that? And um, yeah, maybe maybe even just walk me through like a timeline of your sort of believing poker and the the changes in your life at the time.

SPEAKER_03 50:02

I mean, so this is always a point in an interview where I like decide which direction I'm gonna go because there's a lot of different like versions of the story I can tell. Um, I think like the relatively succinct but still honest version I can tell is um I began exploring like psychedelics and um other substances more heavily as I got into poker and had like unstructured time um and not a lot of responsibilities. Uh at some point when I was still the top-ranked human player in the world, I had like a spiritual experience in my own parlance or a psychiatric experience in interpretations of others that was so radically disruptive that I just stopped playing poker overnight and like basically played like a handful of times after that in the the year or two following. But I I stopped almost completely right after that. And so it wasn't like a retirement, it was just like it got replaced by drugs and insanity and all of these other things that expanded to fill my mind.

SPEAKER_01 51:24

Um okay. I I want to just talk about some of the words there. Um the word insanity, or I've heard you use the word psychosis, right? Which I know is also like a clinical term. Um was it weird the first time you heard somebody else apply those words to what you were going through?

SPEAKER_03 51:43

I think I probably applied those words to myself before other people did. I was, I mean, um, I was not super open with people at the time about what was going on. And the people that I was open with, I was very selective about it. So they were, they generally reacted in wise ways, which like telling somebody that they're insane is not generally the best way to respond to a situation like that. Um I think uh I knew from an early point in time that the most reasonable outside view interpretation of what was going on with me was that I was having a serious psychiatric episode. Um and uh even as you were going through it, you were aware of this? Yeah. I would say, I mean, I I was certainly able to appreciate that that was like the reasonable thing that I would believe about myself if I were seeing it from the outside. Yeah. Um, and there was just a question of, which is I think still a question of like how how much weight do you give that outside view um when your interior experience is so different? Um, and I like depending on the audience, we'll talk about like spiritual or religious experience or um psychosis and psychiatric symptoms. And I think like I'm comfortable using all of these terms because I think that they are, at least in this context, not in all contexts, they're just different sets of labels that apply to the same set of phenomena.

SPEAKER_02 53:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:21

And we're not really disagreeing about anything except for like the the label that we're attaching to it. Um and I I don't mind what I went through being thought about as mental illness. I will also say like there was the initial set of like spiritual experiences that I had, which were very meaningful. Um, and I would I would say that that was not, I don't process that internally as like a form of insanity. But then there was like a long course of chasing those experiences that extended for like three and a half years after the initial experiences. And certainly um I was not having spiritual experiences for that last three years. I was just uh addicted to drugs, really out of my mind with like grief and also um like damage that I was doing to myself neurologically with the drugs. Um, and so I was definitely not well. And there's not a lot of ambiguity about that for the last three years where I was doing that.

SPEAKER_01 54:23

Yeah. Oh man, I um there there are many threads that we could kind of pull on there. Um maybe the the most tangible one that I'll just start with this, but I want to go and get into the bigger picture in a second is um I'm so glad that like you're out there talking about this, and there are a few other people. Um I I think psychedelics have an incredible impact for so many people, like they did for you early in your career, right? I was really I'm really grateful also somebody early on told me when I was at Berkeley that if you have a family history mental illness, which I do on both sides, um of psychotic breaks, that it's probably not a great idea to experiment with it too much. Because knowing my dumbass, I would have done it. And I I'm glad somebody told me because I do think it saved me uh from I mean, even yeah, I I I I can it's not hard for me to imagine, sort of. So I I appreciate people like you a lot um being out there talking about this. I think the the other sort of element that I want to kind of pick up on that Could I just say something about what you just said, actually?

SPEAKER_03 55:32

Um, so I think um it's important to me to say that even with this terrible thing that I went through, uh, which was really life-altering, kind of life-destroying for a time, um I still am really glad that I did psychedelics. I'm really grateful that I had that experience because I think it is um those were critical for putting me on the right path in life. I think it is important that people like understand the risks and benefits so they make their own decisions. Um, it's not appropriate or necessary for everybody. Like a lot of people just weren't as lost as I was. Um, but I I think my view of it is just a lot more nuanced than like I had a bad time psychiatrically, and therefore I don't recommend it to people. It's it's not perfectly safe. It's not totally dangerous, it's complicated. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

Totally. I think um, yeah, I think I think that's perfectly put. I think uh the other interesting thing to me and in kind of what you were talking about relates to this is like uh you had you have such a poker player's understanding of this like kind of like uh you know period that you went through. Um, because I think like just the way that you describe it was so perfect, like uh going through all of this internally and having still an understanding of how it's playing externally feels to me like uh I don't know if that's just you or if that's poker cake, but it feels like a very like poker player um sort of you know relationship with the world. Um one part I I'm really curious about, because I've heard you talk about this, and um is the sort of the religious or the spiritual aspect of this, right? I um I'm an atheist and uh I know I don't actually know how you identify or if you choose to identify on this at all anymore, but I know you used to before this identify as an atheist. Um I guess the first part of this would be just so people know what we're talking about. What was that experience like? What was the spiritual aspect of this experience like for you? What what what did that feel like? What um yeah, even just mechanically, like what actually happened.

SPEAKER_03 57:51

Yeah. I always so I I hesitate to um to describe I will say things about it. I I hesitate to describe the experience in too much detail because it's like uh sort of the hallmark of these experiences is that they are not transmissible to other people. Yeah. So whatever I say about it will sound stupid, like for lack of a better word. Like it might not sound stupid, but it it's like there will be a thousand earthly explanations for what I experienced. Um, and I'm not really in the business of like trying to convince anybody of anything. Um from my own perspective, uh I've I've written about this. I'll just put a plug out for the scene through the center of things, which is a piece that I wrote where I go into this in a lot more depth. Um, from my experience, there was like in all of my uh drug experiences leading up to this, there was a very clear like trajectory where I was like working up toward some sort of event horizon internally. I didn't know what was up with that. I didn't know whether it was like a feeling that I should trust. Um, but I arrived at this precipice, um did a relatively small amount of drugs relative to what I was used to doing. And it just sort of like opened this door in my mind that I didn't realize was there. Um, and it was, it was radically different in character from any other experience that I'd had. Um it was sort of like a combination of an overview of the grand cosmic opera and an encounter with God, which was a like volitional entity that cared about humans. Um, and you know, the the nature of the experience was to me so unmistakable that I quit playing poker the day after. Like I thought this is the only actually important thing that has ever happened in my life. I have to figure out how I can like document this, demonstrate it to other people, replicate it so that other people can do it too. I just became like I had a real sort of scientist um approach to the experience, I think. Um, but it's like unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way. And I can't like, I can't transmit it to other people. Um, but like looking back on it with the benefit of seven or eight years of of experience, like I still totally believe that. I still totally believe that I had an experience of God. It was the before and after like dividing line of my life. Um, and yeah, nothing is shaken that.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:45

Yeah. Um I'll take the let me just take the the dumb joke really quickly, because I have to. Um, I've heard you describe that that God felt most probably most closely resembled a Hindu god. So as an Indian man representing a sixth of humanity, I would like to thank you for proving that it's the one true religion. Um no, but God. Uh we'll cut that out. No, but I I was really taken by. Maybe I should maybe I should say this into the camera. Nothing Kate is saying or nothing I am saying is an endorsement of or against psychedelics, right? So it's we're exclusively talk about your experience. I found I was really, really taken by this is not how I was planning to kind of like uh conduct this conversation, but I found your description really beautiful and really poignant. Um, and I want to actually spend the last part of this on that. Um one part of it, I guess one functional question would be having gone through that, do you still identify as an atheist? No, definitely not. Interesting. Um, do you identify as anything on that question?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:00

Um to the extent I am anything. I think it probably maps onto like perennial philosophy. Like all religions converge on the same sort of telos at the end, and all of the religions are just sort of like lenses through which you can glimpse that ultimate reality. So it's not I I have doctrinal respect for a lot of religions and don't feel particularly tied to any one of the yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:28

I um so one thing that I think the the reason it really spoke to me, your experience of it, is because I've always been a reluctant atheist. Um I come from a Hindu family, obviously. Um and um I yeah, if you ask me to just probability-wise, if you ask me, does God exist, I would say probably no. But I that says nothing of my ability to explain certain phenomena, uh certain kind of states of consciousness. Um and it doesn't even it feels uh uh mathematically true to me. It does not feel emotionally true for how I feel. Um and so I and I don't uh hear people intersect that gap very often or very well, and I think you do it very well. Um one part of this that I think like um think you added now, like I, you know, Plato's idea of like um the good, the true, the beautiful. They like these are the three grand virtues. And you don't have to justify doing something if it is in pursuit of one of these three, the good, the true, or the beautiful. And I've been thinking again, in coming into this, but just sort of more broadly about like what is my uh let's say I am an atheist, but what is my sort of what's the closest I get to uh feeling God, the feeling the existence of God or or believing in God? Uh and for me, I think it's that third one. I think for a lot of people it's the good, um, you know, this this sort of omnipotent and and uh and benevolent God. And then for a lot of people, it's the truth, the truth will set you free, kind of biblical idea. For me, as a cultural Hindu at least, uh, and I found this in your description to it, it's the closest I can feel to it is the beautiful. And I don't mean just the aesthetically, I actually specifically don't mean the aesthetically beautiful. I mean like the cosmically, situationally beautiful, right? To me, when I stand in presence of that, I feel God, and I and my small atheist brain can't really explain it. Um there has to be a question here. Um I guess the question would be like, what are the virtues to you now, both in your life and in your sort of understanding of the divine? Like what what are sort of the axes that you're, you know, this is God is the most X entity. Um, how do you think about that? Maybe that extends into you want to live a life that is very high in X. How do you think about that?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:00

It's a really interesting question. Um because my mind automatically goes to like, okay, what about when these virtues conflict? Like what that's sort of how you identify the thing that is ultimately important to you, I think. Um and it's challenging because on one level, I'm tempted to say truth is actually not as important to me as the other two. Um, this is to some extent where the name of my blog comes from, useful fictions. Um I think that there's a lot of uncertainty in the world. And um choosing the sets of beliefs that you might not be able to prove, but that fill your life with meaning and goodness, I think that's a good way to live. Um the only reason I'm hesitant to say that is I think that gets easy for people to conflate with. Well, she doesn't actually believe in God. Like she's just this is just a convenient belief. And it's like, no, if I do. didn't believe in God, I might still find a reason why it's like a good belief to have, but I do want to separate those and say, like, I think God is also a true thing. Um I think they just I don't want to resist the question, but it feels like they all converge on the same thing from my perspective. Like what is good is what is beautiful. Um, and I don't I don't have a good explanation for why that feels true for me. Um if I like try to put on the hat of Kate of 10 years ago, um, I'm like, of course those aren't the same thing. Like, why would they converge?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:44

Um But I think it's like it probably has to do with this set like metaphysical but felt sense that I have that there is this um thing at the center of the universe uh that is like the ultimate endpoint of everything. Um, and that is like both good and true and beautiful. Um, and the like incredible thing about existence is I don't think you need to choose between them. Yeah. Very unsatisfying.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:22

No, very satisfying. I I love that answer. Um for my sort of final two things here, final couple questions. The first one I have is actually something you mentioned a little bit early, and it relates to this. You mentioned at the top of this conversation that you when you were younger in your 20s, you had a lot of fear of death. Um how's that now? How often do you think about death? And um how much does it sort of guide your day-to-day now?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:48

Um, I don't think about death from the perspective of being afraid of it at all, basically. Um I I think about it sometimes from the perspective of, man, I can't wait. I can't wait to like get to the end and like uh for the big reveal and like see, see what is going on. Um but like there's a lot of living to do between now and then. And there's a lot of like interesting stuff that I think is gonna happen in the world. So I'm not I'm not too much in a rush to die. But uh I feel more excitement than like fear or anything when I think about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:31

Um last question. I I actually on that, it reminds me a little bit of uh the Ramdas uh, you know, uh he said dying probably feels like taking off a very tight shoe. And I I think about that a lot. I my last question for you is not what do you think happens after you die, but what do you hope happens after you die?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:06

I hope that there are ultimately many lives that we get to lead. Um who knows whether at the end of this one I'll be ready to like step off the merry-go-round. Um, but I hope that we are reunited in some sense with the larger universe and God, and that we have the ability to appreciate that reunion as it happens and how that plays out in terms of specifics. I don't know. I'll leave that to God.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:43

Um, leave it to God. It's a beautiful place to end. Kate Hall, thanks so much for bringing on the pod. Yeah. Warm Intro is produced and edited by J Wan Moon and Alex Aiko. Hosted by me, Chai Mishra.