Lex Fridman Podcast #372 - #372 – Simone Giertz: Queen of Sh*tty Robots, Innovative Engineering, and Design Machine transcription by Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (MLX, local, Apache-2.0). May contain recognition errors. The following is a conversation with Simone Yech, an inventor, designer, engineer and robotist, famous for a combination of humor and brilliant creative design in the systems and products she creates, including as part of her new product design company called Yech. She has a popular YouTube channel where she has demonstrated a lot of her incredible and fun designs and inventions from, "quote, shitty robots to a Tesla Model Three converted into a truck. " But where she also revealed her personal journey after having been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Simone is a brilliant, fun and inspiring human being. It was truly an honor for me to get to meet her and to have this chat. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. 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They'll give you a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase when you go to athleticgreens dot com slash lex. This is Alex Friedman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here Simone Yech. What was the first cool thing you built where you fell in love with the process of making stuff? You know I think in the beginning of building stuff you run into the limitations of your skills so much so I feel like honestly building gets less and less. Frustrating or like I love it more and more the more I know. So the limitations aren't fun. Like when it's the limitations are fun, but it's like when you have an idea of something and you want to make it a certain level and then you just have to compromise with the materials and the tools and the skills you have. Um, so I can't remember first time where I felt like. I am proud of this. Wow, this was so smooth. I am so proud of it. Like I feel like a lot of people I watch them build stuff and it's just like watching water pour down. You know it's just like so easy and for me it's just like. Trying to shove a toy car into a wall. So you are not able to step back and marvel like at the early creations even like even like we're not even talking Arduino stuff even before then. I am from Sweden, and you have to choose either sewing or woodworking, and I chose like woodworking in middle school, and I remember the sense of pride when I got to bring something home and that thing of like oh my god I get to show my parents this. And I think that is kind of the feeling that I've built my job around. It's like the sense of pride and wanting to show people something that I made and like back then it was like a little wooden spoon you know. And now it's a slightly larger wooden spoon that is dynamic and moves and has a mind of its own. You first started doing more engineering type stuff with Arduino boards at. Punch through design, which is an SF engineering firm. What are just from your memory there? What are some cool things you built there? So the thing is, I went to advertising school and I just like vocational studies a year, and I realized there that I didn't care much for advertising, but I thought it was really fun to build stuff and program. So like I just. Completely focused on that, and there I built my first hardware project or like electronics project, which was this iPhone case with retractable guitar strings. So basically I imagined that you could like pull out guitar strings from the bottom of your iPhone and you could pluck it to your belt and then you could hold a cord on the screen. And I built that together with my friend Jonathan and I was like, oh this is dope. I thought it was so much fun and I considered like, oh should I go to school for this, but then I thought maybe I can get a job and I could get paid to learn. About electronics, so just based off of that one project, I got the job at Punch through Design, which actually was a was one year internship. Can you explain what we're talking about here? So it's a case with guitar strings attached. Yeah, does it actually work at all? It does. These are not on the screen guitar strings. No, so they're actual strings that you pull out. So there is a mechanism that's almost like a seat belt mechanism and. Yeah, you pull them out from the bottom of your phone and you can attach them to your belt. I mean, it's terrible. There is a few different ways to decide if somebody's touching a guitar string. And what you do in a real guitar is you have the little it's like measuring the vibration or the change in the. As as the yeah you are measuring how the guitar is vibrating and you can't really do that because I can't have a a receiving sensor because the guitar strings are going to move in relationship to that because you don't have like a rigid neck. And this is like yeah this was my first electronics project I was a little fledging baby maker, but what I decided was to use capacitive touch. Because that is independent on if the guitar strings are moving in relationship to something or in relation to something, so basically there was just this little Bluetooth Arduino board that this company Punch through Design made so that was how I found them. And I measured the capacitive touch so like whenever. Um, the guitar string was measured. There was this little microcontroller that was like, oh my god, a guitar string got measured or touched, and then that sent a signal over Bluetooth to my phone, and I'd built a little iPhone app that interpreted those Bluetooth signals and then checked. What type of cord I was holding on the screen, and then play the coherence. What are you holding the cords on the screen? So you are doing the multi touch sensing there. That's incredible. I honestly cannot believe that I pulled it off because I think I was I was ignorance was definitely bliss because that was like yeah the first hardware. Project I'd ever built the first iPhone app I'd ever programmed and like now if somebody was like hey I want this to be my first project I would probably be like oh that's a lot but. What can it off because that's that's such an interesting thing for people to hear because it's your first project and a lot of people stop because of the difficulty of their first project they never truly discover their own genius because they stop at the first and you didn't stop so it'd be interesting to kind of psychoanalyze you on the couch of why you didn't stop. Because you have to build an app. Yeah, to figure out how to did you know how to program much or no. Okay, I mean a little bit, but I never programmed and or done any iOS apps. Okay, so you have to figure out how to get forget like what the app does, just get the app running and working, and then you have to figure out how to get the sensors in like real time the finger touching and you have to connect how to get the the capacitive touch working with the microcontrollers. Do you know anything about the capacitive touch sensors at that time? I mean it's pretty easy now it's basically everything is easy. Yeah, you know rockets are pretty easy. You sound like my grandma. She's I have a Natalian grandma and I always trying to get her we're like trying to get her to tell her recipes and every recipe starts with. It's very simple, and then there is like forty five minutes of her explaining it. It's like with gymnastics at the Olympics they make it look easy. The best people in the world always make the the impossible seem easy. I pride myself with making buildings look really hard because I feel like I am always struggling so much. You make the easy seem impossible. No, I guess. So how many strings was it? Is it just. Oh gosh, I think it's such a long time ago. No, it was six. Oh, six strings and you can touch it and then there is. Wow, and it can and then the the phone itself makes a sound. And I still I still think it's such a cool concept to have this like I am not even a guitar player I don't know I was I mean I got the idea because I was kind of strumming on my charge cord of my phone. Oh, like an air guitar but on a cord. Yeah, but I've been thinking about it because I am like, oh man, it would be really fun to go back to that project with what I know now. But the problem with it is that. When you are producing the tension in your string just with your arm, like you can't make it taut enough to actually play like it kind of becomes playing these like saggy strings. So it's you are not really getting that experience and I think that's why. I mean I. Yeah, I haven't really pursued. I wonder if there is a way to generate the tightness from the case itself. A device that unfolds and then with some kind of tightening mechanisms tight. Yeah, but then it kind of becomes this like whole thing in a guitar. Then it just becomes a really shitty guitar. Yeah, like which this is a really shitty guitar, but it's also. But it's so shitty, it's awesome. Yeah, I don't know. But it's a cool. It's cool that you have an interface between a device that's capable of incredible computational power and an actual hardware thing. Is there something that you can psychoanalyze? That made you finish that others could hear in their own struggle to do their first project like that because you were you were a non engineering person technically. And you did a pretty cool renegade out there, wild no instructions. Engineering project. No, it definitely was an off road build where it's like if you are building a LEGO kit, it's very much on the road and you are following instructions and this is like you have no idea if you are headed for a cliff or a dead end or you are going to get stuck. I think it had a natural pressure to it because it was a school project. So it did have deadlines built into it and and stuff like that so that definitely helped but I think also it was just so incredibly motivating when I realized that I might be able to pull it off. Like that was I felt like a bloodhound you know and you are just like oh my god I can actually make this happen and I think if. I hadn't seen that the horizon, it would have been harder to stick through. Were you able to see the end of the tunnel pretty early on? No, not really. I mean, so there is something just suffering for a while. I don't know how how your brain works, but it's like if I have a problem, I can't stop thinking about it. Like it's so fun to think about it. Like I spent I spent. Two and a half years designing a coat hanger, and I just can't stop thinking about it. Like I get so into it because I think it's so much fun. Take me to this two year journey of the coat hanger. The coat hanger. What? How did it begin? How did it begin? It began with a corner in my home where I couldn't fit a coat rack. The thing is, I shouldn't have brought this up because I am going to release it as a product probably in a year. On an actual product. Okay, well that's leave it as a mystery. It's a mystery, yeah, but it solves a fundamental problem in in the human condition. And I am so excited about it and I cannot I don't yeah but this is I get so pumped about it because I see it's just this issue or like this problem that I want to solve and I I kind of can't put it to rest until I have. It's I mean speaking of coat hangers, door knobs have always been interesting to me. It's cool how how there is things that everybody uses that somebody designed. Lex. Yeah. Oh my god. So okay, so this is I so I have two like big. So basically, I started on YouTube and I am been doing that for like the last seven or eight years and I've kind of been thinking of like okay what's next for me because I want to keep on trying out new things and I am I am kind of. Going into two different avenues. One is the product business that I started, coat hangers TBD, and then I am working on a pilot episode of a show where each episode is about an everyday object and why they look the way that they do. So we written a pilot episode about forks. And it's all about like why do they look the way that they do? Why did this become the like eating implement of the West? Why are we ruled by an iron fork? How did that happen? And every everyday object that you have and that you just take for granted, somebody just made it up. Yeah, we're all sheep. We'll keep using it. Yeah, even if it's not optimal. I mean, presumably most objects are optimal. You hope. Or at least a local option. Yeah, and that's what I think is so like the world around us and this is why I love building things is because it just opens up this idea that the world around us is so malleable and you can make objects work for you better like I spent I made this fruit bowl. I had a fruit bowl and I was always annoyed that I had either too little or too much fruit for it. So I made a fruit bowl where I can change the diameter of it. It has a mechanism so you can like make it bigger or smaller and that's just like the thing of being like. Bowls, why are they the way that they are? I can make them different, and I think like I want to make an episode about door knobs. I think it's so interesting. Why are they the way they are? Why are the place the way where they are? I think that's going to be a rabbit hole from which you will never return. I would happily live in that rabbit hole forever. Like if I can if I can like dig out a little niche for myself there because I think it's like. You know they go so deep. They're also on different size of doors. You never like the push pull situation on doors in general. Like that's one of the main problems of humanity is figuring out the push pull figuring out which it is embarrassing. It's just okay. How many? There is eight billion people on people on Earth. Every single second, there is millions of people being embarrassed by the confusion. Of real lifestyle, right now there is somebody, some guy first time in college, he's trying to be impressive to everybody to push his on, and he plays it off like it's cool. Oh shit, I knew that. No, but and it affects our behaviors. That was why I think it's so interesting with forks is that forks actually affect our eating behaviors. And they can get you to eat faster or slower, take bigger bites or smaller bites, and there are all these ways or like the social. I mean the reason that um chopsticks work is because they do the food chopping in kitchen. Rather than on the plate, and also you have a bowl that you bring to your mouth with whereas a plate you keep on the like there are just all these ways of these objects affect our behavior opening and closing doors, and I think it's such an interesting take on culture through and like human behavior through these objects that we use every day and we never question them really. Yeah, and then there is institutions that are controlling our mind that don't want us to know the truth. Why are sporks not more popular? Have you asked yourself that question? Yeah, no, it's all big utensil is behind all of it. All right, so I mean in those early days, did you suffer from imposter syndrome? Like that leap to being an engineer, was there? Especially when you started working a punch through design. On a team of engineers, was there insecurity? Both yes and no. I think I've um, I always try to flip my flaws into selling points, and for that, so getting that job, I. I was like, "Oh, you are a team of engineers. Everybody working here is an engineer. Your customers are not all engineers. You need somebody who can be your filter and tell you when something's going to be too hard for your customers to understand." So it was more me being like, "Oh no, it might seem that me not having skills is a bad thing, but actually it's a great thing." I represent the everyday person. I understand deep, yeah, deeply what everybody needs and wants. Yes, that is me, the representation of the of the average human. Um, but I mean I I remember that so I studied physics for a year in college and then I dropped out. And I had this rule for myself that whenever I did not understand any something I would ask a question. So I was always raising my hand in class, and it's this room entire like auditorium filled with incredibly intelligent people who are mortified of seeming stupid. And I think that was really like and I remember people at the end of the year coming up to me being like, "Thank you so much for all the questions you asked because whenever there was something that I was too scared to ask you always raise your hand so. " I think it is a bit of a skill, and I think that is kind of how I channel my imposter syndrome is I am just like, no, let's lay it all out there. You are okay being almost like self deprecating, just coming off. I mean I am definitely that. I kind of lean into it. I call myself an idiot. I lean into being stupid. I think not all heroes wear capes, and the guy and girl who asked the stupid question. Is everybody CEO, including the teachers? Yeah, I think it's it's both. It's a double edged sword. I started out on the internet, kind of I kind of got the moniker the Queen of Shitty Robots because I posted a lot of stuff on slash r slash shitty robots on Reddit and people started calling me the Queen of slash r slash shitty robots and then the slash r kind of dropped. So what I am trying to say is I did not come up with that with myself. Um, but I did happily adopt it. So I definitely came from a place of like building things that didn't work and kind of. Yeah, everything going wrong every time like happily failing, and I think that was amazing. It was a really powerful tool for me to like not get my perfectionism in the way because if I set out to do something that's great, then I am never going to start. And I was like, no, I just need something that looks funny. Um, but what I've realized now is that it's also a defense mechanism being self deprecating is like always beating people to the punch. It kind of was a survival tactic on the internet of being like never daring to set out as an expert and I still do that like I am terrified to tell people how to do something even if I know. Um, because it kind of opens you up for being shot down. So I think I have I definitely have a conflicted relationship with it and now especially as I am I am getting older I am more skilled than I was before. I mean I am a CEO three businesses and I am like I don't need to like keep on talking myself down all the time. So yeah I think it's definitely something that has served me really really well and that is still like a. Thing that I have in my work life and in my relationships, but I am also trying to only do it when it's beneficial to me and not when it's harmful. Yeah, I mean, but when you are as successful as you are, I feel like people like it when you are self deprecating you don't take yourself seriously you have that humility. I think it's probably the hardest when you are starting out. Yeah, because no, I think it was easier than almost. I don't know, but nobody takes you seriously right when you are starting out when you are young like. You know I just realized that I played a lot more stupid than I was, and I think it's also. Oh gosh, I can't believe I am the one bringing this up. Uh, but like being a woman in a male-dominated field, and you are like try. I was just trying to make myself the least amount threatening or like really unthreatening because people are threatened by you in different ways and it's like you have such a thin line that you can walk where you are like, okay I need to be just attractive enough for people to not be offended by my appearance but just unattractive enough for people to not sexualize me. I have to be just smart and witty enough for people to be like, oh my god, that's really cool, but also shoot myself down enough for other people not to be able to do it or be like, oh yeah, watch this woman try to thinking that she knows how to. Build electronics, you know. So it's like. That's a interesting skill to build, especially when you put yourself out there on the internet. Yeah, like unfortunately that's the reality of the internet, and it's a skill you have to kind of develop, and it's actually why a lot of really brilliant people avoid the internet. Yeah, like there is not many people like at MIT for example, there is not many. Brilliant professors of PhD students and so on just putting their stuff out there because, like, um, if they what like if they really put their heart and soul into a thing, first of all that's really hard. And nobody nobody sees it and everyone's like, this is boring. So there is so many failure modes like this is boring or like. Like you said, you coming off as too much of an expert, you are not self deprecating enough. Or like there is just so many failure modes and it's terrifying for people. But I feel like that's a skill you should learn because. Most people like at MIT at university and so on are doing a lot of awesome stuff. Yeah, and they should show it off. But I feel like you figured out a really good process of. Of showing it off, when you fail, when you succeed, all of it not taking yourself too seriously, but also revealing through the humor and the self deprecation a kind of genius, a kind of intelligence and curiosity. Can I just want to snapshot that quote and put it on my LinkedIn? And the back. When is your autobiography coming? Oh never. You don't want to say that because like a year from now. Oh gosh, I don't want to. I don't want to shit on autobiographies. Yeah, no, no, even just by saying that I am shit on autobiographies. I just. Me being interested enough in somebody to want to read six hundred pages about them talking about themselves is. No, well, well that's exactly the kind of person that should write one. But yeah, but also I am fucking thirty two years old. What do I have to write about? Like I went through puberty, I lost my virginity, and here we are. Like I don't know, it's like such a. Three chapters is a coloring book. Chapter seven, I learned to tie my own shoelaces. I feel like it would be awesome anyway. What's the the queen? So how did you achieve the status of royalty, the queen of shitty robots? What's the origin story there? I I mean I have officially renounced my title now. Can you still speak of the time when you led? I can still speak of the time your kingdom. Yes, uh no, I mean it started on because I. Did you rule by love or fear? By fear of rejection from me that people would reject me. So I um yeah I started making these little gifts like my the early projects that I did were very gift forward. It was always like I only did it because it could be translated into a gift. Gift forward, I like it. Yeah, but honestly it was like it's a really good. Mental exercise to vet if your project is easy enough to be explained by like a seven second looping video without audio, and. Because like nobody's going to care that it also has Bluetooth, like it's really like is it self explanatory enough to um be explained through a GIF. So yeah, I could just pause. I am sorry to interrupt, but I feel like all scientific papers and projects should go through that exercise. Can be explained as a GIF. Yeah, actually a deep mind does a good job of this. Like you know this, we saw protein folding. Here is a GIF that's literally what they do because who is going to read the Nature paper. So like this, you have to like how do we communicate this visually in a sexy clean way where people can intuitively understand even if you don't know what a protein is even if you don't know what protein folding is. Yeah, it's cool. It's very like yeah if somebody comes out of context and that's been really interesting also like building this product business and trying to do the marketing around that and I am like. Somebody comes in and they have no idea about what this product is. Will they get it explained to them in this ad? And I don't know, but it's definitely a worthwhile exercise to do. So I started making these projects. I got translated into gifts. And I posted them on slash r slash shitty robots on Reddit. So that subreddit existed. Yeah, and I loved it. I thought it was really fun and I was like I want to contribute with content here. Conquered it. I don't I mean. Okay, I don't know. I was voted I think I was voted top user of twenty fifteen so yeah. That's an old merit. Once you win an Nobel prize, you always have the Nobel. Okay, so what was the first? Do you remember the early gifts that you created? So this is when I was at Punch Through Design in San Francisco. I was kind of building a lot of hardware projects for them, but I also felt and they were so supportive of me. But I also it's such a different way representing a brand versus representing yourself. So there were some projects that I just like ruled out because I was like this feels too weird for this brand. And I started building them on the side. One of them was a toothbrush helmet, and yeah, so it's like a skateboard helmet with a robot arm on the forehead, kind of like a unicorn horn, and it brushes your teeth for you. Was that the first YouTube video you uploaded? It was the first gift that I uploaded. So actually I wanted to, um, I wanted to do a kids show about electronics in Sweden because I was like I love electronics I think it's fucking dope. I could do a kids show about it. So I filmed this terrible, terrible pilot episode in my bedroom in San Francisco. And that's when I built the toothbrush helmet and I emailed it to them. I mean just cold email like I know in or anything but I was like, hey I want to do this, and um they didn't get back to me. Nobody surprised and I was like, well I have this. Thing I built I might as well post it on the internet so that's what I made the little gift and I posted it on slash r slash shitty robots and I think it got like fifty thousand views and I was like, wow. And from there I just kept on building things and I think within. Six months it was my full time job. Can you go through the detailed design of this toothbrush helmet? There is a motor. It's like a server. Like what what what's the motor? What's the is an Arduino involved? Yeah, so I built it off of um this robot arm called Me Arm. So it's just this acrylic robot arm, and um it has three servo motors. And it's all controlled by an Arduino. All the electronics. It was a kit, so I assembled it. How do you make sure the the length of the arm is the proper? I mean the arm came down so it's like I just programmed it to come down to my mouth and then poorly brush my front teeth. Yeah, yeah, it was just swung back and forth. I mean trial and error as trial and error. What was the challenges of that? Do you remember? Oh gosh, or was that one not much of a struggle. Challenge? No, it was definitely a struggle. Because also how do you loop it with a nice gift? I mean it loops. It loops fine. Yeah, it's like yeah. I said that's not that's not that hard. Uh no, I mean it doesn't have to be perfect. It's a gift. It's the internet. Things are shitty all the time. I think I mean I think the biggest struggle of that was that I had this intention for it to be this show and then. Them not giving, oh yeah, giving back and I was like, well if they don't want it, then maybe YouTube will have me. They don't notice my genius yet. What was what was so bad about the pilot? Do you remember? What's like the most embarrassing? So cringy. Yeah, I mean it's thankfully not on the internet so nobody can find it, but it's very much me being in what I called host mode which is where I am like, okay so what we're going to learn today is that we're going to look at this this is something called a servo motor and it's like the intonation and everything is really different. And I am actually I mean I thinking back of that I am so happy that they didn't get back to me because it's such a different thing to kind of start your career in your living room running back and forth to the camera and like filming something and then looking at it and like I got to really. Find my own voice in different way, and then like a year later, they offered me a show. But then I was so off and running. I was like, no, I don't want to do this. You didn't fall into that place of being like a actor like a YouTuber where you are presenting a kind of personality. You are more focused on the product you are creating. I mean I think it's a combination. Of it, I mean I I think of it as acting sometimes, but I only play the role of myself. But of course it's like when you are shooting something for the seventh time, like you have to be able to muster that enthusiasm. But no, it's not. I kind of. Think of everyday life me as a watered down version of the YouTube version. It's like. That's a cheap knockoff. Yeah, the push up conversion. No, it's just like add few parts water. If you have me, but like on YouTube is just so condensed because you have jump cuts and you know like I'll scrape jokes and make sure that everything lands and there is music and stuff and then like in real life you don't have any of that but it's still me. What are some other cool robots in the early days that stand out to you? I mean there is a million we can go through, but like what maybe what what was like a challenging one like a really challenging one in the early days. I mean I remember the breakfast robot, which was my second project, was a challenging one. So eating cereal. Yeah, it's a robot that like pours milk into cereal and feeds me with a spoon. I was mostly challenging because it was so like. Everything had to be in the right location and there were so many takes before I got everything right. And by right I mean it makes an absolute mess. Um, yeah, that one was challenging. How many takes was that one? I don't know, probably twelve, ten something. It's just a mess everywhere. As a mess and also I use like Cheerios for the cereals and my it's shot in my old bedroom in San Francisco and the floors were sticky for weeks afterwards. This should go into your autobiography. Yeah, it's nice. We could just type out this podcast and release it as a. My manager would be stoked. We'll fix it in post. Um, yeah, the the feed because you have like a couple of feeding ones right. There is soup, isn't there? Soup one. Yeah, there is a soup robot. Um, there is a beer pouring robot. I mean that's that's awesome. That's a difficult robotics problem in the shitty and the in the perfect version. Of having an arm that interacts intimately with a human being and one of the most intimate things you can do with a human being. That's PG is to feed it. Where is he going with this? Oh my god, he's a YouTube comment come live. Like damn it. So like to me, there is a like feeding is tricky, or even like getting a beer even pouring a beer is is tough into a glass. Yeah, it's trickier than anyone who hasn't tried it things and even making it. I think what I realized is that like. Making things really shitty or like failing in a spectacular way is also its own sort of skill because like the shittiest robot is the one that doesn't turn on but like that isn't. Much to watch, so it was always like wanting for it to fail in these kind of spectacular ways. Um, no, there is a lot of stuff to be said about engineering in it. Is there something to be said on a philosophical level about the value of flawed robot? So like the kind of robots you want is to be partially flawed. Like, do you think the kind of robots we'll have in the home that are friends and um you know almost like pets? Wouldn't they need to be kind of shitty? Because we can love the somehow we