Anna Gát Reinvented Herself and Digital Intellectual Culture (The Pathless Path Podcast)

[00:59] Paul: Welcome to The Pathless Path. I'm Paul Millerd, and in this podcast, we examine the invisible scripts that run our lives and dare to imagine new stories for work and life. So today, I am so excited to be talking to Anna Gát. She is an internet friend who has built a vibrant internet village, uh, called the Interintellect. I think it's a A community of curious humans exploring ideas online, which is like, just benefited my life so much in terms of other people to explore ideas with and probably readers for my book. But she has such an interesting past, has done so many things, was a published poet by the age of 19, was writing lyrics for underground bands in Hungary, screenwriter, playwright, startup founder, turn somebody that did spawn the inter-intellect.

Welcome to The Pathless Path, Anna.

[02:00] Anna Gát: Thank you so much. I feel like for me it's like pathless paths, plural, or something like that. Definitely. Yeah. There's a, there's a whole highway system going on here.

[02:11] Paul: I'm so, yeah, I'm, we'll definitely explore that. I'm so fascinated with people who have reinvented multiple times. Uh, but the question I start with is what are the stories and scripts that you grew up with around what you were supposed to be doing in the world as you came of age?

[02:29] Anna Gát: That's such an interesting question. I think for, um, for me, there were multiple completely contradictory stories, um, that I had to internalize or espouse. And I think by, in the first like 30 years of my life, I, I tried to either make do by all of, all 3 or 4 scripts that I had, despite there being completely contradictory, or I would try to kind of like cyclically live by one or the other. And I think for me, the, and I'm happy to kind of go through the ones that come to my mind, um, um, right away. But I think for me, the journey was to understand how deeply contradictory these expectations are. And that it's impossible.

And also that if there are, you know, some people reach atheism through understanding that there are all these contradictory religions that are each of them, you know, every one of them is convinced that it's the only one path. And then you kind of hack the code of what religion is. And I think the same goes for overly dogmatic expectations of people. At some point you realize that It's impossible to do.

[03:43] Paul: What were some of them?

[03:45] Anna Gát: So some are gendered and some are not. And I think that's probably one of the reasons why they are so contradictory. So on the one hand, definitely a narrative of success, um, and of, um, not being on the trodden path of, of being a very autonomous creator and autonomous maker. I think multiple generations of my family had seen themselves as people who make something people want, you know, and, and, and most of them did. I think I'm probably still the least successful person in my family ever. Um, and so, so that was one of them.

And then later on when I grew up and I started interviewing my older family members, I learned more about You know, social mobility, surviving the Holocaust, losing everything in one war or the other and starting from zero and or immigrating and the narratives and internal strengths, you know, needed for overcoming those obstacles. Some narratives that I had were very gendered and also very contradictory within that. I think most women will tell you that you know, you have these completely nonsensically contradictory expectations projected at you. So I definitely had the eldest child, smart daughter shall bring glory to the family and somehow money for the parents. I had shut up and marry well, put out your boobs and marry well kind of things. That was very nice.

Yeah, definitely great. You know, advice to daughters. But I remember turning 30, I was in London and feeling all of a sudden that most of the narratives that I had as a woman had run out because they really only implicitly, you know, stand until you're 30. And where I'm from, really subconsciously, I think most people think that at the age of 30, a woman should have already absorbed into her family, should have lost her identity by that time. And to me, that was incredibly liberating. I mean, I started Internzeit when I was 31, so just one year after this, and a lot of things had to happen in my private life and, and with my immigration and some of these scripts to, to have fallen, you know, away for me to start that.

But, but I remember this almost intoxicating sense of freedom. At age of 30 that I have failed as a woman. That's great. Now I can do anything I want. I can just be a human. I can create, I can start a business, I can get rich, you know, do whatever I want, you know?

Um, and that was just absolutely fantastic. And I think for women at the age of 30, it kind of coincides also with this weird change in how people relate to you. I think for women, a lot of things really start at the age of 30. That's when people first start listening to you, you know, taking you seriously. And so for me, that was a great, a very interesting, I mean, it kicked off also very difficult periods in my life, but I feel that my identity basically started there. And I was also like 31 when I realized that I was smart.

So that also helped.

[07:11] Paul: What are some of the influences from growing up in Hungary? I mean, Eastern Europe is such a unique experience. I mean, you, you compared to me, I, I didn't really face—

[07:22] Anna Gát: such a polite way of putting it, by the way. It's such, it's so interesting. Yeah.

[07:27] Paul: Yeah.

[07:27] Anna Gát: And dot, dot, dot.

[07:29] Paul: Well, I think for me, I didn't face any crises or challenges really in the US. Like we had a pretty smooth existence and, um, you saw rapid change, right? Right. Mm-hmm. And what was the effect of that, like growing up as a kid? And it's challenging, right?

But there's also strength that comes from that, I imagine.

[07:51] Anna Gát: Yeah. Oh, although when you posted those photos on Twitter where show me where you grew up through photos of food, I, to me, that did look very challenging.

[08:03] Paul: We, we, we have our flaws.

[08:06] Anna Gát: Only, only that kid. Yeah.

[08:10] Paul: N— '90s food culture in America was a low point in food culture for all of history.

[08:16] Anna Gát: You know, my timeline is like people from Malaysia, people from like South India, and then poor Midwestern friends who will like post some frozen dish. And I'm not— I feel so sorry. I just want to fly over and feed you guys.

[08:30] Paul: This is why I married someone from Taiwan. I've course corrected and I've married into a good food culture.

[08:36] Anna Gát: So that's very clever. That's very clever. I think Tyler Cowen was probably, uh, I find this a very worthwhile strategy. It's really interesting thing. I love Leonard Cohen's song, The Future, when you see the empires rise and fall in front of your eyes. I think that that's definitely true in Eastern Europe.

I mean, Hungarians think that they are Central European, right? And it's everybody else who thinks that we are Eastern European. And when you actually go there, these nuances are there in weird ways, but that's probably for a different podcast. You don't know when you're young why people are as they are. You kind of see the symptoms, but you don't know the disease. So there is a certain kind of shift in us and instability in the worldviews, susceptibility to certain ideologies, a distrust or trust for close circles of friends and family, but a wider social distrust.

And then when you start, you know, at least if you're a curious human, you know, you will start asking questions and reading books and you will realize that, oh, actually, if you were part of the, I don't know, Austro-Hungarian monarchy, then very likely between 1919 and 1963, your family lost everything, at least at some point, like somebody came and took your stuff and your fields and your shops and your doctorate and your, or your children. You know, like actual things that you are very attached to and your identity. And I remember when I was a new immigrant and I really, you know, I left everything behind, like my car, my clothes, my boyfriend, my apartment, my life, my good name, my career, my entire network. And I started everything from zero when I was age of 30.

And I remember feeling extremely exposed and deprived, you know, of so many things when I was in London at the beginning. And, and, but feeling that this is such a, that this is such an ancient experience of starting anew. And it's actually what's not normal is never having to experience this in the modern world, um, at, uh, in one way or another. Um, so there's definitely been, and you know, there are great philosophers writing about how, you know, from Adorno to, to later thinkers, how, you know, if you, if you grow up in a, in an environment where in humanity has happened, then you will have much lower expectations of, you know, your fellow humans or, or, or your ideological buildup will be very different. So yeah, I definitely grew up in this. Anything can be taken away from you.

My grandmother told me like anything that's not in your head can be taken away from you. So be smart, read books. Uh, of course now we know with technology and, and, and, you know, other methods that even what's in your head can sometimes be carefully taken away from you, but it's still a little bit more secure there than material possessions.

[11:38] Paul: Who were some of the big influences in terms of writers and people you're reading? I know you've read a ton. I feel like your references are just incredible and send me down so many curious rabbit holes.

[11:52] Anna Gát: Oh, really? Have you read anything in your life that somehow came from Interintellect or my recommendations?

[11:58] Paul: It's hard to even know at this point because so many of the people I know are one or two degrees connected to the things you've built. So probably everything.

[12:09] Anna Gát: We have the same. That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, I hope to, but I also think that, you know, in certain circles, my references are very normal and shared. It's just that I've changed context so many times that I picked up, um, different, and of course I always, always I always wanted to read a little bit different things than everybody around me, you know, um, would be reading. So yeah, probably it's a, it's a, it's a mix of the obvious and, and stuff I sought out for myself.

I think when I was like starting, I'm thinking probably the most, the weirdest things that I was reading were dictionaries and encyclopedias. And I was just very curious about words and I would just sit on my carpet and read a word and, and try to memorize it. And then that my game was that I would, you know, it could be a French dictionary or an English dictionary or, or just a thesaurus kind of thing. And then I would learn a word and the, my, my game would be to think a sentence and immediately build the word, word into it and just continue thinking. So not, not stop your thinking. It's almost like, I don't know, probably there's some TV show somewhere that, or game show that has this.

So you get a word, a random word from a dictionary, and then you have to use it immediately. And I think I actually like memorized so many words just, just through playing this. I don't know, in my teens when your brain is still working properly. Books, I think for me, just novels. I was probably my early 30s, late 20s when I first really started reading nonfiction. I still, I'm on the fence about nonfiction many, many times, not just because it's very, very often not the author who wrote them, but, or the author is not the name on the COVID how to say that.

But the, I mean, you publish something outside the traditional route. So I don't, I think I'm preaching to the choir here, but the content industry can be a little bit exasperating if you're looking for a really original piece of thought or content or, or story. So I was just reading the novels. I was trying to read every good story that would capture me. And, you know, I, like everybody where I was growing up, you know, you were a little bit dissatisfied with your current whereabouts. And so you would be reading about what's happening everywhere else.

And travel and feel completely boundless through your reading.

[14:52] Paul: So take me to London at 30. You pretty much started over, right?

[14:59] Anna Gát: You're— I actually started over. Yeah.

[15:01] Paul: Very dramatically.

[15:03] Anna Gát: I'm still recovering. I think I still have PTSD over that.

[15:07] Paul: Yeah. What were those first weeks like?

[15:12] Anna Gát: The first weeks were good because I did not know what I got myself into. First weeks, I was like, this is going to be fine. And then it was kind of okay for a year. And then it got very tough because for the first year, I thought that I would be able to have a kind of bipolar existence where I would go back to Budapest, but I would have a London life. And somehow I would use these two lives in a way that strengthen each other. And then in January 2015, it became clear that I had to leave for good.

And then started a probably 2-year period, but really it's only just ending for me when it was really starting from rock bottom. So being completely broke and without a place to live, without friends, without any money. So that was very interesting. It changed my mind about a lot of things, I think, at the time.

[16:10] Paul: Like what?

[16:14] Anna Gát: It changed my mind about states of grace and searching for a higher being because I always thought, you know, I went to a Catholic school and I read, you know, some of the religious philosophers. And I always thought that when people are rock bottom, that's when, you know, God or the spirit or grace comes. And I, at least for me, it's absolutely not how it works. I think the better I am, the more I feel the grace and the ability to give to people and build community and be other people's strengths, which I really want to be. That's one of my aspirations. And when I was rock bottom, I was I became so practical and so much of a survivor.

And I felt that it's more like the animalistic bottom of Maslow pyramid. I mean, I didn't do anything unethical at the time, but I was definitely at my most selfish in those two years.

[17:17] Paul: Yeah. Just more of a short-term mindset than trying to think about long-term.

[17:23] Anna Gát: Absolutely. Yeah. You, I think there's even research to show that when you have PTSD or even very deep depression, you don't have any sense of the future. And I definitely can speak to that. When you have major trauma, you can't even think about tomorrow. It's a very interesting, you learn a lot about neuroplasticity.

I think it's kind of the darker version of what happens to people during psychedelic experiences. Or very high levels of meditation. Um, so yeah, the brain is a very interesting place. So, so I have some weird light because the sun is doing things here. So just let me know if it's annoying.

[18:04] Paul: No worries. Only if it's distracting you. Uh, do you, do you want to adjust it?

[18:09] Anna Gát: I'm good. But if I have like some weird shadow on me, just let me know.

[18:12] Paul: No, you look fine. Um, this is the Pathless Path podcast. We embrace per— Perfect imperfections.

[18:18] Anna Gát: Yeah, film noir, Ingrid Bergman lighting with half the face in shadow suggestively and the other half looking at Bogart.

[18:26] Paul: So where you are now is a very different place than 2015. Uh, what were some of the things that started to shift you in a new direction?

[18:36] Anna Gát: It was a long, long process. Um, and at the beginning, I think like everybody, when you make a change in your life, at first you try to operate post-change using your old strategies because that's kind of all you know, right? You can't just wake up and know new things or unlearn old things, right? Um, and so you kind of halfheartedly throw your old strategies at new problems and the first couple of years is just like learning that this is not going to work. Like you can keep doing this. And wait, but no, just, you should just stop doing that.

And I think it just went very global very early. I knew from my old film work, actually, because I worked in film, I had heard a lot of the bad advice about film. So when people started saying that in the startup world, I was just like, no, next. This is not true. You know, like fall in love with the problem, not the solution, they say to the startup founder. And in the screenplay, they are like, okay, but can we root for your hero?

Shut up. Next. Um, or, you know, in, in, in film, they will tell you write a Cannes-winning thing in your country and then get a job in Hollywood. That's never happened. Or like it only happens for directors. It's a very rare path.

And it's an outlier part. And they like shove so many people into really overfunded, terrible European art movies who are only doing that because they want to work globally. It makes zero sense. So they did, they do this startup-wise as well. Like, oh, don't do US, do local, you know, because I don't know, you are in Frankfurt, we should grow the Frankfurt startup scene. And I was like, Fuck the local startup scene.

You want to build for the public. You have to find your users. Maybe they are not here. Maybe they are somewhere else. I don't care. I can just like talk to anybody with this magic machine, you know?

And so I think I was in London and because I was not really integrated inside there, you know, it was very hard to get accepted. I just, I think that was a, it was a very emotionally very difficult experience. but it just sent me on the internet. And then you're talking to Mason Hartman, and then you're talking to Visa, it's 2017. You're talking to Sam Altman, you're talking to all these people, and who cares where you are? And the next thing I knew, I was in San Francisco.

That was my first time in the US. And I'm not kidding you, the first meeting I had on New Montgomery Street became my first investor. I was there really like fresh off the boat. Because I think, but at the time I really, really knew what I wanted to do and what I had to do and that I was the only person who could really do this. And that this was perfectly justified and everything in my life kind of, you know, trained me for dealing with these problems that I was about to be solving as a life job.

And also you just, you learned so, like, you learn how, how much bad advice there is and, and you start trusting, at least for me, I really started trusting my own guts about things when I had tried everything else that people had recommended to me and it was sometimes working, but sometimes not, but the statistics were as good as with my own ideas, you know, so I didn't have any data to show that I should listen to other people anyway. I mean, I do listen to some people, but you know, you have to earn it.

[22:20] Paul: And I think for context, you were working on a startup, right? And it wasn't exactly what it is now, Interintellect, but you kept finding yourself kind of drifting in that direction doing this stuff that became Interintellect.

[22:33] Anna Gát: Yeah. To the point where at some point I was running basically two things. This was the beginning of 2019. And I was so intent on building this app and this bot and, you know, 2016, '17, all those, the, the era's demands. And then the Interns Act was growing on the side and I was just like, oh, that's just my side project that everybody's interested in, but let me build this app, you know? And then at some point I had to sit down and think like, first of all, everybody, all the 3 people that I somehow emotionally blackmailed into using my app are in Interns Act.

but there are also like thousands of more people in intranet. So what, what is my, what, what, what am I thinking? Like, do I think of like, oh, at some point the app will be ready and all these people will be like, yay, another app. And I wish, or what? Um, and so I was like, oh, I guess I'm running intranet now. And it was a little bit just like, you know, you're in a restaurant and there's like an empty table on a table with all the good foods and all the good friends.

And I just like kind of quietly got up from one table and went over and like sat down to the other. And I was like, I'm a little bit late to my own party, but you know, let's do this. And then when I decided that, and I decided that I would just run it by myself, things really took off. But you know, everybody told me that I should build an app and that I should have a co-founder. So, and I really wanted to get into YC. And I think a lot of my previous actions were somehow limited by this obsession that unless I get into YC, I can't build a company and nobody will give me money.

And that actually nearly killed me off and made me leave tech. So, you know, but I love them, but you know, it's not for everybody, right? Some people have to do some other stuff because they have to be on The Pathless Path.

[24:20] Paul: Yeah. And it's really amazing what started to emerge in 2018. I was experiencing this too. I was living in Taiwan and feeling lost on my path after uprooting my life a year or two before that and starting to find these people online. And you eventually dropped this article, which I think sort of dropped a bomb on the curious internet. And I wanted to read a part of it.

You were, you're talking about there's this feeling online and around 1.5 years ago, at first faintly, I started noticing a new tune under the buzz. There appeared a positive, encouraging theme that since then has kept growing and mutating and bringing a lot of us together in conversation, unlikely companions from all over the world and layers of society. And it was this idea around the inter-intellect, which I think is a term you coined. And it really was something. And it was so exciting when you put this out there. It was like, oh yes, I'm not crazy.

This collection of curious humans Something's happening here. Yeah. What was happening then?

[25:34] Anna Gát: I was feeling a little bit, do you know Hugh Laurie? Fry and Laurie have this song, Protoss song. You know, it's like a Bob Dylan parody and they parody like—

[25:42] Paul: Hugh Laurie has songs?

[25:44] Anna Gát: So back in the day, they had this TV show in the UK called Fry and Laurie.

[25:48] Paul: I just know House.

[25:49] Anna Gát: Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. And they have this wonderful video. It's on YouTube called protest song and they parody, you know, John Baez and Bob Dylan and all this. And I think that the chorus is like, you know, like they list all the societal problems, you know, world hunger, nuclear proliferation, blah, blah, blah. And then the answer is, and it's just like this mumbling. And that's the culmination of every verse.

And I really tried to avoid that in my article that I wouldn't be like, Oh, here's like a universal solution. Oh, find it in your heart or some other bullshit. I really do think that simply removing some boundaries between people would help. And this also came from yet another thing that I thought at the time the contemporary media and discourse was simply wrong around. Everybody told us that, you know, the internet is terrible. They will murder you.

They will cancel you. It's all polarized. You can't leave two humans alone because they will just fight. And I'd never seen that. Like, I was running all these events and I was bringing together really, like, opinionated people. And I always felt that, okay, if the kind of set and settings are right, you know, then things will be fine.

Um, and, but it was really only with Interintellect that I started seeing that at scale. And I noticed that there is so much need and demand for this kind of thing. Um, and then I started thinking, okay, maybe we could do culture without culture war. Like, what would that look like? I, I really want to go back to 2018 because I think 2018 at least for me, was kind of a watershed moment in this sense as well, because 2018 was not just a period, or 2018, 2019, it was not just a period when, oh, this kind of hippie-ish, everybody together, post-rationalists and AI people and painters and musicians that we just like love each other. It was also a time when there was so much pressure to go culture war.

Like I distinctly remember a time on Twitter and I was still on Medium. I was not on Substack yet when I started feeling that, oh my God, if I started doing culture war content, I would explode. Like I would be huge. I couldn't make a killing.

[28:32] Paul: Yeah.

[28:33] Anna Gát: And there were actual, you know, queries toward me sometimes very much like with spoken words. That, you know, don't do a startup, just like organize parties and be this connector woman. You know, like we basically, it's like, oh, we need, you know, politically ambiguous, so very sociable women who will kind of do these things and be spokespeople of ideas, um, that might serve the culture war agenda. And, and I thought, I don't want to do that. First of all, I don't believe that. I am also I have very different beliefs about politics.

[29:12] Paul: You're too curious.

[29:16] Anna Gát: And I thought that's such, that to me, that seems very short-term thinking. I'm more interested in something that can last hundreds of years anyway. So it was very interesting. So 2018, I basically made this decision that even if we're smaller, we will not do those things.

[29:34] Paul: Yeah. And you basically, what you were doing is making an observation that, and a call out to, hey, there used to be these intellectual salons. They were small groups, certain places, famous times of history. They were mostly the elite, but now it's everyone. Everyone can participate.

[29:51] Anna Gát: Yes.

[29:52] Paul: Like, how are people missing this?

[29:55] Anna Gát: Absolutely. I mean, this deal that you're getting from society that, oh, You know, you go to university and then you are there for 2 to 5 years and you're having a really good time, right? At least most people are having good times. And, you know, you have access to this cultural and intellectual and artistic abundance. And then the moment when you start getting good at it and start enjoying it, they kick you out and they're like, well, that was this. Thanks for your money.

Now you're an adult and now read newsletters, you know, buy a book at the airport. And I think it's exactly when people grow into the age when they really have something to say, when you have the life experience, when you can read a book, watch a movie, hear somebody speak, and now you have personal experience, you know, your own stories, a lot of other books that you have now read. I want to hear from those people. And the fact that there's no platform for cultural or intellectual interaction where you are safe from political agendas or anybody trying to manipulate your content, to me, the fact that that didn't exist, it just, it seems still insane to me. So I thought, okay, what if anybody who had a laptop could just come and talk about things that interest them?

[31:14] Paul: Duh.

[31:14] Anna Gát: You know, to me it's, it's, um, it's Seemed very, I mean, you know, as a triple immigrant, of course I have been in situations when you can't even afford to go to a lecture, right? You just buy a, I don't know, used book for £1 on Amazon and sit on the tube while you're going to your customer service job and read in the morning. And there's nobody to talk with about whatever you're reading, whatever you're thinking about. And I said, okay, what if this was affordable? What if some people could also make money doing this? Um, so yeah, there, these were my considerations at the time.

[31:51] Paul: You also in that original article used the, the term unbossing, which I love. And it's sort of this idea.

[32:00] Anna Gát: What is that?

[32:00] Paul: Yeah, you wrote unbossing was basically that, okay, the gatekeepers are dead, but we're still pretending like we need to go through gatekeepers. And this resonates so deeply because the entire time writing my book, I'm like, well, I must be missing I must need to get, I must like need to get approval. And the reality is like you don't need approval anymore. And that discomfort is so dizzying for some people that they seek the approval, right? And it's like, no, you can, you can just do things in this world. But we all grew up with these scripts that say we need to look to the boss for approval.

[32:41] Anna Gát: I, now I remember it, but I also, I think I've changed my mind about this in the past 4 years. Yeah. This is a question I did 4 years ago. Because what I think is happening now, and this is absolutely true for me because I've deviated from multiple paths and created my own combination of, you know, areas of expertise and my non-existent pedigree. I don't know why Stephen Fry is on my mind today, but Stephen Fry said this thing that the, the good thing about going to Oxford or Cambridge is that you don't have to deal with not having to have gone there. That's it.

And I do think now that the amount of energy it takes for me to balance out the fact that I don't really have an academic or professional pedigree. I mean, I have good degrees, I, you know, but I'm in rooms with people who never ever have to think about feeling that they belong to the room because of, you know, where they got, where they went to school or, you know, their first couple of workplaces.

And what I feel through, you know, the, the grants that I'm in and the programs that I'm in is that if you like, you can choose not to go through the traditional Victorian you know, good high school, good university, good internship, good first job, and then you start your company and then you go to a good accelerator and blah, blah, blah, is that you have to, you have to create your own gatekeepers because there are gatekeepers and now you have to create your own combination depending on where you want to get in. And which is very, very familiar to startup founders when you create your investor. Portfolio, basically our cap table. And as opposed to a traditional form of gatekeeping where a lot of the rules are really old and independent of you and both parties know what they expect, uh, or what to expect, when it's your own gatekeeping setup, you don't know, right?

Like people, like even in the best cases, you know, with these amazing grants that are proliferating on the internet now, a lot of people don't know why they won. You meet them, you talk with them, and some people are like, I have no idea what I'm doing here. So it's a very, it's a black box. And I think now, I think that one underexplored positive of a traditional gatekeeping model for some people, for the very few people who actually qualify, is that it was not a black box. Whereas now you are kind of alone with figuring out your own gatekeepers and the rules and the implicit contracts and whatever.

[35:32] Paul: I think that resonates a lot. And I mean, I had the advantage of going through some of the traditional path and it, it helps me understand how the world works, right? It's, I think over the long term, these scripts are going to soften, right? But they still matter. And if you are going to take your own path, I need, you need to spend more time understanding how the world actually works. Instead of how you want it to work.

And I think that's a big challenge for people on unconventional paths. And I mean, for you, you've had the advantage of emigrating 3 times and restarting your life. And in that experience, you've had to learn so many things.

[36:14] Anna Gát: Yeah. And one of the—

[36:15] Paul: but it takes a long time.

[36:17] Anna Gát: It takes some time and sometimes it's really surprising. I mean, I was in Brussels for a couple of years during the pandemic. And it was very cold in my apartment, even if I put on the heating. And so at some point I bought myself a Patagonia vest because I thought I'm not going to get rheumatism, you know, in my 30s just because of the climate. And I sometimes would go to, you know, Zoom calls. I don't know, somebody invited me to give a talk and whatever, and I would be, and you know, it would be, I don't know, 2:00 AM my time because it would be in the US.

And so it's very cold in my brother's apartment. I would put on my Patagonia vest over my outfit and people spoke to me like I went to Stanford. Like it's just, nobody asked. It's just, there's this woman calling in in a Patagonia vest. Surely she was my classmate. And I just loved that.

It was like, guys, just get yourself either a real or a fake vest.

[37:13] Paul: And whenever Patagonia vest cosplay, much, much cheaper.

[37:18] Anna Gát: Oh, just, yeah, just put it on. I learned this in a cold country. It works.

[37:23] Paul: Yeah, I do. I do sense that at least in the US there is much more looseness about class and credentials. These things still matter, but it's like, it's, it's gonna help you, but you can also sort of succeed without those, maybe more than any other country. Would you resonate with that?

[37:45] Anna Gát: I actually don't think—

[37:45] Paul: I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how, I mean, I know you haven't spent tons of time in the US, but you've been exposed to it more in the past few years.

[37:55] Anna Gát: I did spend a lot of time in the US and almost all of my investors are in the US and 55% of our users at Interact are in the US. So I'd have a very interesting conversation about this with Emma Scheer.

[38:08] Paul: Which is that he's the, he worked at, he was Twitch.

[38:13] Anna Gát: Yeah. And recently was the CEO of Twitch and he's a good friend and investor in Interintellect. So two things I was, I would say two things. One is that what was very difficult for me in the UK at the beginning was that I was this restarting, you know, went through hardship, self-made woman narrative, right? When I was fundraising or pitching or talking at a, startup, whatever. And that narrative doesn't work in the UK.

So the first weird thing was learning how what I am and what I'm good at and what's good about me is very much welcome in the US. So this kind of hypomanic, you know, explorer pioneer narrative is really, really strong there. In the UK, no. In the UK, you can't do everything went fine, you know, like the Kurt Vonnegut story, like everything went fine and then I fell into a hole and then with my great strength and knowledge, I rebuilt myself. You can't do that in the UK. You have to show that you've been always lucky.

So good birth, good parents, good school, good kindergarten and good school. And then, oh, then they want you to continue to be lucky at their company or whatever, you know, with their money. In the US, you have to show that there was something that you had to overcome. Because everybody knows in the US that if you have good parents, good schools, that will keep you afloat. What they want to see, like, okay, what can you do? Why should I hire you?

Like, we have hundreds of millions of people. Other people want this job. Other people want this check or airtime. Why should it be you? And so that was a kind of fit, I think, for me. And there's also this thing that in Europe, especially in the UK, which is a Northern Kingdom masquerading as a free society, there is only one real success and that's decided before you were born.

So you are gaslighted in this weird kind of hustle culture that you can change your fate, but you can't really do that, or very few people can do that. And in the US, there is a huge plurality of success. So you can be, you know, like there are so many different ways of being a top person in the US. So if you can't be this, you can always be that. And that's just as good, right? Because there's no nobility in the European sense.

But I only really started like understanding these nuances because on the surface, so many things are similar. When I started spending more time in New York, which on the surface seems harder than London, but because New York is what it says it is, people are more relaxed because people can deal with hardship and people can deal with competition and people can deal with discomfort if it's, if there's integrity and you know what you're getting and you know the social contract works. And I know that in the many places in the US, the social contract stopped working because you no longer get this thing where or the state will look after you less, but in exchange you can go farther because a lot of people can't go farther. And so you see the political and social crisis in the US simply coming from the realization that in, you know, vast parts of the country, the contract no longer works.

But I think in the big hubs, it still works.

[41:39] Paul: Yeah. New York knows exactly what it is. It's like, if you put effort in and like kick ass and you succeed, people will be like, Oh, you're making a lot of money. You deserve that money.

[41:49] Anna Gát: Absolutely. You can stop any passerby in New York, ask them to summarize the city, and they will be correct.

[41:57] Paul: Yeah. Um, yeah. And I think you're spot on about the U.S. You basically need to be in a growing city now. And San Fran's a unique case. I think it has huge halo effect from the tech economy, but it has its own issues.

But Yeah, I'd love to shift to a little more inter-intellect. How many salons have you held at this point?

[42:22] Anna Gát: Myself or the platform?

[42:24] Paul: The platform.

[42:25] Anna Gát: I don't know the exact figure, but 4,000 something. Wow.

[42:30] Paul: That's amazing. And these are typically 2 to 3 hour things, uh, that people do. Maybe just share a little bit about what these are like. I guess it varies now.

[42:42] Anna Gát: It varies. So for those of you who don't know Interintellect, uh, we're a curated events marketplace, uh, for artists and intellectuals where anybody with the idea and the ambition can come and start their own events online or offline. Can be a one-off or a series and build your own community around those ideas and make some money along the way if they want to. Um, we have a community tier with the most passionate attendees who can come to our forum and hang out together and with the host. We are a very deep thinking and deep feeling community with a lot of big relationships, book projects, collaborations, friendships, group holidays coming out of just people meeting in our community or among our hosts. The standard Interintact Salon is around 2 hours, a 2-hour long Online gathering where you will talk about an idea, a book, a big question of life, moderated by a host or multiple hosts.

Um, and then we have a variety of different variations on this series that run for over a year or indefinitely. Super Sloanes where a celebrity comes and hangs out with you. Um, members-only gatherings where people just play Cards Against Humanity or Werewolf or learn how to, I don't know, produce music on their computers. And then we have a bunch of offline hubs around the world. And those people come together often just to go to the museum together or have a picnic and just enjoy having a mind without having to worry about what it means that you want to think and talk and challenge yourself. Um, I think it's the most beautiful thing that people can do and I'm very happy to have this job.

[44:35] Paul: Yeah. One frame I've been thinking about is I sort of think there are question people and then there are answer people. Question people love exploring the questions, right? And they'll just keep going and digging deeper. And answer people love to know what they think. Here's what I think.

Here's exactly. And they, they don't want to explore the question. I'm wondering if you think this resonates and like how that would map to like all the humans on Earth. I sort of think there's like just 5 to 10% of people that are just question people and they need to find each other.

[45:10] Anna Gát: Interesting. Yeah, it's probably very similar to the openness number in the Big Five psychology test, openness to experience, I think it's called. I always say that a good host is always on the fence. You can't really host an event having a very firm opinion because then you will not be able to really neutrally navigate the room and ensuring that everybody's heard and everybody gets undivided attention. I don't know, I remember I was 27, I was still in Budapest and I was having a Christmas dinner with a couple of old college girlfriends of mine and I had this sudden vision or realization as I was sitting there listening to people that would probably, we would call them maybe normies today or conformists. I don't know.

It's a dangerous dichotomy because we all have everything, right? It's just a question of proportion. And I realized that, oh my God, a lot of these women that I knew at the age of 27 kind of stop, or at least periodically, and they say, okay, I'm 27, This is what I learned. This is where I traveled. This is who I slept with. These are the internships that I did.

And from now on, I'm going to live off of this. I'm going to be not a maker of the world, but a, but a user. And I remember sitting there like this little idiot elf that I am. Guys, what the fuck are you talking about? You haven't even started yet. I don't know shit.

I'm just starting. Are you seriously going to stop here? Nothing has ever happened to me. I was just like in my early 20s making mistakes. Give it to me now. I want to go.

And I think for my kind of understanding of the proportions was more like it's 20% of people who kind of feel that, oh, my youth is just the first offer that I don't accept. You know? Yeah, you have the first offer. Everybody gets the devil's pact. Everybody gets the devil's offer. When people are like, oh, you wanted to be an opera singer.

Well, but here's, you know, being a banker and singing karaoke with your friends, or, oh, you wanted to be a quarterback. Well, here is like a very shitty local version of that where you play something on your computer, you know? And I felt that, oh, I got all the devil's offers in my 20s. Like all of it was thrown at me. And I said, okay, do I want to be this? This little over-bloated nobody in this tiny country having received the least challenging or meaningful versions of my dreams?

Or am I going to pack and sell everything, go to the hardest place in Europe? Like I went to the hardest place where my passport would get me and see what I'm made of. And to me, because my parents are very famous and, you know, my entire life when I was young was like, people would look at my ID card and be like, There you go, miss. I mean, it had more negative sides than positive, but this thing of getting into the room was not a problem. And I wanted to experience being this complete nobody coming from Eastern Europe. Eastern Europeans are really looked down upon in London.

So you are this discriminated against minority. And I wanted to see that because I didn't want to grow old and, or, or just like be an adult in a city and have children without ever having gathered the data about my own abilities, because then how do I know who I am? And I do think that a lot of people who are, who stay with the first offer, they don't really know. And the, the reason why people go into your community and my community and want to read about The Pathless Path and the boundless thinking is because the curiosity doesn't go away. And I think the cost of continuing to think deep into your adulthood is much lower now than any other time. Like you can stay, you know, where you are and you can have the job that you picked for yourself when you were 20 and still read your book and gain something.

And change your thinking and maybe even value what you already have more. And I really deeply respect people who go and try and then return to their roots, whether that's a religious reconversion or actually going home, or in some cases, you know, I have friends whose parents divorced in older age and went back to their high school sweethearts. Like, even that happens. but that's your choice now. If you have never tried, then it's not your choice yet. It just looks like it.

[50:07] Paul: I love that framing. It, you, life's giving you offers and you're saying, ah, I'm gonna try the next offer I get. And it's funny, I think my wife and I sort of fell into this trap with childhood, like child or not childhood, but, uh, having a child. Um, you sort of think, okay, we're having a child, we need to get serious about life. And the great thing is the child—

[50:33] Anna Gát: I don't know about serious people. I follow you on Instagram. You seem like very serious young parents.

[50:38] Paul: Well, the thing you realize is like, what, what I mean serious is like you have to pick one location. You have to like know what you're doing. You have to like buy a house, right? And it's like the, the great thing is the offer came in the form of the child and she sort of reignited our adventurous spirit. It's like, oh, we're still here. Like we're still curious people.

We're probably gonna explore. It's just gonna be better with a child. And, uh, it, you, it sort of never goes away. The need to have to remind yourself that like life is a continuous act of finding out and asking questions. Uh, but yeah, I think it does get harder as you age.

[51:23] Anna Gát: This is so, yeah. When, when people tell me like, I'm going to get a stable job or we will have a child, you know, or we, we will get a house, that will solve the problem. And I'm like, no, you will have a new problem.

[51:38] Paul: Yeah. Where, where is the stable problem?

[51:40] Anna Gát: Now you've just given yourself a 40-year-long problem. Which is fine if this is the problem you want to have. But to think about these insane, you know, life decisions as something that will solve the problems of like you don't know what you want to do with your life, that's horrible. And so many people kind of like, you know, do this kind of logical swap. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, that's not, that's not, that's not how, how it goes. But I have a question for you.

Do you think, I mean, this is something that I, I spend almost all of the winter kind of mulling over and thinking about. Do you think that conformism or nonconformism, if we, like, I know it's not a separate, two separate polarities, but let's just for the sake of argument pretend that there's no overlap. Do you think it's something that you're born with and everybody has a built-in baseline of adventurousness and we should just like let people do whatever they want? Or do you think it's completely, you know, a decision question or an environment question or a level of information about the world question?

[52:46] Paul: I think it's both. I think there's definitely a genetic setting, right? You can, you can often see it by looking at your siblings and being like, oh, I've seen them make many decisions and it's like obvious something's happened there. But I think it's environment too. Like, I think in a place like the US where the labor market is really good and you can make good money and stable, like you can relatively find stable, good paying jobs here. And I think that gets a lot of people indexing too far to the conformism, right?

Where they're probably overpricing the safety and security and underpricing adventure and risk. Right. I think, I mean, Nassim Taleb writes about this in Antifragile, where he's like, people think they're selecting for less randomness in their life, but actually picking like a job invites more randomness because if you leave a, if you randomly get fired, that is extremely disruptive. To your life versus my path. Like, I don't, I have no idea what I'm going to make this year, next year, next month, but I've developed an emotional resilience for that and I'm not going to make zero, which is really interesting. So long answer is like definitely genetic, but I think the environment nudges people away from the adventure on average.

In many places.

[54:24] Anna Gát: Yeah. I, I'm sorry to say that I really agree with Taleb here because I think it's, it's similar. It's a different way of, of, of saying that, you know, you, you, you choose something that you think is a solution and you're, you've just given yourself another problem.

[54:39] Paul: Yeah. And I think it's interesting for me because I was a bit of a conformist person in my twenties. Like I followed the default path.

[54:48] Anna Gát: You posted a photo from like, I don't know, like an office, and it was so strange. It was something Photoshop situation.

[54:54] Paul: It's weird. It's weird for me to look at, cuz it's like, how did I end up so deep down that path? And I think, um, the thing is like, I was good enough at it and good at fitting in. I always felt like an outsider though, cuz I didn't grow up with like an elite path. Um, so I was always sort of pretending and performing. Um, and I just ignored the signals that it was the wrong path because when you're succeeding and making good money, everybody implicitly supports your life.

And I think the reason many people don't take an alternative path like mine is because they're accurately realizing that they will get less support, which is true. And I think this is why communities like yours are so important. Because you can just go enroll in your membership and instantly find the support you need.

[55:51] Anna Gát: I think so. And I think it kind of goes back to maybe an even more basic problem that we, we have, which is that most people never get good feedback. We have this weird kind of warped way of looking at people. So when we see somebody who is beautiful, well-dressed, well-spoken, you know, kind, charitable, smart, funny, like whatever they're doing that pleases you, you think, oh, I'm sure he hears this all the time. And no, because everybody else also thinks that. So oftentimes, just like, I think, you know, the Michael Nielsen note on like the insane, you know, ROI on just raising aspirations.

Just like spotting something that's good and telling the other person can change a life. Nobody ever gives— people give good feedback when they have to, when they want something, when they are courting. Like, there are specific scenarios, but it's very, very rare. And so I often think that if you want to see more out of the box thinking around yourself, adventurousness, you know, dedication in the arts, in self-learning, in, or self-led learning, in, you know, independent research. Just tell somebody like, oh, actually what you're talking about is really interesting. I would like to read about this more.

What are the 7 books I should read? And, you know, by the time that person puts the email together for you with the 7 books, they're basically writing a PhD proposal and who knows what happens, you know, next thing you know, paid Substack, you know, Joe Rogan interview, et cetera. Et cetera. So that's really, really, really worth your time. And, and, and, and, you know, I just, anybody who's listening, listening to this, if there are two people in your life right now who are just amazing at something, please text them. Just tell them whatever it is, any job well done from gardening to playing the cello to just being a good conversationalist that you can trust and, and, and, and, you know, just tell them.

Maybe they don't know. I, I'm pretty sure they don't know.

[58:09] Paul: Yeah. I love this. I've done some group coaching and some one-on-one coaching. I don't really do it anymore, but one exercise is the best self exercise, which is just email 5 friends and ask them when you've seen, they've seen you at your best self.

[58:22] Anna Gát: Yeah.

[58:22] Paul: A hundred percent of the time people are like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize, I didn't realize people saw this in me. Right? Because they, they're not getting the feedback. And like, I actually spend a lot of my time doing this. It's so important to me because when I first took the leap, I felt so ashamed of what I was doing. I felt like I was a bad person for like wasting my talent and doing a weird path and not having a story.

And I, I didn't really have a lot of active support. I had support in the sense of if I failed, would people take me in? Sure. But people weren't like rooting for me. And I think rooting for people is so important in today's world because it, it actually takes so little to change someone's life. It's kind of crazy.

I'm sure you've seen examples of this in your community.

[59:21] Anna Gát: Absolutely. And I think this is one of the driving forces of Interintellect. And I think, you know, as you're also, I think it's important that we are, you know, honest with people who are listening to us that if you deviate from the immediate norms of your immediate community, it's possible that at least temporarily you will lose the support of those nearest you. Just because even just, you know, going against other people's expectations can be a little bit offensive or shocking or, disorienting to another person. And it's in those moments when the wider circles of friends, online communities, writing groups, the weak ties become so important and just trust the process and know that most of the people, even if you lose a couple of friends for a few months, they will come around and they will understand that this, your choice is not about them.

It's not a criticism, implicit criticism of their lives. They also are the heroes of their own movie and they see you through the prism of that. I think that's very, very important. And I can only attest to the incredible humbling gratitude, exploding feeling of the moment when you realize that, oh my God, people want me to do what I'm doing. I mean, for me, I think still, every time people sign up for an Intrinsic membership or they reach out to me or they just like talk to me on Twitter or on Substack. I'm like, oh my God, people actually want me to continue doing what I'm doing because they need my work.

And I think as far as human experience or human experiences, plural, go, that's kind of the best thing you can get. That's as good as it gets. Are there any people we should highlight here to give them a boost of, uh, I would really recommend for people to check out the 2023, uh, Interintellect Fellows. Uh, this was our first fellowship, um, where we supported financially, um, 5, um, independent researchers and makers. Um, and you can find them through our website, interintellect.com. Uh, you will find job transition as one of the areas of research talent, but there's also friendship.

Education and public philosophy. So I'm very proud of that. I wish I could have given more money because this is like a micro micro grant, but still, you know, I, my life was changed by, you know, a couple of thousands of dollars that enabled me to go to SF in 2019 and then a tiny EV grant I won that enabled me to move out of London the same year. 2019 was a crazy year for me. And so I know that most people just don't have that little, little, you know, amount of savings that can just like get you to the next level of the game. And so, you know, keep an eye out on Interintellect fellowships, but also there are so many good fellowships now.

Almost every community or, you know, organization is giving away just a couple of thousand dollars. And sometimes that's all you need.

[01:02:37] Paul: I love that. Yeah. Um, I pulled 'em up.

[01:02:39] Anna Gát: Yeah. There's so much money and people want to give you this money. Take the money.

[01:02:43] Paul: Brian Kam, Mary Budjoric, and, uh, Linus Liu. I'll, I'll link them up. I, uh, I definitely want—

[01:02:51] Anna Gát: I've, mm, two, two rounds.

[01:02:53] Paul: Oh, amazing. I'll pull up the other names and link them. Um, but yeah, I know we've talked about things I might be able to do to support them, so stay tuned for that. And, um, How has Tyler Cowen helped to raise your aspirations? Because he has this Emergent Ventures program and he's supported so many people. It's amazing.

[01:03:13] Anna Gát: He does mentorship at a scale that just blows my mind so much. I think he's definitely one of the three main mentors for me. I'm always a little bit reluctant to say that because he's like a public treasure, so you can't just like monopolize Tyler.

[01:03:29] Paul: But well, I think I think this is an interesting thing because he really cares and just a small vote of confidence for him can have a huge effect. And this is possible for many people, I think.

[01:03:43] Anna Gát: I remember I had lunch with Tyler in March 2019, right before I went to the US. I told you that was a crazy year and we had lunch and I remember I was so nervous that he ate like 4 courses in front of me and I was still starter. And then I went home and my friend who was another winner and who was kind of advocating for me was like, how is it going to go? And I remember just like crying for an hour, like this is completely pointless. I would never get this. I will never even apply.

And then I didn't apply. And then I went to SF the second time in August 2019. And I was yet again having lunch with another EB winner. Always have lunches with people. That's a really good strategy, even if you forget to eat. And I, okay, so I was meeting with this person at OpenAI and we were having OpenAI food and I got so upset by the notion that I would need to apply to an EV grant and be rejected that I went and I was crying in OpenAI's toilet.

So, you know, this, my simulation is weird. So here I am crying in OpenAI's toilet in San Francisco. And deciding I will never ever apply because who would ever give me a grant? And then in October 2019, right before I left London, everything was going terribly, really badly. And so I thought, okay, so now I feel so shitty that if I apply now and when I get rejected, I will not even feel it because like I'm already feeling terrible. So I applied and I literally got the grant the next day and I was like, Oh my God, Anna, grow up.

What the fuck? And I learned so much because I have this instinct when something potentially good is happening that I just become super depressed and decide that this is never going to happen. Why would this happen? And now I'm like, no, you just have to try. Just put yourself into another difficult situation. So this is not the most difficult situation you have to deal with.

Deal with it. And realize that you were wrong. This works, guys. This is, guys, this is my recipe for a good life.

[01:05:56] Paul: I love it.

[01:05:57] Anna Gát: Yeah.

[01:05:57] Paul: Learning, it, it seems like it's inevitable.

[01:06:00] Anna Gát: You're great. This has nothing to do with you.

[01:06:04] Paul: It's, it's amazing how we all, like, we all need to take like the slow, dumb, like hard way. Like it's just how life works and it, it sucks, but it's also like beautiful too. Wanted to do some rapid fire questions.

[01:06:22] Anna Gát: Okay.

[01:06:24] Paul: If you had to organize a dinner party, alive or dead, who would be at the dinner party with you?

[01:06:32] Anna Gát: 5 people.

[01:06:33] Paul: It doesn't have to be 5. You can change the table size if you want.

[01:06:38] Anna Gát: Definitely a couple of Romans. So like Caesar, Mark Antony, maybe Yeah, a couple of people from there. Maybe Seneca, I would be interested. So one of them, maybe Mark Antony would be interesting because I don't fully understand the guy. Who else? Who else?

Who else? Probably Da Vinci because I would be too curious and apparently he was a sweetheart.

[01:07:05] Paul: Who else?

[01:07:05] Anna Gát: Who else? Who else? I think I would want some religious person? Descartes would be interesting. Either Descartes or Leibniz or Spinoza, like one of these three guys. I would definitely have a conversation.

I would probably want to talk to James Joyce because I don't like his books and I want to like them. So if I got to like him as a person, that would help. And Elena Ferrante, I want to bitch with her about boys.

[01:07:38] Paul: I like it. Uh, who are your PATH role models?

[01:07:43] Anna Gát: PATH? I, when I was 11, I was in a church and I heard a Poor Clare, so Franciscan female monk, a nun, talk about her first pilgrimage and becoming a nun. And it was a story of leaving everything that you thought you were behind and choosing a very different path. And I think about this speech that she gave very frequently ever since then. And I think it's just the most beautiful ancient human story of humans originating somewhere in Africa. And there always being a couple of people who are like, okay, this was great.

Now let's see what's on the other side of the mountain. And sometimes you have to go because there's no food or no water. Sometimes you're fighting with your brother and you have to leave. But sometimes you are just like, those seem like interesting birds. Anybody else? Let's go.

[01:08:43] Paul: If you had to live in one place for the rest of your life, where are you picking?

[01:08:48] Anna Gát: But I can leave it so I can travel.

[01:08:51] Paul: Yeah, you can travel. Still got planes and maybe teleportation in the future. I love how seriously you're thinking about this question.

[01:09:02] Anna Gát: In a little bit different reality, I would want to be in Israel because I would want to be in a place that is the source of things. So it would have to be a location that is like, you know, the end and the beginning somehow.

[01:09:23] Paul: What's the most surprising thing that's emerged out of Interintellect?

[01:09:28] Anna Gát: People getting married to each other.

[01:09:31] Paul: How many so far?

[01:09:33] Anna Gát: We have, I think, 5 or 6 very serious relations, and all of them moved countries, continents for each other. It's beautiful.

[01:09:40] Paul: Wow. Any Interintellect babies yet?

[01:09:43] Anna Gát: Not yet, but we started Kinderintellect, which is a salon series where you can bring your baby. And because a lot of people—

[01:09:52] Paul: I need to attend.

[01:09:53] Anna Gát: Yeah, yeah, you have to come and, or you can host one and talk about, you know, because they're always connected.

[01:10:00] Paul: That'd be so much fun.

[01:10:01] Anna Gát: You can talk about immigration and adventures while a parent. So we're preparing the ground. Yeah, I'm in a competition with Matt Clifford, my friend, because EF, which is combining startup founders, they already had babies. But they are 11-year-old and we are like 4 years old. So, but I have to catch up, you know.

[01:10:20] Paul: I love that. Yeah. I'm, I'm counting on many of the, the people working on stuff to figure out all this schooling and future stuff for my daughter. Amazing. Where, where can people learn more about what you're working on? Anywhere you want to send people?

[01:10:40] Anna Gát: Yes. Come to interintellect.com. And now we also have a Substack, interintellect.substack.com, where I have my Friday Digest, which I will write later today.

[01:10:52] Paul: And it's so good.

[01:10:54] Anna Gát: It's all the things you should read, guys. Don't look anywhere else. Just read my digest and read those things. And that's all you need to know about the world.

[01:11:01] Paul: It is so good. I'm just like, how is she reading so much good stuff every week?

[01:11:07] Anna Gát: I don't know.

[01:11:09] Paul: I wish I always been a reader and just would sleep or something.

[01:11:13] Anna Gát: That's not happening.

[01:11:15] Paul: That's amazing. Yeah, I, I will link those up. Highly recommend Interintellect. I've been a member for a few years now. Have attended many, uh, hosted with Orfest.

[01:11:25] Anna Gát: Yeah.

[01:11:26] Paul: Yeah. And just helping me make friends around the world. It's really, uh, enriched my life. I, I really mean it when I say you've created positive externalities by your creation for my life that are sort of undeniable. And I appreciate that. I'm rooting for you and excited to see what comes next.

[01:11:46] Anna Gát: Thank you so much, Paul. I'm very, very happy to have learned more about you and all the wonderful questions also came as a nice surprise. So thank you.