Tom Brands: Iowa Wrestling | Lex Fridman Podcast #245

The following is a conversation with Tom Brands, Olympic champion and world champion in freestyle wrestling, three-time NCAA wrestling champion at University of Iowa and one of the greatest coaches in the history of wrestling, leading the University of Iowa Hawkeyes for 15 years, including in 2021 winning the national championships and getting a coach of the year award, his third. He's known for his intensity, focus, and mental toughness, embodying both as a wrestler and coach the culture and spirit of Iowa wrestling. We recorded this conversation almost exactly three years ago after I attended the University of Iowa versus Iowa State wrestling meet in the historic Carver Hawkeye Arena. Tom graciously invited me to his home where his family, a couple of friends, and me spent several hours chatting about wrestling and life. We recorded this brief podcast conversation that evening and I wasn't sure where, how, or whether we'll publish it, but returning to it now three years later, I realized just how meaningful that evening was for me and even though I was nervous, didn't even put on my jacket, it's a moment I would love to share with others. The mix of intensity and heartfelt kindness from Tom and his family made me want to stay in Iowa forever. I think I will return there soon enough because of the amazing people there and because Iowa is still in many ways the heart of the indomitable spirit of American wrestling, a sport I love and to which I'm deeply grateful for humbling me early in life and helping me and many others build character through hard work. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description and now here's my conversation with Tom Brantz. What's the best motivator for you or for your athletes? Hatred of losing or love of winning? For me personally, it was definitely the hatred of losing. I was not a guy that was about pageantry. I was not a guy that was about the parade. When I wrestled in Atlanta, I rented a three-cylinder Gio with my wife, drove home and mowed the lawn because it hadn't been mowed for a month. I remember one of our neighbors driving by and they were like, they did a double take. I thought he was in Atlanta. Well, I was in Atlanta yesterday. I just sat on the stand and got a gold medal put around my neck. That's how I was. That doesn't mean that it was the right approach or the wrong approach. It's just what worked for me. When you were a kid, you and Terry, you dreamed about winning that Olympic gold. Yeah. That's about winning then. There is the lure of winning. What drives you is that as you move forward, there's just no reason that you have to settle for anything but being the best. It would get to you to the point where that's not going to happen to me again. The thing that keeps you up at night is the losses and that's not going to happen to me again. That's the thought that keeps you up at night. That's the thought that drives you in your training. That's why you do nine ropes when Gable says do three ropes and buddy pushups and you're out of here. You do nine or you do them until you can't do any more. It's a very rare ingredient. The older I get, the more rare I find it is. The ingredient of loss feeding the drive of hard training? Maybe that because everybody's so worried about the negative whatever and you're putting too much pressure on yourself. Maybe that. What I meant was it's when a coach says, okay, finish with four ropes and buddy pushups and four-way neck, I would do 12 or 10. That's rare. It's no longer about what the coach says. It's your own demons that you're trying to exercise out. What's the few losses you've had in your life? Are all of them just melt together or is there something that stands out in your mind? I'm a guy that remembers my career that well. I know that I am judged on a very small portion of my life and that's minutes of wrestling matches. There's a lot of winning, but there's some losing in there too. People think they know you because of that. They think they know you because they see you in a press conference. To go back to the original question, I don't know how to answer that. There's no losses that eat at you still? There's opponents that I have learned a great deal from. My loss to John Smith in 1991, US Open, was something that I learned a lot about. I learned a lot about positioning. I learned a lot about the importance of parterre. In a certain crazy way, I learned that I could go with the best guy in the world even though it was 14 to 4. This is when Tech Falls were 15 or 12 points. I didn't get Tech Fall. That wasn't a badge of honor for me, but I knew I could go with him because it was one point takedowns. I scored four takedowns on him. I learned that I had to move my feet. I learned what it meant to move your feet constantly. John Smith is a very, very intense competitor that people know that now, six-time World Olympic champion. I felt that firsthand, but I did not go in there taking a back seat even though the score was very lopsided. But you knew you could stand with the best of the world. I knew that this is what this is about. You know what? You move your feet and you don't give up a lace that's so damn tight that you can't feel your calf muscle. I had to get ready for the consolation side of the bracket because I believe that was in the semis. You just learn from that. It was better than learning from a win over a second-ranked senior level guy when you're a junior in college. You're wrestling the best on a stage. If you look back, you probably spent tens of thousands of hours on the mat, spilled sweat, blood, even tears maybe, maybe a few times. So technically or philosophically, how would you do any of those hours differently? Just looking back at the tens of thousands of hours. I would be more probably in my older age, I probably would have been more relaxed in my training and probably would have went another cycle if I could do it over again. In 96, I really thought that when Gable retired that I would be the next guy in line. I was wrong and that was immature of me. In terms of the coach? In terms of the coach, yes. I knew that Gable was close. I didn't know when but it just so happens 97 was his record-breaking year and then he retired. I didn't know how close he was but I knew that he went down with a bad hip injury. And so you're not going to... So what does a relaxed Tom Brands look like? You're saying you would have been a little more relaxed. More like where, you know what, I was pretty dang good and I was getting better every day but maybe doing a little bit different, a little bit smarter. And Terry actually did that going through 2000. He had to do it and he would have been in the funny farm let alone the physical farm, whatever you want to say, mentally and physically beat up. But he had to learn to less is more type approach. And how it came around was you work hard at feeling good. You work hard in your recovery. So even when you're not wrestling hard in that wrestling room and looking for the toughest partner to go, you're still working hard in your recovery. In recovery. And massage could be that. Stretching could be that. Things like that that are more fluffy. And that's something you weren't as good at in recovery? Never, never. There's not a place for it with young people because in my opinion, there's so much development to have happen. I mean when you need to learn wrestling, you need to be wrestling. And as you get older, your body won't do it anymore. And so to learn wrestling, it's more of a probably a relaxed approach. So if you had to choose between two athletes who would dominate competition, one who drills 100,000 reps of a specific takedown, specific technique, or one that spends that time live wrestling? Both. It's the same. And I like to live wrestling. I was always wanting to live wrestle. Bring the warmup into the live wrestle, let's go. But where I got really, really good was in repetition. And I was disciplined enough to know that the things that you hate to do in this sport are the things that make you the very best. And that is a rare ingredient as I've gotten older. And you spend a lot of time communicating that to younger athletes. So the thing, if you feel yourself hating something, that's probably the thing you should be doing. Yes. As a matter of fact, I had a strength coach when I was really young. He was just a freaking guy that would, he wore white, like he was almost like a nurse, nurses clothes. He wore all white from head to toe and he was in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And his first name was Walt. And he taught Terry and I to hate the bar away from you on that last rep when you're dead. And whether it's a curl, you hate it up. And then you do the negative and you hate it down and you hate that bench up and you hate it. You look at the bar and you hate it away from you. So I learned and I was young. I was young. And I remember being born, my mom's sister lived out there and we were dropped off to stay out there with our cousins. And I was born a little bit and they always treated us really good. But this was like the single most bright spot in a weightlifting, like enlightenment, even though I lifted weights. But I never knew the psychology behind lifting weights. It's just to look good. And so you can flex and look in the mirror or is it for performance? And this guy was about performance. And you said repetition. Do you mean technique? I'm talking repetition, technique, technique, technique, drill, drill, drill, hit, hit, hit, drive, finish, hit, hit, hit, drive, finish. So you believe in that? I believe in that wholeheartedly. So I mean... And I believe that you have to do it on your own. I don't believe in the coach taking you to the promised land. So in the guys today or in yourself, how often do you see people that grow the belief of doing 10,000, 20,000 reps? I think it's rare. I think it's very rare. And I think it's especially rare. I mean, you can talk about that as a coach, but it's especially rare to bring a guy to that understanding, but you never stop trying. You're always trying to reach him. I mean, we didn't have a good performance out there tonight, but you know what? You don't stop communicating. And there's a lot of programs out there that put their head down when things aren't going their way. And then as things start going their way, then they rise with the tide. There was no difference in the demeanor of our corner. And we talk about that. That's a philosophy. And so you're reaching your guys that way. So go back to your point or your question. You know, do you believe in the 10,000 reps? And yes, I do. And how do you inspire people to do that? Well, you communicate. By example, but communication. But I mean, that's a... In my experience, what I've seen is that communicating the value of repetition and drilling is a hard thing to communicate. It's hard, and it's very rare to have somebody that goes in there and will do it on their own. Do you have young guys that step up and do that? We do, and it's rare. And the guys that do it on their own and have done it on their own are the guys that are in that lineup and doing well. The other thing is that when you talk about getting to that next level, a lot of times it's, you know, what held you back was I did everything the coach asked of me and nothing more. I mean, you can be a great guy for a coach as an athlete, and you did everything that coach asked, but you did nothing more. So you're really looking for the guys that go way beyond what the coach says. We don't want guys that are looking at their watch running out of the room when practice is over. We want guys that know what they have to get done, and they might leave early, but they're not looking at their watch. They might be done early. We might be on a whole different path, and this guy just excuses himself. I'm all about that. We are not autocrats. There's an internal engine in there. Is that something you're born with, or is that something you can develop? I think you are born with it. You develop it also, and I think that there has to be comfort, and I go back to the communication, that young people are comfortable enough to communicate that I need to take the day off. So what do you mean by communication? Or I need to make a difference. Just let, exactly, so letting athletes be part of their own development. Communication to me is letting them know what they need to do to get themselves in contention to be the starting quarterback, and then to give them boosts and compliments when they earn them. I don't have time to waste with lies and cheating. When I say cheating, I'm talking about when they cheat themselves, and so those become very direct conversations, and the conversation starts like this. I don't have time to waste, and neither do you, and so why are we wasting our time? Here's what I mean by that. We're having a conversation about your accountability. If you look in the mirror and you're accountable, then we aren't taking the time to go through this. We're already on our way to solving the problem. Problem can't be solved without that understanding. And that has to do with symptoms that you see in the wrestling room. There's something where the fire's not quite there. That has to do with mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, everything, everything that you know about. I had a boss, and our athletic director is a great athletic director, and he gives us everything we need to be successful, but I had a boss. His name was Fred Mims, and I didn't think anybody could be better than him, and then all of a sudden this Gene Taylor guy came in, and then he was pretty doggone good too, and he actually was just like Fred and maybe even a little bit more current, and then he ended up taking a job at Kansas State where he's the athletic director now, and then this lady, Barbara Burke, comes in, and I didn't think anybody could be better than Gene Taylor or Fred Mims, and this Barbara Burke, she's better than both of them, and the reason why is because she's a problem solver. She doesn't waste time. She's direct, and she's a problem solver, and that's what we need. You need problem solvers. So on the flip side of problems and technique and repetition, here's a thing called toughness, mental toughness, something that maybe you or maybe even Iowa in general is a little bit known for. So how do you train mental toughness as a coach? You train mental toughness by putting them in situations that they're willing to go through but don't think they can make it, and then they go through it, and then all of a sudden those barriers are down. Is that have to do with physical usually exhaustion, the four wraps on the ropes? It has to do with that, and it has to do with understanding why we're doing it, and sometimes understanding why we're doing it might not come for months, but there's blind faith, and we have a heavyweight in the room right now, this young guy that he's like that. He doesn't necessarily understand it. He has a lot of questions, but he does it, and he's been here four months now, four and a half months now, and he's getting better every day. So mental toughness too is a matter of repetition. So that mental toughness is a matter of repetition and having an open mind and being extremely accountable, and not only accountable that when something doesn't go your way that you look in the mirror and own it, but accountable to the point of view that you know what, I got to get tough in this situation right here right now, and this is what's going to make or break me. And I talked about my own career being defined by a couple of minutes on the mat, but that's when you're going to be defined. That's how you're going to be defined. That's okay. So people are going to talk about you, so you might as well have them talking about how doggone tough you are. What about, we live in a world now, I've often in my own work, I hear about this concept of work life balance or over training. So you've been one of the hardest workers ever on the mat. You've coached some of the hardest workers ever. Do you think it's possible to over train, train too much? How big of a concern is it? I think peaking and burnout are frames of mind or burnout is a, like you let things probably get to the point where you could have arrested them with a good frame of mind. But peaking is a frame of mind and you have to know, be able to read, and that's a lot of it. And the individual athlete also has to know that it's a frame of mind. And so when you have a coach that's reading that the right way, and you have an athlete that is knowing that when zero hour comes, you're going to be ready to go. And knowing that there's light at the end of the tunnel, if you feel like you're burning that candle at both ends, light's coming at the end of the tunnel. I mean, you're good to go. So you think about Gable and that whole dream of being carried off the mat because you worked so hard. And again, do you think it's possible to over train? So you said it's mental. I do think it's possible to over train if you have a lot of distractions. So if you're looking at your watch running out of the room, then yeah, you're going to, that frame of mind isn't going to lend itself to excellency. And the thing is, is we have to accomplish what we need to get accomplished to get better every day. You can't kind of accomplish what you need to accomplish. You have to accomplish it. And when you're in that mindset, then the clock is irrelevant. There's no place for a clock in the wrestling room. And maybe a clock that times a match, but it may be a clock if, you know, we're student athletes here, but that's why we encourage our, you know, when you schedule your classes that you don't have a class that comes right up to, you know, practice time or starts as a night class, and it starts at 530, you know, go to get the 630 class or the seven o'clock. So you leave it all behind your heart. Your passion is completely innate. There's no, when you walk in that wrestling room, there's no distractions and it's never eternal. The only thing that's eternal is death. You know, there's nothing. Sometimes guys come in there and they wig out. Oh, it's an hour and 25 minutes of, oh, or an hour and 45 minutes. Oh, yeah. You have to be willing to go as long as it takes. There's no clock. There's no clock. Again, wrestlers are some of the hardest, some of the toughest people in all sports, but weight cutting often breaks people. So what's your thought on weight cutting, both nutrition wise, mental wise, how do you approach and think of it as a coach in your own career too? It's a lot of discipline and it's a lot of discipline during a very uncomfortable time period that really doesn't last that long, but it feels like it lasts long and it's painful. But once you shrink your body down and if you're hydrated, you'll get through it. If you're a little hungry, but you're eating, but you're hydrated, once you break that sweat, your energy depletion goes away. That's a fact. I've practiced that. You come in and you're yawning and you're starting to shrink your body down and it's that time of year where, hey, I got to get my body shrunk down and you're dehydrated, you are dead in the water. But if you're hungry and hydrated, when you break that sweat. Have people gotten better with that over the years, over the past few decades? I think that coach's science is better. I think that coaches communicate it. I think they always have. I think the bottom line is having the energy to implement that and taking a guy by the hand when he doesn't understand and he's new in your program and he's essential and or he's unwilling to and not disciplined enough because when you take him by the hand enough, they will learn that discipline. This is an important aspect of wrestling, buddy. You know what I'm saying? It's not just go and show up for the match. It's not about just making weight either. You got to be able to make weight. That's part of the warmup. That's part of the process getting ready to wrestle. It's the whole thing. It's the lifestyle. When did you first start believing you're going to win Olympic gold? I don't know. I mean, I found out I got really addicted to wrestling really, really fast. Started late but looking back at my life, wrestled my whole life with my twin brother. And when Terry and I would fight, it was wrestling and it was to maim. And so if you're trying to maim me, I better be tough because if I roll over and expect you to scratch my belly when you're trying to maim me, I will lose my head. And Tom and Terry Brands, there was no alpha male. And when it was on, it was on for real. What do you mean there's no alpha male? There's no alpha male. There's both. There's a lot of twins. There's a dominant twin, a lot of them. Very few times is there a situation where I'm going to win every time in everything and then he's thinking the same exact way. And Terry used to describe it like when we used to get interviewed a lot about our careers. It'd be like you grabbing a steering wheel and me grabbing a steering wheel and fighting. And that's what it was like when you would wrestle him or fight him. And so I had that benefit. So when did I know? Well, I got addicted to wrestling really, really fast in fifth grade and started to research it. And I don't know why. And talked about the Olympics and put it in my head. And I remember said something about being an Olympic champion in fifth grade and somebody made fun of me and I got in a fight in a playground. And I remember getting pulled in, getting in trouble for that. And the people that got me in trouble for that were smart enough to not rake me over the coals, but they researched or they actually found out what the fight was about. And I was distraught. I was really emotional, like crying or whatever you want to say. You don't want to admit that too many times. But it wasn't because I got beat up or got my nose bloodied or got punched in the face. Yeah. Or broke my arm or there was any pain. It was because they stomped on my dream and they doubted me. And so I fought for that. And that was a lesson. There's going to be a lot of doubters. And one thing we talk about as a staff is our staff has to be lockstep in that hallway, in our offices. And when you deviate outside of that, that is heresy. So everybody has to be on board, confident that you're going to be number one in the country. When we go forward and we go put our public foot forward, there is a decision. We are unified and there is no backbiting. And we have great people right now. And we hadn't had that before. We've had detractors in our Hawkeye Wrestling Club. We've had guys that would go out and get rolled up in ankle laces and not care in our club. And we got Brandon Sorenson, who got rolled up by James Green last night. But I'll tell you what, I don't have a problem with that. You know why? Because I know it means a lot to him. He didn't roll over. He didn't quit because he was on the consolation side of a bracket. And so when you have that and then you have, you know, if there's a disagreement, it's behind closed doors and then you're moving forward. And when you have people that when they're meeting your fans and your supporters, you know, they're talking the right way with the right message. And anything that's catty wonk is to that. You got to be careful there. You got to be careful there. So that in terms of affirmations, terms of really believing as a team, as an individual, believing that you're the best in the world, did you, I'm sure you had detractors. You had people that continued after fifth grade. And that's probably where my hatred of losing trumps my love for winning, because I wanted to shove it up their rear end bad. Yeah. And the thing is, is we maintain a high level and there's very few programs. Oklahoma state, Ohio state now, Penn state. I mean, there's four programs that try to win a national title every year and that's it. And these, these, these other teams, they get up and they got a good team and they get up and they get going. And then when, when things don't go well, okay, we're going to do it next year or this is a down year. We're going to, we're going to get right. We're three years out. So no matter what you're fighting for first, we do. And we haven't won. And you say, well, we haven't won in eight years. Well, you're right. We haven't. But look at our results are better, better than anybody out there. And it's because besides Penn state, and it's because of our mentality and because we have great people, Ryan Morningstar, Bobby Telford, Terry Brands, our medical team, even our strength coach, Quinn Holland, we're all on the same page. And when I send something, I hit it immediately. I don't have time to waste. There will not be dissension in that hallway. Everybody's in a together. Yeah. 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta. Can you take me through the day when you're going for the 62 kg gold? What did you eat? Drink? What did you think? It really doesn't matter. I have a routine that, you know, I had a routine as a competitor that I could run through right now. It was a lot of self-talk, very, very positive self-talk. Visualization. Yes. Visualization, self-talk. And that's how I was able to relax and getting ready for matches my whole life. Learned that very early age at a camp, at a developmental camp, at a young age, Terry and I did. And I can tell you what I ate and I can tell you what I did to relax. And it doesn't matter. What you have to do is you have to find that peace. And I just know that when I was getting ready for the finals match, I had gone back to my room. I had my relaxed material, you know, and I was able to relax because I prepared for it. Hopefully I'm right on this, but just looking at the insane bracket you had to go through, you had to beat, just to get to the finals, you had to beat three world champions. Eventually world champions. I mean, Dave. And you know what? I don't talk about that and nobody else does either, but everybody talks about it in their own career. So now you're making my head big. But yeah, I had a road. I had a road. You're right. That is the hardest bracket I've seen. So I've talked to a lot of Olympic champions. That is the hardest bracket I've seen of any champion. So maybe I'm confused on this, but it seemed like a really tough day for you. Did you know the bracket ahead of time? Did you know who you faced? You see the draw and it's a two-day tournament. So psychology comes into it as much as physical shape, because there's those, you got to sleep the night before after the weigh-in, then you got to sleep again that next night after your semi-final match is going to be in the morning. And then you have to go back and rest because your final match isn't until whatever time it was. And so all this relaxation and all that stuff that you just talked about, that visualization and self-talk, that's what helps you, it's your routine. And was there any doubt, any fear, anything there? The fear is the type of fear, and I just talked about this to one of my athletes today, Jack Dempsey talked about fear. And the fear of losing is what motivated him to try to take his opponent's head off. He was a boxer and that's okay. So fear of competition, fear of screwing up, fear of, oh, I don't feel good. No, no. But that little fear that, you know what, there's somebody out there that thinks that, you know what, they're going to revel in my, they're going to eat it up in my misery. They're going to love, they're going to be thriving because I fail. And I'm not going to let that happen. You're identical twin, brother, Terry. You've been at him, like you said, your whole life. And you're both some of the greatest wrestlers of all time. You won the gold medal, he won the bronze medal. You've mentioned, you know, all that really matters is the six minutes or, you know, just a few minutes, sometimes a few seconds define your whole career. So how do you think about that thin line, the tragic line at the Olympic level between winning and losing? I think you come to peace that in the end, when it's over, that you did the best you could. And that's certainly the case with Terry. His career credentials are better than mine internationally. You know, he won two world championships. I won one. And he won Olympic bronze medal. And, you know, I won an Olympic gold medal, but I only won one. And the thing is, is that's not what's important anyway. What's important is, is that when it's all over, you know, how do you look back on it? And you're kind of like, well, you just said that you made sure that you weren't going to leave anything undone. But you know what? There were tournaments where I did leave things undone. And so how do you come back from that? Well, Terry never came back from 2000 because he retired. Well, you know what? You duplicate and exceed when you're communicating to these young athletes. And because of that experience, that makes Terry a better coach. Because of, you know, 1995, that makes me a better coach. You know, realizing that there are certain things that unraveled in that year that I could have controlled looking back on it. And when you have that perspective, you can communicate. So what control is there? Can you control everything? How big of a role is luck? Control how you react to an injury. Control that. So you can't, you don't have any control of it. It's over. You know, you have whatever and whatever happened, but relax and you learn to deal with injuries better because of that. You have that experience that you let this thing maybe get the best of you. And that's just an example. And, you know, Terry put a lot of demons to rest with that bronze medal. So becoming an Olympic medalist, a few demons could relax. Well, no, he'll never admit that. And he probably is truthful. And I should, I'm speaking for him, but he's truthful when he says that. But if I look at it and bronze sucks, but if I look at it, he did put some demons to rest and I'm proud of him for it. There's something there that is a consolation in the fact that he won the consolation medal. The consolation medal sucks, but there is a consolation that he won the consolation. That's a tough medal to win, by the way. Yeah. But do you see the Shakespearean tragedy of it all, that the line between winning and losing? So you often say that, you know, winning is everything, but it feels like, especially at the Olympic level, or you talk about NCAA finals or that tournament, you know, a split second miss move can result in a loss where you dominated all the way up to there. That's where your psychology comes in and that's where the repetition and all of the self-talk and visualization and the physical shape and everything comes together. And so that doesn't happen. And tonight we got beat twice, actually three times, and we out-wrestled those. We lost three matches and we out-wrestled the guy for six minutes and 30 seconds. Or one match went to overtime. And if our guys can move forward with the right perspective, I'm confident that they'll be better. I'll tell you what, I'd take our guy over their guy any day, any day, because our guys get up for every match. And now we got a lot to work on. Right. A lot to work on. But you know what? I could say all that and I'll take our guy and blah, blah, blah. But what are they going to do tonight in their meal? How are they going to grow? What are they going to do tonight in their rest? What are they going to do tomorrow in their recovery on their own necessarily? What are they going to do Monday? Great wrestlers can use their imagination with a win that they're not satisfied with and go forward as if it was a loss. But it's still easier to go forward with that win. But they don't just, oh, I won, I'm fine, goes on. But then when they lose the exact same way that they could have lost before, then they go off the deep end. And then that's when they're going to make the change in their life. And we talked about that to our team tonight. And the mature, rare ingredient is guys that can get better even with success like it was a loss without beating themselves up. That's complicated. It is. It's a balance. You often talk about Iowa's focus on creating individual champions like Spencer Lee. Can you explain the philosophy of focusing on individuals versus the team? I think that we need to put them both together and the individual impacts the team. And, you know, we haven't done that since 2010 and we need to do a better job of putting 10 weight classes out there that contribute to the team. And if it's not 10, then it's nine. And if it's not nine, it can't be four, you know, and that takes a lot of pride. And it takes a lot of, you know, where the coach is on top of it. And, you know, you're not just working on the easy things, the glaring things, you're working on everything. What do you mean by everything? So the... Like there's just some, you know, there's ideas that when you're a coach that aren't, they're beneath the surface and you got to find them. And that's where communication comes in. Yeah. But you're talking about, yeah, we got to move forward. Well, what does that mean? Well, I know what that means, but how many guys really know what that means in their program? You know, there's so many levels of that. You've said before that winning is everything. And that means people lose. Most people lose. You know, there's really in whatever the context is only one winner. In many parts of our world today, outside of wrestling, that concept, the brutal honesty of that is uncomfortable for people. So how do you think about this very philosophical, difficult concept of, you know, there only being one winner, that winning is everything? It's kind of a really painful idea. I don't think that that's a bad thing to have that mentality. I mean, I think at Kutukov, I remember a story I read about him. He comes to mind. You know, Sargouj, I remember when he lost in London and I remember the look on his face. And those are some of the greatest wrestlers in the history of the sport, freestyle wrestling. And you know what? It's what works for you. And you can talk about being at peace with your results and that the approach is, and the journey is what it's about. But, and that's great. And that relaxes some champions and that makes some champions really, really tick. But not everybody. So it's okay. It's okay. And if that wigs you out and that really makes you uptight, then go the other route. You have to find what works for you. And that takes a lot of work. If you're lazy, forget it. Forget it. So you and Terry, but in general, how do you find the line between extremely physical, extreme physical wrestling and rough wrestling or angry wrestling? So to which degree has anger, whether it's in your wrestling room these days or in your own career, entered wrestling? Do you see it as a tool that can be used in the wrestling match? I think there's a balance and, or not even a balance. There's a line that you go up to and you can't cross it. Sportsmanship is everything. You can get dinged for points. You can get thrown out of tournaments. There's rules with flagrant misconduct where you're kicked out of the match. Other team gets the points and then you have to sit the next meet. So it's very serious. The NCAA sends a message, a very serious message about sportsmanship. And so we talk about that. And the other thing with wrestling is there's rules in wrestling. These guys that are tough guys outside of the rules, that's what you want in your opponent. That means they're frustrated. You got to be a tough guy inside the rules of the sport. That's more honorable than cold cocking somebody and knocking them out. So yeah, anger doesn't mean breaking the rules, but I mean, you know, a lot of people know you just watching you as a coach. There's quite a bit of passion there. Well, come and do what you're doing tonight. I mean, break bread with me in my kitchen and see how big of a jackass I am. No, you're a pretty nice guy. Well, I'm not asking for that necessarily, but thanks. I'm saying, you know what, as a coach, as a coach, I mean, okay, come spend a month in our program and you'll see really what kind of people we are. And there's a stigma out there because they are very threatened by our program. There's nobody else that threatens the sport of wrestling like we do. And that's the truth. There's a legend to Iowa wrestling. It's one of the most intimidating. There's a legend to John Smith. It's the same thing. But it has- They get up for John Smith. They get up for Oklahoma State. They get up for Penn State. My question is, I'll answer it this way. I'll give you an example. In my coaching career, I coached at Virginia Tech for 22 months. We recruited the number one recruiting class. We got the administration to change 100% 180 how they looked at wrestling. Here's the thing. And because of how serious we were and because we weren't idiots, we were able to do that with our administration. But my point is this, we tried to win. We tried to win. Even at Virginia Tech, it wasn't a stepping stone for me. It ended up being one quickly. And looking back on it, I was a fool to think that I'd be there for 20 years. That's what I thought. But you believed you would be. I did. I did. I did. So do you remember a time that you really pushed yourself to your limits? So Gable talks about having to be carried off the mat. Have you really found that level? I said something about that too in a book. And I think I was misquoted one time. And actually it was Gable's quote. And I was trying to make the point that Gable's quote was like this. And they were making it like it was my own words. I think it was a first wrestling tough book. But- It's a good book. It's a good book. But the story is Gable's. And I don't know if there's anybody that has done that besides him. And I think that's a very rare quality. But I've definitely been in that nirvana level of, you know, you could go all day long. And you have to shoot me to stop me. Yeah. But there's a balance because you're not going hard with and holding your breath. It's not a, it's a relaxed. And like you got a guy cornered and who's most dangerous? Well, the guy that's cornered. And so that's where you relax. I'm not bum rushing him. I'm relaxed. I'm still moving, faking very fluid. Guy falls down on his face. I run around behind him. That's offense. You don't have to just grunt to the leg and call that offense. Offense is a in and out, smooth. Now you're starting to sound like a Russian wrestler. Yeah. Well, that's, they're the best. In a certain light, looking at the history of wrestling, wrestling is much bigger than folk style, freestyle, Greco. It's one of the oldest forms of combat period. There's been cave drawings 15,000 years ago. Do you ever see, so you're one of the great coaches of all time. You're now focused on a particular rule style right now, but do you ever see wrestling as bigger than all of this, as one of the pure combats? I do. And we're raising $20 million for a facility to make it the best facility on the planet. We have a vision to build the best facility on planet earth and put the best wrestlers in it. And that is bigger than wrestling. It's for the university of Iowa and our donors are doing it for the university of Iowa, but it is about the value of wrestling to me also. There is so much value to wrestling. Blind people don't play football. They wrestle. Blind people don't play basketball. I mean, maybe they do, but it'd be very difficult. They can wrestle. Wrestling is a feel sport. Yeah, there's no ball. There's nothing. It's just two guys or two girls and that's it. That's right. I mean, I'm not going to say you can't because somebody will get a hold of this and I'll get an email or a letter that says, you said blind people can't play baseball and blah, blah. I'm just saying that blind people can wrestle very effectively. Yes. I've wrestled with my eyes shut. I mean, was honest about it too. And I was effective. So- Why was I able to be effective? Because wrestling is a sport that you can overcome a lot. Your demons that you're overcoming, they're not limited with whether I'm blind or not. The demons that are overcoming are inside you. You have to overcome those demons from within. So what's the future of Iowa wrestling look like with this facility and this momentum you have now and this great group of guys you have now? We have a good young group of guys and there is a lot of buzz in the program and probably hasn't been this much buzz for quite some time. And our job is to be relaxed and be focused and not get caught up in the buzz, but we have to put it together. And we have a catalyst, Spencer Lee, but he's going to have to get better. And we have some other catalysts as well that are going to help us in the future, but they got to get better. And so all this stuff about independence and accountability and being able to get better every day under duress and not knowing that you're getting better, but you are, you know what I mean by that? Yeah. Like the great thing about Gable was, wrestling for him was, is you were getting better and you didn't know you were getting better. Well, yeah, just like you said, grow from success. So you never allow yourself to think that you're getting good. All of a sudden you do something in the practice room that you've been working on and all of a sudden you hit it and it's like, it was automatic. And then that, you know, that multiplies success. And so if I may say so, you're a bit of a man of the Bible. What's, where do you go? What do you go to the Bible for your faith, strength, love, patience? Same things I talked about, things that you can't control, you turn them over. So the biggest thing for me is I got to turn over the things that I can't control, turn them over to that power and I'm going to be a lot better off. And that's the reason why I'm not in the funny form. Cause very competitive to me. It's very serious that we, we know that these young wrestlers come to school here to be the best that they can be and to accomplish goals that like me, when I was young, they've set out to accomplish and they chose Iowa to do that. And so we have to deliver. And because of that peace with God, you know, it's pure, it's a pure motivation. It's a pure platform. It's not, it's not doing this for my ego. We're not corrupt people. We're not liars and cheaters. And so often that gets in the way of a decent person. Yeah. First and foremost, you're a good person and God helps you be that. Yeah. And we're serious about wrestling. So a couple more questions. What's the role of family in wrestling? You mentioned your wife, who I read, turned you down when you asked her for a phone number, said it's in the phone book. That's pretty smooth. Her story of that is that she didn't want me to have to remember the number. And I say at this point, and I say, there's no way. And I remember it very clearly. Like, Hey, it's in the phone book. And I was like, okay, she's blowing me off. That's okay. But luckily, Anyway, here's the thing with family. I mean, we have great people in our program. We have great parents. We have a culture of parents that that's part of the buzz. And this class that you see wrestling right now, that's been here a year now, Lee, Miren, Costello, Warner, and then Lugo was a transfer. And I'm forgetting somebody. I don't want to forget anybody, but these parents are phenomenal. And that's a different parental culture. So the camera's dad is the same. And there's a lot of good there. And that's a big move because how we talk to parents, we don't talk to parents to get along with them. We talk to parents to help them understand where we're at with their sons. And when you can have a direct conversation with a parent who helping his son or her son, the mom helping her son to be accountable and to own it, then you can get a lot accomplished. And that's what we've been able to do. And so you're solving problems like I talked about earlier. That's part of the family. The other part of the family is the coaches are like family. The other part of the family is the coaches of significant others and wives are part of the family. And we fed, you know, we fed 40 guys and an entire coaching staff and wives and their children here at Thanksgiving. And that equals 70 people. And it's fun. It's fun. So a family means administration. Gary Barta, my athletic director, gives us everything that we need to be successful. And he has an open mind for the sport of wrestling and wrestling is important in Iowa. So that's a no brainer, but not if you're not a wrestling guy, but he sees we do it the right way. And so the commitment is there from him. If we were doofuses, you know, he, the commitment wouldn't be there. So family is everybody's all in. I mean, it's from the wrestlers to the family. It goes back to what I said earlier about our people. Our people are great. Ryan Morton Star is great. Bobby Telford is great. Bobby Telford took over for a guy named Ben Burrhow, who is great. Our medical team is great. Dr. Westerman, Dr. Wolf, Jesse Donenworth, our athletic trainer is great. Terry Brands is great. Mariah Stickley and Elise Owens, our managers, are great. My daughter's a manager as well. It's great. They're hardworking young women. Our Hawkeye Wrestling Club is where it needs to be in terms of how they help in their role. And now we have four women in there. And that's great. And, you know, at least one of their dads is super involved with us. But, and so it's one thing that I've learned is that you have to have that. And if you don't have that, then you have to address it quickly. And those outliers, you know, let's solve that problem. Let's get it out in the open here. And if they're, you know, if it doesn't work out, it's not going to work out. That's a heck of a Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah. Next year. Well, I don't know if it'd be legal, but I'd have to check with our compliance and, you know, they'd have to vet you. You could come. You can come and see what it's all about. This room is full. Oh, man. Well, yeah, I'll be back next year then. All right. Awesome. Last question. In 2014, I watched this video four years ago of you competing in, I believe, your first swim meet against your brother, Terry, and you came out victorious. Not really. Okay. So let's, I won the race. Did you cheat? Here's what happened. I had researched this thing because I'm, that's how I am. You practiced. No, I didn't. But I researched it in swimming. If you flinch on that starter block, it's a false start. You can't twitch a finger. And because they would be doing that to get their buddy to move or the guy next to him, you know, so you have to be rock solid. Well, when we went, Terry was leaning forward as the gun was going off. So he's moving. And so I was like, no, no, no, false start. No, no, no, no. And he couldn't hear me. He was already in the water. And so he took off like a bat out of, you know, where for the end of the pool and couldn't hear me and got to the end of the pool. And it was a down and back. Well, that's a hard thing to do with a guy with no body fat. And so he burned a lot of energy and he come up on that end of the pool. And he was like, where's, where's the X? He didn't see me. And so we stopped him and then he came back and then we went another one and I beat him. But it's the only time that, you know, I would say that he was tuckered out. And that's the reason why. And I also say this, we did a time where we timed my race, the one I won, and then we timed his first down to the wall. And then we timed his, the actual race where once he hit the wall, we timed him on the way back and he'd beat me. Now, how's that for being a that's pretty honest, accountable person. And I'm going to tell you something else getting in those shorts, those swim trunks as impressive. They are tight. Yeah. So is there outside of wrestling? Is there a thing that Terry got the better of you? I mean, I guess this could count as one that you're still really bitter about that you need to avenge. I mean, that's passed. I mean, we, he's got an UNO title. We have UNO world championships. He's got an UNO title. I have, I have yet to have one Morningstar has two titles. That's unprecedented. So there's only four trophies out there and Terry's got one of those. I don't have one yet. Yeah. Well, it's still time, Tom, thank you so much for letting a Russian with a tie into your home. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Tom brands to support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Marcus Aurelius. The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.


Chris Urmson: Self-Driving Cars at Aurora, Google, CMU, and DARPA | Lex Fridman Podcast #28

The following is a conversation with Chris Urmson. He was the CTO of the Google self-driving car team, a key engineer and leader behind the Carnegie Mellon University autonomous vehicle entries in the DARPA Grand Challenges and the winner of the DARPA Urban Challenge. Today he's the CEO of Aurora Innovation, an autonomous vehicle software company he started with Sterling Anderson, who was the former director of Tesla Autopilot, and Drew Bagnell, Uber's former autonomy and perception lead. Chris is one of the top roboticists and autonomous vehicle experts in the world and a longtime voice of reason in a space that is shrouded in both mystery and hype. He both acknowledges the incredible challenges involved in solving the problem of autonomous driving and is working hard to solve it. This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, give it five stars on iTunes, support it on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman, spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N. And now here's my conversation with Chris Urmson. You were part of both the DARPA Grand Challenge and the DARPA Urban Challenge teams at CMU with Red Whittaker. What technical or philosophical things have you learned from these races? I think the high order bit was that it could be done. I think that was the thing that was incredible about the first, the grand challenges that I remember, I was a grad student at Carnegie Mellon and there we, it was kind of this dichotomy of, it seemed really hard, so that would be cool and interesting. But at the time we were the only robotics institute around, and so if we went into it and fell on our faces, that would be embarrassing. So I think just having the will to go do it, to try to do this thing that at the time was marked as darn near impossible, and then after a couple of tries, be able to actually make it happen, I think that was really exciting. But at which point did you believe it was possible? Did you, from the very beginning, did you personally, because you're one of the lead engineers, you actually had to do a lot of the work? Yeah, I was the technical director there and did a lot of the work along with a bunch of other really good people. Did I believe it could be done? Yeah, of course, right? Like, why would you go do something you thought was impossible, completely impossible? We thought it was going to be hard, we didn't know how we're going to be able to do it, we didn't know if we'd be able to do it the first time. Turns out we couldn't. That, yeah, I guess you have to. I think there's a certain benefit to naivete, right? That if you don't know how hard something really is, you try different things and it gives you an opportunity that others who are wiser maybe don't have. What were the biggest pain points? Mechanical, sensors, hardware, software, algorithms for mapping, localization, just general perception control, but the hardware, software, first of all. I think that's the joy of this field, is that it's all hard and that you have to be good at each part of it. So for the first, for the urban challenges, if I look back at it from today, it should be easy today. It should be easy today. That it was a static world, there weren't other actors moving through it, is what that means. It was out in the desert, so you get really good GPS. So that went, and we could map it roughly. And so in retrospect now, it's within the realm of things we could do back then. Just actually getting the vehicle, and there's a bunch of engineering work to get the vehicle so that we could control it and drive it. That's still a pain today, but it was even more so back then. And then the uncertainty of exactly what they wanted us to do was part of the challenge as well. Right, you didn't actually know the track heading in. You knew approximately, but you didn't actually know the route, the route that's going to be taken. That's right. We didn't know the route. We didn't even really, the way the rules had been described, you had to guess. So if you think back to that challenge, the idea was that the government would give us, DARPA would give us a set of waypoints and the width that you had to stay within between the line that went between each of those waypoints. And so the most devious thing they could have done is set a kilometer-wide corridor across a field of scrub brush and rocks and said, go figure it out. Fortunately, it really, it turned into basically driving along a set of trails, which is much more relevant to the application they were looking for. But no, it was a hell of a thing back in the day. So the legend, Red, was kind of leading that effort in terms of just broadly speaking. So you're a leader now. What have you learned from Red about leadership? I think there's a couple of things. One is, you know, go and try those really hard things. That's where there is an incredible opportunity. I think the other big one though is to see people for who they can be, not who they are. It's one of the things that I actually, one of the deepest lessons I learned from Red was that he would look at undergraduates or graduate students and empower them to be leaders, to have responsibility, to do great things that I think another person might look at them and think, oh, well, that's just an undergraduate student. What could they know? And so I think that kind of trust, but verify, have confidence in what people can become, I think is a really powerful thing. So through that, let's just like fast forward through the history. Can you maybe talk through the technical evolution of autonomous vehicle systems from the first two grand challenges to the urban challenge to today? Are there major shifts in your mind or is it the same kind of technology just made more robust? I think there's been some big, big steps. So the, for the grand challenge, the real technology that unlocked that was HD mapping. Prior to that, a lot of the off-road robotics work had been done without any real prior model of what the vehicle was going to encounter. And so that innovation, that the fact that we could get decimeter resolution models was really a big deal. And that allowed us to kind of bound the complexity of the driving problem the vehicle had and allowed it to operate at speed because we could assume things about the environment that it was going to encounter. And so that was a big step. So that was the big step there. For the urban challenge, one of the big technological innovations there was the multi-beam LiDAR and be able to generate high resolution, mid to long range 3D models of the world and use that for understanding the world around the vehicle. And that was really a kind of a game changing technology. In parallel with that, we saw a bunch of other technologies that had been kind of converging half their day in the sun. So Bayesian estimation had been, SLAM had been a big field in robotics. You would go to a conference a couple of years before that and then every paper would effectively have SLAM somewhere in it. And so seeing that those Bayesian estimation techniques play out on a very visible stage, I thought that was pretty exciting to see. And mostly SLAM was done based on LiDAR at that time. Well, yeah. And in fact, we weren't really doing SLAM per se in real time because we had a model ahead of time, we had a roadmap, but we were doing localization and we're using the LiDAR or the cameras depending on who exactly was doing it to localize to a model of the world. And I thought that was a big step from kind of naively trusting GPS, INS before that. And again, lots of work had been going on in this field. Certainly this was not doing anything particularly innovative in SLAM or in localization, but it was seeing that technology necessary in a real application on a big stage, I thought was very cool. So for the urban challenge, there was already maps constructed offline? Yes. In general. Okay. And did people do that, did individual teams do it individually? So they had their own different approaches there or did everybody kind of share that information at least intuitively? So DARPA gave all the teams a model of the world, a map. And then one of the things that we had to figure out back then was, and it's still one of these things that trips people up today, is actually the coordinate system. So you get a latitude, longitude, and to so many decimal places, you don't really care about kind of the ellipsoid of the earth that's being used. But when you want to get to 10 centimeter or centimeter resolution, you care whether the coordinate system is NADS 83 or WGS 84, or these are different ways to describe both the kind of non-sphericalness of the earth, but also kind of the, I think, I can't remember which one, the tectonic shifts that are happening and how to transform the global datum as a function of that. So getting a map and then actually matching it to reality to centimeter resolution, that was kind of interesting and fun back then. So how much work was the perception doing there? So how much were you relying on localization based on maps without using perception to register to the maps? And I guess the question is how advanced was perception at that point? It's certainly behind where we are today. We're more than a decade since the grant or the urban challenge, but the core of it was there. That we were tracking vehicles, we had to do that at 100 plus meter range because we had to merge with other traffic. We were using again Bayesian estimates for state of these vehicles. We had to deal with a bunch of the problems that you think of today of predicting where that vehicle is going to be a few seconds into the future. We had to deal with the fact that there were multiple hypotheses for that because a vehicle at an intersection might be going right or it might be going straight or it might be making a left turn. And we had to deal with the challenge of the fact that our behavior was going to impact the behavior of that other operator. And we did a lot of that in relatively naive ways, but it kind of worked. Still had to have some kind of solution. And so where does that 10 years later, where does that take us today from that artificial city construction to real cities to the urban environment? Yeah, I think the biggest thing is that the actors are truly unpredictable. That most of the time, the drivers on the road, the other road users are out there behaving well, but every once in a while they're not. The variety of other vehicles is, you have all of them. In terms of behavior, in terms of perception or both? Both. That we have, back then we didn't have to deal with cyclists, we didn't have to deal with pedestrians, didn't have to deal with traffic lights. The scale over which that you have to operate is now, is much larger than the air base that we were thinking about back then. So what, easy question, what do you think is the hardest part about driving? Easy question. Yeah. No, I'm joking. I'm sure nothing really jumps out at you as one thing, but in the jump from the urban challenge to the real world, is there something that's a particular, you foresee as very serious, difficult challenge? I think the most fundamental difference is that we're doing it for real. That in that environment, it was both a limited complexity environment because certain actors weren't there, because the roads were maintained, there were barriers keeping people separate from robots at the time, and it only had to work for 60 miles. Which, looking at it from 2006, it had to work for 60 miles. Looking at it from now, we want things that will go and drive for half a million miles. And it's just a different game. Okay. So how important, you said LiDAR came into the game early on, and it's really the primary driver of autonomous vehicles today as a sensor. So how important is the role of LiDAR in the sensor suite in the near term? So I think it's essential. But I also believe the cameras are essential, and I believe the radar is essential. I think that you really need to use the composition of data from these different sensors if you want the thing to really be robust. The question I want to ask, let's see if we can untangle it, is what are your thoughts on the Elon Musk provocative statement that LiDAR is a crutch? That is a kind of, I guess, growing pains, and that much of the perception task can be done with cameras. So I think it is undeniable that people walk around without lasers in their foreheads, and they can get into vehicles and drive them. And so there's an existence proof that you can drive using passive vision. No doubt, can't argue with that. In terms of sensors. Yeah. Yeah, in terms of sensors, right? So there's an example that we all go do it, many of us, and many of us every day. In terms of LiDAR being a crutch, sure. But in the same way that the combustion engine was a crutch on the path to an electric vehicle, in the same way that any technology ultimately gets replaced by some superior technology in the future. And really, the way that I look at this is that the way we get around on the ground, the way that we use transportation is broken. And that we have this, what was, I think the number I saw this morning, 37,000 Americans killed last year on our roads. And that's just not acceptable. And so any technology that we can bring to bear that accelerates this self-driving technology coming to market and saving lives is technology we should be using. And it feels just arbitrary to say, well, I'm not okay with using lasers because that's whatever, but I am okay with using an eight megapixel camera or a 16 megapixel camera. These are just bits of technology and we should be taking the best technology from the tool bin that allows us to go and solve a problem. The question I often talk to, well, obviously you do as well to the sort of automotive companies. And if there's one word that comes up more often than anything, it's cost and trying to drive cost down. So while it's true that it's a tragic number, the 37,000, the question is what, and I'm not the one asking this question because I hate this question, but we want to find the cheapest sensor suite that creates a safe vehicle. So in that uncomfortable trade-off, do you foresee LIDAR coming down in cost in the future, or do you see a day where level four autonomy is possible without LIDAR? I see both of those, but it's really a matter of time. And I think really, maybe I would talk to the question you asked about the cheapest sensor. I don't think that's actually what you want. What you want is a sensor suite that is economically viable. And then after that, everything is about margin and driving cost out of the system. What you also want is a sensor suite that works. And so it's great to tell a story about how it would be better to have a self-driving system with a $50 sensor instead of a $500 sensor. But if the $500 sensor makes it work and the $50 sensor doesn't work, who cares? As long as you can actually have an economic, there's an economic opportunity there. And the economic opportunity is important because that's how you actually have a sustainable business. And that's how you can actually see this come to scale and be out in the world. And so when I look at LIDAR, I see a technology that has no underlying fundamentally expense to it, fundamental expense to it. It's going to be more expensive than an imager because CMOS processes or FAB processes are dramatically more scalable than mechanical processes, but we still should be able to drive cost down substantially on that side. And then I also do think that with the right business model, you can absorb certainly more cost on the bill of materials. Yeah. If the sensor suite works, extra value is provided, thereby you don't need to drive cost down to zero. It's the basic economics. You've talked about your intuition that level two autonomy is problematic because of the human factor of vigilance, decrement, complacency, overtrust, and so on, just us being human. We overtrust the system, we start doing even more so partaking in the secondary activities like smartphones and so on. Have your views evolved on this point in either direction? Can you speak to it? So, and I want to be really careful because sometimes this gets twisted in a way that I certainly didn't intend. So, active safety systems are a really important technology that we should be pursuing and integrating into vehicles. And there's an opportunity in the near term to reduce accidents, reduce fatalities, and that's, and we should be pushing on that. Level two systems are systems where the vehicle is controlling two axes. So, braking and throttle slash steering. And I think there are variants of level two systems that are supporting the driver that absolutely we should encourage to be out there. Where I think there's a real challenge is in the human factors part around this and the misconception from the public around the capability set that that enables and the trust they should have in it. And that is where I kind of, I am actually incrementally more concerned around level three systems and how exactly a level two system is marketed and delivered. And how much effort people have put into those human factors. So, I still believe several things around this. One is people will overtrust the technology. We've seen over the last few weeks, a spate of people sleeping in their Tesla. I watched an episode last night of Trevor Noah talking about this and him, this is a smart guy who has a lot of resources at his disposal describing a Tesla as a self-driving car. And that why shouldn't people be sleeping in their Tesla? It's like, well, because it's not a self-driving car and it is not intended to be. And these people will almost certainly die at some point or hurt other people. And so, we need to really be thoughtful about how that technology is described and brought to market. I also think that because of the economic challenges we were just talking about, that technology path will, these level two driver assistance systems, that technology path will diverge from the technology path that we need to be on to actually deliver truly self-driving vehicles. Ones where you can get in and sleep and have the equivalent or better safety than a human driver behind the wheel. Because again, the economics are very different in those two worlds. And so, that leads to divergent technology. So, you just don't see the economics of gradually increasing from level two and doing so quickly enough to where it doesn't cause safety, critical safety concerns. You believe that it needs to diverge at this point into different, basically different routes. And really that comes back to what are those L2 and L1 systems doing? And they are driver assistance functions where the people that are marketing that responsibly are being very clear and putting human factors in place such that the driver is actually responsible for the vehicle. And that the technology is there to support the driver. And the safety cases that are built around those are dependent on that driver attention and attentiveness. And at that point, you can give up to some degree for economic reasons, you can give up on say false negatives. And the way to think about this is for a for collision mitigation braking system, if it half the times the driver missed a vehicle in front of it, it hit the brakes and brought the vehicle to a stop, that would be an incredible, incredible advance in safety on our roads. That would be equivalent to seat belts. But it would mean that if that vehicle wasn't being monitored, it would hit one out of two cars. And so economically, that's a perfectly good solution for a driver assistance system. What you should do at that point, if you can get it to work 50% of the time, is drive the cost out of that so you can get it on as many vehicles as possible. But driving the cost out of it doesn't drive up performance on the false negative case. And so you'll continue to not have a technology that could really be available for a self-driven vehicle. So clearly the communication and this probably applies to all four vehicles as well. The marketing and the communication of what the technology is actually capable of, how hard it is, how easy it is, all that kind of stuff is highly problematic. So say everybody in the world was perfectly communicated and were made to be completely aware of every single technology out there, what it's able to do. What's your intuition? And now we're maybe getting into philosophical ground. Is it possible to have a level two vehicle where we don't overtrust it? I don't think so. If people truly understood the risks and internalized it, then sure, you could do that safely. But that's a world that doesn't exist. That people are going to, if the facts are put in front of them, they're going to then combine that with their experience. And let's say they're using an L2 system and they go up and down the 101 every day and they do that for a month. And it just worked every day for a month. That's pretty compelling at that point. Just even if you know the statistics, you're like, well, I don't know, maybe there's something funny about those. Maybe they're driving in difficult places. Like I've seen it with my own eyes, it works. And the problem is that that sample size that they have, so it's 30 miles up and down. So 60 miles times 30 days, so 60, 180, 1,800 miles. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the 85 million miles between fatalities. And so they don't really have a true estimate based on their personal experience of the real risks, but they're going to trust it anyway, because it's hard not to. It worked for a month. What's going to change? So even if you start a perfect understanding of the system, your own experience will make it drift. I mean, that's a big concern. Over a year, over two years, even. It doesn't have to be months. And I think that as this technology moves from what I would say is kind of the more technology savvy ownership group to the mass market, you may be able to have some of those folks who are really familiar with technology, they may be able to internalize it better. And your kind of immunization against this kind of false risk assessment might last longer. But as folks who aren't as savvy about that read the material and they compare that to their personal experience, I think there that it's going to move more quickly. So your work, the program that you've created at Google and now at Aurora is focused more on the second path of creating full autonomy. So it's such a fascinating, I think it's one of the most interesting AI problems of the century, right? I just talked to a lot of people, just regular people. I don't know my mom about autonomous vehicles. And you begin to grapple with ideas of giving your life control over to a machine is philosophically interesting. It's practically interesting. So let's talk about safety. How do you think we demonstrate, you've spoken about metrics in the past. How do you think we demonstrate to the world that an autonomous vehicle and an Aurora system is safe? This is one where it's difficult because there isn't a soundbite answer that we have to show a combination of work that was done diligently and thoughtfully. And this is where something like a functional safety process is part of that is like, here's the way we did the work. That means that we were very thorough. So if you believe that what we said about this is the way we did it, then you can have some confidence that we were thorough in the engineering work we put into the system. And then on top of that, to demonstrate that we weren't just thorough, we were actually good at what we did. There'll be a collection of evidence in terms of demonstrating that the capabilities work the way we thought they did statistically and to whatever degree we can demonstrate that both in some combination of simulation, some combination of unit testing and decomposition testing, and then some part of it will be on-road data. And I think the way we'll ultimately convey this to the public is there'll be clearly some conversation with the public about it, but we'll invoke the trusted nodes and that we'll spend more time being able to go into more depth with folks like NHTSA and other federal and state regulatory bodies. And given that they are operating in the public interest and they're trusted, that if we can show enough work to them that they're convinced, then I think we're in a pretty good place. That means you work with people that are essentially experts at safety to try to discuss and show. Do you think the answer is probably no, but just in case, do you think there exists a metric? So currently people have been using number of disengagements and it quickly turns into a marketing scheme to sort of you alter the experiments you run to adjust. I think you've spoken that you don't like... Don't love it. No, in fact, I was on the record telling DMV that I thought this was not a great metric. Do you think it's possible to create a metric, a number that could demonstrate safety outside of fatalities? So, so I do. And I think that it won't be just one number. So as we are internally grappling with this, and at some point we'll be, we'll be able to talk more publicly about it, is how do we think about human performance in different tasks, say detecting traffic lights or safely making a left turn across traffic? And what do we think the failure rates are for those different capabilities for people? And then demonstrating to ourselves and then ultimately folks in regulatory role and then ultimately the public that we have confidence that our system will work better than that. And so these, these individual metrics will kind of tell a compelling story. Ultimately, I do think at the end of the day, what we care about in terms of safety is a life saved and injuries reduced. And then, and then ultimately, you know, kind of casualty dollars that people aren't having to pay to get their car fixed. And I do think that you can, you know, in aviation, they look at a kind of an event pyramid where, you know, a crash is at the top of that and that's the worst event obviously. And then there's injuries and, you know, near miss events and whatnot and, and, you know, violation of operating procedures. And you kind of build a statistical model of, of the relevance of the low severity things to the high severity things. And I think that's something where we'll be able to look at as well because, you know, an event per 85 million miles is a, you know, statistically a difficult thing, even at the scale of the U.S. To, to, to kind of compare directly. And that event, the fatality that's connected to an autonomous vehicle is significantly, at least currently magnified in the amount of attention it gets. So that speaks to public perception. I think the most popular topic about autonomous vehicles in the public is the trolley problem formulation, right? Which has let's not get into that too much, but is misguided in many ways, but it speaks to the fact that people are grappling with this idea of giving control over to a machine. So how do you win the, the hearts and minds of the people that autonomy is something that could be a part of their lives? I think you let them experience it, right? I think it's, I think, I think it's right. I think people should be skeptical. I think people should ask questions. I think they should doubt because this is something new and different. They haven't touched it yet. And I think it's perfectly reasonable. And, but at the same time, it's clear there's an opportunity to make the road safer. It's clear that we can improve access to mobility. It's clear that we can reduce the cost of mobility and that once people try that and are, you know, understand that it's safe and are able to use in their daily lives, I think it's one of these things that will, will just be obvious. And I've seen this practically in, you know, in demonstrations that I've given where I've had people come in and, you know, they're very skeptical and they, they get in a vehicle, you know, my favorite one is taking somebody out on the freeway and we're on the one-on-one driving at 65 miles an hour. And after 10 minutes, they, they kind of turn and ask, is that all it does? And you're like, it's a self-driving car. I'm not sure exactly what you thought it would do. Right. But they, you know, they, it becomes mundane, which is, which is exactly what you want a technology like this to be. Right. We don't want to be a technology that's just, you know, a little bit of a pain, which is, which is exactly what you want a technology like this to be. Right. We don't really, when I turn the light switch on in here, I don't think about the complexity of, you know, the, those electrons, you know, being pushed down a wire from wherever it was and being generated. Like, it's just, it's like, I just get annoyed if it doesn't work. Right. And, and what I value is the fact that I can do other things in this space. I can, you know, see my colleagues, or I can not be afraid of the dark. And I think that's what we want this technology to be like, is it's in the background and people get to have those life experiences and do so safely. So, putting this technology in the hands of people speaks to scale of deployment. So what do you think, the dreaded question about the future, because nobody can predict the future, but just maybe speak poetically about when do you think we'll see a large scale deployment of autonomous vehicles, 10,000, those kinds of numbers. We'll see that within 10 years. I'm pretty confident. What's an impressive scale? What moment, so you've done DARPA Challenger, there's one vehicle. At which moment does it become, wow, this is serious scale. So I think the moment it gets serious is when we really do have a driverless vehicle operating on public roads, and that we can do that kind of continuously. Without a safety driver. Without a safety driver in the vehicle. I think at that moment, we've kind of crossed the zero to one threshold. And then it is about how do we continue to scale that? How do we build the right business models? How do we build the right customer experience around it so that it is actually a useful product out in the world? And I think that is really, at that point it moves from a, what is this kind of mixed science engineering project into engineering and commercialization, and really starting to deliver on the value that we all see here, and actually making that real in the world. What do you think that deployment looks like? Where do we first see the inkling of no safety driver, one or two cars here and there? Is it on the highway? Is it in specific routes in the urban environment? I think it's gonna be urban, suburban type environments. Yeah, with Aurora, when we thought about how to tackle this, it was kind of en vogue to think about trucking, as opposed to urban driving. And again, the human intuition around this is that freeways are easier to drive on, because everybody's kind of going in the same direction, and the lanes are a little wider, et cetera. And I think that that intuition is pretty good, except we don't really care about most of the time, we care about all of the time. And when you're driving on a freeway with a truck, say at 70 miles an hour, and you got 70,000 pound load with you, that's just an incredible amount of kinetic energy. And so when that goes wrong, it goes really wrong. And that those challenges that you see occur more rarely, so you don't get to learn as quickly. And they're incrementally more difficult than urban driving, but they're not easier than urban driving. And so I think this happens in moderate speed, urban environments, because there's a lot of traffic, urban environments, because there, if two vehicles crash at 25 miles per hour, it's not good, but probably everybody walks away. And those events where there's the possibility for that occurring happen frequently. So we get to learn more rapidly, we get to do that with lower risk for everyone. And then we can deliver value to people that need to get from one place to another. And then once we've got that solved, then the kind of the freeway driving part of this just falls out. But we were able to learn more safely, more quickly in the urban environment. So 10 years and then scale 20, 30 years. I mean, who knows if a sufficiently compelling experience is created, it could be faster and slower. Do you think there could be breakthroughs and what kind of breakthroughs might there be that completely changed that timeline? Again, not only am I asking you to predict the future, I'm asking you to predict breakthroughs that haven't happened yet. So I think another way to ask that would be if I could wave a magic wand, what part of the system would I make work today to accelerate it as quickly as possible? Don't say infrastructure, please don't say infrastructure. No, it's definitely not infrastructure. It's really that perception forecasting capability. So if tomorrow you could give me a perfect model of what is happening and what will happen for the next five seconds around a vehicle on the roadway, that would accelerate things pretty dramatically. Are you, in terms of staying up at night, are you mostly bothered by cars, pedestrians, or cyclists? So I worry most about the vulnerable road users about the combination of cyclists and cars, right? Just because, or cyclists and pedestrians, because they're not in armor. The cars, they're bigger, they've got protection for the people. And so the ultimate risk is lower there. Whereas a pedestrian or cyclist, they're out on the road and they don't have any protection. And so we need to pay extra attention to that. Do you think about a very difficult technical challenge of the fact that pedestrians, if you try to protect pedestrians by being careful and slow, they'll take advantage of that. So the game theoretic dance, does that worry you from a technical perspective, how we solve that? Because as humans, the way we solve that is kind of nudge our way through the pedestrians, which doesn't feel, from a technical perspective, as a appropriate algorithm. But do you think about how we solve that problem? Yeah, I think there's, I think that was actually, there's two different concepts there. So one is, am I worried that because these vehicles are self-driving, people will kind of step in the road and take advantage of them? And I've heard this and I don't really believe it because if I'm driving down the road and somebody steps in front of me, I'm going to stop. Right, like even if I'm annoyed, I'm not gonna just drive through a person stood in the road. Right. And so I think today people can take advantage of this and you do see some people do it. I guess there's an incremental risk because maybe they have lower confidence that I'm gonna see them than they might have for an automated vehicle. And so maybe that shifts it a little bit. But I think people don't wanna get hit by cars. And so I think that I'm not that worried about people walking out of the 101 and creating chaos more than they would today. Regarding kind of the nudging through a big stream of pedestrians leaving a concert or something, I think that is further down the technology pipeline. I think that you're right, that's tricky. I don't think it's necessarily, I think the algorithm people use for this is pretty simple. Right, it's kind of just move forward slowly and if somebody is really close, then stop. And I think that that probably can be replicated pretty easily. And particularly given that you don't do this at 30 miles an hour, you do it at one, that even in those situations, the risk is relatively minimal. But it's not something we're thinking about in any serious way. And probably that's less an algorithm problem and more creating a human experience. So the HCI people that create a visual display that you're pleasantly as a pedestrian nudged out of the way. Yes. That's an experience problem, not an algorithm problem. Who's the main competitor to Aurora today? And how do you out-compete them in the long run? So we really focus a lot on what we're doing here. I think that, I've said this a few times, that this is a huge difficult problem and it's great that a bunch of companies are tackling it because I think it's so important for society that somebody gets there. So we don't spend a whole lot of time thinking tactically about who's out there and how do we beat that person individually. What are we trying to do to go faster ultimately? Well, part of it is the leadership team we have has got pretty tremendous experience. And so we kind of understand the landscape and understand where the cul-de-sacs are to some degree. And we try and avoid those. I think there's a part of it, just this great team we've built. People, this is a technology and a company that people believe in the mission of. And so it allows us to attract just awesome people to go work. We've got a culture, I think, that people appreciate that allows them to focus, allows them to really spend time solving problems. And I think that keeps them energized. And then we've invested hard, invested heavily in the infrastructure and architectures that we think will ultimately accelerate us. So because of the folks we're able to bring in early on, because of the great investors we have, we don't spend all of our time doing demos and kind of leaping from one demo to the next. We've been given the freedom to invest in infrastructure to do machine learning, infrastructure to pull data from our on-road testing, infrastructure to use that to accelerate engineering. And I think that early investment and continuing investment in those kinds of tools will ultimately allow us to accelerate and do something pretty incredible. Chris, beautifully put, it's a good place to end. Thank you so much for talking today. Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it.