I've spent much of my career wondering how to pull together the threads of my interests into one package, and wondering if I had picked "the right thing". Career or creative life. Stability or meaning. The serious path or the interesting one.

This podcast is a journey of discovery, talking to people who have taken their own unique approaches to this problem. Maybe I learn something. Maybe you do too!

For the first episode, I wanted to talk to someone whose story resists tidy summary, and Brian Thomas was the perfect place to start. He's a former investment banker with a background in political economy, a brief stint as a silk merchant, a chapter in data center infrastructure where he also built a sustainability program, and a most recent life as a lecturer at Santa Clara University. None of it was planned, and most of it began with a phone call or a relationship rather than a five-year strategy.

What I loved about this conversation is that Brian doesn't pretend he figured it out. He talks honestly about selling out, burning out, and slowly — almost accidentally — discovering the three things he'd do for free. He also offers some advice one might not expect: don't follow your passion. Save yourself first. Be good at something, then find ways to apply it.

It's a generous, slightly contrarian, deeply human conversation. I hope you'll listen.

(Small apologies for a few of the sound bumps. We attempted our conversation in a busy coffee shop. Sound programs had shenanigans trying to smooth things out. We let them).