You came with the question to end all questions…

The first major conversation that comes to mind was my first formal extemp practice, held at my first coach’s house. It was myself, him, and an extemper who graduated from my high school two years before I entered in who ended his career as one of the best speakers of all time. We sat down at his dining room table, the two of them at the head and myself at the foot like some unintentional symbolism, and they laid out the structure of how to construct a speech.

After that, I was given a topic concerning something to do with African economics, and I ruminated on a minute and then spit out some facts that I thought were impressive. They countered with an astounding depth of knowledge about the topic, and I faced a revelation: the levels of information that are out there in the world are endless. I wanted so desperately to know everything, and though I was like that since birth, they and the event exposed me to the resources necessary to attain this knowledge at a true expert level, rather than the prodigious youth standard I was operating under beforehand.

What made that night truly great was that I was in the presence of somebody who was literally the best at what they did, and I saw what made them reach that height. It taught me that there’s more knowledge out there than one can ever consume, but that there’s only positive consequences for trying to engulf the largest percentage of it one can. The night ended with my coach telling me that he could help me get a national championship of my own, and at the time, I took it as some remark on natural ability. Four years later, able to truly appreciate it, I realized that they saw not just the ability, but the fact that I will never be too full of learning, and that’s what success requires.

It’s pertinent because that’s what led me, tangentially, to Genius. I’d always had that autodidactic streak, but I’d found a way to formalize it. It’s why talking to Genius staff and users always become highlight occasions, it subconsciously brings me back to that table, mature enough for the first time to realize that there’s a select group of people blessed with the madness of loving knowledge so much that they’re only interested in giving it away to others.

(You can also thank this conversation for allowing us to have @MetaWorldPeace send Ariel the video of me calling him wack for using file boxes.)

It would have to be when I was 12 I spent a whole summer of bliss in my older friend’s garage. We slept on a single mattress we played on the concrete and ate nothing but junk food. We played a bunch of RPGs and talked and dragged the mattress outside in the daytime to do flips onto and practice handstands. When we dragged it back in one day it must have landed on a nail polish bottle and when I was sleeping I inhaled the fumes all night. I woke up with what felt like a bubble in my throat and had tremendous trouble breathing. After I finally recovered we laughed about how low my survival skills were.

There was a good 6 years of memories that were close to being as good as this summer.

• My grandfather used to take me to a lot of matinees
• I remember loving the Harry Potter movies when I was little, but that was mostly just because I loved the books. So I’d say the first movie I truly loved was The Dark Knight
• I was 16. It was the first movie that I didn’t get sick of talking about after the first few days that I saw it. It seems kinda obvious now, but I remember how badly I wanted to figure out what the two-sided coin, “you either die a hero….”, and “not the hero Gotham deserves…” all meant. I could ramble on more about it, but basically it was the first movie that got me thinking about the meaning behind movies (which is a big part of my life these days, as most of y'all probably know by now)

You are so right about my family it’s not even funny haha. But uh, as far as biggest impact goes it has to be my mom. She’s an amazing woman who taught me to get your priorities in life straight and do what makes you truly happy. She also is the main reason why I have such an awesome taste in music and charming personality haha.

Literally teared up writing this tbh.

Definitely my Latin American history professor from my last semester. We studied not just the history of Latin America from 1400s to mid 1800s but we applied Marxist theory to understanding how the societies changed as power dynamics emerged–how did people resist or accept colonization, what structures emerged, how was religion and race affected, what rhetoric emerged, how did this end up affecting their images of self and the outside world. Most interesting class I’ve had in years without a doubt.

The professor was great, the class was awesome but I would try to go to office hours to pick his brain about everything we learned and when I found out he was also into Anarchist theory then it went 100-1,000 real quick. Discussed everything I ever had an interest in from some key books and texts in the field, marxist theory, anarchist theory, anthropology, I could not have asked for a better professor.

If I had him dinner with him I would probably try to figure out how to get him to take me to this annual conference he goes to where all the historians meet up and discuss Latin American historiography, new theories/paradigms, debate, and for the first few days its just a big Leftist circlejerk where the anarchists and marxists come out to play. As MLK once said

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

I believe that you asked me these out of formality instead of actual curiosity, therefore I will be answering disingenuously.

Book: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Movie: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
TV Show: Dude, Where’s My Shorts?