Confessions of a LinkedIn Co-Founder | A Bit of Optimism #Podcast

17 Sept 2025 · 1 min

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1:03

A short spoken monologue from a podcast where the speaker recalls childhood ambitions shaped by science fiction: initially wanting to be a science fiction author and then planning (at about age 12) to gain influence by becoming director of the CIA to make the world more peaceful. The speaker abandoned the CIA plan after reading a book called "The Crimes of the US Intelligence Agencies."

Chapters

This will be a very weird thing that I've never ever said before on a public camera. What did you want to be when you were a kid? Oh, that's interesting. I'd say the first thought was probably a science fiction author, because I was reading a lot of science fiction and then I started realizing that you wanted to contribute to making the world better. So then I had this kind of plan that I and a group of friends would all get into positions by which we could influence the world to try to make it more peaceful, less warlike, more compassionate. What we think of as essential human virtues. And this will be a very weird thing that I've never ever said before on a public camera. My theory, now this is again, a 12 year old's theory, right?
Was like, oh, and the right way to do that will be to become the director of the CIA. And then when I was talking about that with my dad, he bought a book for me called the Crimes of the US Intelligence Agencies. And I was reading through it, oh, I was like, okay, scratch that plan.