The Best Day of My Year: Sebastian Thrun Meets Jamie Hyneman!
Udacity Talks went on the road yesterday, and lucky for you, we took you with us! Where did we go? M5 Industries!
If you’re not familiar, that’s the laboratory/playground of former Mythbusters host Jamie Hyneman. Our host? Sebastian Thrun. Can you imagine these two together, talking shop … in Jamie’s shop???
No imagination required. It happened. Which you know, if you watched it live. If you weren’t able to watch the episode live, you can see the video right here:
Everyone here at Udacity watched it, of course, and debate has been pretty fierce ever since over which moments were best. Those who loved watching Sebastian play with Jamie’s drones seem to be holding a slim majority, though the “lead balloon — wet toilet paper” conversation has won over a lot of converts as well. The “giant wooden egg” segment is holding steady in 3rd place.
My personal favorite moment (at least for now) is when Jamie quotes Robert A. Heinlein’s famous maxim “specialization is for insects” and Sebastian laughs and responds by saying, “Nanodegrees are for insects.” You can’t script that!
One of the most powerful, most insightful, most affirming segments of the episode starts at around the 29 minute mark, when Jamie begins to speak about creativity and engineering:
“What could be more creative than when you’re trying to problem-solve, and something comes into life that didn’t exist before?” — Jamie Hyneman, Udacity Talks
One of the last questions Sebastian poses to Jamie is this one: “What would you like to invent next, that hasn’t been invented yet? What are you itching to solve?”
You’ll have to watch the full episode to see how Jamie answers, but as a hint, I can tell you that it may have something to do with a very mysterious pair of shoes!
As a final note, here is one of the more endearing tweets that was published during the event:
Udacity Talks is our series where we bring together great minds to discuss the big ideas of the day, in an unscripted format, powered by questions from you, our students! To see the full archive of previous episodes, and to see what’s coming next, please visit Udacity Talks.
“It’s going to be the best day of my year!” — Sebastian Thrun, getting ready to visit Jamie Hyneman at M5 Industries
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This post was written by Christopher Watkins, Senior Writer and Chief Words Officer, Udacity
