Astrophysics, Saving the Planet and Raising Three Kids | Casey Handmer (father of 3, founder of Terraform Industries)

Casey: If you want to get people to do extraordinary things for you, whether that be pick up after themselves or like build a machine that no one's ever built before. You have to understand what they want, what their intrinsic motivations are, and then help provide those. You can't just be like, I'm the boss.

And I say, this has to happen. Because like, if you try negotiating with the toddler, like, essentially it doesn't work with anyone who has agency. 

Adam: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep in the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. In today's conversation, I sat down with Casey Handmer. Casey is the founder of Terraform Industries, a company that is turning CO2 into natural gas through solar electricity.

He's an astrophysicist who has worked on frontier technologies at NASA and Hyperloop. He holds a PhD from Caltech. He's also a husband and the father of three kids. Including a newborn. In our conversation today, we spoke a lot about productivity and priorities. How he and his wife, who is also an accomplished astrophysicist and an engineering leader, have managed a busy household and two demanding jobs while raising three kids under the age of five.

We also spoke about Casey's philosophy of approaching life from a position of optimism and his emphasis on long term projects with his kids. Our conversation covered a lot of fascinating topics and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did getting to know Casey.

Lastly, startup Dad has a new merch store, amazing gear for all the startup dads and moms in your life. Check it out at www.startupdadshop.com. 

Adam: I would like to welcome Casey Handmer to the Startup Dad podcast. Casey, thanks for joining me today. It is a pleasure having you on the show.

Casey: Thank you. It's great to be here.

Adam: So Casey, tell me a little bit about your professional background. We have never met before today. So this is exciting for me.

Casey: Yeah. I'm a physicist by training or a covering physicist by profession. I have this, somewhat unfortunate tendency to switch fields or careers every few years. But it means I've been lucky enough to work in a whole variety of different areas in different places, different times, different people on different interesting problems.

So formerly you know, degrees in mathematics and physics PhD from Caltech and theoretical physics, focusing on black holes. Which, you know, I wrapped that up the same day we detected the first black hole signal. So like good timing. And then I went, went into industry and I worked at a startup for two and a half years doing mostly magnetic machinery stuff for Hyperloop, like magnetic levitation.

But basically I, I was kind of the quantum last resort where like my mathematical skill was roughly equivalent to my personality defects. So like people would ultimately be forced to come and talk to me about stuff which meant that I got to work out with a huge variety of very clever people on a variety of interesting problems, a real privilege, actually a better entree to the post academic world one could not have hoped for. Then I went over to JPL for four years and that kind of, that took me through COVID and having children and got to work on, I think I worked on about 15 different projects over four years. And as usual, a third of them succeeded, a third of them kind of went nowhere and a third was still in play when I left and then about two years ago, I decided to jump in feet first and start a company myself.

Not an easy decision, but in retrospect, I should have done it sooner. I just, I never really saw myself as like a startup person or a founder an entrepreneur. I'm happy to work for them, but I didn't, I thought that was some je ne sais quoi that founders must have that I did not. Turns out you just need to be a little bit crazy.

Adam: I was going to say it's the lunacy.

Casey: I’ve go that in spades. So yeah, it was fine. I'm quite suggestible as it turns out. So, here we are.

Adam: Yeah. And you're not starting like you know, the next wave of social network. You're building like, a world changing business not to minimize my social network friends, but this isn't just like another B2B SAS product that you're building here. Tell me about what it is that you're building.

Casey: Yeah. I mean, like, parent, my children are better than anyone else's children, right? Obviously, but like, I do like other children as well. And the same goes for the startup, right? Like, obviously I'm working on this because I think it's important but I don't want to diminish the efforts.

I know that SAS is still bloody hard. The success is by no means guaranteed. But what we are doing is definitely like, if I was trying to optimize around odds of success for me personally, financially, I would not be doing this, that's for sure. But I'm kind of optimizing it for a wider space, which is like, what can we do, what can I personally do to kind of further decrease the time between now and when humanity is able to both reduce the amount of carbon that it's emitting. also importantly increase the amount of energy that it is consuming. So it is trivially easy to reduce the amount of carbon that you're emitting by simply killing everyone or starving them to death or something.

But I do not want to do that. Part of my parenting philosophy is that our children should have a much better life than we do. So we've got to go forth and build an amazing world. So what we're doing is we've actually figured out a really neat trick to take solar power, which I think is pretty mainstream now.

Two years ago, it was still kind of quirky and 10 years ago it was very, very odd. And so like photovoltaic power is taking the electricity grid by storm, but electricity is typically only a quarter to a third of the net energy consumption of a society. And actually food is less than 1%, but the other two thirds is chemical, it's fuel, you know, gasoline, kerosene, jet fuel, butane, you know, natural gas.

And we figured out a neat way of plumbing these two things together. So we can take cheap solar in as the input and we produce natural gas as the output, much like a well, you know, like an oil well or a gas well except we don't drill in the ground. And so the carbon that we're producing does not come from the ground and so it does not contribute to climate change. Of course that's a nice story. At the end of the day, no one cares unless you can also produce that gas cheaper than drilling a hole in the ground. And fortunately drilling a hole in the ground is bloody expensive. So, we have a hope, like a hope that keeps us alive.

Like we keep that hope alive day after day that we will one day get there. It's going to take a long time. You know, I think, I don't know, like children also take a while to grow up. But I think, you know, it's quite possible that like this business will be like hitting its stride in a major way, like at a global scale at the same time as my kids are like going off to college. So like, it's good timing there, you know, like, but I'm not gonna live that long, so I can't do them serially. I have to do them in parallel.

Adam: That's a very good way of thinking about it. You have to raise your startup and you have to raise your kids at the same time. 

Casey: And they're complimentary as well.

Adam: Yeah. 

Casey: You learn an awful lot about yourself, raising children and you also learn a lot of it yourself, essentially raising engineers. And I don't want to say that like the children, like the engineers that we mean to the children, but there's quite a lot in common.

You basically, like, if you want to get people to do extraordinary things for you, whether that be pick up after themselves or. Like build a machine that no one's ever built before. You have to understand what they want, what their intrinsic motivations are, and then help provide those. You can't just be like, I'm the boss.

And I say, this has to happen. Because like, if you try negotiating with the toddler, like, 

Adam: It doesn't work with kids. Doesn't work with engineers.

Casey: Well, essentially it doesn't work with anyone who has agency. Right. So like, the kid hasn't really internalized yet that like, they can't just like do whatever they want. And actually in some ways that's a beautiful thing.

And the same time, like any engineer who is qualified to work on this project could be earning much more money doing almost anything else because there are many other companies that could use their skills. And we have better hours and more pay, more prestige and less chance of seeing years of their life's work go up in smoke.

So you, have to kind of plumb it together.

Adam: So this show is about family and parenting and the reason that I asked you to be in the show is because actually a listener reached out to me and was like, hey, this guy Casey is building a world changing company and has three young kids and a newborn. And I don't know how he makes it all work. So could you have him on the show and talk about how he manages his life. And I said, you know what? He seems like a perfect candidate for the show. Let's reach out. So that's why we're doing this. So, you have three kids

Casey: I do.

Adam: And one of them is pretty young, eight weeks, if I'm not mistaken,

Casey: Almost very fresh. And she's just delightful. She's like all of our children and everyone's mileage varies here, but all of our children have been really easy kids as far as kids go, at least compared to, you know, I won't be too specific here, but like compared to other children that I'm closely aware of, possibly related to, definitely myself. And actually I have quite good recall of my own life back to when I was just under like 16 months old or something like that. So like very young. And I know that I was a pain in the ass as well. but like the kids are fine.

Essentially, as I said, they sleep through and they behave themselves and they don't whinge or whine too much, but each child has been easier than the one before, possibly because my wife and I are getting more confident and competent. But who knows, you know, maybe we're just every child's like, I want another one.

I want another one. So it has to be like really, really chill. But like the baby is seven weeks old and most nights she'll sleep for like a five hour stretch, which is unheard of. I mean, I don't even sleep for a five hour stretch. I wake up screaming more often than that.

Adam: Oh, that's funny. So, mentioned your wife who also sounds like the most accomplished person I've ever heard of on the planet.

Casey: Again, it's my duty to be parochial here. And I know that there are other humans on earth both living and dead who have intrinsic value. But I have to say that my wife, Christine is one of the most extraordinary people I've ever had the privilege of meeting and definitely the most extraordinary person who ever like expressed an interest in spending any time with me.

And as like hidden debts, you know, we've been together for eight years or something. And every day I find out something new that I no idea about. New capabilities and skills and she's always learning new things and she sleeps much better than I do. And she exercises much more than I do and takes care of herself.

In addition to like, you know, growing these children with her body, which is, you know, nine months of gestation it's kind of a marathon. And then after that, you know, you've got a breastfeeding baby for a few years. And actually it's kind of nice with three and five year old, like old enough that like in the immediate postpartum period, I was like the boss of them. So like, we just went out and did museum stuff every day during paternity leave over Christmas break. I don't know how some people do it. You know, if you've got a colicky kid or something like that, it'd be. Really tough.

Adam: Yeah, which I feel like maybe is the norm. Not everyone has three pretty straightforward kids like it sounds like you do. but I'm sure that's not by accident. 

Casey: I'm confident that, like difficulty is conserved. So all I know is that like an easy childhood means like difficult teenage years and I'm ready for that because I'm going to get a call from the CIA in like five years that my son has hacked them or something.

Like, it's going to be bad news. But actually one of the nice things is my wife and I both kind of have similar outlook and like, we think that children should be empowered to explore the curiosity and do cool stuff. And so, you know, like both my kids have used power tools with some level of supervision, obviously.

And so I hope that as they grow in age and skill and curiosity and drive and their hormones kick in and so on, they will have a wide palette of creative and productive outlets for that energy as I did at that age. And they're not kind of driven into desperation. 

Adam: You have three kids age five and under and you have a wife. How did you, and you've survived so far, how did you meet your wife? And tell me a little bit about what she does. She's very accomplished, as I understand.

Casey: Well, she has a website which listed all those things. But we initially met Caltech in early 2015. I think our first meeting in person was actually at Kip Thorne's house and Kip Thorne was the kind of grandfather professor of that entire department who subsequently won the Nobel Prize for the aforementioned gravitational wave discovery.

So we've met for the first time at his house and actually the story has been told recently in a, LA connections article or something in the LA times while I've submitted the story. But yeah, essentially like, as I often do, I made a terrible first impression. And to be honest, her first impression wasn't that great either.

But we worked together. So, you know, like generally speaking, you want to be cautious about being too antisocial around your colleagues. So, we basically gave each other a pretty wide berth for a few months. But at the time I was flying planes quite a lot and fairly routinely taking people up cause it's just more fun with other people, including her.

And and so, you know, at the time we just kind of, were drawn into each other's orbits and by I think September we'd become an item. And then not long after that, she got the official nod to go to Antarctica for a year. So like most of 2016, she was in Antarctica essentially like connected by email.

And I was back home working my little heart out at Hyperloop. So it was, it was an unusual courtship experience. Then she came back and we got engaged like three weeks later or something. So, but hang on, we got engaged before we got married three weeks after she got back. So like our entire, engagement was almost all of it was we were not in the same hemisphere.

Adam: Wow.

Casey: Do not recommend necessarily. And I do have a blog post on managing long distance relationships for anyone who has to endure that. But it worked out for us, fortunately. Yeah, but she's cool. She's also an astrophysics scientist, I guess. PhD postdoc. That's how she worked at the South Pole and

she also has lot of experience running software and managing teams that manage software and build software. And then when she was at JPL, like we both started about the same time. And after four years, I was basically like burned out. And I think if I hadn't left, I would have been asked to leave pretty soon.

And meanwhile, like every year she got promoted. So like in her last year at JPL, she was the deputy program manager for the exoplanet exploration program, which is basically finding, counting, characterizing, studying the planets outside our solar system. Which is kind of a funny story. Because basically she and the manager of that program work side by side.

It's not really like a subordinate relationship. And then they report to the executive council of JPL who reports to, and again, like first among equals the director of JPL who recently changed over, I think just after we left. And then notionally JPL, which is a NASA center, but it's kind of independent reports to NASA HQ, which then reports to the executive branch through the science technology, something committee and to Congress and the American taxpayer, but actually JPL secretly reports directly to divine beings who are the ultimate arbiters as to whether or not they can operate satellites and robots in space other planets. So arguably my wife reported via one step directly to God. So, you know.

Adam: Wow. even more accomplished than I thought.

Casey: Oh, I'm just scratching the surface here. She recently got a black belt. So she got a black belt in Kung Fu when she was seven months pregnant as one does.

And she ran for office in our city last year. So, maybe before, I don't remember, but, with you know, a zero or one year old, my three year old was a bit younger back then running around every day. And so if you look at kind of my productivity function, I was doing cool stuff.

I was working at extremely high level in academia, but like I didn't really take my career very seriously or like apply myself in a productive way until we met and I was able to follow her example.

Adam: This is a wonderful segue because you just described your wife getting a black belt while she was seven months pregnant, reporting one level removed from God and uh, 

Casey: Yeah. Unofficially, unofficially.

Adam: Unofficially. And leading an engineering, a fairly large engineering organization.

Casey: At JPL. Yeah. She's since… she's now she's at Planet, which is doing Earth observation, but again she's leading teams doing like software development, like, and again, like not even B2B SaaS stuff. It's like, we have to make these computers process this data to produce money. And no one's ever done that before.

So it's very open ended and it's non trivial, but I have no idea how she does it. It's tough to do.

Adam: Well, so that's what I want to ask you about. You two sound very busy. You were running a company. Your wife has a baller job where she's in charge of a lot of humans. There's also three tiny humans running around your house. How do the two of you manage to be productive, be good partners to each other and make sure that the kids don't die? Like what sort of support structures do you need to have in place? How do you make it all work out?

Casey: Yeah. I mean, I know your listeners are probably saying, well, of course they live with their grandparents or something. You know, they live with the kids grandparents and they do all the childcare for free. That's actually not the case. My family lives in Australia and while they are able to visit, you know, once a year or so we don't have any local support group. And we have friendly neighbors and so on but they don't really involve themselves in our children’s lives.

Adam: They're not taking the kids.

Casey: They're not. We're lucky that we're like economically fortunate enough to be able to hire help occasionally. But then again, like during COVID number two arrived in August, 2020.

And so essentially like that was where things went from being just barely under control with my wife and I both working full time remotely at JPL and looking after the eldest to like having the eldest plus this other little kid. And both of us trying to work full time. Oh, and then my wife also got tapped to work on the new miles rover engineering team.

So this is the perseverance robots. Not quite as new anymore, but back then it was new which is 12 hour shifts. So like 12 hour shifts three days in a row and then four days off. And then back, it was like four teams or four, four crews that run the rover. And actually the, it's not exactly 12 hours.

It's 12 minutes because Mars’ rotational period is 24 and a half hours. So over the course of a month, you lose one day. But like we were up all the time anyway, because of kids. So like we didn't really notice. I think the key is like, you form in your mind a list of things that you would quite like to do, like in terms of like, oh I'd feel inclined to do that.

And then you rank them like how much they will help you do other things in the future. And then you have to be very, very aware of like how much time you're spending. So if, for example, when it comes to gardening, I know that if I and I do all the home maintenance as well, but like I do gardening and I like make a beautiful garden bed, I'm committing to spending a hundred hours every year keeping it working, which I do not want to do.

So instead when I do gardening, I'm always trying to find ways to reduce the amount of labor I have to do in the future and the same thing goes with like a creative process. I write a lot of blogs. So that's like incredible leverage. Everyone should write a blog. It's just a proof of work.

That's a record of what you're thinking about at different times. If you get into a discussion about someone, if you've got a job candidate, you wouldn't, you need a job or something. You'd be like, look, I wrote 10, 000 words on this, read it. If you think I'm crazy. But like that will tell you what my work product is like, because I actually did it like over a considered period of time, not like a half hour job interview kind of situation.

And every now and then, if you write enough, you will write a really good one. And it can sometimes change people's lives. Which is, that's kind of a burden in a way but it's also it's an amazing thing. Yeah. So in some ways, like this company that I'm currently recording in exists because of my habit of writing technical long form posts about stuff that I was interested in.

Adam: You mentioned, hey, if you're going to garden…

Casey: Yeah.

Adam: You're going to make a beautiful garden. You're going to have to stick with that garden a hundred plus hours a year to make it continue to look beautiful which I can appreciate. So what would the opposite look like? How would you minimize, how would you both get joy out of gardening and minimize the ongoing work required with something like gardening?

Casey: Well, I mean, when it comes to watering, you can set up an automated system or whatever. But you know, you just kind of select, you know, outdoor furniture that's compatible with leaves sitting on it, for example. And then, you know, essentially the children have the run of the backyard. So you know, like you would never go over there and be like, oh, this is an amazingly curated garden, but it is functional. It's kind of like the peanut butter sandwich of a garden. Right. You can make it, you make a meal in 15 seconds.

Yeah, I like it. And I built a tree house at one point. So during COVID I had a, we just moved into the house just before COVID and it had not really been maintained in 50 years. And so, which is how we were able to afford it. So I spent the better part of all my free time for the next 18 months just doing a lot of preventative remedial maintenance on the house. Some of which I actually quite enjoyed. Some of which I could do with my son who was one at the time. And some of which was just thankless, painful, boring, annoying, frustrating, tiresome work, like painting the soffits. And every time I like finished a major milestone on that project, I'd like go and buy 50 bucks worth of treehouse hardware, build more treehouse, which was fun.

Yeah, treehouses are cool. It's not a child's compatible treehouse though. It's like 60 feet off the ground, but the kids have never been up there. My, my wife said I could take a kid up once, once she had a third cause initially I was like two kids, I'm done. And then I was like, actually…

Adam: In case you lose one.

Casey: I'm like, yeah, exactly. But now I'm like, actually I could see myself having as many kids as I possibly can, you know, nature willing. And obviously spouse but it's just like, you just kind of change your mentality, right? So like, especially after you start a startup, you're like, actually the future is unlimited, like statistically speaking, most startups fail, but like the ones that succeed can really do amazing things.

And the same thing goes with kids. You're like, okay, it's like a finite amount of pain. And actually the subsequent kids go super fast. The first kid, you're like, my whole life has changed. And after that you're like, oh, the damage is done. Just keep on adding kids. And you're like each one of these kids gets to be a human who has a whole life and tell the whole story and can laugh and cry and love and maybe one day make grandchildren or start their own companies or heaven forbid, go to CalTech.

Adam: It's funny what you said about you know, the first one, your life totally changes and then subsequent one sort of less change. I read a thing once where somebody was talking about the standard deviations of additional kids and how they impact your life. And it is very true that like the standard deviations get less severe. They're very severe when you go from zero to one, right? Your whole life now is responsible for caring for this other human. But once you're already caring for another human, that next standard deviation, not that much different. And then the third…

Casey: Yeah. And kids get easier over time. And you're so sleep deprived. You can't remember what the difficult times were like. Essentially most of 2021 for me has been completely memory hauled. I cannot remember what happened at all. I was too stressed and sleep deprived.

It was quite challenging. And that like at the time I was like, I don't think we need any more kids at this point, but eventually Christine talked me around and I'm glad she did. Cause baby three is delightful. But, I got naming rights, so that was the clincher.

But I had some real bangers as well on my shortlist.

Adam: Oh yea?

Casey: But Christine said, you're not allowed to name the baby Elon. I was like, okay, so no, no baby Elon. But anything else is, is fair game up to a point. Naming is interesting. Actually, all our kids have somewhat unusual names.

Which is partly deliberate because, you know, URLs are hard to come by. But also like when you choose a name for someone it has to be a name that will work for them for their whole life. So you have to think like this would be a cute name for a five year old, but will it work if they become like secretary of the interior?

Adam: After having three kids, the one or two most surprising things that you've discovered as a dad?

Casey: So I actually thought that based on my own recollection and discussions with my parents, that the first five years of any child's life would just be basically type two fun. Like maybe fun after the fact, but not really fun in the thing. And you just kind of had to get through it.

It's like grad school, right? You just kind of grind along and eventually the child turns into a human who you try hanging out with. And actually I think that happened. I mean, like that human transition happened for my son yesterday. Cause, he was just like sitting in the garden, staring at the distance.

And I was like, is something wrong? Cause normally he's very active and engaging. And he's like, oh no, I'm just relaxing. I was like, oh my God. Soon he's going to have opinions about politics or something. But actually much to my surprise I really enjoyed a lot of even the very early childhood, even the tough times even like, you know, scraping vomit out of your ear and changing diapers and fixing accidents. And just like dealing with bureaucracy is not much fun because like they're dual citizens and stuff. It's a pain in the ass, but like, yeah, kind of going through that process. It's really delightful. And then I guess the other thing when most parents will experience this was like in the abstract, before I had children, I found the concept of changing diapers pretty gross.

But after the fact. Not at all. I wash my hands obviously, like, after I'm done, but like, I guess there have been times when like, it's got to me, you know, like I'm like cleaning my nails for the fourth time in a day or something, but like, it's quite clear that like the things that gross you out changes like somewhere deep in the brainstem in a way that like, it's not conscious, right. It's like something in the operating system got updated and you don't think about it anymore. Um, Yeah. And it's just, yeah, I just feel so fortunate and rich and like, yeah, it's like I could do anything.

It's almost like having children forced me to actually be productive. And I actually see this in a lot of men in particular, like once they’re, and I've always been fortunate, actually, Christine earns more money than I do. But actually, I mean, I'm responsible for my own salary. So like whose fault is that? But…

Adam: Yeah. You should pay yourself more.

Casey: I should Goddamn  pay myself a lot more than I do.

I think if you're a pre revenue hardware startup. It's easy to pay yourself more when you don't feel like you're LARPing, right? Like live action role play. So if you actually like met milestones and like got customers and stuff then you probably justify it. But you know, some ways, like how do you, if you want something done, you have to give it to a busy person and,

and because we're so busy and the subway is going on, you just have to stay committed and get it done.

Adam: Yeah. And there's a level of business that you reach where it's kind of like, ah, what's one more thing? We're already busy. Here's one more thing.

Casey: Yeah. So like just four weeks ago, I was like, you know what? I think I have a physics textbook in me. And I'm like, I'm halfway through writing like two other books. And I'm like, oh, I should like start another book. And initially I was like, how high can it be? I've already got all my physics notes.

I'll just copy those from high school, essentially. Or early undergrad and like put my spin on it and I want it to be short. So it's quick to write, so like 50 pages or something like that. Just like, like physics with people in a hurry, like not some giant tome. Exactly. Just like, and for people who are like motivated, who don't need to be, have the math explained to them, they already know it, or if they don't know it, they'll Google it, you know, just like, just the basics, the stuff you wouldn't otherwise get, and very quickly it is evolved into like something that is going to be like a work of art.

It's going to be extraordinarily, exquisitely beautiful. I will not do it if it is not but it's also going to. It's going to involve a lot of work. If anything, writing beyond a certain point, like compressing, is even more work. Anyway, why not? 

Adam: Yeah, life couldn't get any more busy. So just like peak business.

Casey: yeah. As long as you keep on doing stuff, right? It just gets done eventually.

Adam: Yeah. All right, because you have three kids. I'm sure you've received a non trivial amount of parenting advice in your years. 

Especially because they're still young right, and people love to dispense parenting advice when you are expecting or when you have a newborn or whatever. What is the worst piece of parenting advice that you have ever received across all 3?

Casey: Actually, I think that when it comes to bad parenting advice, I'm usually the one dispensing it. 

Adam: What's the worst piece of parenting advice that you've given someone then?

Casey: Well, I don't think it's bad, but I think it's often it's culturally unfamiliar here in the United States, but in Australia it's natural. At least it was in my generation, which is that like you never see children who are more fucked up than by parents who are like trying incredibly hard to not fuck the kids up. Right. So like, actually you have to give them space. And the way I phrase this is that children thrive on benign neglect. Right. So like if my kids are playing around in the backyard and they're breaking the rules, which they're expected to do, because rules are there to be broken and they're like trying to hit each other with sticks or something, right?

I will keep my eye on them, right, out of the corner of my eye but I won't go out there. They won't know that I'm watching them. I'll wait for someone to get hurt and then I'll like come on down and be like, I told you, so like, here's a bandaid, clean yourself up. Yeah, but like, I'm still soft hearted about it, right?

I'm not just going to emotional iceberg. And, you know, last night when my son was unwell you know, I carried him to and from the bathroom and cleaned up and changed his bedsheets and whatnot, which is all, you know, it's a part of the job. But, you know, it also means that I'm helping them build resilience and autonomy.

Which they have to have like sooner or later. I can't have these guys coming back from college at 22 being like I can't even like feed myself. You know, I don't know how to make food, which is, I don't know. It's so common. And I guess I'm lucky in that like, I was raised in reasonably humble circumstances, so like I wasn't hungry, but like we didn't have a whole bunch of money.

So you know, obviously like the fact that my wife and I are significantly wealthier than my parents were is unavoidable. Like we will have essentially servants who do cleaning and stuff in the house. We've done it, we still do a lot of it, but you know, the people who come around, but I don't want the kids to be thinking that they can just throw stuff on the floor and someone else pick it up for them.

Bad parenting advice. I think. The stuff that, that kind of upsets me and where I changed my attitude about it, especially given like bearing on my upbringing is like the superfluity of violence against children. So some people believe that like spanking kids essentially is relatively harmless.

And I think actually like in terms of the grand spectrum of things that have been done to children over the course of history you know, a sharp tap on the rear to like misbehaving eight year old boy or something is probably. But my view on it is that the people who think it's a good idea, aren’t mature enough or wouldn't understand how to do it fairly.

So, so I think like as a civilization, we have definitely done the right thing by erring on the side of not beating children. That said, kind of the trend of like emotional blackmail to get them to do stuff I think is, problematic in its own ways. So it's just tough. It's like children are in many ways the worst housemates ever.

I mean they're kind of fun, but like, it's just like if they were adult sized, oh, nightmare. Nightmare. But the other thing I guess is that, like, that I would say that some people are somewhat, sometimes like kind of like hmm, about is like the 2-year-old who's having a tantrum about something is depending on you to provide the center, the self discipline that they cannot,

Adam: Mm hmm.

Casey: They're outsourcing that to you. And so you don't get anywhere by indulging the impulses where they're negative or destructive. It is your job as a parent to override their preferences when necessary and set the agenda, whatever that may be. And very quickly they'll kind of internalize that.

But if you just kind of indulge them and let them do whatever they want and give them candy when they throw a tantrum, well, like. You're not part of the problem. It's like saying like, there's no bad dogs, only bad owners. It's kind of a similar kind of thing. And I'm going to get so canceled for saying that, but like at the end of the day, one of the wonderful things that our society does is it does give parents a wide latitude to raise children within very broad bounds.

And I do believe that essentially like state interference in child raising is necessary, but it should be minimal. And we should be allowed to basically run the experiment in real time. And the things that worked well for my childhood, I can reproduce and the stuff that didn't work so well, I can delete.

And the same goes for my wife, obviously, who had, I will say like a very unusual upbringing. Her mother was widowed when she was six and her brother was three and her sister was six weeks old. So like about the same age as my kids now. And life was really quite tough. Actually we lost my mother in law last year.

So, so it's just the kids now. So it's oh, it's easy to take this stuff for granted. But yeah when people come up and like, I actually don't get offered unsolicited parenting advice. Basically hardly ever. And part of it is probably being like a tall, somewhat scary looking dude. 

Adam: The miracle of video and, remote recording is that I have no idea how tall you are.

Casey: Yeah. Or how big my face is. Yeah. I'm six feet. I'm six feet. And like, I don't like, I feel like I've got a pretty good sneering face. but actually no, normally people like it comes from the heart, right? It's well intentioned and you'd be like, okay, yeah, thanks. I appreciate that. Or like, we'll take that into account.

And actually, if anything, like, navigating these things between like my immediate family is like the fun part, cause like they're unavoidable and I get them very well with my relatives, but but there's still, they have different ideas about what children should do and how you should manage it.

And like, in particular, like my kids, if I'm trying to get them to do something, they just have to do that one thing. So like, if you're trying to get the shoes on, so you can go for a walk. Now's not the time to like start painting. For example but every now and then someone will like drop an absolute zinger.

And I just do what my father always did, which I remember him doing. And I think is great. Which is like, and this is back in the 19, like early 1990s or something. So like before cell phones, it's like, oh, thank you. Yeah. So much. Can I get your number? Why? Oh, well, no, since you, you have so many good ideas, I was thinking you might like to, you know, care for the children sometime and we can organize that. Yeah. Yeah. We'd be very happy really, if you want to, if they want to come and stay with you for a day or a week or a month. And….

Adam: When can we send them over?

Casey: Yeah just let me know, would you like both of them or like, we've got another one at home.

I think that explains quite a lot about my childhood. So yeah, like if you're going to, if you're going to be like sarcastic to someone who's being mean to you in public, you've got to commit to the bit. Anyway, I enjoy it. But it hardly ever happens, especially in the United States.

People are polite to a fault. Every now and then, like probably the best one you ever get is like, you know, the kid's having a huge meltdown and the parents are just like. Peacing out, just staring to the distance and it's like, like clearly someone needs a nap. Like, it's me. I need a nap.

Adam: I need…dad needs a nap. Dad, dad's only partially here right now. 

So there are two things that you mentioned in our prep for the show. One is this idea about focusing on optimism as a default. And then the other thing is you mentioned something about long term projects.

If I'm thinking about your professional life, you have to be optimistic to think about like the work that you're doing and how difficult it is to get there. So, what is optimism as a default? And then a focus on long term projects mean to you? And what does it mean to you in relation to like, relationship to your kids and your family 

Casey: Well, I think a lot of people will blame this on social media, but I've certainly seen it's kind of fashionable, particularly my generation, particularly amongst childless people, to kind of default to pessimism and criticism without actually realizing that, that compared to any time in history now is not only the best for almost everyone, but also the time with the most democratized tools for creation and innovation. So like sure, like 200 years ago, if you're some landless peasant, yeah, generally you can complain. Like, not only is your life bad, it has no way of getting better and there's nothing you can do about it. That's almost certainly almost always not the case for.

Almost everyone that I know that makes a habit of routinely complaining about stuff now, and to take credit, like some of them are actually very creative people who are building stuff. They just default to complaining about things. But at the same time, we're also seeing this kind of backdrop of birth rates falling all around the world.

And part of that is just like, people have contraception and TV. So they like, you know, don't default just to making kids all the time. Well, I mean, I think the TikTok generation is largely probably a little young to be having families yet, but, but certainly Facebook or whatever. 

But at the same time, like, I think it's very hard to feel enthusiastic about having as many children as you can afford if first of all, you're delaying child rearing later in life because of economic necessity perceived or otherwise or if you think that the future is going to be terrible, right?

If you think that like things are, have only gotten worse in the 20th century and they're getting even worse now. And any moment now, like my net worth will be a million dollars and I'll be completely miserable. And I think, you know, money doesn't buy happiness, obviously. Children make me far more happier than money ever has.

Although I think a lack of money can certainly drive misery, particularly if you have children involved. But I think if you think the future is going to be rad. It would be really cool to like make little humans and have them run around. I would say actually that there is a chance that the falling birth rate, delayed onset, child rearing, blah, blah, blah, problems go away in the same way that it seems that like, these GLP 1 agonist drugs like Ozempic and Manjaro and so on are like, there's a good chance that like they'll certainly take the edge off if not outright cure obesity and obesity-related illnesses for large swaths of the world's population in the next few decades, which is that sooner or later humans are going to figure out how to hack it, hack aging and not die. And so like, if you think, well, the problem with birth rate is that people have like functionally a 20 year window in which to have children.

And they spend 15 of those years, you know, building a career. Well, if you can extend that window to 200 years, that’s not a problem anymore. And if people are no longer like, which obviously like consumes a lot of the resources that they produce during their lifetime. As well as being downright unfun for the people who are actually in the process of dying.

Then the kind of that problem goes away and actually that kind of feeds into the optimism. I think we're going to crack this. I think, you know, like there is a countably finite number of people who are going to die of natural causes the remainder of the century. And it's a lot smaller than people would otherwise think.

We might not get there this year or this decade, but we will get there. It's like, we have the ability to completely read and write and study essentially biochemistry. It is complex, but its complexity is finite. And we're getting very, very good at making computers that can think so like we're going to solve this problem.

And live forever at least for a long time for a longer time and get to be like you, you and me actually might, this might kick in when we're 60. So like, we'll be the immortal crusties, like, we'll be like old wrinkles and like gray hair, but like a thousand years old, everyone else will be young and beautiful.

Adam: I was just, I was just thinking, you know, well, if your midlife crisis doesn't start until you're 80, then there's a lot of time to have kids, right? And uh, you could have more of them.

Casey: Well, I mean, for example, like, so replacement is like 2.2 kids per couple or something like that. First of all, like if you're able to turn down aging so that a death rate of humans is the same as it is naturally at the age of 15, say 15 or 20. So like the number of humans who die of aging related diseases in the twenties is shockingly low.

And actually, if you look in a hospital, it's almost no 20 year olds in there except for like, trauma, infection, alcohol related stuff normally. So if you just maintain that level of mortality, you would live for a thousand years on average. So like, you might be like, oh, it's been a century time to have another kid. Right.

Adam: mm hmm.

Casey: You have 10 kids over the course of your life, like one per century, like that's fine. Like we make a lot of children that way. And probably in 200 years, we'll figure out just how to like copy paste them with some kind of fish tank type system. Anyway this is getting a bit out there but I do think that the children are great.

And every day I feel like even, you know, three o'clock this morning, you know, I felt like, okay, my son's having a bad time, but actually I don't mind hanging out with him a bit middle of the night and give him a pat and you know, talking about stuff.

Adam: Cleaning, cleaning the barf up. 

Casey: Oh, it's just nothing. It's immaterial. Like after you've done it 10 times, it's just like, you don't even think about it. That's the easy part. 

Adam: So you and your wife feel like you've got things pretty well in hand, you know, and again, like you mentioned, hey, who,who knows what the next five years look like right in the five after that, but, you know, it sounds like you have a pretty good partnership. And one of the things I know that's super important as a parent myself, that is really important. It's also one.

Casey: You kind of take it for granted.

Adam: It's, It's also one of those things that's really hard to navigate, right? What's something that you and your wife don't necessarily see eye to eye on when it comes to parenting?

Casey: So actually this is a good example. I'd say the lowest moments for me, my failures as a parent is when I lose my temper, or like lose patience, and you know, usually this will start with the child screaming for 20 minutes and then at some point I'll join in. And we'll make a beautiful symphony.

Adam: They wear you down. 

Casey: Yeah. And Christine justifiably and correctly, I think says that like, there's no excuse like screaming at a three year old, like what's wrong with you? Like it's a three year old. And I would say like, and it kind of, it feels adjacent to violence to me when I'm. You know, not in that main state that, you know, you're not physically harming the child, but like, it's definitely not doing them any benefits , to see their dad, like lose their mind over some issue, which is usually pretty trivial and might round to like, hasn't slept much in the last week.

And actually, like I thought, Oh, baby's coming, you know, like my sleep's going to be disrupted. If anything, my sleep has been the same as before because I just stay up too late, like a complete idiot. Cause I, I would try to get stuff done. But yeah, I'd say like, I don't disagree with her on that.

I'd say like my behavior doesn't always meet my own expectations. But I think it's definitely improving, especially as like I'm 36 now. So over time the kind of the fires within tamp down somewhat. And your expectations change. 

Before we had kids, I was like, you know, it's probably like, run through this checklist of like 20 or 25 different issues and make sure that we're aligned. One of the things that we're actually quite atypical for is we don't really watch TV as a family.

The children don't really play computer games. My son has a Chromebook now from school, which he plays chess on sometimes, but like they don't have like a iPad each that's crammed with games that they just like play around on. Like I think we have Khan Academy or something, which we use like once a year, but like other than that, and we don't have a TV in the house that, we actually don't have a TV now. So I guess I'll watch YouTube on my own computer, but like when the kids are in bed and so like, a lot of people don't think that way. They think like, well, the TV is what babysits kids. And I hear all these horror stories from poor parents who are trying to travel with their kids.

You know, in planes and stuff like that, or in cars. And we've done a comprehensive series of trips. I've taken the kids to Australia a few times. Last year, we flew to Ohio, I think three times with both kids and pregnant wife in relation to my mother in law's illness. And we did a road trip across the country and back in the family Tesla towing a caravan, which took about a month.

And they're just champions. I mean, I, this time last year I took my son who was four at the time to Australia for my grandfather's 90th birthday cause it was his like only grandchild, great grandchild who could talk. He's got a couple of others who are quite a bit younger and they can talk now, but they couldn't then.

And that's a long flight, 14 hours, right? And I didn't, I didn't have an iPad for him or anything like that. I brought a couple of books and some like Rubik's cube and some Lego or something like that. But like we talked and looked out the window and took a nap and eats food and talk to more and like just cool about it.

So. Yeah. I'm glad I don't do that.

Adam: That's awesome.

Casey: And the other thing is guns. We're not big on guns. So, so some families will have like lots of toy guns and stuff, and we don’t do that.

Adam: You do not. Yes. Makes sense. 

Casey: Ray guns and like toy nuclear weapons and stuff. That's okay. 

Casey: like, it has to be weird.

Adam: It has to be weird. Okay. So I did want to ask, and maybe this is a good one to end on. I was going to ask you about what you wanted your kids relationship with technology to be given how instrumental it is in your life and your professional life, but I, kind of have a sense of that from this conversation.

Casey: So the thing is they will use computers. I just don't want them to be like necessarily using all their time to play violent computer games, for example. So like, my parents basically did not think that computers were a good idea for kids. And so until I was about 16 I was strictly regulated how much time I could use in a computer.

And after that it was like the purposes for which I could use it were limited to like schoolwork and reading Wikipedia and stuff like that. I was really strongly discouraged from playing computer games. And my brother less so, but still to an extent. And as an adult, it's not really part of my life.

I think I last played a computer game eight years ago. Which again, assists with the productivity. So like, I think it's unavoidable that they will use computers. I think it's super important, especially being raised in the Zoomer generation, that they actually learn how computers work and not just like voice command their way through an iPad or something like my generation feels like the last generation actually knows how to like write code and push kernel patches and things. The important thing is that they're interacting with the computer as a tool that enhances their creativity and productivity, right? Not something that's just there to like poke their limbic system and release dopamine in their brain. That's the key thing. That's always been the case as far as I'm concerned. My eldest is just learning to read now. So like, I think his ability to interact with the text side of a computer is about to take off. Which will be super exciting and also somewhat terrifying. But it also gives them the keys to the kingdom.

It's like power tools, right. But like when I think of these new AI tools that are coming along, I don't think of them in terms of like, oh, it's going to replace 90 percent of workers or something, it might replace 90 percent of jobs. But really what it will do is, it will increase the productivity of people who can use it properly.

And actually, if anything, the barriers to entry of these AI tools is much lower than like writing C++ that compiles. So, I'm very, very bullish on like being fluent and conversant with these tools as they evolve. So that you remain part of the story. 

Yeah. And then obviously like I have a chemistry lab at home, so we can do like physical chemistry and, uh, build buildings or like you're trying not to blow things up normally, but like, I don't just take them for granted, but like the stuff you can do in physics, chemistry, which is just magic, right?

You read Harry Potter and you're like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if I had a magic wand and an owl and a broomstick? And you're like, no, actually I can just like take a magnet and some wire and like push electrons around. And if I hook them up the right way, it can think.

Adam: It’s amazing.

Casey: What the fuck? Anyway so, so, you know, fortunately happily for us, all our children are at least as far as we can tell didn't fall that far from the tree.

They all seem very technically minded and quite, numerically literate, like my son is like when we're on a long road trip now we either play the doubling game. It's like two, four, eight, 16, 32. Or we play the like consecutive prime game. So like you kind of count up prime numbers and then try and make sure that each subsequent number is prime.

And it's not that hard to essentially like the divisibility rules for numbers less than say 10 or 20. And that'll get you up to that squared in terms of like being able to verify primality. So that's a fun, fun game in inverted commas. God, someone's going to call child protective services on us.

Adam: No, I think that's great. Mentally stimulating and they don't have to sit in front of a screen to do it. So pretty awesome.

Casey: Yeah, later on when you play the doubling game and then you pull up a Python instance on the Chromebook and you're like, okay, now like for, two to the eye for eye and range 10 or something done. Oh, that was easy.

Adam: Well that is a wonderful thing to end on. And I love the optimism. I love the idea of focusing on the long term. Last question for you is how can people follow along or be helpful to you? 

Casey: Yeah, well, thanks so much. So our children are not on social media. So if you're looking for pictures of them, hopefully you will be unable to find them online. If you do find them online, do let me know. We think that children especially at our kid's age, not old enough to consent to having a permanent record of what their faces look like and the silly things they did.

but you know, for me personally, I'm most active on Twitter and I have a blog which is not that hard to find. And yeah, I mean, that's basically like, if you want to chat or something, reach out on Twitter, I've quite a backlog of podcasts and stuff on a variety of incredibly esoteric subjects as well, which would be a fun lesson if you've completely exhausted the catalog otherwise, and are trying to drive to South America or something.

My wife is no longer on Twitter, unfortunately. But she can be found on certain social medias as well. We actually have a very obscure podcast called Reproductivity which I think there's like six episodes up or something talking about balancing kids and work. So we talk about some stuff there. 

Adam: I will link to any and all of those things in the show notes. Thank you. All right. And something tells me, given this conversation, you're going to do great at rapid fire. So are you ready? Casey, here we go.

Casey: We're about to find out,

Adam: Okay. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased?

Casey: I'd say we have a Snoo. And I'm giving that credit for the child sleeping well.

Adam: That comes up a lot. I should get them as an advertiser on this show.

Casey: You should. I want a grown up Snoo.

Adam: Okay. Awesome. What is the most useless parenting product that you've ever purchased?

Casey: Shitty, shitty toys. I don't like, the five cent toys that break all the time. Just straight to the bin. if your relative's listening to this, do not give them to us.

We just bin them instantly.

Adam: Awesome. Okay. Finish this sentence. The ideal day with my kids involves this one activity.

Casey: Making food together.

Adam: Awesome. Love that. Any favorite things that you make with your kids?

Casey: Well my wife is vegan, so, the sacrament of meat is something that I do with the kids. Barbecue that I built recently. And so we had steak last night which I met again at one point, but I think mostly it was absorbed. We've made sourdough pizza, pasta. Yeah. Like we basically, you can go out and you can buy, this is a good product.

You can buy kids safe knives. So actually like I'm happy if the kids use regular knives under supervision. Maybe with like hands on hands kind of thing. But you can actually buy this like plastic kid safe knives, which can cut vegetables, but you can't cut skin. And so you're just like, hey, like dice this onion.

Like maybe you want to put these goggles on first. At their school, actually preschool, like they, they have a griddle where they flip pancakes together and stuff, so like they know not to touch the hot thing.

Adam: You seem like a pretty even keeled guy, but what is the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a dad?

Casey: Oh, it's always silly stuff. don't do the thing. And then they do the thing and then like causes a huge hassle. And you're like, you did the thing and it caused you a hassle. Now it's a problem, you know, like, and it's a problem because the two year old doesn't really make that connection, but like say they take their favorite toy and the favorite toy has broken slightly.

And you say, okay, we're gonna put this up on the healing bench and when I have a moment, I'll glue it together and then it'll be fine. And then when you're not looking, they go up there, they take it down and they keep playing with it and break it badly, like permanently. And you're like, okay, that's broken.

Now throw it in the trash. And of course there's tears and you're like, well, yeah, what are you gonna do about it? Stuff like that. In terms of stuff that's not related to the kids themselves, the sheer hassle navigating the medical system and the immigration system. Passports, et cetera, et cetera.

Of course it could be much worse. It could be infinitely worse actually. But we were fortunate that our children are healthy and happy, but but it just seems like unnecessary, you know, like, again, we live in a world of B2B SaaS, like you should just be able to swipe your credit card and get the service you need.

Like I have buying power. Why do I have to like go through some insane queue that wastes an hour, half my time, no matter what happens to do the most basic stuff or like, yes, sure. I understand that like the Australian government wants to make sure that people like, trafficking humans across the border and so on, but like There are products available through third party cells that do like ID verification.

They don't have to like completely stand up that vertical incompetently within their own. Well, it's not even incompetent. It's just, it's unnecessarily labor intensive. Anyway, it's just, it's this insane process. Anyway.

The things I will do to get my children free education and healthcare.

Adam: It's true. It's worth it in the end, even if it is incredibly frustrating in the moment. How many parenting books do you have in your house?

Casey: 20.

Adam: How many parenting books have you read cover to cover?

Casey: 5

Adam: Oh, wow. That's good.

Casey: They cover the same ground, a lot of the same ground. If you just read like a book on sleeping and you read another parenting book and it's like this chapter is on sleeping, you're like, oh, my kids are good at sleeping. Let's switch. Life is short.

Adam: What is the favorite age so far for your kids?

Casey: Whatever age they are today.

Adam: Okay, what is your least favorite age?

Casey: People talk about the terrible twos a lot, but I was a terrific twos for me. For both the kids who've been two, it was fabulous the whole way along. I mean, the three year old is like a threenager, but like 15 minutes a year. She's a delight. Everyone loves her. They, I that's a mate problem.

Like it's conspicuously obvious to me that all the people in my children's life, including my own relatives, including their teachers, including their friends and other parents in the school, like my kids a lot more than they like me. Like conspicuously more and it's understandable. Like I can't fault them, but like, man, anyway.

Adam: All right. What is the most absurd or ridiculous thing that one of your kids has ever asked you to buy for them?

Casey: It's usually like, daddy, can you make me something or like, cause we have a 3d printer or like, you know, you know, the food's not actually, our kids are pretty good as far as like being picky about their food. Like, oh, I need you to put it over there, over here or something like the cost is the wrong color or like, whatever, make it again.

I mean, when the oldest was three, he used to occasionally be like, you know, the dinner's wrong, make it again or something. We never did. Hunger always overcomes. To buy…

Adam: Or maybe make, if you're making a lot of things in the house. With a 3D printer.

Casey: I mean, like, I actually don't think it's unreasonable for a five year old to say, daddy, can you make me a helicopter? Because as far as he's concerned, I can make all kinds of things. And he sees helicopters flying around and he knows that I can fly planes. I've never flown him in a plane, but like, he knows that I can fly a plane.

So like how hard could it be? It turns out it can be done. You can buy a kid helicopter and build it in the garage. So I think when they're a bit older, we will actually build a kid plane together in the garage. But that's ridiculous thing. I don't know, like probably rockets, like a dad can, like, we built some like little model rockets and he's like, okay, can you like, for the next one, can we build one that goes to space?

And I'm like, ooh, and he's like, cause I want to launch a satellite. And I was like, oh, you mean orbit, not just space. ooh, I don't think so, but we'll see. 

But like, I think within six months he'll be able to do the math to understand why that's really hard. So like, then we can have a meaningful conversation about it, which would be super cool.

Adam: You strike me as a very handy guy. You can build a lot of things, but what is the worst experience that you've ever had assembling a kid's toy or a piece of furniture?

Casey: Furniture is a particularly interesting one. Like, and I say this as someone who's like a manufacturing geek, but like IKEA has figured out how to get you cheap furniture by essentially making you do the assembly step, but it would not work at all if they could not do precision manufacturing of wood, which is insane because wood changes shape like temperature and humidity and so on, somehow they get it right. That said assembling IKEA furniture without, and you don't have jigs to do it. Like if you're in a factory, you have a jig that holds all the pieces in the right place, and then you just put screws in or whatever. You don't have that, which is annoying, but I'm pretty good at IKEA now.

But like just the, like the non IKEA furniture that like, it's just thoughtlessly designed and it like rips the skin off your knuckles and so on. The worst designed piece of consumer hardware that I've ever interacted with was the caravan that we took when we took, when we drive across the country and back.

So for example, I've got a blog post about this, like 10,000 words bitching about it, but like, the, every time you stop and starts every day, we were moving and like, you have to reconnect at the new campsite. So you're connecting the freshwater hose, the blackwater pipe, which is filthy and disgusting process because our caravan was broken in an important way, various valves didn't seat properly. And then the electrical system. And in order to engage the electrical system, you have to it's a plug with a screw thing that like holds it in place, which itself is dumb because like, you should just have a clip system that, that locks it in place. Just like, like the, like a cork remover from a bottle, right?

Bottle opener. Something like that. Like these things have been around for hundreds of years. It is understood technology, right? But it gets worse than that. There's a flap that comes down to cover the power receptacle when you're not using, when you're driving, which is fine. You don't want stuff to get in there.

And the flap is attached to the caravan with a hinge. Which is an injection molded piece of plastic so you can make it any shape you want and it is shaped in such a way that as you are screwing and unscrewing the collet that holds the plug in the hinge has a very sharp vegetable peeler section that flays the skin off the inside of your hand like right here There's a scar which then immediately gets covered in everyone's excrement when you're, when you're doing the blackwater thing.

So now you've got a big infection in your hand and you're like, the people who designed this in contrast to the Tesla, which is, we like took way off its design thing by like putting a tow hitch on it and towing this across the country. And it worked flawlessly, never broke down, never even like had a single hiccup, like that thing is alien technology.

I bought Tesla stock in 2011 and I'm very glad that I did. But, but this goddamn caravan, everything about it, just, ah, this big, long blog post about it. 

Anyway, we got it done in the end. 

Adam: Have you accidentally mixed up your kid's names? 

Casey: Oh yea, all the time.  it's not quite as bad as like accidentally calling your spouse, your ex girlfriend's name or like even some other woman who you never dated. But but actually now, like, since we just had this new arrival, we've got these grownup kids, like three and five, not that grown up, but like they can go to the bathroom by themselves.

So, yeah. So you get home and you're like. Kid one, kid two we’re accounted for. And you're like, oh shit, I have a third kid. Where's the baby? Cause normally babies cry, but this baby never cries. So it's like, yes, our baby doesn't cry. Except when like I'm putting it in the bath, maybe. And so you're like, oh, the third baby is accounted for, but then like, I'll call the baby.

The second child's name and the second child, the first child's name and it's never going to get better.

Adam: How long can a piece of food sit on the floor and you will still eat it?

Casey: Me personally?

Adam: You personally.

Casey: It depends on the type of food, but probably on the order of like, oh, I don't know, like, like on average, I would say I wouldn't because getting sick is a huge inconvenience for our family and I have to like, be careful about my health. No harm, no foul all day. Yeah, it was like, you know, corn chip or something. That's like not really touching the ground very much,

Adam: Yep. 

Casey: It’s still good. You know, nothing goes

Adam: Balance precipitously on its edge. 

Casey: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it's follow the kid's example, right? If you can bite into it, it's fair game. So,

Adam: Alright, last question for you. And we kinda got there a little bit with the caravan RV discussion. But, now that you have three kids, what is your take on minivans?

Casey: My wife is not keen. We just bought a seven seat Tesla model Y, which is fine for now, we are on the list for the Cybertruck, which was originally a six seater, but now it's a five seater. So I'll have to look into like what it will take to retrofit that to be a six seater. Minivans.

I think it is possible to do a minivan and retain a shred of dignity. I'm not quite sure how but I think it might be possible. But like at the end of the day, like, like parenting is like leadership in the company here, right? Like at the end of the day. I'm not being the leader for an ego trip in some sense.

I'm somewhat, unwilling. It's a servile role. You, you lead by, by serving. And at the end of the day, if the children need a minivan to get them to their soccer practice or something then it's not my job to think about how I look in that minivan. It's my job to think about how I'm enabling my children to have the life that they deserve.

There are some cool minivans out there. You can always, you know, paint them or something, make them look cool. 

Adam: Awesome. Alright, so. We're not writing off the minivan. It's just not a today purchase. 

Casey: My wife and I may have our, like our final boss battle over that. I'll have to see. 

Adam: Awesome. Well, just don't let her listen to this. 

Casey: She’s too busy.

Adam: She’s too busy anyways. It's okay. All right. Well, hey, it was great having you on this Casey. This is really fun. I laughed a lot. And I feel like I know you so much better than I did when you were just a faceless person on the internet. So thank you for joining me and have a great rest of your day.

I appreciate it.

Casey: Thank you. It's been a pleasure. 

Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Casey Handmer. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share, and leave me a review. It'll help other people find this podcast.

Startup Dad is a Fishman AF production with editing support from Tommy Heron. You can join a community of over 9,000 subscribers and stay up to date on my thoughts on growth, product, and parenting by subscribing to the Fishman AF newsletter at www.fishmanafnewsletter.com. Thanks for listening. See you next week.