# David Sussillo (on foster care and neuroscience)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard-229033/david-sussillo-on-foster-care-and-neuroscience
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard-229033/david-sussillo-on-foster-care-and-neuroscience.md
Podcast: [Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard](https://stenobird.com/podcast/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard-229033)
Published: 2026-03-25T07:30:00+00:00
Episode link: https://rss.art19.com/episodes/ecf7d7ec-18c0-493b-b31f-c7097e1592ef.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0
Audio file: https://rss.art19.com/episodes/ecf7d7ec-18c0-493b-b31f-c7097e1592ef.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard-229033/episodes/david-sussillo-on-foster-care-and-neuroscience
Duration seconds: 6732

## Resource

David Sussillo (Emergence: A Memoir of Boyhood, Computation, and the Mysteries of Mind) is a technologist, neuroscientist, and professor at Stanford University. David joins the Armchair Expert to discuss growing up with two parents that were addicts, experiencing extreme poverty throughout his childhood, and the joy of finding a best friend during that time. David and Dax talk about how the immersion and rules of video games amid the chaos of his life became the precursor to his research today, ending up in a series of group foster homes for several years, and his dream of going to college functioning as a protective shield for his future self. David explains being orphaned by the living while in foster care, the elation of receiving a full ride to Carnegie Mellon to study computer science, and the deep learning neural network research he now leads at Stanford. Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: https://www.allstate.com/ Head to turbotax.com to find a store location near you and get matched with a TurboTax expert — with real-time updates in the iOS app. This episode is sponsored by AppleTV. Learn more at: https://tinyurl.com/mr2caw2c See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard-229033/episodes/david-sussillo-on-foster-care-and-neuroscience/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard-229033/david-sussillo-on-foster-care-and-neuroscience.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.