I Woke Up In A Jail Cell - ft. Kurt Kemple

He robbed a bank during a Xanax blackout. Woke up in a jail cell with no memory of doing it. Got sentenced to 5-7 years. And decided not to waste a single minute. Today, Kurt Kemple is Senior Director of Developer Relations at Salesforce, a published author, and a self-taught theoretical physicist who has peer-reviewed papers on black holes — all from a GED. This is one of the most extraordinary conversations we've ever had on That Wasn't The Plan. Turn it up. 📎 Find Kurt & Resources Mentioned: 🌐 Website: kurtiskemple.com ✍️ Medium: "I'm an Imposter" by Kurt Kemple 💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kurtiskemple 📚 Book: Effective DevReel — Springer 🔬 Physics Letters B — Kurt's published paper on black holes 💙 Struggling with addiction? You don't have to figure it out alone. SAMHSA helpline: 1-800-662-4357 (free, confidential, 24/7) or text 55753 to reach the Partnership to End Addiction. aa.org is always there too. 📧 thatwasnttheplanpod@gmail.com | 📲 @thatwasnttheplan CHAPTERS 00:00 — Sweet potatoes, mayonnaise, and the devil's sauce 06:12 — Introducing Kurt Kemple 09:35 — Kurt joins / second chances advocacy 10:33 — The bank robbery he doesn't remember 13:00 — The note, the $2,000, turning himself in 15:30 — Childhood: instability, moving, dropping out 19:00 — Waiting a year to be sentenced 22:00 — The courtroom: five to seven years 24:00 — The decision: not a single minute wasted 28:00 — Prison as the most stable place he'd ever lived 31:00 — Learning trades: carpentry, welding, HVAC 33:30 — Computers click: HTML, JavaScript, and LimeWire 37:00 — Building websites on thumb drives with no internet 39:30 — Getting out: an information omnivore meets the internet 44:00 — The career begins: first tech job, imposter syndrome 52:00 — Salesforce and Slack: what developer relations actually is 58:00 — "I'm an Imposter": writing the piece that still gets shared 1:04:00 — Second chances advocacy and the stigma of incarceration 1:09:30 — Physics: how a Slack question became a black hole theory 1:11:00 — Cave paintings as hard drives. Pyramids as storage systems. 1:14:30 — Shannon entropy, Landauer's principle, and the brain's energy cost 1:20:00 — The black hole theory: what Kurt actually published 1:22:00 — The mad scientist phase: panic attacks, thinking he was going crazy 1:25:18 — The kindest thing anyone's ever done: Donna 1:28:00 — Closing / K bye 🥂 #secondchances #ThatWasntThePlan #KurtKemple #impostorsyndrome #Prison #theoreticalphysics #salesforce #GEDtoSuccess