Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee Page #2

jungle plants

that he hopes will be

the building blocks

for medicines of the future.

I was doing my

postdoc, I was at Harvard,

but I always heard

about Belize.

Just how amazing

the jungles were

and the local healers.

Decided to go to Belize

and just see

what it was

all about, you know?

But anyway, we'll talk about

that, then.

I ended up

meeting John McAfee.

Yeah, I didn't know him

from Adam,

but I told him about

my research,

and he seemed engaged.

He seemed interested,

and within, you know,

minutes of conversation,

and within, you know,

minutes of conversation,

he offered me my dream job.

He said, "You can continue

your research,

and we'll make

a business out of it."

And I thought,

"Oh, my God."

I mean, this is

this is it.

This is, like,

my big break.

There was not a space

for the lab,

and he had me stay with him,

um, which made me

very uncomfortable.

I saw a lot of stuff

when I was living in his place.

He had armed guards.

I'm not a huge fan of guns.

Um, he had meetings

with people that were

also armed.

With people that were

also armed.

Um

At one point he said

that he was working on a book

with two heavily armed,

very built men

from the Ukraine.

I mean, I don't know, this is

probably not relevant.

I'm sorry, this is

That's okay.

This is the tangent that I told

you I would go on.

Yeah, that's okay.

That's part of interviewing.

It's just, there's

There's a lot

of tangents.

Peoplewe all do it.

Oh, f***, there's just

there's so much crazy sh*t.

There's so much crazy sh*t

that I don't even know

that I don't even know

You know, it's hard to know

where to start.

I wanted to start

with John's past.

In emails he was evasive.

But I managed to dig up

some of his records.

He was born in England,

and grew up

an only child in Virginia.

According to John, his father

was an abusive alcoholic

and committed suicide

when John was young.

Eventually, John graduated

college and became

Eventually, John graduated

college and became

a computer engineer.

In the 1980s, he tried his luck

in Silicon Valley.

McAfee, may I help you?

Speaking.

It's one of those

strange days.

His first efforts with

antivirus were in late '86.

And, uh, he was

always playing

with different kinds of code.

There was this new problem

with computers,

that was ayour computer

could catch a cold.

Okay, there it goes.

In Budapest, uh,

we have a hospital

that lost 25 systems.

Uh, including

all patient recordshello?

When John came up

with antiviral software,

90 % of the people

that were running computers

weren't even aware of viruses.

And then viruses started

getting names.

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