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Welcome to SpyC, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum.

I'm your host, Sasha Ingber, and each week I take you

into the shadows of espionage, intelligence, and covert operations across the globe.

He may dress like he's on a vacation in Hawaii, but Palmer Lucky has been busy designing weapons for the Pentagon.

He founded California-based defense technology firm Anderil in 2017, named after a sword in the

Lord of the Rings, and according to Palmer, 20% veteran-owned. He's promising a marked shift, faster, cheaper, and more

agile systems to fight the wars of today and tomorrow. This, after Palmer designed the Oculus

Rift, a virtual reality headset at age 19, revolutionizing the world of virtual reality.

We sat down to talk about how Anderil's work is also supporting the U.S. intelligence community,

an essential part of mission readiness.

Welcome, Palmer.

Nice to see you.

Thanks for having me on. So most teenagers are not building virtual reality headsets. They don't end up selling it at the age of 21 and becoming a

billionaire. I'm curious to learn about your upbringing and how it took you to where you are today.

Well, my dad was a car salesman who taught me a lot about the mechanical side of things. My mom was a

homemaker. I was homeschooled through most of my childhood, started going to community

college when I was 14 years old and started building virtual reality headsets when I was 15 years

old. So that was my hobby for a while. I didn't figure out how to turn into a job until I was

18 or 19. But earlier in life, I was very into the great outdoors and sports and swimming and sailing.

But as soon as I discovered computers, it was all over.

Only exercise I was getting was typing on my keyboard.

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