Welcome back to The Stratosphere, and thanks as always for being a part of Puck.

On Friday evening, I hitched a ride down to Stanford to spend a few hours at the kitchen table with Sam Bankman-Fried. I didn’t know what to expect when security led me to the front door of his parents’ home for what turned out to be S.B.F.’s first on-the-record interview since he was arrested, indicted, and spent over a week in an infamous Bahamian jail.

To say that former billionaires under house arrest don’t usually do this is an understatement. It was a surreal experience. Sam, eating a vegan burger and French fries, discussed everything from the moment of his arrest to his decision to not fight extradition to the U.S., his sense of isolation and sense of shame, and whether he has considered going to therapy. There were no lawyers, and no P.R. chaperones to interject. Three hours later, I returned to San Francisco and struggled to make sense of what the hell had just happened. This is the story of how Sam’s globe-spanning life collapsed to the size of a small suburban lot in Palo Alto.

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