Michael Ellison was 19 years old when he picked up the phone and called the main line at Goldman Sachs. He had no contacts, no money and no suit of his own. Not long after, he was standing in a room full of Wall Street executives, shaking hands with the chairman of the firm. How he got into that room, and what he did when the people inside it told him to give up, is a story I want every young striver in America to hear.

Today Michael is co-founder and CEO of CodePath, the largest educator of college computer science students in the country. His students are first-generation and low-income, and they are out-earning their peers coming out of traditional programs. He knows that climb from the inside. He grew up in rural Maine and spent part of his childhood without a home, the same road I walked in South Central Los Angeles.

We spent most of our hour on the question people ask me everywhere I go right now: what happens to work, and to wealth, when AI can write the code? Michael’s answer is not the one you are hearing in the headlines. He also gave me a simple way to measure where you stand with AI today, and I think every listener should take that test.

If you are a student, a parent, a worker wondering about your job, or somebody sitting on an idea you haven’t started yet, this conversation is for you. The full episode of Money and Wealth with Michael Ellison drops this week on the iHeartRadio app and wherever you get your podcasts.