Sam Altman on one of the highest-return years of his career: no job, exploring his interests, and a lot of people who were nice enough to teach him things. "I read many dozens of textbooks. I learned about fields that I had been interested in. I didn't have any idea that they were all gonna come together in the way they did." "I learned a lot about nuclear engineering. AI was starting to work, so I learned a lot about AI. I learned about synthetic biology. I learned about investing." " I met…