In 2002, Scott Dylla, a skinny postdoc with a Minnesota accent, answered a Craigslist ad for a room for rent in Palo Alto. Although he couldn’t afford to move in with Brian Slingerland, then an up-and-coming technology banker at Credit Suisse, the two got to talking.
Two of Slingerland’s aunts had died of cancer. One, only a year after she retired. The other of lung cancer. She’d always smoked Kents.