He Could Probably Design an Experiment to Explain It. Bravery has been brewing inside David Eagleman, Academy Class of 1989, for a long time. On a fall day in the 1980s, when he’d only been a sixth grader at the Academy for a matter of weeks, hot-air balloons touched down on campus, and one pilot asked if anyone wanted a ride. David hopped in. The balloon rose back into the sky, and David realized he was the only kid who’d taken advantage of the offer. “I thought everyone else would, too, but no one did. I watched the Academy recede in the distance,” David recalls. “The balloon touched down three-quarters of a mile from campus, and I ran back.”