Tom: Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory.
You are here my friends because you believe
that human potential is nearly limitless.
You know that having potential is not the
same as actually doing something with it.
Our goal with this show and company is to
introduce you to the people and ideas that
are actually going to help you execute on
your dreams.
All right, today's guest is a hyper intelligent,
furiously educated, one man army hell bent
to create a brighter future.
While others may look forward and see only
a dystopian world where the machines enslave
us for our heat energy, he sees only amazing
possibilities.
This optimism coupled with a metric ton of
grit and degrees in molecular genetics and
Aerospace Engineering from MIT and an M.D.
from Harvard Medical School have helped him
shape himself into one of the most potent
entrepreneurial forces on the planet.
He is committed to helping at least one million
entrepreneurs create companies that matter
and he believes that the best way to predict
the future is to create it.
As such he's founded seventeen companies himself
and invested in countless more that are designed
to alter the very fabric of human society.
From Human Longevity Inc and Cellularity which
together and to keep us all healthy and add
30 high performance years of the human lifespan
to singularity university which is disrupting
education and business quite frankly.
Planetary Resources a company that builds
the space ships humankind will need to, you
guessed it, mine asteroids.
He's literally constructing our future at
one game changing enterprise at a time.
He's also the founder and executive chairman
of X. Prize the legendary nonprofit that gave
birth to privatized spaceflight and continues
to incentivize some of the biggest scientific
and technological breakthroughs of the 21st
century.
It is not hard to see my friends why Fortune
magazine is named of one of the fifty greatest
leaders of our time.
Please help me in welcoming the man has a
stamp with his face on it, the multiple time
New York Times bestselling author of Bold
and Abundance the Future is brighter than
you think Dr Peter.
It is so good to have you on the show man.
Peter: It is so great to be here pal.
I need to get a copy of that introduction
to consent to my mom.
Tom: That is, I think, very reasonable.
I love this story about the fact that your
family really wanted you to go to medical
school which you did dutifully as a good Greek
boy, sent them the diploma and then rapidly
pursued your dreams.
Peter: My parents both were born in Greece
in the island Lesbos and came over after World
War two and I grew up in a in a medical family.
Of course back then right you know you were
either a doctor, a lawyer or maybe an engineer
but you know doctor and lawyer was the highest
profession.
It was expected that I become a physician.
It drove a good part of my life.
At the end of the day I sort of rationalized
becoming a doctor was a great stepping stone
towards my desire, my true desire, of going
into space.
Because when I looked at the actual stats
out of every hundred astronauts the largest
chunk were military.
I was not likely going the military.
The next largest chunk were doctors and then
it went down to scientists and engineers and
so I said okay Doctors I can do that.
Tom: There's a lot of familial pressure to
go into that especially as a son of immigrants.
What was the narrative you were telling yourself
when you said, “Okay, I'm not going to do
that?”
Peter: I kept it secret.
I externally was the good Greek head of the
Altar Boy going to MIT to study biology on
my way to medical school.
All of my space interests were extracurricular.
Up in my mouth and my room I had a closet
packed with explosives, literally my best
…
Tom: You guys were just buying them, right?
Peter: Yeah back then you could you could
mail order explosives.
My friend Billy I would buy the very best
stuff we could.
We started potassium nitrate saltpeter and
charcoal and sulfur which makes a reasonably
good gun powder.
Tom: How’d you figure that out?
Peter: I had this great book called Poor Man's
James Bond and then there was the Anarchist
Cookbook, both of those give me every formulation
I wanted.
Listen I'm just saying the stuff was available.
Tom: You're really in trouble with two boys
by the way.
Peter: Listen and if they ever if they ever
watch this show.
I have them ban the show for them.
My friend Billy and I used to build explosives
and we learn the potassium per chlorate versus
potassium nitrate generates on oxygen so it
could explode underwater.
That was really great because we made these
little bombs that we'd throw in the pool and
blow up until one day I remember at Jonathan
Lind’s we threw it in and you got this explosion
of water going out and then we heard this
crack.
His pool basically cracked crossing entire
… I learned one of my one of my rules of
physics that fluids are not compressible.
Tom: It's a good lesson.
Peter: I had a fun childhood but all of the
non-medical stuff was literally in the closet.
Tom: You've got pretty specific advice of
following your passion and doing that.
At what point do you tell your parents, how
do they react, how do you keep going in that
direction?
Peter: It was an interesting moment in time.
Because I went to MIT and I was doing molecular
genetics during the day and at night and weekends
I would go and hang out at the MVL, the manned
vehicle lab which is where the astronauts
were being trained.
I'd volunteer to do research and I would do
that in the side.
Tom: Were you doing molecular genetics because
you thought it would feed into …
Peter: Yes that was the highest probability
path to getting accepted in medical school.
Which was where like the second to last goal
graduating medical school was that was the
target.
I did everything space, I was while I was
there grad I started my first organization
ever it's called Students for the Exploration
and Development of Space Seds, it still is,
God, no it's 35, 40 years later the world's
largest college space organization.
Jeff Bezos I met through Seds, he was the
president of the Princeton chapter.
I found myself running a national an international
organization of fellow student space cadets.
A lot of the guys I work with now that have
co-founded companies came out of Seds.
Seds was my magnet for attracting like-minded
people around the world, right?
You put out this call and say this is what
I stand for this is what I care about anyone
who wants to join me …
Tom: Did you actually write a manifesto?
Peter: Yes I did write a manifesto in and
it was interesting the year was 1981, 1982.
There was a magazine back then called Omni
Magazine, do you remember Omni Magazine?
This manifesto got published in three magazines
and it said, “We students, that space is
our future and the government is mortgaging
our future.”
It was a long letter to the editor that said
any students who are passionate about opening
up space you know it's our legacy join me
in this organization.
I got letters from around the world to people
who wanted to join and form a chapter of Seds.
It was awesome.
Fast forward I get into medical school and
I'm going through medical school and I'm still
doing all my extracurricular space activities.
I'm still running you know Seds, I had started
a launch company, I had started a university
… I'm running to startups during medical
school it was an insane thing.
Tom: Because there was so much time …
Peter: There's so much time.
Tom: In medical school.
Peter: We’ll get back to that.
We're at a point where we had to declare our
internship and residency, this thing called
match and it scared the living shit out of
me.
I found myself in a situation where I was
able to skate by in medical school.
In that there was always someone else watching
and if I made a mistake could be caught and
it sort of got known that my heart and soul
wasn't in medicine it was and other stuff
I was doing.
When it came time to become intern and resident,
you're at that point, you're going to become
a real doctor and if you are not being paying
attention to kill people.
It scared me, it really scared me so.
I remember going in calling the head of the
man vehicle lab at MIT and explaining situation.
I said, “Can I come back and enter the doctorate
program there?
I need I need a time out from medical school
to figure out what I want to do with my life.”
I got accepted back into the aerospace engineering
degree and followed that.
Eventually got my aerospace engineering degrees
went back and finished medical school but
by that time the two companies I had started
were going forward.
Like you said, I mailed the diploma to my
parents and said, “Okay listen, I got to
fess up I'm not going practice medicine.”
Tom: You took that really, really far.
That very impressive that you could do that
all at the same time.
Just knowing you personally from a time management
perspective your use of time is 
of that, but watching what you accomplish
in 24 hours is pretty startling so kudos to
you.
Peter: Thank you.
Tom: One thing I want to talk about.
You’ve talked about going back to your dad
and your mom and dad both grew up on Lesbos.
You once likened your dad moving to New York
and becoming a doctor being akin to you going
to Mars.
This is really similar to Lisa's dad story.
He grew up in a tiny village in the middle
of the mountains in Cyprus, goes to Athens
and then ultimately to London and when you
talk to him that's what it sounds like.
The drastic change in world view and how that
impacted him.
What was I like your dad, what did that leave
on you?
Peter: I grew up with the stories of my dad.
Of him you know speaking about times where
he did not have enough to eat.
Where when all his friends … the he was
in a small village called Mysignain in the
island Lesbos.
He talks about tending to you know the sheeps
and goats and picking olives and that was
how he helped keep his family fed especially
during the war.
When he left to go take his entrance exam
to medical school, when he took the boat to
Athens for the first time, his father was
there waving them off and saying if you don't
pass don't come back.
A pile of pressure.
He did pass and he goes to medical school
and has to work a job during the day and he
couldn't go to classes to pay for his medical
school and to pay for room and board and so
he ended up studying at night.
I grew up with this with this sense of, you
do what you need to do to make it happen and
you pursue your dreams and education is the
most important thing you could possibly get.
He doesn't speak a word of English and he
just does what it takes.
When I think about the journey he made from
this small village on Lesbos to becoming a
very successful New York physician, it's this
epic journey of improbabilities.
I think about, that for me, the equivalent
of going from here to Mars which is something
I do intend eventually to do.
Tom: I love that.
Did you look at your dad as a hero growing
up?
Peter: He was very much a hero.
Tom: You weren't dismissing him?
Peter: God, no, I was not dismissing him at
all, I was in awe.
I have two six year old boys now, fraternal
twins, and I think about how do I convey the
lessons that I learned from my father?
Because I'm not growing up in that level of
hardship.
I am yes squeezing every you know nano second
of time out of every hour but still I just
am so appreciative of what he did.
I would have had none of these opportunities
had he not taken that leap he did.
Tom: I love what you're saying but you dad
that he did whatever it took and he got the
results.
This is one of my favorite quotes of yours,
I'm going to paraphrase it, people need to
stop focusing on the problem and start focusing
on the solution.
How do you teach people to do that, what are
you going to do with your kids to get them
to be solution oriented?
Peter: I have a belief that every problem
is solvable.
Tom: How’d you come up with that?
That for most people would seem pretty counterintuitive.
Peter: Because as I think about the world
we're living in today, it's the realization
that we have solved so many problems to achieve
this extraordinary world we live in today.
In terms of global production of food, of
energy, of water, of information.
We're living in the world of Star Trek.
You think about that that we can diagnose
almost anything, I can read your genome for
100 bucks in a matter of a couple of hours
and understand all three point two billion
letters of your life and have an AI analyze
it tell me about yourself.
I can on one of these devices call up any
piece of information, talk to anyone on the
planet.
This is magic this is crazy stuff.
Just 20 years ago let alone 100 years ago
or 1,000 years ago.
The realization is any problem is only a problem
contextually today and we're going to be creating
the tools and knowledge to be able to solve
that problem and I believe that any problem
not forbidden by the laws of physics is solvable.
Even then we're going to sort of learn where
the boundaries of physics truly are.
Tom: Just to give you an idea why this is
such an important question for me, so the
whole point of impact theory is me going to
now I don't have to worry about money like
what I really want to do?
What I want to do is overcome the poverty
of mindsets.
Most people I just think have a frame of reference
that is so counterproductive that they don't
end up wringing the potential out of themselves.
God forbid something happens to you and your
wife and your kids and growing up with somebody
else they just have a different frame of reference
and that ultimately stunts their development,
that's my belief.
When somebody grows up in the inner cities
or in Tanzania don't have access to the education
system, whatever it is that causes them to
have that mindset, they have that mindset.
I'm trying to answer the question how do you
add scale by leveraging behavior not changing
it how do you make sure that everybody has
that mindset?
Peter: First of all thank you for that because
that mindset is the virus we need to let loose
into the cosmos.
It’s the realization if people truly believe
what you're saying then everybody becomes
a problem solver and then problems vanish.
I mean ultimately at scale eight billion people
solving problems or problem after problem
means that this world is just dealing with
higher order problems which is fantastic.
I think it's by story, I think it's by what
you do here, it's the stories that we tell,
it's the examples that we give.
You have to ask yourself the question, has
somebody who is got that mindset smarter?
Probably not, they've just had better experiences
and perhaps luck along the way.
I'll give you one example I mentioned Seds
earlier.
Seds was my first organization ever.
I'm at MIT, it's my sophomore year and I'm
passionate about space.
I find out there's no student space organization
at MIT.
Oh my God it's crazy, there should be students
based organization.
I go to the MIT student center and I find
out you need to get five signatures to start
a group.
I'm the first I get three of our fraternity
brothers, Bill, Brad and Roland as the third
and then one of their girlfriends’ Natalie
and that's our first five.
We get it we submit it and I'm here I'm running
the student space organization.
I go and I poster MIT, this is before the
days of the internet, before computers, rub
on letter type of days, in photo photocopy
days, this is 1982 thereabout.
I posted the entire campus and 30 people show
up at this meeting where I pitched this idea
of creating a student space organization and
after that meeting I was so enthralled by
this level of energy like oh my God this has
a future.
I remember standing outside the student center
looking up at the stars and seeing fast forward
this organization actually becoming what it's
become.
I send out letters along with two of my colleagues
and it gets published by astronomy analog
and Omni Magazine hundreds of people write
letters back in and the organization blossoms
into an international student space organization.
I find myself running in the living room of
my fraternity.
It was a success and I became addicted to
that feeling of success.
Had that been a failure, had I done that and
next year no one showed up and it flopped
maybe would be having a different story.
In the success I was like, okay, what can
I do next?
Next for me was something called the space
generation foundation and then International
Space University I.S.U. which is you know
another major nonprofit success but it has
grown in two hundred million dollar university
around the world and it's just been amazing.
I think part of this is putting yourself out
there and trying it's the ratio of zero to
one is infinite.
How to get people to just try to overcome
their fears that's the hard part.
It's the realization that it's okay to fail
but it's even better to succeed.
Tom: Very well said.
The key moment in the for me, and you put
your finger on it, is writing or getting the
signatures to start the organization to believe
that you could pull it off.
Is that optimism something that you cultivated
in your life or is it something that you come
by naturally?
Peter: When you peel the onion of taking that
first step that zero to one in and getting
those five signatures, what drove that?
What drove that was my childhood passion and
interest in space.
I was so interested in space so enthralled
by it that ultimately I was miffed there was
no space group there.
I was like okay, opportunity I'll create one.
The question then becomes you know what drove
that passion in me?
When I think about going back to my kids,
I talk about the three things I want for them.
I boil it down to the three most important
things that are import.
For any child my children particular that
I'm driven with them is helping them find
their passion.
I don't care what it is, I don't care if it's
Barbie dolls or, right now it's Mine craft
and Lego's.
It's find that passion that will drive them
self driven learning and solve driven investigation.
The second thing is curiosity.
In a world where you can know anything curiosity
is so critically important and then grit and
you know grit.
You know grit and your story just speaks volumes.
Passion curiosity and grit for me was what
I happen to have learned.
I learned grit from my dad because I saw him
not give up and so in my in my household for
my kids you know we joke and seriously say
what's the one thing we don't do and they’ll
say we don’t give up.
Every day when I walk them to school the last
thing I say to them is ask good questions
today.
When we're walking to school I say, “What
question do you have for me?”
I want to get a culture of question asking
and a culture of not giving up.
Passion, it's my job to observe the natural
passion and then just fuel it what I want
to do?
Okay paper airplanes, fantastic.
We're going to learn every paper airplane
out there why they work.
Tom: I love that.
What I love about that is it's systematized.
So few people can get to the point where they
can explain how I'm going to inculcate this
into my kids.
I ask you about the kids a lot because kids
are the one thing that really forces people
to say what am I trying to teach, what am
I trying to pass on?
I've got this universe of things that I think
about I'm going to boil it down to something
that I can pass on to the next generation
and when it comes to kids people take that
really seriously so it cuts through all the
BS and gets to the point where people are,
you know what they really believe in enough
that they're going to try to pass it on.
A lot of people fall down in the how.
Peter: Well so it's interesting my kids are
going into kindergarten and I think about
honestly, will they ever go to college and
do we actually reinvent what school is like
for them what role do I play?
I mean one of the things that I'm excited
about is getting them involved in Dean Caymans
first Robotics competition.
First Robotics, if you don't know about it,
is this incredibly rich after school experience
where kids, first starting with Lego’s,
build robotic Lego’s to do certain things.
Then at the high school level a First Robotics
team gets basically a box of stuff, they have
to build a robot that accomplishes a certain
task, like I picks up basketballs and shoots
them into the hoop while knocking out other
robots.
It's about.
Learning how to think through a problem and
build a system and become engineers.
Ultimately our society tends to make heroes
out of who, rock stars sports stars.
Your chance of becoming a rock star sports
star or a public … the only thing less than
that is probably becoming an astronaut.
At the day so we idolize these rock stars,
these TV stars, these sports stars and that’s
okay I guess but we should be idolizing you
know people like yourself and engineers and
scientists and incredible people on the planet.
First Robotics is all about recognition and
celebration of engineers and scientists.
Tom: What is the most important elements to
thinking like an entrepreneur?
Peter: Being fascinated by how you would solve
it and then creating something that you really
want and that you authentically believe in
like you do this show, and then being able
to express it to people.
I'm working right now on a on my one 19th
startup and it's a …
Tom: I under sold you in the intro at the
…
Peter: By two but that's okay.
It's reinventing the news media.
It's a really exciting one I'm so excited
about it I can't say much about it but right
now when you're watching the news on TV whatever
you're counting on an individual called a
news editor to decide what you put into your
brain.
It's insane that you should allow the crisis
news network or the constant negative news
network whatever you call C.N.N.
I love model you know little tweaks on, jabs
on C.N.N.
We allow them to decide what I should see
over and over and over again.
Your mindset is everything.
Imagine if you could have some other mechanism
for controlling what you see and when you
see it.
Anyway I won't go into more than that.
At the end of the day I'm excited by this
in theory and we are building the beta right
now and for me the tire hits the road as an
entrepreneur if I love it and I use it and
until I love it and use it all the time it
doesn't go into the ethos out there.
It needs to be something I'm passionate about.
Tom: For anybody who doesn't know, what is
your fascination with Star Trek and how deeply
have you baked it into all of your companies?
Peter: It's that green chick.
I was born in the '60s and Apollo occurred,
Apollo 11 occurred in 1969 which was an incredibly
formative moment in my life, the entire Apollo
program.
At the same time you know Star Trek debuted
in 1966, I didn't see it then I saw it in
the reruns and it had three seasons in total.
When I was seeing it in 1969, 1970, Apollo
showed me what was going on right now and
Star Trek is this is where we're going.
That one two punch just made me enamored with
the future in space that this was this was
the destiny of humanity, we're about to launch
into the cosmos.
I became enamored with Star Trek.
The more you look at Star Trek, Star Trek,
Gene Roddenberry the creator writer or producer
of Star Trek, I know his son Rod Roddenberry.
Gene Roddenberry was a brilliant man.
What Gene Roddenberry created was a set of
technologies on that show that are still driving
us today.
He had the communicator that you'd be able
to tap into and talk to anybody on the planet
and of course you know we take that for you
know that was a crazy idea back in the sixty's
with rotary dial landline phones.
He had the tricorder and we have just in within
the Xpairofeyesee, as you know, we just had
the awarding of the $10 million Qualcomm tricorder
Xpairofeyesee the tricorder was a thing that
bones or Spock would use to diagnose someone
and go you know Jim he's an alien or he's
got [inaudible 00:27:09] fever or whatever
case might be.
We challenge teams throughout the world here
to create the Star Trek tricorder a device
that could diagnose fifteen diseases for you
as a mom at 2:00 o'clock in the morning when
your kid is sick.
He has the replicator device that you know
you can create anything.
That's you know we're just on the on the on
the way towards that with 3D printing.
Star Trek just created these amazing, this
view of the future.
Probably one of most interesting views of
the future that no one talks about is the
future of Star Trek had no economy.
In a world in which you can create anything
money has little to no value.
You're living in a world of abundance where
you can create anything you want, disease
is cured, education is available through an
AI, you can create anything through or through
this you know replicator, you can go anyplace.
What really had value in the future and will
have value for us in the future is raw material
like you know an asteroid worth or a planet
worth over here, energy from the sun or from
in that case dilithium crystals or information
sets to manufacture something.
I see the Star Trek universe as really a target
we're heading towards.
Tom: One of my favorite things is when somebody
who's very successful who I take very seriously
as an entrepreneur, as a thinker, whatever
is so impacted by something pop culture that
it makes its way into everything that they
do and so at the last years Visioneering summit
literally all the teams presenting a new potential
Xpairofeyesee had to say how the Xpairofeyesee
was in line with Roddenberry's world view,
so that was amazing.
Then the tricorder Xpairofeyesee.
So let's talk about how somebody can go and
see Star Trek and see this absurd device which
everybody else discounts and just says, “It's
fiction, it can never be.”
Then the person, namely you, that goes no
we can, there's a way to actually make that.
Is it just been the first you run a little
credibility with yourself and then a little
bit more a little bit more in the stacks up
till you're so brazen that you go for the
tricorder?
How does that happen?
Peter: First of all I would posit that science
fiction, all science fiction, written, television,
movies and so forth create this believable
future.
After you’ve read it or watched it if you
are all of a sudden back in reality here there's
this dissonance between this should be possible
and we're here.
If you need can make that leap to say, okay
it's possible how do we get there?
Xpairofeyesee’s are all about saying I don't
care where you went to school, what you've
ever done, if you solve this problem you win
and so it's putting out a bold objective goal.
Here's the fifteen diseases you have to be
able to detect and here are the vital symptoms
it will detect and if you do this you win
10 million bucks.
We're not too far from that being possible
for all of us.
What I mean by that is we're within 10 to
20 years from us being able to be in a world
where we can speak our desires to an AI and
that AI is able to drive 3D printing technology,
synthetic biology technology, eventually nanotechnology
and your thoughts verbalized become matter.
It really is it's going from mind to matter
to the marketplace.
I talk about this, we're all going to become
entrepreneurs in the future where if I have
an idea for something that I truly desire
like I want this mug and I can say to my AI
this I want something carry some hot coffee
and I'd like a handle on it and pink color
or white.
Can you give it the thermal properties so
that something inside it will stay warm for
a much longer period and I'd like it to be
less than ten cents so pick a material but
that's cheap and I can look at see it can
you scale a bit larger.
I haven't written a piece of code, I've just
I'm expressing what I want that's in my mind
in my heart and this AI is then taking that
desire and converting it to the right code
or the right whatever it might be so that
it becomes a file that can be then manufactured.
That level of magic is coming very fast, it's
coming very fast.
It’s Iron Man and Jarvis materialized in
the next decade.
Tom: What are you most excited about right
now with technology like that getting so near
term, what's got you jazzed?
Peter: Wow, everything.
I’m driven by two moon shots that I'm on
the right now I'm on a moon shot for mining
asteroids.
The mining of the asteroids is just a part
of the opening up the space frontier.
That during our lifetimes in the next 10 to
20 years that we're going to be moving irreversibly
into space.
I'm so thrilled that Jeff Bezos is doing what
he's doing with Blue Origin.
I knew Jeff at the earliest days of Amazon,
I remember him telling me I'm building Amazon,
which by the way is a half a trillion dollar
company, I'm building Amazon in order to make
the money to go and open the space frontier.
It was about two months ago he sold a billion
dollars of Amazon stock to continue fueling
his Blue Origin space company.
Then Elon Musk who I met now back in 2001
has been as passionate about opening up space
and really Space X is just light years ahead
of most all the other aerospace companies.
You got two incredible, wealthy, passionate,
driven entrepreneurs opening up space.
My part of that is with a company called Planetary
Resources that's going out to these asteroids
that are rich in fuels, in particular hydrogen
and oxygen which is rocket fuel from the shell
main engine, and then platinum group metals
and construction metals and so forth.
These are trillion dollar assets.
If I can [inaudible 00:33:39] one of those
and put it in the public markets, I'd be set
for life.
Our first target asteroid is something like
a 10 to $100 trillion asset depending upon
you know how you value it or devalue it.
The other thing I'm passionate about is human
longevity.
It's the realization that we are now gaining
the tools to begin to understand why we age
and ultimately why we die.
The question is do we have to?
You know certain species of life on this planet,
sharks, whales, turtles have known the multi
hundred your life spans I remember seeing
a show on that while I was in medical school
and I locked in and said okay, if they can
why can't I. I said clearly it's a hardware
or software problem and so I've dedicated
a lot of my energy and you named in the two
companies Human Longevity and Cellularity.
Human Longevity is the genomic side of the
equation, Cellularity is the stem cell side
of the equation.
Which are just two of a couple of the different
technologies and there are many others.
Tom: Why distance cells excite you?
Peter: Stem cells excite me because they are
our primordial stuff.
Let me give you a 101 lesson in stem cells.
When a woman gets pregnant and a fetus starts
developing in the uterus what is surrounding
that that fetus and creating the nest for
it is the placenta.
The placenta actually is supplying to that
fetus all of the stem cells that it needs
to grow every tissue, every organ every part
of its body.
A stem cell is a primordial cell that can
develop into anything, brain, liver, heart,
lungs, skin, bone, cartilage, whatever might
be.
When that child is born, when you know my
children were born I actually stored their
placentas.
There's a company called Life Bank, people
store cord, blood.
My recommendation is that's great at a minimum
store the placental cord blood and there's
lots of companies will do that.
I think storing the placenta is much more
powerful, it's not just the cells that generate
the humopoetic system, it's all of the stem
cells that create the child.
In a child whose blood and tissues are coursing
with stem cells whenever any damage takes
place any inflammation occurs, those stem
cells are go to the point of inflammation
and very rapidly repair what's going on.
As we grow older two things happen, one our
stem cell populations in our bone, in our
fat, in our in our organs diminishes hundreds
or thousands of folds.
Far less stem cells going through our body.
The stem cells in our body have undergone
genetic changes because of radiation, the
stuff you drink and eat it's just the normal
degradation of the of your genome which changes
over your lifespan.
If I go and I extract stem cells in my body
right now in my bone marrow or fat which are
the two largest reserves and I sequence it
and if I could compare it to the stem cells
of my birth, I would see that that's changed.
My stem cells have now reduced in number and
have become somewhat senile so their ability
to continue to repair me has reduced which
is one of the theories of why we age.
So one of my business partners my co-founder
of Human longevity and my partner in founding
Cellularity, Bob [inaudible 00:37:27], Bob's
an M.D. PhD and NATO fighter pilot, one of
the rock stars in the stem cell world, has
actually done the work to show if you take
… in this case he did the work in mice.
You take the placentas of that mice, you convert
it to dosages of stem cells that you then
give to that mouse at the end of its life
like in this case typically a 26 month old
mouse, you will extend that mouse life another
30 to 40%, you'll add another year almost
on to it.
That's been repeated in a number of different
ways there's a whole thing called the Young
Blood experiments being that Stanford.
Right now the experiments are going on in
humans as well that if you know it's Dracula
the Vampire.
If you take the blood of a young individual
and transfuse it with a plasma, not the cellular
portion into an older person you will get
a lot of return to youthful state.
In reality it turns out that there are a number
of stem cell clinics outside the United States.
I happen to know a number of 80 something
year old billionaires who go and don't get
young blood infusion but get stem cell infusions.
Tom: Why not young blood?
Peter: Well it turns out that the stem cells
actually generate the growth factors and all
the chemical [inaudible 00:39:02] that is
in the plasma and they live for 100 days.
Tom: Is that stem cells from themselves?
Peter: No it's stem cells from newborns.
Tom: Really?
Peter: It's the stem cells from the placenta
or cord blood that are typically thrown away
…
Tom: That is utterly fascinating, I could
do an entire show just picking your brain
about that.
Peter: These are the kinds of conversations
that I think were verboten or were crazy before.
There are a lot of scientists today talking
about aging as a disease not an inevitability.
Tom: How do you feel about augmenting yourself?
Are you going to do it?
Maybe you won't be an early adopter but would
…
Peter: I would be an early adopter.
I was on stage speaking at Singularity University
and the guy who spoke after me was talking
an implantables.
He says yes we have these little RFID things
that you can put data onto and you plant them.
Afterwards I said “Can I?”
He said, “Sure.”
We went back on stage and he implanted right
here, you can feel it.
Well.
I got this little are if I do if you take
your near field ID with your phone you get
a business card off of it.
Tom: Are you serious?
Do you have one on your phone?
Peter: I don’t have it turned on but we’ll
take a look …
Tom: That is crazy.
Peter: Listen I think there's got to be some
level of safety but I'm much more risk [inaudible
00:40:26].
Tom: I would say.
Peter: I think it's interesting because today
if you think about the world of sensors, I've
got heart rate and steps on here very soon
we'll have glucose and blood pressure and
other elements.
Probably within five years, Apple, Samsung,
Google, Facebook, everyone's working on sensors
for your body.
Tom: Man, I can keep going on forever.
Limited time, there's two things I want to
talk about.
Is it true that you have a board of advisors
that are science fiction writers?
Peter: We do.
We have created at the Xpairofeyesee Foundation
a board of 35 science fiction writers that
we will we've just formed it but will call
on.
Because at the end of the day you know coming
up with Xpairofeyesee’s, coming up with
you know big bold crazy ideas that are on
the verge of just being doable.
Why not call them people whose profession
is to come up with those things?
Tom: What do you think they do to stay at
the edge of that?
Are they just researching real world technologies
or are they …
Peter: Obviously it's becoming harder to write
stuff which is real hard core science fiction
because all the things we used to think of
… I mean once you've got AI and nanotechnology
nothing's impossible.
We're game over or game start.
Tom: That brings me to my next question.
Very interesting that you switched it from
game over to game start.
As this happens, AI comes on, just that we're
at a place where robotics, AI would create
just about anything we want, humans are essentially
wiped out from the current way we think about
jobs or we could call it roughly 50%.
What happens societally, what happens to the
generation that would have to make that transition,
what does universal basic income look like,
what is all that?
Peter: When people ask me, “Are you fearful
of the AI, is AI The devil, is it the Terminator
going to destroy humanity?”
I answer, no it's not.
I think AI is probably one of the, Artificial
Intelligence when I say AI, is one of the
most important tools humanity will ever create
that will become our partner in solving any
challenge we want.
I differ with you know Stephen Hawking and
Elon Musk and Bill Gates, it's kind of hard
to go against those guys.
I disagree I think that that's their amygdule
speaking and they've seen Terminator too many
times.
I did I am concerned about AI taking our jobs,
I am concerned about AI and robotics disrupting
a lot of our current jobs I'm not concerned
in the long term because I think we're going
to adapt society to that's fine but in the
near term it's the rate at which we're going
to be losing jobs.
We've lost jobs over and over and over again.
I remember the number, particularly in 1810
we had 84% percent of Americans were farmers
and today it's under two percent 84% to two
percent.
Wiped out all those jobs and of course we
became far more efficient and now robots,
robotic tractors and so forth will do the
farming and such.
That's that kind of magnitude change is fine
of going from 50% of our jobs … I told my
sister [inaudible 00:43:56] who's an anesthesiologist,
that her job is going to be replaced much
better by an AI in robot than the human doctor.
All surgery will be done by robots and all
diagnosticians will be replaced by AI's.
It's the rate at which we do those transitions.
Truck drivers, taxi drivers all those things
being replaced.
Today our meaning of our life is wrapped up
in what we do.
So the two issues with technological unemployment
is how you earn your living and then what
you do to create significance in your life.
The first I think is going to be solved by
universal basic income.
I think ultimately we're the monetizing the
cost of living it's becoming cheaper and cheaper
to live.
The example I give today is you know this
device will eventually become your teacher
and your healthcare provider for free in the
same way that access the world's information
is available across the world for free.
A car today, I love my car and I'm not a car
guy but I love it I love the Tesla, but I'm
going to park it or get rid of it when autonomous
Tesla's and autonomous cars come online because
autonomous cars are going to be ten times
cheaper and far more convenient.
We're going to give up car ownership for something
that's one tenth the cost and then whole bunch
of things change.
How we deal with the significance of our jobs
in our lives that's going to be an interesting
question and so I'm concerned about that,
I'm concerned about people feeling angry towards
technology for disrupting their lives.
That's something I'm spending a lot of time
thinking about these days.
Tom: Did you read Fahrenheit 451?
Peter: God, back in high school I think.
Tom: The thing I found really interesting
about that, it planted a seed in my head,
was that there exists out in the woods the
people who so were unwilling to give up books
that they were more prepared to give up society
and so they move out into the woods.
That seems an inevitability especially when
I think about it not so much as AI but I think
about it as a human machine interface.
As we begin implanting things into our brains
that augment it or even just as we begin messing
with our own gene sequencing and people that
refuse to start doing selection on genetic
criteria for their babies.
Eventually they'll lose, it just doesn't seem
like …
Peter: Eventually those people will lose.
Tom: The people who are the Luddites.
Peter: The people who are the Luddites, yeah.
It is true, I think we're going to split humanity
into those who want to retain their old ways,
and that's been the case always, and those
who choose to if you would plug in.
I think it's interesting cause I've thought
a lot about that and I've written about that.
I think that once we are able to connect the
brain to the cloud, and Ray Kurzweil puts
that date as early to mid 2030s, 2033, 2035,
times check that's 16 years from now or thereabout.
That’s not very far away 16 years ago was
2001, I remember like it was yesterday.
Of course you've got amazing individuals like
Brian Johnson with Colonel and Elon Musk with
Neural Link and a whole bunch of other players
out of Facebook, out of Google working on
this technology as well.
It's about how human hands human intelligence.
Then ultimately human intelligence is the
most important thing we can have and I think
once you're able to enhance your intelligence
and plug into what I call the meta intelligence
where you if you plug into the cloud and I
can know the thoughts of a man woman and child
on this on this world or know anything I want
at any time, it's so powerful, so addicting.
That I think to unplug from that would be
to feel like you're shut off and you're blind
from the world.
Tom: It's so interesting how much fear and
anxiety people have over the change in all
of that.
My whole thing is you get what you focus on
so if you're focusing on that then it's going
to be big and scary but at the same time if
you focus on the potential beauties of the
billions of new minds coming online and being
connected to them in the revelations that
will happen.
As we really take control of the next phase
of our evolution, how interesting it gets.
Have you read [inaudible 00:48:46]?
Peter: I haven't yet.
Tom: You're going to love it.
I've become a total evangelist for this book,
absolutely obsessed got to get the author
on here.
He basically walks through how the way the
human mind works.
You know my obsession with narrative and fiction.
He does the most eloquent job explaining that
our fictions, the stories that we tell are
like David Foster Wallace's notion of this
is water.
They are so ever present these stories that
we're telling each other, we don't even realize
that they're stories.
One of the examples he gives is money.
Money is an interest objective truth, it is
only real in as long as we …
Peter: Everybody believes it.
Tom: The second people don’t believe in
it, it ceases to have any value whatsoever.
He lists just five, six, seven different narratives
that we're all taking for granted.
One of the most beautiful was how during the
Crusades the Christians and the Muslims lined
up perfectly.
It's it is in their cemetery, in that they're
telling the same fiction just from opposite
sides, one true God, one true God that wants
us to reclaim the Holy Land, that wants us
to reclaim the Holy Land.
The only part that's different is their true
God is different than theirs and so they collide
and kill each other.
He talks about how if either of them, the
story had been different, protecting you know
one true God, what he wants is for you to
live in peace and harmony and land mass is
totally irrelevant.
When it meets this force that has have the
land mass than then they would acquiest.
It is only because they are telling the exact
same story from opposite sides that you get
the historic collision that we got.
He talks about how to anybody living back
in that time it would've made sense.
If you're this kid growing up in England that's
about to go fight the Crusades, the woman
whose attention you want, she's looking at
you like, oh my God going to go off to the
Crusades and you know she's fluttering her
eyelashes and their family is like, my God
going to bring glory to the family into the
church, this is amazing you should be doing
it.
Now when we look back at it seems so absurd.
He says, you can take any time in history
you want and to those people the fiction would
have been invisible, it would have all seemed
absolutely objectively true and it was being
mirrored back to you at every level of your
society to the point where you can't see it.
That with enough distance you'll say well
that was obviously ridiculous and he said,
so what do you believe right now that 100
years from now will seem patently ridiculous?
Just got the chills.
That to me is when I look at the stories people
tell themselves whether it's the Terminator
or whether it's the Borg whatever story they're
telling about the scary future it's like,
okay well as long as you're in a group that's
self reinforcing that, I get it, I get why
it seems we have to … we're already at war
with AI emotionally and it hasn't even been
truly created yet it's just it's the other
right it's the difference.
How we get over that as a species is something
that I find utterly fascinating and I don’t
think at all that I have the answer.
Peter: We're going to find out during our
lifetimes.
That's the most an incredible thing that I
keep reminding people, wake up the next twenty
years this game plays out which is why I'm
so convinced we're in the middle of a videog
ame anyway.
It's like it we’re living in the most extraordinary
times it's all playing out, we're in the final
phase of the game play and we're right here,
right now clearly where this is a simulation.
Tom: I heckled you a little bit at Xpairofeyesee
when you brought that up.
I want to believe that because it fits so
well with my matrix mythos.
I can get over time and if somebody can explain
to me how either the people watching … because
the only reason to do a simulation is the
watch it play out.
If you don't live long enough to watch it
play out there and there would be no point.
Peter: You could create a simulation, have
it have it play out at a billion times the
clock speed …
Tom: So that's where I end up.
Peter: Replant it and restart again.
This whole notion of parallel universes, the
notion that that … if I were a scientist
trying to create a, if I could create a virtual
computational world using whatever quantum
computers and set up an AI inside and set
the original conditions and let a play out
and tweak the conditions that would play out
and run a Monte Carlo simulation …
Tom: What's that?
Peter: It's a simulation in which you change
a few small variables and run a million of
them in parallel or a billion of them in parallel.
Imagine a world in which in alien civilization
you set the starting conditions and literally
let an infinite number of these play out in
parallel and then see what happens.
I find these thoughts too compelling to just
let go.
Tom: I'm with you.
The one that I think free me out was when
I realize that the DNA first of all can be
represented as zeros and ones, so already
just life is could essentially be digital
code.
I find that stuff utterly, utterly fascinating.
Peter: Again the next 20 years dude.
Anyway, it's just in the amazing life I consider
myself so lucky to be alive right now.
Tom: Exactly.
Before I ask my final question where can these
guys find you online?
Peter: Diamandis.com is my website, I put
out a weekly tech blog, I work a lot on this
on this Friday and Saturday.
Thank you.
On Twitter I'm just my name Peter.
Singularity University, come and get involved
in SU We run programs for executives for graduates
Xpairofeyesee.org.
We're taking on the world's biggest problems,
fun stuff.
Tom: What's the impact you want to have on
the world?
Peter: My MTP, what I call my massively transformative
purpose is to inspire and guide the transformation
of humanity on and off the earth.
Just to peel the onion there, I believe that
we are undergoing a transformation as a species
from what we have today to this notion of
a meta intelligence.
That transformation is can happen in both
on the earth and off the earth, I had to add
on earth part for the child in me.
I think that's going to have to be inspired
and properly guided to have the minimal negative
impact.
I think this is happening I think we are the
lungfish coming out of the land I think we
are speciating as a species.
The rate of change is way too high and so
I think about that.
I want to help make the human race a multi
planetary species.
For me it's about changing the mindset of
people from scarcity minded to abundance minded.
I think that changes the game when people
go from oh it's all mine to, there's an infinite
amount let's share.
So far so good having fun.
Tom: I love it.
Thank you so much for some on the show.
Peter: Thank you pal.
Tom: Guys, I am telling you this is somebody
that you're going to want to get to know at
every conceivable level.
I really believe that he is leading the world
in terms of understanding not only where we
are near term future, where we could be and
how we're going to get there into the future.
I think there are very few people that do
it with a level of compassion, brotherly love.
One thing about this guy that you learn very
quickly behind the scenes, he's got that Greek
warmth, he is so kind brings you into a big
it is amazing.
He greets the transition from where we are
today to where we can be in the future with
that same sense of love, compassion, empathy
and it's wonderful.
I don't think there's anybody on the planet
that I have met that would be better suited
to do that to introduce people to the technologies,
the ideology, the things we're going to need
to do.
He knows how to go raise the funds to actually
make these companies real, to get them to
be profitable and most importantly and this
is the thing he will never get enough credit
for, he has a huge long range vision but he
always starts with what do we have to do today.
How do we do today and then tomorrow one step
after another and tell the grand dream becomes
a very blaze, where you've seen him execute
so many steps that it becomes an inevitability.
I've never met anybody else as good as he
is at that and for that reason I beg you,
go learn from him don't even just listen to
what he says, watch what he does because that
will highly instruct you in what you should
be doing.
All right, he and I are in the middle of a
bet right now, it is the first the 3 million
followers.
I'm begging you help this man beat me.
Go follow him, it will improve your life,
I'm not kidding.
Dive in, get to know him and guys if you haven't
already be sure to subscribe.
Until next time my friends, be legendary,
take care.
Hey everybody, thanks so much for joining
us for another episode of Impact Theory.
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be legendary my friends.
