Moonshots with Peter Diamandis - EP #21 The Vaccine That Will Cure Chronic Diseases w/ Lou Reese
Episode Date: January 5, 2023In this episode, Lou and Peter discuss work-life integration, the issues with modern medicine, making life-changing drugs accessible to the world, and the mindset that has made Lou Reese successful. ...You will learn about: 26:50 | You can't bet against Elon Musk 33:12 | Making a life-changing drug accessible for everyone, not just the 1% 56:25 | Creating the best Covid Booster for the world. 01:13:09 | What are the biggest influences in Lou Reese's life? Lou Reese is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Vaxxinity; a company focused on providing accessible cures to chronic diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Covid-19, and more. _____________ Resources Learn about Vaxxinity. Levels: Real-time feedback on how diet impacts your health. levels.link/peter Consider a journey to optimize your body with LifeForce. Learn more about Abundance360. Read the Tech Blog. Learn more about Moonshots & Mindsets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
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That's the sound of unaged whiskey transforming into Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey in Lynchburg, Tennessee.
Around 1860, Nearest Green taught Jack Daniel how to filter whiskey through charcoal for a smoother taste, one drop at a time.
This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell.
To hear them in person, plan your trip at
tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. I think that if you don't have to face hardship,
you'll never know what you'll do when it's hard.
So this is how you test your mettle in a certain sense, right? So I don't wish hardship upon anyone, but I think that hardship spares no one.
And a massive transform to purpose is what you're telling the world. It's like,
this is who I am, this is what I'm going to do, this is the dent I'm going you're telling the world. It's like, this is who I am. This is what
I'm going to do. This is the dent I'm going to make in the universe. Everybody, welcome to Moonshots
and Mindsets. I am here with officially my best friend on the planet, one of the most brilliant
thinkers that I know, the deputy dad to my two boys and I, the deputy dad to his three kids, Lou Reese.
Lou's also the co-founder and executive chairman of Vaccinity, which we'll talk about a company that's transforming the treatment of chronic disease by like eliminating it.
And huge moonshots there.
Lou, how you doing, brother?
You know, I can't complain. Everything is amazing. I'm not sure I can deliver on brilliance today,
but I'm going to do my best. I have every confidence that you will,
every confidence that you will. It's good to see you. How are you? How are you hanging in?
I'm doing all right. I'm, you know, going, you going you know 28 hours a day as normal
I just
I just realized
I'm my worst
enemy
on this stuff
it's like
who the hell starts
meetings at 6 a.m.
and goes till 10 p.m.
it's like
who
who allows this stuff
I blame Esther all the time
but you know
it's
you know
it turns
it turns out
that when it's
self-motivated
there's no one
no one to blame.
But I always, that's why I took out all the mirrors in my house.
I got tired of yelling at that guy, you know.
That's what I tell Tony Robbins when Tony's like, I'm exhausted.
It's been five days on stage.
Who set that schedule, Tony?
It's part of the deal, you know.
I mean, I was having a discussion this morning, actually, with some of the people that work for us down here.
And I was explaining in my broken Spanish that it's not about life-work balance.
It's actually about life-work integration.
And it led me to this thing I've been telling the kids every day now, which is, um, and, and maybe to my wife as
well, but sometimes I'm, I try to be softer with the messaging, but, uh, but you know, if you don't
enjoy walking to the place that you're going to the, if you don't enjoy getting to the there,
and if you don't enjoy, you know, the meals that you eat, suddenly you realize that more than 70 or 80
percent of your time that you're awake is wasted. And so there's almost an obligation to enjoy
the journey as much as the end destination, which is not easy for me, but it's very easy for me to say. Yeah.
You know, I had that moment in time, that realization,
and I remember it vividly when it was the winning of the X Prize.
It was October 4th. It was probably around 8 a.m. in the morning.
Spaceship One had just made, crested over 100 kilometers
and was on the way down to win and i was like holy
it's over it's done you know the prize is about to be awarded and i remember having this
mental image that i had crested the mountain peak i had been at the top of the mountain i achieved
that journey and when i looked around me all i other saw all i saw was more mountain peaks
me all i other saw what i saw was more mountain peaks yeah right and it's really and it really is the um enjoy enjoy the journey um uh because that is that's that's life and it comes back to are you
living your massive transformative purpose right so even if you fail even if you don't pull off
what your crazy moonshot is like for me when i you know i wanted
i failed at the asteroid mining company but i will take another shot at that eventually
um the journey was still amazing in that regard now you've never failed you've never failed so
you don't have to worry about that oh no i mean i think think I think life is a series of little successes or big successes and little failures or big failures.
You know, I think it's it's something that I think I'm obviously still working on, not just seeing the the future kind of goals and the future aspirations and the future impact and the ideas that swarm, right?
Part of it is being able to, and it sounds a little corny, but it's an exercise in being
in the present and enjoying it really at all moments. And, you know, I remember being sick with with COVID in October of 2020.
And I was and I was, you know, not horribly ill, but definitely not well.
And I was laughing hysterically in bed.
And I thought to myself, it's like, you know, if I can't enjoy the aches and pains and kind uh the the symbols of life that this is that this
exhibits reminders that you're alive right yeah exactly it was uh it's one of those kind of the
ultimate make lemonade moment you know it's like but i was laughing hysterically so much so that
you know may may and the kids would come in and be like are you okay and i'm like no i'm fantastic
everything is amazing i have laughing disease. So of
everybody I know, you have the most extraordinary mindset about life and you are the most present
person I know throughout the journey of life. And I mean that with all the love that it comes along
with it. How do you do it? So listen, you're executive chairman of a company,
it's a public company, Vaccinity. We'll talk about what it does in a little bit. You've got
three kids. You're married to your partner, Maymay, who's the CEO of the company, which cannot be
easy, right? I mean, and then you live in Montana, Telluride, Costa Rica, and on an airplane.
There's probably in Dallas, you have a home in Dallas as well.
Where are you right now, by the way?
I am in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica at the moment.
Yeah, which is why that's so good.
Yeah, exactly.
I know this is our second attempt at doing this podcast.
And the United States did not have the bandwidth Internet wise for it to work.
So I had to wait until I was in Costa Rica.
Yeah. One of the one of the benefits, actually, and actually this is a mindset leapfrog example.
Right. Same with, you know, Kenya and other parts of Africa. You notice that they've
leapfrogged entire sections of technology. And here they basically went from the coconut wireless,
which is people making things up and telling other people in the town, to high-speed fiber
internet. And it happened overnight. So I'm, it helps to have a few billionaires as neighbors
who demand fiber optic cable at every corner. Yeah. I mean, I think, uh, the, the, the, the
word on the street here is that that was Jack Dorsey's, uh, favor to the community because in
order for him to be down here, uh, as frequently as he is, he, uh, he basically dug up the road
and threw in fiber immediately um so yeah
that's uh that's uh it's good to have great neighbors uh i want to come back to costa rica
in a minute but let's talk about being present um how do you handle uh that work-life integration
as you said and and being being present with uh with my deputy children. So, you know, it's not, uh, I would say that,
you know, no one, including me is, is perfect at presence. Um, and the people that say they are
lying, uh, it's kind of like, it's, it's like work, right? Um's practice. And practice is a discipline.
A great friend of mine and yours actually once said that self-love begins with self-discipline.
And I add not self-flagellation.
So the answer is that I'm constantly readjusting and making mistakes and looking at them as
neutrally as I can, not to punish myself for falling short, but to continue to kind of
train to be better at that.
And I think that fundamentally presence and being, is the best gift we can give to those
that we love and those around us and ultimately our impact, our journey in the world. Right. Um,
and so, so it's, uh, it's a constant struggle, right. And there's, there's constant realignment
there. Um, but I, my guiding principle is that I don't think there's anything that I can think of that's
more important. And is that go roll back into you being a dad? I mean, one of the things I see you
as an incredible dad and with incredible kids. What do you think is the most important thing
if you're as an entrepreneur, as an executive, as someone who's really making a dent in the universe
and also being a father of a 11 year old, uh, and, uh, eight year old and a now two year old,
right? Uh, one year old, one year old, one year old. Uh old uh and uh and ryan actually just turned nine it's
amazingly fast um i mean if we asked bear my eldest he's 11 he would tell you that i get
dumber every day um and and so so i think part of it is my mind tells me i was born in in the
triassic period you know so so i do think I do think that all of these things
go through normal life fluctuation, right?
But really, I try to carve out individual time for them
where there's nothing else that's in the way.
And it doesn't have to be very much time but i do try to carve
it out where it's just them right so um so as you know as my best friend i i very rarely uh
have my phone tethered um in the way that is is is uh the standard of the day. The rest of everybody.
So for those who want to appreciate Lou,
Lou doesn't use email,
and he occasionally uses text message,
and I use smoke signals most of the time
to reach out to you.
Well, you know, the thing is that
it's almost impossible.
I mean, think of all of the forces
that are conspiring against all of us to be present with our family, with our loved ones, with the people
that we're working with, like all of it is actually a giant game trying to pull your attention away.
Right. If you think of the purpose of pop-up ads, if you think of the purpose of cell tone rings that gets your attention or alarms or
all of these things are really just glorified distractions. And if you focus, I tell the kids
all the time that if I get two or three big things done a day, you can look back in a decade and you do an unprecedented amount of work.
Um, if you do 50 things, um, you'll look back and realize that you checked a lot of boxes
to nowhere.
Um, so I, I do my best to avoid checking the boxes, um, that, that I don't really believe
are important.
that I don't really believe are important.
And it's funny, when I stopped doing email almost a decade ago, everybody was kind of,
thought it was a little extreme
and people tried to push me into doing it
and there's a lot of feedback around it.
And now there's this growing movement
because we have our text messages, our WhatsApps,
our We Chats, our signals, our phone calls, our scheduled calls, our zoom meetings, our in-person
meetings, our Slack channel for company stuff and emails. And it's like, you know, it seems a little
excessive and, and I only have one mouth and two eyes and two ears. Right. So I feel like a lot of times we end up, a teacher of mine once
told me that we're deluged with data, but we have very little information. I like that. That is true.
It really is an intention or attention deficit economy out there. It's just a battle. You know, I can't wait for my AI to like just triage
everything coming my way and either handle it or like bring to my attention, like the number one
thing. I mean, that's what a good executive assistant does in some sense, if you let him or
her, you know, sort of be a traffic cop for what's coming at you. Yeah, it's a good, it's a good blocker ultimately. Right.
And, and I think that, uh, it's hard because sometimes you miss stuff.
Sometimes you miss things and you say, man, I really wish that I had, uh, I really wish I had
done that also. But the truth is, you know, with the amount of things, you know, my, my grandfather
used to say, don't worry about
missing a deal because deals are like streetcars.
They come along every 15 minutes.
Now we don't have streetcars, but the same is true for commerce and maybe even more so.
I think that the critical moments, the things that are the most important to me are, you know, when we wake up in the morning and I've got the kids and we, we go to get breakfast all together. Um,
and I schedule around that so that they know that it's quiet and it's just us and they can kind of,
you know, explain their dreams and their fears and what they're going to do for the day. And
I think that those, those moments are, are, uh, are truly priceless. And,
and I think they also have an impact. You know, I think that they, they show that your intention is,
is to prioritize the kids. And, and I think that the other thing that, that we don't do as a
culture really anywhere in the world that I've been is express that, right? And express that in the form of, of both sacrifice
and gratitude. Right. So, um, I think that, uh, one of the greatest blessings of my life is that
when people that have never met my family or my kids say, what does your dad do for work? And they
say, he helps people. Um, and, and they don't say, you know, he's out there trying to make a buck or he runs around and
screams at his computer or any of the other things that other kids that I've asked the
same question might answer.
And so I think it's about clear communication of your intention and your purpose.
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Let's switch to some fun current topics that I always love getting your take on.
You know, Sam Bankman Freed got arrested yesterday.
And, you know, I you and I were talking about the fact that I had dinner with him in September.
And I, you know, just insanity about if I'd looked across the table to him and said, listen, in a couple of months, you're going to be in federal custody.
I wonder if he would have, what he would have
thought. I mean, what's your reflection on that insanity? You know, okay, so I think it's funny
that he's not a billionaire and that he was arrested. I think that was probably the right
thing to do. Is it funny or is it strange? Well, no, the part that's funny is that as soon as he
got arrested and was no longer a billionaire, everybody took away his three letter acronym.
That's the only part that's funny. And no longer became SBF. Yeah, exactly. Now everybody calls
him Sam Bankman was freed. And I think that, you know, when you have an unprecedented creation of wealth without commensurate value, it's always risky, right?
I think that anybody who thinks that he mastermind this entire thing is out to lunch, right? I think that when you grow from
zero to 100, you miss a lot of stop signs. So ultimately, I think that, you know, it's
a it's a very challenging situation, because the the reality there is that I don't think he would have seen it coming.
Um, if you had told him that at dinner, and I don't think he would have been lying to you
when he said, you know, whatever his response would have been. Right. I think he, I don't,
I don't feel like there was a, there was an outright goal and desire to swindle billions of dollars from from his investors and from the public.
But I do think that that when you have, you know, 140 plus companies were filed in that bankruptcy to pretend like any person, even with what we do in a very small level, keeping track of everything is hard. Right.
And it takes a lot of work and a lot of systems and a lot of a lot of other people on the team
that are, you know, more competent than me at many things, including checking email.
And the testimony yesterday, one of the one of the funniest statements I think that came out of it, uh,
was that the entire company, all of their accounting was on QuickBooks and Slack, right?
Um, and running a $45 billion empire on QuickBooks and Slack alone, uh, is, is highly
unrecognized, like not recommended, right? It's, it's not, not part of the deal. QuickBooks
is for a
different level of operation
in terms of the scope
and scale. And so just that,
just that oversight alone,
just that one fact. And I agree with you.
I don't think it was...
I think he was naive, and I think he
was just running as fast as he
could and wasn't looking at how to make,
you know, I didn't have the experience for the checks and balances. I mean, I think in my
experience of him, I didn't see anything that made me feel he was anything other than, you know,
to some degree full of himself and super confident and therefore running
as fast as he could based on that confidence. Interesting, right? If you see something go from
zero to tens of billion dollars, you know, overnight, I guess that's a warning sign
that maybe that just doesn't happen very rarely. I'm not sure. I can't necessarily point at anything
else that's done it that fast. Yeah. I mean, it's like you always say, right. It's a great success that
took over a decade, um, overnight success that took over a decade. And I think that, uh,
I think that's true. And in this instance, you know, um, it's a warning sign because, A, when you're that overconfident, I think my dad would call it hubris.
And the other thing is that, B, when you're in an unregulated business, right,
or a newly regulated business in this instance was unregulated in the way that he was performing most of his tasks,
it doesn't mean that it won't be regulated.
Right. So one of the biggest, one of the biggest problems.
Sure will be now.
Right. Exactly. And one of the biggest problems that entrepreneurs face, I think,
is actually getting stuck in the moment and thinking that that moment will last forever.
You know, look at the blow up of venture capital funding in the last 18 months, where it went from the
largest amounts ever to, you know, a trickle. And most of that is growth or follow on funding
that was pre committed before the trickle started. So the macroeconomic situation and reality is
something that it will change, right. And the one thing, uh, as my,
as Bear would say, the one thing that we know is constant is change. Yep, for sure. And it's,
you know, it's too easy to be, uh, looking back and, uh, criticize, uh, uh, Sam Bankman for now
in retrospect, a lot of people are jealous. a lot of people are throwing rocks his way.
You know, if he had been more careful, maybe he would have made that same amount of capital over
time. I don't know his business model. I think one of the smartest things that people who did
not invest in him said was, I could not understand what he was doing and therefore I didn't invest.
And then what you had is just this lemming mindset of people throwing money at him and
FTX because everybody else was throwing money at him and FTX.
Right.
And that's a fascinating mindset where large venture funds, shall we say, very famous quarterbacks and and other and,als and in areas where people blindly put money in just because everybody else is.
You know, I think that in psychology, very early on, they teach you that chickens will eat until they're dead.
If you put them in a room by themselves and you feed them,
they'll eat until they're saturated and they're full, satiated and full.
But if you then immediately take those full chickens
and put them in another room,
and 90% of the chickens in that room are starving and eating rapidly,
they'll start eating rapidly.
So I think that ultimately um, ultimately it's a, it's an elaborate,
uh, it's an elaborate example, but, uh, I think humans function much the same way,
right? And there's this fear of missing out this FOMO, um, that, that drives a lot of, uh,
a lot of those decisions. I also think that it's, uh, a little bit hubristic, right? It goes back to
this concept of hubris, but on the quarterback side, right? And so I think that at some stage,
a lot of these funds, they think that they're so damn smart. They think that they're the smartest
guys in the room and that they could never make a mistake. And then when their friends
make those bets, they say, well, they couldn't be
wrong. These are the smartest guys in the room. Um, and it's, it's, uh, it's, it's a combination
of laziness and apathy and hubris that I think drives those smartest guys in the room to choose
to do no diligence and to follow the other lemmings off the cliff. So, I mean, it's weird, but it's the same thing.
You know, I try to teach the kids.
I never pretend.
Like, I don't make mistakes, right?
I can get swept up in a moment and get excited about something
and lose a game of poker with the kids because I'm excited about something.
You know, all of those things are natural human tendencies.
And the discipline, at least in the investment side,
the discipline is really slowing down and doing the work internally every time.
You want to talk about Twitter at all?
I mean, I'm not sure if you've had any run-ins with
Dorsey on this or watching. You know, Elon is so incredibly amazing in everything he does.
And the question becomes, how many things can he be amazing at doing? Any thoughts?
You know, I think it's a complicated reality. I think it's easy to throw stones at Dorsey and at Jack now that he's out and now that this transition has happened.
I agree with you.
is an amazing entrepreneur and has really had an ability to go after a lot of things,
more things than anybody else would think he could. So as a betting person,
based on track record and management, I would say, you know, you can't bet against him.
I agree with that, by the way.
And I don't.
I do think that, you know, it's he's he's going to be facing a lot of headwinds that have nothing to do with what he's doing.
And and he had there were a couple of tweets over the last few days that point to that, where, you know, you have, you know, Tesla's market cap down by 50 or 60%.
And the reality is, and he responded, he's like, well, I can't control all macroeconomic trends, right?
Ignore tribe.
Yeah, no matter how much we want to we can't and so i don't i i think that a lot
of the people throwing uh throwing stones are are doing it from a position of of ignorance and
jealousy um and it's it comes to the verse like schadenfreude versus freudenfreude which is you
know schadenfreude is taking enjoyment at the failures of other and Freud and Freude is taking, uh, taking enjoyment from the success of others. Right. And, and it's,
uh, I think this is, you know, this is from my lips to God's ears, right? Because who,
who's going to be able to do that? Um, because it's, it's such a natural tendency of humanity to have schadenfreude.
But I think that being able to celebrate the tremendous successes of others, including Elon, are where I think our focus is better spent.
You know, the one thing I would love your opinion on that I have no idea how it's going to work out,
on that. I have no idea how it's going to work out, but it seems to me that Elon is getting a lot of, he's being targeted very heavily. Biden came out today and said that his connections with
South Africa, China, Russia are things that are warranting additional exploration.
The FDA is jumping on him for the animal studies, for Neuralink. To me, there is
something, I don't believe in conspiracy theory, but I also don't believe in multiple coincidences
occurring simultaneously. So I worry about the of of those other businesses and the impact that that might have on them.
Not again, not because of something that Elon does, but because of macro factors that are difficult for one person to control.
No, I mean, I've seen I've seen the same currents, if you would, headwind currents.
I mean, the the challenge is Elon has won on so many counts, right? He reinvented
space industry. The entire US space program arguably is dependent upon SpaceX. And, you know,
we just saw the Orion mission to the moon, which was nice, but Starship is going to blow that out
of the water figuratively, literally, when it starts flying.
The next Orion mission isn't going to be for another two years because it takes that long to get the parts for the second mission.
And even that, once the vehicle goes there, it's not a lunar lander.
It's basically propulsion to get to the moon.
Starship is going to get to the moon, land on the moon, carry dozens of people, come on back, be able to go to Mars.
It's an extraordinary vehicle.
And again, like you said earlier, I wouldn't bet be able to go to mars it's an extraordinary vehicle and again like you said earlier i wouldn't i wouldn't bet against elon being able to pull
it off in fact i have every faith that he will make it happen um period uh and then tesla won
as well right tesla tipped the point and has has won the race domestically, I think globally on EVs, and they've driven everybody else
to have to invest heavily and catch up.
So even if he'd never, if Tesla goes out of business, it has done what Elon's original
intention was.
And I remember back in 2001 meeting with him, it was like, I have two purposes.
One, I want to get humanity off the planet and I want
to move us to an all electric economy. And he, that those MTPs and those moonshots have played
out beautifully and he's succeeded and will be forever in history as the fuse that lit those two
transition points. So Neuralink, you know, I think I was just with the CEO, one of the top
BCI companies called BlackRock. I don't like the name of the company,
but it's called BlackRock and it's got the longest standing deep and surface electrodes
in human patients. And it's the most advanced out there.
And, you know, they see Neuralink as having elevated the field,
but still more showmanship than reality.
So we'll see who plays it out.
But FDA, they're going to play in the FDA world there.
And obviously, you know, everythingon is doing is a global game so
um i have no comments on china or south africa i don't think i mean starlink is a global
ecosystem of comms anyway like you said i wouldn't i wouldn't bet wouldn't bet against him
what else you're seeing out there in the global economic trends or
anything else that's capturing your attention on what's going on right now that you're
highly opinionated about and want to educate me on?
Well, I mean, you know, I think that if SBF is going to be put in prison or be kind of hung out to dry. I think that somebody really needs to go
after short hedge funds. Um, because I think that that's a criminal destruction of value on a macro
economic basis. Yeah. It's like, it's like a thug on the, on the, uh, on the wall, on the wall
street, you know, sidewalks. Yeah. So I'm going to hold you, I'm going to hold you up. And yeah, it's crazy. So I find that entertaining. Um, but, but, uh, but yeah, I mean, in general,
I feel like, you know, we're seeing, um, I think inflation is probably going to cool off. I,
I just like everybody I'm afraid of, uh, not afraid I'm'm aware and and paying attention to the macroeconomic trends that we're we're being faced with as a country, but but mainly as a planet.
You know, are I can tell you that it's China's reopened. That's going to be a really interesting touch point as more data comes out, both in terms
of in terms of illness and, you know, continued spread of COVID.
But but more importantly than that, in terms of adding another economic engine to the to
the global economy and kind of seeing where that goes and how that impacts the rest of
the world.
Um, so, so I think that's going to be something that, that I, that I'm eagerly following. Um,
but yeah, besides that, just keep my head down doing the family stuff and, uh, and we're working
a lot. So it's, uh, you know, let's talk, let's talk to the let's let's jump into the working a lot, because you've got a moonshot that I want the world to learn about.
And full disclosure, I'm a co-founder and vice chairman of of Vaccinity, along with Lou, who's executive chairman and May May, who is the CEO.
I want to understand what you see the moonshot and the MTP of of
vaccinate. Educate for folks what you're doing and why you're doing it.
Yeah. So right now the the most expensive drugs on the planet by volume
are biologics also called monoclonal antibodies and last year they
accounted for over $220 billion
worth of sales globally. So what is a monoclonal antibody?
Basically, we all know about antibodies after COVID and the idea that your body generates
responses to specific external targets, usually infectious disease. So think of the flu shot or your COVID vaccine or a vaccine
against tetanus or mumps, right? What we do and what monoclonal antibodies are, are their targets
against internal targets that your body makes that are toxic in one way or another.
So examples of those would be Rituxan and Humira and seven of the top 10 selling drugs in the
United States would qualify as monoclonal antibodies. And basically what we're doing
there is we're making the antibodies that your body can't make. And we're making those in these giant bioreactors
to make a million doses a year.
The factories cost over a billion dollars to build.
And the problem with them is that they're extremely effective
against certain chronic illnesses,
but they're difficult to make, difficult to take.
They involve either a weekly or a bi-weekly
self-injection or as much as twice a month infusions which take about three hours and
require an infusion clinic or hospital and they're extremely expensive so the average
cost of a new monoclonal antibody is over $100,000 per patient per year.
So these are things that are bankrupting the OECD healthcare system.
And the thing that I see here as the biggest goal is that they currently are available
to less than 1% of the world.
What's a typical monoclonal cost people?
So the average price is over $100,000 a year per patient.
Okay. So this is for the wealthiest people. So I take a monoclonal antibody, just to use an example,
it's called Repatha and it's a antibody that's made in a vat. I'm not sure where they produce it.
Let's call it New York for the moment.
And these B cells are producing this one exact antibody, which is a protein, but that goes
attaches to a target in the liver called PCSK9.
And PCSK9 in the liver generates low-density lipoproteins, LDLs, which are the bad cholesterol in your bloodstream.
And so this company produces this monoclonal antibody in these vats in New York.
They put them into five-milliliter injectors, and they ship them out.
And I inject it into my thigh every two weeks.
And it lowers my LDL 50%. Now, mine is cheaper.
Mine's just $10,000 a year. So I'm lucky. And it works amazingly well, right? It puts my
little numbers in the green zone, makes it really good. I feel good about that. I'm not going to get heart disease or heart attack.
But it's expensive and it's a pain in the ass to inject it every two weeks.
It's like the first and the second Monday or the first and the third Monday of the month.
Yeah. And when you're traveling, it's hard when you're... They have to be refrigerated.
Yeah, exactly. They have to be refrigerated. If you're traveling, it's challenging. If you're,
you know, have an extremely busy schedule like you do, it's something else to remember. You know, there's a lot of
problems with it. And the other thing is that it's not widely reimbursed by insurance because of that
cost. So in the example of Repatha, you know, that's $10,000 or $12,000 or $15,000 depending on who you are.
And, and that's, uh, that's something that you're not reimbursed for, for most people.
Um, so there's a, there's a huge opportunity there, um, to, to basically not create something
for the 1%.
So what are we doing?
What we're doing is we have, uh, the ability to lower the cost of these by approximately a thousand fold by having your body generate that exact same antibody that you're injecting.
And instead of injecting it every two weeks, this is something that you could be injecting every six months or once a year.
So these are things that could be a part of a regular chronic disease maintenance system
with existing infrastructure that exists all the way from sub-Saharan Africa to Geneva
to Santa Monica to New York and has an opportunity to really transform both access and cost with the ultimate goal of eliminating unnecessary suffering.
And the way I explain it to people, once they know what a biologic is, once they're aware that
it's the largest category of drug in the world and it's available to less than 1% of the world,
I say, let's look back in history and see where this happened
before. And the best example is if we were having the same conversation in person 700 years ago,
the most expensive thing on the planet by weight wouldn't be salt or gold or any of the things you
would expect. It would be books. And they were available, but to less than the one percent because us same guys had
to write them by hand so you never i didn't you couldn't call me and say hey luke could you loan
me the book you wrote by hand like of course not it's not part of the deal it's the most expensive
thing in the world and so so ultimately a very simple elegant invention a piece of technology, solved that. And overnight, the printing press lowered
the cost of books by 5,000 fold. And within a generation, it put books on everybody's bookshelf.
And so in effect, that democratized and demonetized books, we have with our technology platform,
the printing press of biologic drugs. So we have the opportunity to take something available to less than the 1%,
most expensive, largest volume of sales of any drug category,
available to less than the 1%, and give it to everybody
because of a technology that I believe is a revolution.
And I tell people it's an expansive disruption model.
So we don't just want to take the monoclonal market or take the biologic market. We actually want to expand it
to everybody that's suffering from these chronic diseases unnecessarily and eliminate that suffering.
Right. And if you look at it, you know, now in this, in the world for, for the first time in history, in the last, you know, three to four years, we crossed the line where the things that are
external are no longer killing us the most. It's not bacterial infections and, and infectious
diseases and, and, you know, crazy wars and all of these things. It's actually the vast majority
of people right now are killed by chronic diseases. They die because of these things. It's actually the vast majority of people right now are killed by
chronic diseases. They die because of chronic diseases. And the number one killer on the planet,
as you mentioned, with heart disease and stroke, it's heart disease and stroke. And it has been
the number one killer on the planet since human beings started keeping track. And I don't think
people realize that, right? Cancer has got such a bigger name and COVID had such a bigger name and wars in your face. But you're right. Cardiac
disease in women, for example, kills 40% more women than breast cancer does. And I don't think
people realize that. And the thing that's scary, and I learned this during my longevity platinum trip this past summer, is 70% of all heart attack,
heart attacks, or I guess, heart related deaths have no antecedents, meaning it comes out of the
blue. It's like, didn't have have pain didn't have shortness of breath
didn't have anything on their you know physical it's like didn't wake up yeah that's insane
it's the great calendar clearer um don't worry about any of your email anymore
um but yeah i mean it's it's extremely scary extremely scary. And it is no doubt the epidemic of our time,
right? We have statins, which are great. We've got monoclonal antibodies, which are great.
Monoclonal antibodies are too expensive for the world and the production for the amount of people
that are in need. I mean, do you realize 2.2 billion people right now are at risk of high cholesterol around the world?
2.2 billion people, right?
The total amount of people on statins are about 450 million.
The number on PCSK9, less than a million.
Hold on a second.
It's 450 million are on statins.
Yeah.
Or under a million are on, are on a PCSK9 inhibitor, which is the, yeah.
And, and the reality is that if, let's say you have a heart attack and you're one of
those lucky people that survived the heart attack and afterward you're prescribed statins.
If you follow those patients for one year, over 50%, it's actually just over 60% of those patients are not taking the statin effectively after one year.
And these are people that already had a heart attack, right?
The reality is that taking a pill a day is extremely difficult, which is why we didn't have population collapse when we had pill-a-day birth control. It turns out that
people still get pregnant, people still have heart attacks.
And so ultimately, that's an unbelievable
reality. And if you look at people that have not had a heart attack, that just have
high cholesterol and that are prescribed statins, about 50%
of them refuse the prescription
because they feel fine, like you said. And of that 50% that get the prescription, if you follow those
people for one year, just one year, 75% of them are not taking the statin in an effective manner.
Statin is a cumulative... Meaning they're sticking it in their ear or up their nose.
Meaning that they're not taking it every day. And it's one of those
medicines where in order for it to be ultimately effective, you've got to stick to the one pill a
day, approximately at the same time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, for it to work. And the
compliance rates, that's what that's called, how well patients do what they're supposed to do,
are extremely low, like abysmally low, like failing in any
school system in the world low.
And so we need to make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard.
And what we often do is make the right thing hard and the wrong thing easy.
So that's one of the reasons why we're so excited about the vaccine platform and
our moonshot here of really democratizing health by allowing the benefit of biologic drugs for
everyone by fundamentally disrupting the convenience factor and the compliance factor
and the cost factor. So to frame it for folks, again, we talked about that giant vat in New York
producing a massive amount of these antibodies against this protein PCSK9. And the company
creates these self-injectors with 5 mLs and they ship it to you and you inject every two weeks.
And those antibodies enter your bloodstream and go to the liver and block the PCSK9 enzyme.
And that's the $10,000 a year.
The alternative is instead of doing that, you vaccinate yourself.
And the vaccine, as we all have learned from COVID, gets your immune system to create antibodies.
have learned from COVID, gets your immune system to create antibodies. And the right designed vaccine can get your internal immune system factory to generate antibodies against
the PCSK9 for free. Yep. So instead of having that relatively large amount of drug that you
have to take every two weeks over the course of a year, 26 injections,
with one or two injections a year with a very small amount of the vaccine. And very infrequently, your body can then generate that same amount or more antibodies itself.
So what's the cost compared to a $10,000, $15,000 a year PCSK9,
Repatha? What do you expect the vaccine equivalent to cost a patient? I mean, our cost of goods, typically, we publicly list our between around a thousandth of the cost
of goods of monoclonals. What they'll cost in the marketplace, I actually don't know, but we're
talking about something that's accessible around the world. So tens of dollars, hopefully? Yeah,
exactly. I think at scale, you're talking about something that's, you know, tens of dollars.
And I mean, I tell people that my goal is very simple. I'd like to vaccinate from sub-Saharan Africa to Geneva, to Santa Monica, to New York at the same time.
And that's never been done with the best in class drug.
You know, the typical thing that happens and is happening now and happened during COVID actually is, you know, the richer and the more guns your country had,
the sooner and the better your drugs were. And quite frankly, that happened within the United
States and on a global scale. And one of the things that I feel strongly about is that,
you know, suffering and disease don't care how much money you make and they don't care who your
dad was and they don't care, you know, what political party you contribute to. Suffering
is suffering for the individuals and for their families. And I think that everyone has has a
right and we have an obligation to to serve as much of that population as humanly possible.
So, you know, I've got to be careful because you and I are on the board of this public
company, so I don't know everything that can and cannot be said.
But where is where is vaccinity in the in the testing process for this vaccine?
So that's going to be going into humans early next year. We're actually doing that
the first trial in Australia. Something that's really interesting to note is that PCSK9 is
highly conserved across species. So, so far there have never been, you know, what you see in animals is what you see in humans by and large with this with this
target so it's a it's a heavily de-risked target um and something that you know the the non-human
primate models which we had very positive data in non-human primate just to translate is like
monkeys yeah like monkeys and uh and fancy word for monkeys.
My wife would say, or Lou, um, but, uh, but, but yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's what one
would consider a highly de-risked understood validated target with, um, millions of years of
patient, uh, safety data now from the people that are on it on monoclonal antibodies.
So it's a safe target and it's well understood. So one of the things I've heard you say that I
find fascinating, I mean, is first of all, people, we think about that we're developing
heart disease and the precursors of stroke when you're in your 50s, 60s, and 70s. But that's not true, is it?
It happens a lot younger.
And one of the things that a platform like this can do is actually to not be reactive
after, but preventative.
Can you speak to that vision?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, let me give you a different example than heart disease.
Our Alzheimer's vaccine, which is going into its registrational trial, so it's gone through four separate human trials.
And we generate very similar antibodies to a drug that's been in the press a lot recently, lucanumab.
And the idea there is... By the way, which is a much better name than ad Lucanumab. And the idea there is...
By the way, which is a much better name than Aducanumab.
I mean, these names are like ridiculous.
It's a challenge.
Like, what the hell can you remember, Mab?
Yeah, it's unbelievable.
The naming process for drugs is something that probably needs a different set of regulations as well.
needs a different set of regulations as well. But yeah, so it's interesting because if you think about those products, everyone always
talks about treatment of people with Alzheimer's. Maybe it's mild Alzheimer's,
maybe it's early Alzheimer's, whatever the current phraseology happens to be. But
ultimately, wouldn't you like to be treated and not have
Alzheimer's? Wouldn't you rather prevent getting Alzheimer's? And a low cost, highly convenient
and effective vaccine is, in our opinion, the path to achieving that. So imagine if instead
of waiting until you were 65 or 70 and got diagnosed with mild Alzheimer's,
you could actually at 40 or at 30 be taking this annual vaccine to prevent the onset or delay the onset of Alzheimer's in the first place.
So it's the idea of extending health span, um, and not just,
not just lifespan, right? It's healthy, productive years. Uh, and, and that's really
the promise of these technologies. Now, if you go back to heart disease and you think about it,
um, you know, it's the idea of, instead of waiting until you have extremely high cholesterol and partially
clogged arteries, it's the idea that at whatever age is necessary for your physiology, at 30,
at 40, you could be vaccinated against LDL-C cholesterol and you could eliminate the growth
curve of that cholesterol, right?
So these are things that can prevent, prevent in the optimal use cases, they can prevent
the onset of these chronic illnesses, whether it's Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, whether it's
migraine or hypercholesterolemia, high cholesterol, this gives you a path to treat
that as something that you don't treat as an illness that you have. You treat to prevent
the illness in the first place. Yep. Agreed. Just to iterate off the cuff, because it's fascinating,
the targets, and you said this this earlier any place that there is
a potential that there's an approved fda approved monoclonal antibody um the science team at
vaccinity is looking at creating a vaccine to generate those same antibodies but just a thousand
times cheaper so what are the some of the programs currently, you know, that you're
that we've created you're targeting? So you've mentioned heart disease and stroke with
hypercholesterolemia, basically mentioned Alzheimer's. What else is going on?
We have a Parkinson's trial. We just finished our second human trial in Parkinson's and
that'll be read out in 2023 as well. And then we have a suite of,
well, we have a universal COVID booster
or a pan-COVID booster as well
that we've announced some data on
in our phase three recently.
Yeah, I'll mention that
because I'm very proud of it.
The COVID booster,
which is the only infectious disease,
everything else is done,
vaccine suite is targeted towards human disease. But back in 2020, we sort of had an emergency jacuzzi meeting, no, just kidding, emergency meeting and decided to stand up a COVID
booster. And the results were of that vaccine against COVID were significantly better than
a number of other vaccines out there. Could you, would you want to mention what that was?
Are you able to? Yeah. So we were the first company that tested and completed a phase three
trial against boosting against the three main kind of forms, right?
The three main platforms, mRNA, we boosted against Pfizer,
and adenovirus, we boosted against AstraZeneca,
and live attenuated, we boosted against Sinovac and Sinopharm.
And we beat, we have statistically significant results showing
that we were better than Sinopharm and AZ by multiples.
Um, and, you know, numerically we're higher than Pfizer, but the, uh, the technical term
is that we showed comparability.
So we're as good as Pfizer. And our safety profile so far, we haven't released the
entire results of that. But in terms of adverse events, our safety profile is better than all of
them. Yeah, I like to say it's the COVID booster you'd give your kids. Yeah, absolutely. And I
mean, I think that there's a huge need for something safe,
effective, and, and it doesn't require, you know, negative 80 degree Celsius cold chain storage to get it around. So something that is actually accessible around the world. So that's, that's
the goal. Anything that can, anything that can, can refrigerate beer or Coca-Cola is good for this.
Yeah. So it's a, it's a huge milestone. It's our, it's our, it will,
it'll be our first phase three as a company. Uh, and we did that in the UK and in, uh, in Australia.
Um, and we're, you know, we're excited about it. And most importantly, I, you know, I'm really
proud of the team, right? Uh, it's, it's, it takes, uh, as, as my wife may, may would say,
It takes, as my wife Maymay would say, it takes a village to raise a loo.
And what I tell everybody is that, you know, me alone on the street corner, I'm just another, you know, crazy homeless guy in San Francisco screaming about big ideas. But when you have a team behind you, it's amazing what can be done.
It's amazing what can be done.
So I really couldn't be prouder of the team and all of the sleepless nights and countless hours that were put into making all of this happen. I have to tell a story.
The company, I first joined Lou and Maymay when their company was called United Neuroscience.
And while they were working on Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, it was like the real most interesting stuff was preventing against hypercholesterolemia and bone loss and muscle loss and other areas.
And I was like, you know, we need to get away from like just the only focus on neuro.
And you and Maymay and Chris and I were in a jacuzzi in Hawaii and we're like playing with like, what's a better name?
What's a better name? And it was like, well, we had singularity and cellularity.
And I think we came up with vaccinity after a margarita or two. And then we added we spelled it with two X's V-A-X-X-I-N-I-T-Y in homage to Maymay as a woman being the CEO and sort of the decade of women coming.
But that was a fun memory.
Yeah, it was amazing.
I'm going to give you credit for coming up with the name ultimately and us agreeing with you.
But yeah, I think, and you mentioned something that's actually really interesting that is often overlooked. So a monoclonal, by definition, is one antibody at a time. And one of the benefits of vaccines is that you can actually have multiple targets in the same vaccine. So you can make your body generate multiple antibodies at the same time
against a variety of targets. So in the case of muscle loss or bone loss, right? Really,
and I'm thinking of this from a, going back to the Elon conversation, this is a get us to Mars,
conversation, this is a get us to Mars, get us to the moon and have us retain our muscle density and our bone density as best as possible. And as well as another, you know, a variety of other
applications. But that's something I'm very excited about. And those are vaccines that are
in earlier stages of development right now with us, but that are
moving rapidly towards the clinic. And both of those targets, it so happens, will necessitate
multiple targets in the vaccine or will be optimal with multiple targets in the vaccine.
So it's something that you can't, so it's, it's, it's boldly go
where monoclonal antibodies have gone before and other places that they can't go. Yeah.
It's funny. You call these space vaccines, right? It's a, and, and as we, as you go into space,
you don't stress the muscles and the bones. You have osteopenia, which is a weak, you know,
breaking down of the, of the bone tissue and sarcopenia, is a weak you know breaking down of the of the bone tissue and sarcopenia
which is your muscle wasting uh which you have to prevent and you can block them with these
it also happens to be the one of the major issues with growing older so while you know uh while
lou you've built out part of vaccinity at the Kennedy Space Center which is so cool and we
can talk about that uh the big opportunity for for this is going to be vaccinating all you know 70,
80 and 90 year olds to maintain their their muscle loss mass and bone loss because that's another
major killer people fall they break their hip or their pelvis and then they end up in the hospital
they fall because they don't have the muscle tissue to prevent when they trip.
And then their bones are weak.
And then you're in a hospital laid up in bed and you develop pneumonia and it's a spiral.
And it's like a very slippery slope down to last exhalation.
Yeah, so the way that I conceptualize scleropania and osteoporosis ultimately is I think of it as these are the number one leading causes of lack of health span. living independently and being a productive person to putting you into the hospital and
this downward spiral that so many of us have seen. Um, you know, my grandfather on my father's side,
uh, he, he had scarcopenia, he fell, he broke his hip and he never recovered. Right. It was a very slow, very expensive, very high rate of suffering way to go.
But that was the beginning of the end of a healthy lifespan.
So when we think about solving heart disease and solving Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and all of these things that will increase our
function and ultimately our lifespan. Part of it is we want to make sure that those are healthy
and productive years and that the other kind of ailments that come along with that, including
the loss of muscle, loss of bone, or decrease in bone density that those actually uh
those are addressed at the same time you know so so absolutely uh that's that's something on my
mind and and uh and one of the one of the goals and targets here so let's talk about um uh costa
rica why when did you go down and why are you in costa rica you're a huge costa rica fan
i mean why not you know mexico or uh you know panama or other parts of south and central uh
america i mean um you love costa rica pal and a lot of other individuals do too yeah i you know
i love surfing um and there's great surf,
but there's a lot of places with great surf. Um, I, the climate's amazing, but there's a lot
of places with a great climate. Um, ultimately this is, uh, this is a decision driven heavily by
what I think are important values for the family. Um, and that really means the kids. So, you know, Costa Rica
has the highest amount of biodiversity per foot of any place on the planet.
Some of which is poisonous.
A lot of which is poisonous, right? But ultimately, it provides the best example for preservation and regeneration and actually cataloging of almost any place on the planet.
You know, our kids went out and tagged with satellite tags, the first giant manta rays ever tagged with satellite tags in the history of Costa Rica.
And we followed those and we found out where their migratory paths were
because they're only in one place for about six months a year
and no one knew where they were the rest of the time.
These are global unknowns that we had no data, no information on, and really no ability to direct the appropriate
resources to protect those corridors, right? Because we didn't even know they existed.
So people didn't know if they went and slept on the bottom of the ocean in a deep trench. People
didn't know if they resurfaced in the interim. you know, there were literally no knowledge of what happened.
And I like to tell people that they've probably done more than a person getting a PhD from Stanford Marine Biology School
in terms of actually solving a problem and understanding it to its conclusion and having, you know, real information from a collection of the data.
So there'll be a paper published likely this year around some of the findings of those satellite tags.
And so we're excited to be able to do that.
But really, it's about showing and gaining an appreciation for the world around you and for all that exists, right?
And I think that there are very few places that I could imagine that offer that.
The other thing that I like about it is that a friend of mine once said that the greatest gift you could provide to your children were obstacles that they themselves
could overcome. And I've
added or failed to overcome to that.
But the idea is that, you know, give them
things that they want to go and try to do
and let them try to do it.
Like don't help them.
Don't provide guidance.
Don't give them an insight.
Just let them go and try to do it.
And the experience that they gain from that is really of the utmost value in their future and in their lives.
is really of the utmost value in their future and in their lives.
So an example of that would be, you know, something as simple as we have a little river that's running down the middle of the the the kind of de facto driveway.
And we could easily make that gate automated.
Right. There's there's solar panels that we can put on the gate that would make it easy to open that would open itself.
All of those goats you could attach to it.
Yeah, there are goats that we could attach to it yeah there are goats that
we could attach to a poisonous story um but uh but but the idea is that that they get to get out
every day every time and open and close the gate and the reason is that there are certain values
that you can't teach without letting them do them themselves. And that's a very small
example of a very minor obstacle, but the amount of appreciation that that
generates for them every day when we go on our way to breakfast, every day
when we come back, is tremendous, right, and I think that Costa Rica is full of those
opportunities. Um, you know, when you and Kristen and the boys were down, my deputy boys were down
here, we, uh, we got everyone certified to scuba dive at the earliest age possible.
That was amazing. It's like, yeah, it it was such a such an extraordinary success for the
for the three boys to be certified at age 11 yeah i mean it's it's these are things that are
and and again we couldn't interfere because we weren't the instructors we couldn't invited yeah
we weren't we weren't invited yeah and we were doing other things um but ultimately that was
an obstacle they were provided,
where the vast majority of 11 year olds in that same setting fail and are removed from those classes, because they panic or they can't handle it or whatever. They are confronting a lot of
fears. There's mass clearing underwater, all these different things. But ultimately, they all
they all succeeded. And they did that because of who
they were, not because of assistance from anyone else. And, and those are values that they exist
everywhere, but they're much harder to find in certain places and locations. So it's a long
winded way of saying why I like Costa rica but it's an amazing place and the
people are amazing um and uh and you know they they have a saying here that's pura vida and that
means pure life right and uh that concept is is ties back into what we talked about at the
beginning about being present right a brief note from our sponsors. Let's talk about sleep. Sleep has become one of my number one longevity priorities in life. Getting eight deep uninterrupted
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Peter for your discount. Lou, are you willing to share some of the formative moments of your life?
And I mean, you're one of the most extraordinary thinkers.
And I remember being at the top of the mountain with you and both families.
One time having a beautiful bottle of wine, probably an Amarone.
bottle of wine probably in Amaroni and just having this experience of you saying to myself listen if I should ever perish and I'm not planning to for some
hundreds of years or so but if I ever did I would want the family in your
hands that you know I would trust you over anybody to deal with any emergency
any situation and I think that was the birth of our, our deputy family situation and saying, you know,
this is more than a godfather, more than an uncle.
This is your deputy dad and he'll be there.
What shaped you to be who you are?
Man, you know.
I mean, there's so much, I know.
Well, first of all, I really appreciate that.
And, you know, the feeling is mutual and I respect you and I love you and I just couldn't have a better time with you.
And I love that we get to think about the biggest problems facing the world together and and tackle some of them, which is which is really such a blessing.
And and and Kristen and the boys, you know, obviously I love them like like they're my own.
and uh and kristen and the boys you know obviously i love them like like they're my own and uh and the you know i can't nobody can ever be capable of of responding correctly in every
situation but i'll promise i'll do my best things that are hard ultimately, uh, have, have significantly influenced, uh, me. Right. So I think of two, two big obstacles that I had to overcome. The first is when I was, um, 10, my dad went to prison for almost five years. Um, and you know, that's a formidable
time in a, in a, in a young man's life and in any child's life. Um, I had my two sisters and my mom,
uh, and, uh, I had a lot of responsibilities and clarity around those responsibilities thrust upon me.
I remember waking up at one in the morning so that I could clean the kitchen before my mom would wake up so that she would have one less thing to worry about when she was awake.
I remember my dad was stationed in Yankton, South Dakota for a lot of this.
It's a very cold, inclement location.
And this was around real estate collapse back then?
Yeah, it was part of the savings and loans debacle that occurred in the late 80s and was prosecuted in the early 90s.
And 6,000 people in Texas went to prison for it, including every savings and loan owner
in the state.
So it was a wide net.
And my dad was an amazing man.
And I look up to him when he's unfortunately passed away. But but I love him and respect him. And I think that that he got caught up in a big net, you know.
because you know we visited in Yankton South Dakota and I remember being at a truck stop and having an ice cream scooper of mashed potatoes with with
turkey that was indiscriminate like indiscriminately tied to dog food and in
in one of those trays like you were in school.
And I remember the next day having to go through the church and smuggle in warmer hats and gloves
and things that the prison wouldn't let them have,
but that were desperately needed for him and his friends.
You know, B vitamins because they had no sun exposure
during the cold,
long winters in South Dakota. Um, you know, and, and the consequences for failure would have been,
you know, getting caught under those circumstances as a 10 and 11 year old
would have meant that my dad would be in prison for another 20 years. So the consequences were high.
that my dad would be in prison for another 20 years. So the consequences were high. Um, and, uh, and it was, it was hard. Right. Um, and then when he, when he got out of prison,
we had, uh, just, just over a decade with him before he passed. And I was, uh, I was actually
attending Columbia business school at the time. I did not graduate.
I dropped out, full disclosure.
And I was with him in Montana.
We were fishing.
And we were side by side in this river, this big raging river called the Madison River,
outside of Yellowstone National Park.
And he looked at me and he said, you know, I'm going to take a seat.
I'm feeling a little tired.
And he just fell over in the water and started floating downstream.
And I remember throwing my rod down and jumping in.
And I'm in these big waders and they're getting filled with water.
And I'm swimming down the river.
And I ultimately dragged him out.
He was a big guy.
And I propped him up on a rock and tore down a fence and got the car there
and drove him to the closest emergency center, which was an hour away in Ennis, Montana,
where he was incorrectly diagnosed as having had a heart attack.
um and you know he uh he ultimately after ambulances and driving and ripping down fences and swimming in rivers and care flights and doctors and surgeries he ultimately died of
ascending aortic dissection um and uh there was there was a lot of moments that day, but ultimately, you realize that there's not very much time.
And you realize that every moment that can be spent and invested in impact and in my personal mission,
I tell people a lot of people wake up, 95% of the world wakes up every day.
They brush their teeth and they put on their shoes.
They feed their kids or they do what they're supposed to do.
But they're lacking a fundamental sense of purpose, which is why, you know, if you've got friends that work at a big white shoe law firm, they tell you that they're waiting to retire until they're 65 um and they count the minutes right and um not all of them but most of them
and the reality is that that's that's living a life that i that i feel bad about because it's
devoid of purpose um and for better or for worse every day I wake up at four or four 30 in the morning.
Um, and I never have that moment. Uh, I know that I'm here and I'm here for one reason, and that's to eliminate unnecessary suffering. And, uh, and all of my, all of my good fortune
or all of my skills and all of my energy is dedicated ultimately to that purpose.
And as a consequence, it doesn't mean that there aren't hard days and easy days and better days and medium days and whatever else you want to say.
There's all sorts of days.
But as long as you can look to that as a guiding principle and as a North Star and as a mission,
I feel like you can really accomplish
anything. And that's the goal. You know, another people say, you know,
By the way, let me just let me just pause there and say that is that is beautiful. Thank you for
sharing that. And it's in it's the real, you know, I think, brother, that, you know, it's those moments that shape the human being.
Right. And we all strive to have our kids have the most comfortable, easy life they have. and soul shaping moments that really shape you and elevate you to be who you can be.
You know, I am curious, and your dad would be so extraordinarily proud of you, and I
hope you know that in your heart and soul.
What do you think about the need for kids?
I mean, you said, you know, when Bear and Ryan hop out of the car and go through the rain and open the gate and, you know, you don't.
I love that the gift that you give them is giving them a challenge and allowing them to face the challenge themselves.
but hardship in a child's life to shape them because human nature for most people is to you know to meet your kids needs to not let them suffer to give them the best life that
that they can have thoughts about that i think that uh if you don't have to face hardship you'll never know what
you'll do when it's hard so this is how you test your metal in a certain sense
right so I don't wish hardship upon anyone, but I think that hardship spares no one.
So, uh, uh, a brilliant person once told me that we have to walk, walk softly because
everyone is facing their own tremendous battles.
Hmm.
Um, which we don't actually know. Yeah. And they're invisible, right? Um,
they're, they're often invisible and often more often unspoken. Um, and so, so be kind,
right? Be kind, but, but know that your time is coming or you're in it, right?
And that's important.
And it's important because it provides a sense of empathy,
provides gratitude for the moments when you don't feel that you're facing a tremendous battle.
But yeah, I think that ultimately kids need, they benefit from hardship and I don't think that everyone benefits in the same way. So, you know, people say some some people say entrepreneurs are born not made.
I think I think there's a comment that a part of that that's true, you know.
change and shape the world and do the biggest things are, uh, are accustomed to the biggest obstacles, setbacks, humiliations, challenges, fears, all of those things that everyone faces.
They're not immune to them. They, it's just the reaction to those that's so different is what yields different levels of impact and outcome.
So I have a lot of friends that when they got COVID were crying and said, poor me. I was laughing
and thinking hysterically that this was an example of life and the forces in our immune systems and all of these components that make it amazing.
I'm not a model for, for anybody, but, but that's, that's the way that I try to confront my,
my individual challenges. Now I'll tell you a story about, about entrepreneurship. I've got
two origin stories around that, that people always find find hilarious but now that's setting a high bar so they'll be boring I'm sure
anyway I'll just make fun of them so they go so I remember I got a phone
call at my house I was eight years old and a friend of mine Philip done it who
everyone jokingly called his mom Sergeant Dunnett,
she was very strict, called and asked me to come over because he had a lawnmower
and we were going to mow his neighbor's lawn and they had agreed to pay us.
So I said, okay.
We went over and it was 110 degrees in Texas during the summer
and we're pushing this manual lawnmower and it took both of us to push it
because there was no motor on it. So it's like, you know, you're really just cranking through it.
And we did the head, the edges and the hedges and the lawn and all this stuff. And in the
middle of the day, she came out and this blue haired old lady gave us a glass of lemonade.
And then when we got done, she gave us each quarter.
And I'm old, but I'm not that old that I was I was distraught right I was
I was absolutely distraught and I and I went back to the house and I and I called my mom and I said
mom come pick and they had one of those old phones with a long cord with the rotary dials
stuck to the kitchen wall and I remember walking and calling her and I said mom come pick me up and she said what happened I said I want to talk about it just pick me up I'm
distraught so she picks me up and I go home and I'm sitting there and I'm awake all night in my
bed tossing and turning thinking about this stuff and I walked downstairs the next morning and my
my older sister was uh doing some arts and crafts with leather with a group of friends and a thing that
very not politically correct used to be called Indian princess and and she was cutting up pieces
of leather and they were gluing them to make vests and things for this for this powwow and
and I remember picking up all the trash all the leather that was trash that was discarded
and I grabbed it. And I remember walking around outside and I found this dead turtle
and I put it into bleach and I took a screwdriver and I dug out all the guts and all the stuff and
all the gore and I broke the turtle shell up and I tied it around these pieces of leather and I made little bolo ties and necklaces and all sorts of crap. And my parents were having dinner in an entertainment
area called Deep Ellum. And while they had dinner, I went outside and I roamed the streets and I knew
most of the people on the streets there. And I roamed, so not a safe environment that you would
recommend other people to do, but my parents were cool with it. I came back in about an hour, hour and a half later. And my dad said, Oh, my
God, what happened? You get robbed? And I said, No, I sold all the necklaces. And he said, Okay,
well, how much money did you make selling the necklaces? I said, You know, I think about $800.
And I pulled out all this money from my pockets. And he said, Did you rob somebody? And I said,
No, no, no, just sold all the necklaces. Well, how much you sell them for? And I said out all this money from my pockets and he said, did you rob somebody? And I said, no, no, no, I just sold all the necklaces.
Well, how much you selling for?
And I said, well, it entirely depended on what the person was wearing and if they had a date.
And I'd walk up and I'd pick the right people.
And it ranged between a dollar and thirty dollars for the same product.
And and I ended up, you know, realizing that I could make a jewelry business at the age
of eight. And I started peddling jewelry on the streets after that, you know, on the weekends
as a, as a side business. Right. Um, so that was the first one when my dad said,
we're not going to have to worry about you. Can I tell you my equivalent of your first lawnmower story?
So I'm about 11, about our boy's age.
And my best friend, Billy Greenberg, and I, I'm living in Great Neck, New York.
And we lived about a mile apart.
And we decided we were going to do a snow removal
service.
Now we had, I had lived through one winter there and it snowed a few times and average,
you know, like an inch or three inches or four inches like that.
And so we went, we walked between my house and his house and we sold snow removal service
for the winter for $20.
And we signed up, I remember, about 20 houses,
and we got $400, and we used $200 of it to buy a gas,
one of those pusher ones that has little blades and so forth, and it could clear up to 12 inches.
Well, the next week, we have a three-foot record snowfall.
And everyone on our route is like calling up saying,
where are you?
We paid for you to be able to remove our snow whenever it snowed.
And I was like just, I was decimated.
My dad, God bless him, calls up his friend who cleared our our things we had a snow
plow and he paid him to go and clear all of them and then i just cancelled all the services after
that but it was uh it was definitely bad luck oh Oh man.
What was your next one?
That's amazing.
I love that.
Uh,
you know,
my next one was,
I was 10 and my dad was just about to go to jail.
Um,
so it was tough times at the house.
And I had,
uh,
I had gotten into this great school in Dallas called St.
Mark's school of Texas, which is an all-boys school, which I also didn't graduate from.
But I'm sitting there.
Why break a record?
Yeah, exactly. And so I'm sitting there, and I remember I get called into the principal, Warren Foxworth's office, Warren Foxworth.
And he's sitting there and he's telling me that he's got to call my mom and my dad.
And I'm thinking this is the worst timing ever.
You know, my mom is distraught.
My dad is about to go to prison.
Like this is, this sucks.
And interestingly, Warren had been a neighbor of my dad when they were kids little kids
and so my dad comes in and I mean he just lays into me in this office he's screaming he's telling
me I'm too stupid to breathe all this stuff is going on it's just unbelievable and and my mom
is sitting there and she's equally upset and and uh and less vocal
and and warren is sitting there and he goes my dad's name was was lou also and he's like
lou calm down calm down susan what are you my mom's name is susan he says calm down susan lou
what are you doing what what i don't understand and and my dad goes what do you mean you don't understand? My kid went and spent $4,000, $3,800 at the school bookstore on what?
On a bunch of pens and pencils and jackets.
What are you talking about?
And Warren said, Lou, I don't think you understand.
And my dad said, what do you mean I don't understand, Warren, you idiot?
Warren goes, well, maybe I'm the idiot, but I thought you'd be really happy about it my dad just loses why would i be happy about it he goes he didn't spend 3800 lou he made
3800 we've never had this problem before and my dad said how did he make 3800 in bookstore credits
and i was trading pens i was trading pens that didn't exist at the bookstore with these other kids who were getting
them for free by charging them to their parents at the bookstore. And I would trade these pens
that I was buying for a dollar or 50 cents a piece for a $15 pen from the bookstore and then return
it to the bookstore. So I had this amazing credit. I was going to pay for all of my tuition in like
a few months. And I told my I, he said, why were you doing
this? I said, well, I figured that they'd credit it to my tuition. I wouldn't have a tuition to pay.
And, and I remember the look on his face and he was really so confused, right. By the entire thing.
And, and I remember feeling this sense of, uh, you know, shame and pride at the same time.
And it was shame at the beginning because I thought I had done something wrong, even though I thought I was doing something right.
But by the end of it, you know, it was pride because, you know, ultimately, if other kids had figured out what I was doing at the school and done the same thing, it would have bankrupted the bookstore. So Warren said that I wasn't allowed to engage in any on-campus commerce
from then on because of the consequences to the bookstore. But yeah, it was amazing. It was just
simple arbitrage, but I had something that everybody wanted and their cost of goods was
free in their minds. And my cost of goods was very low. And the arbitrage was, you know,
one to 10, one to 15. So 90% return. Have I ever told you my fetal pig story?
How I was almost thrown out of school and would not be having this conversation with you or anybody had the turn of events gone slightly different.
Yeah, tell me. Shoot.
So my freshman year at a place called Hamilton College before I transferred to MIT for my undergrad.
And Hamilton College has a very strict honor code, right?
You sign this honor code and it's like, you know, it was like really strict.
You sign this honor code and it's like, you know, it's the gospel and expulsion is the
result of anything that's verboten.
And my freshman year, I'm in freshman biology.
I'm pre-med, make my parents happy.
And in freshman biology, half of your grade for the year is your fetal pig lab dissection. Never forget this. And about two
months into the semester, about two weeks before the fetal pig lab, half of my grade, I come down
with chicken pox. And so I'm in Hamilton's infirmary with chicken pox. You know, my parents come up from Great Neck and they
visit me and I'm like just out of it. And as I'm starting to recover and I'm getting better,
I'm like freaking out about this fetal pig. And so I go into the last few days of, you know,
the lab work and we were not allowed to take the fetal pig out of the lab. Very strict rules,
posted on the walls, the fetal pig must stay in there. Your time with the fetal pig is limited,
et cetera, et cetera. And so I'm freaking out. And I hatched the plan with my lab mate, Philip,
to steal the fetal pig. And I'm going to steal the fetal pig and bring it back to my dorm room
and study it at night over the weekend before the exam.
And so this is a Thursday.
I open my book bag or Philip does.
I push the fetal pig in.
This is a formaldehyde stinky fetal pig in my book bag.
Bring it back to the dorm room.
Stick it in the refrigerator.
And the next day, I'll never forget, Professor Frank Price stands up in front of the classroom and goes, ladies and gentlemen, I have something very serious to talk to you about.
One of the fetal pigs has been stolen.
And I want whoever is responsible to turn themselves in.
That same day, no shit, there's an article in the school newspaper about a fetal pig being stolen.
And I'm like, Philip and I are like
looking at each other across the room squirming. And like, what do we do? Oh my God. So the fetal
pig is in the refrigerator. And this is a refrigerator shared by a few different dorm
rooms. And one of the seniors sees it in there and says, I'm going to turn you in if you don't
turn yourself in. Now, at this point, I'm a freshman pre-med.
My entire life is crumbling before my eyes.
Philip and I have the crazy idea that we have to get rid of the evidence.
So we take the fetal pig and we go into the forest and we bury the body.
Kid you not.
We bury the body in the forest and we're coming back and I'm
like we're gonna do this is insane I'm it's like everything's over so it's
about five o'clock on on this Friday and the exams on Monday and I'm breaking
down I call my dad and I'm like in tears and I fess up to him. I said dad. This is what happened. I
Sorry, I don't know what to do and it's one of those moments in time where I'm so thankful
I had I trusted my dad well enough to have that conversation with him and he said son you need to turn yourself in
You just need to go and talk to your professor and tell him what you did and why you
did it. And he said, I, you know, so I went and saw Philip and said, I'm going to turn myself in.
And he's like, no, no, you can't do that. I said, listen, you had nothing to do with it.
So I went, I exhumed the body from the forest. I went and went to go see Professor Price.
So it turns out my dad had called the out about the fetal pig debacle says,
you know, I'm going to turn you in. And I was like, enough, enough. I'm turning myself in.
And so I went and I saw Professor Price. He was tutoring students and he said, please wait there.
And so finally, like, you know, tearful, mournful with the dead body in my hands, I walk over to him and I say, it was me.
I had I stole the fetal pig.
And I'll never forget.
He looked at me and paused.
And he goes, Peter, have you learned your lesson?
I was like, yes, yes, yes.
I'm sorry.
And he said, good luck on the exam on Monday.
And and that was it and it's just this this forgiveness
uh my life would have been completely i wouldn't if i'd been thrown out of my freshman year of
college it'd be maybe i'd be a tech billionaire as a result of that i don't know but but it was uh
i'll never forget uh this moment of kindness from Professor Frank Price that allowed me to continue on and go on to what I've done.
The great pig heist.
Yeah, the great pig.
Yeah, the fetal pig story.
I was just telling that to Dax and Jet over a s'mores the other night and it reminded me of it.
Isn't it amazing to think through all of the, and I, I try to do this, uh, I don't
do it enough to be honest, but I do try to do it all the time.
Um, but think of all of the, I call them the, but for people, right.
Um, and, and, uh, it's, it's, but for this person, this would not have happened or that
would not have happened, or I wouldn't be here or whatever, whatever that is.
Um, and, and, you know, one of the, one of the things that I'm real proud about with,
uh, with Baron Ryan is, you know, I try my best and Jett and Dax as well, actually,
but I try my best to show them that every interaction that we have is an opportunity
to make the other person's day better. Now you don't do that for you and you don't just do it
for them, right? They're going to interact with other people that day.
And those people are going to interact with other people that day.
So just a little bit of positivity can fundamentally change massive outcomes from other people.
And going back to that idea of, you know, you don't know what the tremendous burden the other
person is carrying you know how many times have you witnessed kindness that was given at exactly
the right moment either for you in the case of dr price or for, you know, anyone that you're interacting with in, in that moment.
Right. And the truth is that, um, we don't even, we, we have no idea, but you know it when you see
it. And, uh, and it's, it's really an amazing gift. Right. And the reason that I'm so positive that my transformative, my real purpose is to
eliminate unnecessary suffering is that for every one person that you help or heal or touch or save
or eliminate that little bit of suffering in their day, you know that you're doing good that is beyond
anything that has to do with you. Right. And so it, it really takes you out of the equation and
becomes all about the other. Right. And, and I've been saying, and you've heard me say for,
for several years now that, you know, my, one of, one of the mantras I practice is
that I am we, and we are. And ultimately, it means that, you know, you transform from the ego,
from the individual, to being a part of we. And then ultimately, you realize that we are,
and then ultimately you realize that we are and you're a part of everything simultaneously and that means that that you look at every object in every moment with a different level of clarity
because you're you're you are uh you know most religions say it in in one way or another but
but you are uh you are a piece of everything
and everything is a piece of you. And, and there's something that really ties us all together when
you think about it that way. And, uh, it's a goal to be able to live by it. There's an idea I want
to close this out on that you share. And I was just grabbing it here from a text we had a while ago.
The idea of truth versus politeness and vulnerability versus small talk.
And I found those really important distinctions, and I think they're a good a good close out for us uh vulnerability
versus the value of small talk thoughts i think being authentic is a superpower
um i think that when you're authentic to yourself and authentic with others, you, you can touch each other in ways that
are just much deeper and, and more significant, um, than, you know, Argentina beating Croatia
in the semifinals of the world cup. Right. Um, not that that doesn't matter. It matters, but that,
that there's, there's a fundamental authenticity to depth and vulnerability and being, being open
and honest with what you're accomplishing, not accomplishing failures, successes, um, fears and, and joys. Right. And being able to go to that
as quickly as possible eliminates, uh, tremendous amounts of wasted time.
And it doesn't mean that everyone likes authenticity. It doesn't mean that it's a crowd pleaser because a lot of times it's not right.
Um, but it's, it's an opportunity to, uh, to transcend the blase and, and get into what,
what really matters, right. And what really drives us and what our true feelings and ambitions are.
And to me, that's something that that's worthwhile. Yeah. I always know when I have a challenge or an
issue or need advice, there's no bullshit from you. It's, it's double barrel truth,
whether I like it or not, you do it beautifully. Uh, and that's what you want from your best friend.
You know, you want your best friend to give you a real mirror. You know, if I tell you I need
a hug or, you know, I need some support, you're there for that too but uh yeah uh you know it's another interesting point
before i get to the to the last point which is you know i asked this on my closest friends you
know you and keith farazi and eric poulier and and others um does is there somebody who knows you
knows everything about you i mean where mean, where you're not hiding
anything. Do you have someone in your life that knows you so authentically, so deeply,
that there are no secrets? And it's a beautiful thing to have, right? You ideally want that in
your spouse, in your partner, where you can be truthfully you without feeling criticized and so forth.
And I measure success in my life.
And there are a few people where there's nothing hiding.
There's nothing I can feel ashamed of or guilty of or what they know it.
Thoughts about that?
I mean, I, I, I mean, I, I would, I would, uh, be hesitant to say that I am an open book
in general, but I, I don't shy away from my shortcomings, right?
I, I think that I, I embrace that I embrace them as opportunities for growth.
So I would say that I do my best to provide that authenticity to you. And I would say that
I have, you know, a few friends that can understand that. And yeah, there could be
criticisms too, right? Like, because it doesn't mean that you agree with all of the choices, right? Like, you know, you've done dumb things.
I've done dumb things. I plan on continuing to do some dumb things, right? I mean, like it's,
it's part of, part of life. Um, and, and in terms of, uh, yeah, I mean, my partner is amazing. Um, and, and I definitely think that she knows me, uh, extremely well. Um,
and I don't think I hide purposefully really anything from her. Uh, and I don't think I could,
if I wanted to, um, which is a big part of it. I think that, you know, once you have a certain authentic approach to a friendship or to
a relationship, it's, it's very easy for those people to tell when you're not in authenticity.
And so, so they might not be able to tell you exactly what you're thinking or why you're
thinking that or where the shame or the fear comes from and being authentic in that moment.
But they know it.
And to me, those are all of that is, is really the highest value in a relationship.
It's, it's the ability to, to trust someone that you love or people that you love more than you trust yourself.
It's, you know, it's, it's when you're not, when you're looking outward in that moment,
um, what's, what's better than being taught a lesson about you by someone that loves you.
Right. And you and I are such easy people to live with
yeah kristin and may may have uh have an easy time of it
oh my god i can't imagine anyone more difficult to live with than me
except for maybe you
and politeness politeness versus truth you know i can't you know those conversations that are all
about bullshit politeness that are like okay can i extract myself from this conversation
but you don't tolerate those very very well you love dropping bombs in the middle of them i think
yeah i mean i think sometimes one of the things like as an example something that i could definitely work on is sometimes in those types of settings i just want
to disrupt it you know it's like it's like have you ever seen the monks pouring the sand that you
know they're gonna scrape away right after they're done making this beautiful mandala
sometimes i feel like just jumping in the middle of that shit while it's being done
you know because it's just like well it's gonna happen anyway like why are we why are we going for this exercise and and i feel like
sometimes overly polite conversations are like that too you know where where you have this you
have this dance that's being played out in slow motion i know it's so painful for no reason you
know ultimately i wish i had a button that could rewind the conversation three
seconds so you know so it's like in the middle of conversation now are you wearing that dress
because you want to go to bed with someone tonight i mean it's like what what is it you know or you
know is that the stupidest thing you could possibly say right now i I mean, honestly, it would make life more
interesting. I mean, I'll give you a great example. So we were sitting here and we're
watching an amazing documentary about the bachatos. And the bachatos are the Nicaraguan
migrant workers that come over and build things in Costa Rica in search of a better life and,
you know, leaving persecution in Nicaragua, etc um and these are basically all men
and the it told the untold story of the bacharos right and my good friend of mine Roberto um uh
he he made it and produced it and directed it and it's it's a remarkable film okay and film. Okay. And afterward, this is the screening and, and this, this beautiful beach woman, um,
at the time when we're supposed to ask questions says it's a 32 minute documentary.
Okay. Um, and her question is, well, I think you should make one about the women.
well, I think you should make one about the women.
When are you going to make the documentary about the women?
Now, I love the idea of making a documentary about the women,
but the bacharos aren't women.
They're men.
And in the documentary, their families and wives and children,
men, women, and otherwise, were included and touched upon.
But ultimately, the people that are enduring the labor conditions that are the unseen population of of the other country that are
crossing the borders and getting caught and returned and all of this, all of that is happening
to the men. Right. And so it wasn't that there was a sexism moment. None of that. It was that she had to ask that question because it felt like the polite, appropriate question to ask. And it showed that she had not watched or understood the film in any capacity.
So, so that's an example of sometimes where I see these things where it's like, I understand that it feels like that's the right question to ask. But, but ultimately, it's on the wives and children they left at home?
And if there are any dramatic affairs with siblings of the men that went to work
that happened while they were gone, right? Is there a drama there that was different
than everyday life before? And that might be interesting. You know, that's a great
point. But to me, you know, the authenticity of that moment was shedding a light on people that
never see the light. And it was very powerful. And a question that tried to dim that light in any way um was a damn question uh i'm gonna end on a on a on a joke so
um professor heisenberg is in his car traveling down the highway uh the autobahn since he's german
and a cop pulls him over and says,
Professor Heisenberg, I clocked you at 75 miles per hour.
And he goes, oh my God, now I have no idea where I am.
For those of you wondering,
it's the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
You can't actually know the velocity
and your location at the same time.
It's a geek joke.
I know.
I love it.
Well,
I mean,
look,
you got to do what you're good at.
I'm obviously not good at delivering jokes.
Brother.
I love you.
I love you in my life.
Thank you.
Thank you for all.
Thanks for a fun conversation.
Thank you,
Peter.
It's great to see you.
And I hope we get to give you a big
happy birthday. Oh, yeah. Happy birthday. Coming up very shortly. Despite all odds,
I made it past 40. It's amazing. Amazing. Well, you know, I'm working on another century for you.
So yeah, well, we'll make sure we use it. Well, yeah, give my deputy kids a big hug and kiss for
me. All right. You kiss the kids.
Love you. Love you too.
Talk to you soon.
Bye.
Everyone, this is Peter again.
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