Moonshots with Peter Diamandis - EP #4 How to Create a Successful Life w/ Tony Robbins
Episode Date: October 5, 2022In this episode, Peter and Tony discuss what it takes to be an entrepreneur and live a successful life. You will learn about: What it takes to be an entrepreneur How philanthropy works How cra...zy ideas change the world How to predict the future through patterns Tony Robbins is the nation’s top business and life strategist as a motivational speaker, coach, and philanthropist with over 30 years of experience. He has coached Fortune 500 top leaders and U.S. presidents. Support Tony’s 1 Billion Meals challenge: 1 billion meals challenge | Feeding America. This episode is brought to you by Levels: real-time feedback on how diet impacts your health. levels.link/peter Consider a journey to optimize your mind and body by visiting Life Force. Listen to Moonshots & Mindsets on: Diamandis.com/podcast  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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What gives people energy at any age besides physical energy, the psychological, spiritual, emotional energy that drives someone to do
something unique is to find something they care about more than themselves. There's only so much
you'll do for yourself because it doesn't, it's not that hard to get yourself to the point where
you're comfortable and you're okay and you're fed well. In the world we live in today, even if you want to live off somebody else, it's possible to do that.
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 to make in the universe.
Welcome to Mindsets and Moonshots.
Today, I'm excited to be speaking with one of my dearest friends on the planet,
the incredible entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen books,
a philanthropist, a coach of millions worldwide, the incredible Tony Robbins.
Tony has a 40-plus year career in creating breakthroughs and transforming lives.
He's coached and consulted with some of the top athletes, entertainers, thousands of top CEOs and four U.S. presidents. He's a founder,
partner, investor in over a thousand privately held companies. And as is fitting to the spirit
of this podcast, Tony has an incredible moonshot to provide over one billion meals to needy
individuals by 2025. And it's probably worth noting something
else important. Tony's a new dad. Tony, good to see you, buddy. Good to see you, Peter. That's
quite an introduction. Yeah, well, you know, deservingly so. And I love our friendship and
our partnership. You know, it's appropriate. We're doing this on Labor Day. Of course. Of course. Of course. And I work my butt off 24-7.
And you're the only person who works 28-7.
No, I don't work that.
I do. And I am curious, you know, having a new daughter, increasing the scope of the family.
You know, one thing we talked about in the past was I asked you on stage we were having a
conversation I said tell me about your thinking on work-life balance and you said no such thing
it's work-life integration do you remember that yeah of course you gotta think about it as you
know labor what is labor you know for me labor is an expression of love other than my absolute
direct love with no other filters,
my labor is the greatest love that I can give somebody. It's my mind, it's my emotion, it's my spirit and soul as it is with you. And I think, so that's why it's fulfilling. And when I say,
you know, I remember interviewing Mary Callahan Erdos when I was doing Money Master the Game,
you know, she manages, you know, businesses of over $2 trillion in business with a T,
$2.5 trillion, I think it is now. And I asked her about this and she said, you know, businesses of over $2 trillion in business with a T, $2.5 trillion, I think it is
now. And I asked her about this. And she said, you know, I used to come to the office with my dad,
who was a financial planner, and sit behind his desk. And I was so part of his life. And she said,
you know, here, now I run $2.5 trillion. And she said, but at the same time, I'm, you know,
JP Morgan, the head of this company, I do the same thing with my daughter. I have this great time with her. And I really look at it as, you know, it's an integration. It's not a balance.
I mean, think about balance. Think, imagine a teeter totter, a seesaw, and you and I are going
to play the game of life as balance. Okay. Once we get it balanced, how long before one of us is
like bored enough, we want to do something, jerk this thing around to feel alive. Right? So, but
for me, it's been a really interesting time. I don't have a thousand companies.
I have 110 companies,
but we are doing $7 billion in business
across all these different industries.
And I have thousands of employees
and I love the challenge of all that.
And it's certainly been different now
because I have five kids and five grandkids,
but you know, my oldest daughter is 48.
My youngest is 17 months.
It's a different world, but I love that too. It's caused
me to have more gears, you know, to find parts of myself that I've got to step in and be even
more present in a different way. It's been the most exciting and fulfilling thing in my life so
far here. I love all my kids, all my environment. It's just this stage of life doing it is really
special. I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs don't realize, you know, doing anything big and bold in life is hard and it's going to take a lot out of you.
And it's going to consume everything you've got, especially if, like you said, it's full of love
and passion and it's your highest expression in the world. But how do you deal with, you know,
sort of all the demands?
It's like, at the end of the day, you've got a 17-month-old.
You've got a family.
And you're on an airplane how many days a year?
Well, a lot differently.
I'm going to tell you what.
Part of why I have a daughter right now is because of COVID.
Because we wanted to do this for about 10 years.
But most of my life, I've been on the road continuously.
So I have all these homes all over the world, but rarely at any of them.
An average year, I'd have 115 cities I do.
Most of these are multi-day seminars anyway, to give you a sense.
As you know, I'd go to 14 to 16 countries, some of them two or three times, like Australia.
And so literally, I was home very
little. I spent more time in the airplane than anywhere else. But thanks to COVID, and it was
not a thanks initially. I mean, when I started getting the phone call, and you know, we're
supposed to do this big event in San Francisco, and they call up, the governor says, you can put
10 people here. 10 people, you know, we got a stadium for 15,000 people. But then, you know,
the next thing I knew, it was all over the world.
It was London.
It was Australia.
The whole world just like dominoes.
And so I was like, my first approach is we're going to Vegas.
They'll never shut down Vegas.
They shut down a Vegas a week before we went to the event.
Let's go to Dallas.
Let's go to Texas.
I know the governor, he's never going to shut that thing down.
You know, they kept open Costco and they shut down the churches there.
And it was just wild.
So I saw people doing webinars and I was like, oh man, I'm used to a stadium, the energy,
I can't do this. So I built this studio and we have 50 foot high ceilings and 20 foot high LED
screens, 0.67 highest resolution, 50 people around me. It's amazing. It's unbelievable. I can now see
people in their home. And now my seminars are 25,000 people. We've done four seminars with over
800,000 homes. There's over a million people in each one. I never dreamed of having that impact.
So because of that, I can come home and be with my daughter or I probably wouldn't have done it.
So the technology has shifted things for me. Do you think you would not have had her if you
didn't? I wouldn't have. We kept putting it off and saying, we just can't do it with the lifestyle
we have. And yet I was so addicted to the lifestyle of helping people all over the earth. And
it's my mission. It's what I'm made for. It's not a mission statement. It's how I live.
But now I'm able to reach even more people. Hey, thanks for listening to Moonshots and Mindsets.
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we were never designed as humans to eat as much sugar as we do, and sugar is not good for your
brain or your heart or your body in general. Levels helps me monitor the impact of the foods
that I eat by monitoring my blood sugar. For example, I learned that if I dip my bread in
olive oil, it blunts my glycemic response,
which is good for my health.
If you're interested, learn more by going to levels.link backslash Peter.
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It's something that is critical for the future of your longevity.
All right, let's get back to the conversation in the episode.
So that's one of the conversations I really want to get into because my mission, as you know, is inspiring, guiding entrepreneurs to go bigger, right? And I think entrepreneurs
are the means by which we make the world a better place. Entrepreneurs are individuals who find and
solve problems and the more of them finding and solving problems. And the challenge is it's not
an easy lifestyle. I mean, you've had nothing, but you know, it's, it's hard. It's 24
seven. It's picking yourself off the ground and going. I am curious your, your advice for that
entrepreneur who's having that debate and that challenge between private life and, you know,
having a family or, you know, what I say is that when you're starting a company,
you're going to spend more time with your co-founders
than you are with your wife or your husband
or your kids a lot of time.
How do you deal with that?
Well, in my case, it's relatively easy
because my wife is the executive producer of our lives.
Sage is pretty extraordinary,
but we traveled everywhere together.
We did everything together around the clock
and it just made us deeper and richer because as much as we love each other, our relationship is also based on a common mission of serving humanity as much as human possible, not making that statement and saying it to the world, but the way we lived our life that was most fulfilling and still is.
know, my sons have been involved. My daughter's been involved. They've all been involved in the business throughout my life. And that's where that work-life integration happens. But I also
think not everybody's made to be an entrepreneur. And I don't think, I think today everybody thinks
that's what they want to be. But you know, we all have different, we're talking about labor day. We
all have three different kinds of gifts of labor that we could give and we can develop all these
skills, but there's a nature in most people. And the first level is that skilled producer,
like that person who's like an artist. I don't mean an artist, like just painting. You know, but there's a nature in most people. And the first level is that skilled producer,
like that person who's like an artist. I don't mean an artist, like just painting.
You know, some people are artists with software. Some people are artists in fashion. Some people are artists in negotiation. Like they're the best in the world at what they do. They're
extraordinary. And artists do things because they want to see the impact. They want to feel it.
They want, they would give up the money for the impact in most cases.
You know, some people are more manager leaders. These are people that love, they don't love the
individual building the product or the service. They love managing the process, the people and
the processes. And they love that systematic approach to things. And then there's some
people that are, we're all entrepreneurial if you're in business, but a true entrepreneur is
in it truly for the risk.
You know, I remember I was with Steve Wynn and he invited me to come to Macau to see his new hotel
he was just building. And, you know, it was the most extraordinary $2.7 billion hotel. And I got
to be there before the doors open and he's showing me everything and, you know, explaining me that
the average bed is five times larger than Vegas and how he has these suites he showed me where
they literally don't have to deal with anyone else. The entire suite is like a mini,
you know, casino. And, but he's, you can, you can gamble in your sleep.
You have to deal with the riffraff, you know, type of thing. Right. And so I said, well,
you know, in every business, there's an 80, 20 rule. I said, you know, what's the 20% of your
business that produces 80% of your profit?
And he goes, Tony, it's more extreme than 80-20 in my business.
He goes, there's 50,000 people that produce 80% of my profit.
These are the big whales.
And he said, so I've hired people who all they do is take care of them.
And he goes, they all play Baccarat.
Because Baccarat is a game where the odds are really close.
It's the closest odds you have to any other game to being close to being with the house but the house still has a slight
advantage he goes but tony what they don't understand is the more they play the more those
odds multiply in my favor and he goes so we have people that make three million four million dollars
in a weekend but they could also lose four or five or ten million he goes i have people all they do
is live for this so you know why am i telling you this story? Because to give you an idea, I remember I said, well, let's watch
after everybody opened the doors, you're seeing people mesmerized by the building and everything
else. And we go up and he says, let me show you the high rollers table. And I watched the guy,
no lie, in probably 13, 14 minutes lose $10 million right in front of me. And my gut's
torn up and I'm not even the owner of the casino. can never own a casino i'd have to give the guy the money right steve just smiling from ear to ear
and all of a sudden the guy turns around and sees us standing there he goes oh my god oh my god can
i have a picture and you know i hear this every day of my life so i said sure and he hands me the
camera and he goes no not you with mr winn he's like ste I believe, I went to your Vegas place. Everything's so different.
You're unbelievable. Guy lost $10 million and he's hugging this guy, Steve Wynn, right?
So what I really want people to get is it doesn't matter what you do, but a real,
that's an entrepreneur. Somebody who'd lose it all, step back up and do it again. Ted Turner's
done it. Anybody's done it. You are not necessarily made for entrepreneurship just because you have an
interest in it, just because you have a passion. I think you need passion. You need to know where's
the marketplace you're going to serve that has that impact. And then you got to look at competency.
You got to say, what competencies do I have? What skills do I have? So for me, I'm an artist at my
core. I won't be on stage for 12 or 13 to 14 hours. I don't have to work another day of my life. Why am I here?
It's the fulfillment of seeing the impact in these people's lives.
Now, I became an entrepreneur.
You know, I got all these companies.
But part of how I did that was I got other people that were entrepreneurial in it.
Because I would overspend, overdeliver, over everything.
And they'd say, well, does the customer care?
And we developed great partnerships in that.
So over the years, I developed those skills.
But under stress and under excitement, you go to your nature. So the question I have for you
is, who are you? Are you more of an artist that you're in it for the impact alone? You might ask
yourself, who am I and who do I need? You might have to bring an entrepreneur in to scale that
business with you who can take those kinds of risks. Or you might need to get a manager leader
if you're an artist. If you're a manager leader, you're looking for great entrepreneurs to join.
And you're looking for artists who make that company work.
So I think it's really important not just to say I have this giant goal, but to be honest
with yourself about your nature.
Because in the end, if you have these great goals and you're not fulfilled, then what
did you do it all for?
It was just for positioning, which was ridiculous.
And there are very few individuals who do anything big and bold on their own.
It's building a team and it's knowing what you can do and so forth.
Let's drill in on the next question, which is, and I'm really, I feel a lot of energy
around this, which is a lot of entrepreneurs are doing things that are not impactful enough,
right?
That are, the joke I make
is they're building another photo sharing app.
And it's like they're, you know,
the world's biggest problems,
the world's biggest business opportunities.
You know, when I say that people get it,
but how do you get folks to be willing to take the risk
to go and do something
that actually can make a dent in the universe?
If you're the entrepreneur in this equation,
if you're the individual who has those skills,
you've built something,
but how do we encourage them to go bigger?
Well, I think you don't have to encourage
an entrepreneur to go bigger.
That's the nature of an entrepreneur.
But it's not just about making money.
I understand what you're talking about.
That's the challenge here.
You're talking about impact.
Yeah, impact, yeah.
You and I are completely aligned in this
area, as you well know. And I think your idea constantly of, you know, billion, you know,
the biggest problems are the billion dollar solutions, right? This is the opportunity
that's there. I just don't think that's everybody. I think encouraging, here's the difference,
Peter. I used to think everybody should have their, you know, change the world and so forth.
I don't think that anymore. I have a different mindset. I'm looking for who you are and let's help you get what you really want.
And there are people that are unbelievably driven who will take giant risks, who will not sleep,
Elon Musk, who will be there on the floor and will go and change the world. That is not everybody.
And I don't think everybody should be encouraged to do that because all they'll be is disappointed.
You know, right now, as you're listening to this podcast, whether you're one of those people or not, there's nothing you and I are
going to say that's going to make a difference for that kind of person other than to encourage
people as an entrepreneur to say, why not do something that'll be meaningful and size and
scope and the economics, right? The meaningfulness is what the end's going to matter because the
money goes away. There's only so many islands, homes, trains, planes, automobiles,
you know, things you can do. It all comes down to what is your life's meaning? What is it? What have you given? What have you grown? What have you experienced? What have you delivered? And so I
think, I think we can call to that, but I think you did the best job of it by showing what's
possible, Peter. You do so many great examples of showing how technology can really solve a
problem for a billion peoples and make you a billion dollars or more. And I think you're probably the best at it. And I don't say that just to compliment you
on your own podcast. I think you are, but I have a slightly different exposure, which is those
people are going to do it. I can help tweak it with them. I can sit down with them. I can show
them another opportunity. I can get them hungry for more meaning because after a while, when they
made enough money with widgets, it's pretty damn. Yeah. I call, I call it success to significance, right?
How do you take the success you've had,
whether it's capital or resources or relationships,
whatever it is and put into service of a significant impact.
So let's talk to those people right now.
Let's talk to the people who you are entrepreneurs who are wanting to do
something. And, you know, I was there. Yeah.
I was finishing medical school. My my dad or like peter take
over my dad's practice go become a physician when are you going to start do your internship
residency no that's not what i want to do i want to go and build this right and that was space kind
of crazy um but the individuals who are facing uh their parents their husbands, their wives, their loved ones who are saying,
that's way too risky. Why aren't you becoming a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer or joining that
big blue? What's your advice for them? My advice is pretty simple on this one.
If you have enough passion, you're not going to let anything stop you. You need to fan that
passion. You get around where it's better. You got to get around people that have delivered on their
passions and let that rub off on you. Even when people say, I'm trying to find my purpose,
get around where it's better and let something hit you. And because, you know, role models make
it real. You can have a dream or a vision. I mean, again, Peter, I'm not just throwing compliments
away when you don't know how much I love you and sincerely, but what you've done with XPRIZE is the perfect example of that because you've shown it can happen again and again and again.
It's not a one-time thing.
We can take a vision.
We can inspire enough people to compete.
And we can transform an entire industry, whether it's space or whether it's, you know, solving hunger or whatever the case may be.
So I think for those individuals, the piece for them to do is constantly fan the flames.
You have to see, feel, experience
what it is you really want. And, you know, I think for some people finding that purpose or that drive
sometimes is to do the opposite. It's like when people say to me, you know, I don't really know
what I want to do for a living. I said, oh, great. Describe the job from hell. Tell me who you would
write down, who you wouldn't want to work with, what you wouldn't want to do for a living,
the environment you never want to do it.. Write down who you wouldn't want to work with, what you wouldn't want to do for a living, the environment you never want to do it.
And you cannot believe the amount of energy that comes out when people start writing all
the shit they hate.
And when the energy's out and they've written all that they don't want, then I say, okay,
write the opposite and you have the job from heaven or the business from heaven or the
relationship you don't want, right?
When people are so frustrated, tell me everything you don't want, right?
Okay, now there's energy going because the only thing that's going to get you to execute is energy.
And if you sit in your head, there's low energy in your head. If you're sitting talking to other
people about what's possible, they'll have the best of intent, but they just don't want you to
be disappointed. But disappointment is part of entrepreneurship. Disappointment is part of life.
Disappointment either drives you or destroys you. You got to pick. And if you immerse yourself over and over again in what it is you want,
you'll start to have pull instead of push. I mean, those are the two kinds of motivation, right?
You and I both know that we gravitate towards those who are celebrating society, right? We want
to be that NBA all-star. We want to be that, you know, it was the, you know, the Wall Street dream.
When I was in high school and college, all my smartest friends went to Wall Street to
become investment bankers, like, or lawyers.
And I was like, pulling my hair out.
It's like such a, for me, it was an empty and meaningless job.
It was moving money around.
It was basically just making money on the heels of folks who are changing the world.
is basically just making money on the heels of folks who are changing the world.
And ultimately, it's how do we create the ability to celebrate individuals who are those change makers, who are those entrepreneurs that are, you know, it is Elon, it is Mark
Benioff, it is other individuals that you and I both know.
So it's I want to light the fire for folks to say you can make a difference in the world.
You can go work on something bigger versus just falling into the normal pattern. Any thoughts there?
Well, again, I think it's, I have a slightly different point of view. When I was growing up
and developing myself and starting to succeed on decent scale, I had these really specific goals
that I was trying to target. I knew precisely where it was on the mountain.
And then as the years went by, I began to have a different approach.
My approach was, let me figure out the direction I'm heading.
What I really believe is there without having to walk into that one individual meeting person,
economic situation, whatever.
And when I get to the mountain, I'll climb over it.
I'll dig under it.
I'll go around it.
I'll enjoy it.
Whatever the case may be.
to the mountain, I'll climb over it, I'll dig under it, I'll go around it, I'll enjoy it, whatever the case may be. And I think that today, people are so obsessed with something way out there that for
some people, it's too soon. I mean, let's talk about what it really takes to make a business go.
Every single person who's a true entrepreneur has to go through what we call the threshold of
control multiple times. The threshold of control is like if the people watching or listening are snowboarding or skiing, and let's say you're intermediate at best or you're a beginner, and one day you're on a new mountain and you miss the wrong turnoff and you're on the green slope or the blue slope, and there's a double black diamond right down below.
You look down and you go, I'm going to die.
There's no way I can get on this thing.
I'm going to die on this thing.
So what do you do?
You've got two choices.
One choice is you realize you're beyond the threshold of your control. And so what you do
is put your ass against the mountain and you hang on a claw for dear life. So you don't fall down
that cliff and you work your butt down there slowly to try to survive. The other is, all right,
I have got to turn. I've never done this before. And you literally focus only on the next
turn, the next turn, the next turn, the next turn. You don't focus on getting down to the bottom of
the mountain. It's too much. You focus until you do those turns. And by the time you're done,
the double black diamond is your little, you know, you own it. It doesn't own you, right?
It's a completely different experience. So in my businesses and yours, I can remember
coming home from a business meeting or
an event I'd done. And there were 11 employees I had at the time in this tiny little office.
And they all met me at the airport as I landed. I thought, wow, this is so cool.
Well, they're all here to tell me they love me, but we're going to quit because the lady running
the show was just the terrible treatment of people. And she was saying the company's going
to go bankrupt and she was paying herself and somebody else and not paying other people. And I came home and found out
a fire, the lady and found out that she had spent all the money, gave it six months in advance to
herself, another person. And we had no cashflow. I needed $50,000 to keep the doors open. Now,
$50,000 then would be like 10 billion plus the day from now. It'd be a much, much, much larger
number I can imagine beyond my threshold of
control. Right. And so I remember I was trying to, I tried one thing and another, and somebody
offered me an opportunity, this network marketing thing. And it was like, Oh my God, this is not
what I'm about in my integrity. And then finally I had this idea. I'm going to call this guy who
was a gentleman who was a stuntman, stuntman in movies. And he only got a couple of deals
and I worked with him, turn him around and got his psychology straight. And he had like 10 straight big movies, big movies and made a ton
of money. So I called him and I said, look, I need 50 grand. I don't know how I'm going to pay it
back, but you know, I absolutely will. And sure enough, he loaned me the money. And by the way,
about 10 years ago, I've obviously paid him back way back then. I, I tracked him down to get another
50 grand, just remembering how incredible it was, you know, at that stage. But it was one of those
thresholds that I had one years later where, you know, somebody sued me. I didn't do anything wrong,
but you can go through a lawsuit and cost you two, $3 million. And they're like $3 million.
Then it was more money than I could dream of. And then I had a business partner years later that
I was partners in a company that had 1.6 billion in EBITDA. And there was an offshoot of that
company. And I'm going through all the. And the partner was supposedly a billionaire.
And he had no money.
And two of my other partners got in trouble.
So I signed this deal joint in several.
And there was $150 million in debt.
And so I had to come up with $150 million.
That was inconvenient.
I didn't have $150 million.
But I figured it out.
That's how I got to being in a position now, I could do $7 billion in business because you go
through those thresholds. So I think it's wonderful to have that giant goal. But I think most
entrepreneurs still have to crack their teeth on whatever is the threshold in front of them next.
And each time you do, when you become more confident, you become stronger. It's like the
food. You know, originally I was, you know, trying to figure out how I could feed two families.
You know, I was just beginning. My family was fed when I was 11 years old at Thanksgiving.
I never forgot it.
I want to feed others, so I fed two families.
Then it was four, and then it was eight.
Then I got my little small company involved,
and then I eventually got to two million people a year.
And then about eight years ago,
I was writing this book on finance,
and I'm interviewing these billionaires,
and I'm watching Congress wipe out food stamps.
It's called the SNAP program now.
So much so that, I think it was six and a half billion,
it took so that every family that needed food
would have to give up one week's worth of food every month
unless you and I stepped in.
And it's like, well, how many people
have I fed in my lifetime?
I thought it was 42 million people.
I didn't even know the number.
I said, what if I fed 50 million people in a year?
What if I fed 100 million people in a year?
What if I fed 100 million people in a year for 10 years is a billion people. Well, that was seven and a half
years ago. I'm coming up eight years. I'm two years out of schedule. We're 940 million meals
right now. And so now I'm working on a hundred billion meal challenge. I'm finding a hundred
other people. I know you're going to be at the, I'm going to be your dinner. And I'm looking to
find, I've already got, I've already got four people putting up a billion meals. So we're
already at 5 billion meals more than I've done in 10 years.
All right. We're going to take this conversation someplace else that I have a lot of energy around, my friend, which is which is there.
You know, there is something like twenty seven hundred billionaires on the planet right now.
Yeah, it's it's amazing.
And, you know, the top hundred have more money than than most nations on the planet.
And so you and I know a lot of ultra high net worth individuals, a lot of billionaires.
And one of my biggest challenges is what the you know, what the hell are they doing with their capital?
You know, it's the notion of everybody sitting on their money to make more money versus using that to make a dent in the universe.
You know, to use Steve Jobs's quote.
And it really pisses me off.
I mean, I want to go, you know, take out a full page New York Times ad and say these people are solving the world's problems.
These people are building, you know, buying bigger yachts.
And so I would love to explore.
How do you think this is going on what is it that you know there are very few people as mark banning off you and i
know he's a beautiful man he's yeah he's backed uh you know so much research in health tech and
biotech and change the world um and then there's folks like elon musk who's bet it over and over
and over again martin rothblatt another dear friend who's done extraordinary work, just taking moonshot after moonshot.
And then there's the tops of the Forbes list.
And I've had this conversation with Steve and Kip Forbes and the family there.
I said, you've gamified wealth retention.
It's like you don't want to drop from number seven to number 70 by giving away that.
It's like it really.
So advise me here. How do we help incentivize those individuals to really use not just their capital, but their resources, their intelligence
or relationships to go make a bigger dent on the planet? What are they going to do with it at the
end of the day? Well, you know, here again, Peter, I used to feel exactly the same as you do.
In fact, we've had this conversation before privately
at a different time when you were raising money,
you know, for the X prize on the health side,
on the longevity side, right?
Like, what's wrong with these people?
And, you know, the only reason I can answer
is not because I'm so smart,
but because I believe I talked to a very smart friend of mine
who's been one of my dearest friends
for the last 30, 35 years.
And that's Peter Guber, who I know you know well as well.
And Peter was saying, Tony, you're being pissed off and stressed at people.
And he goes, it's not consistent with all the other things you do.
Everywhere else, you try to understand them.
You try to appreciate what drives them.
He said, that's why you're so effective.
But you have low tolerance because you're willing, you know,
I've given away 17% of all I've earned in the last 10 years to give an idea,
not 10% of the gross revenues I've made.
It's like I'm disproportionate to what I do, so I think everybody else should be.
He goes, not everybody is.
He goes, here's how I think you should look at it.
And ever since he told me this is how I look at it now.
He said, I want to know what it is that is their hot button, and I want to deliver that.
Instead of saying, oh, they should do this so they can save children.
Let's say, for example, we have 28,000 kids now that I've saved that were trafficked. I mean, one child in
a traffic situation chained to a bed. Well, seeing this, you'll be altered forever. So it's like,
I have been altered. Some people don't care about that. They don't care about that.
Underground Railroad, yeah.
Yeah, Underground Railroad. But many organizations, they're one of them.
But the most important thing is, he said, some people do things because they want their name on the hospital side of the wall.
Some, you know, on the building.
Some people do it because they're guilty because they didn't earn their wealth, and so they want to get rid of the guilt.
Some people do it because they care about the children.
Some people are going to do it because, and you have to figure out what those are.
And instead of being mad about it, you've got to say, what is their hot button? And that has helped me immensely
in raising capital because I don't have a judgment anymore. They should do it for the reasons I think
they should do it. I'm obviously, I feel strongly about saving people in a variety of areas, food,
water, air, I mean, everything. But I also now see everybody's got their thing. Everybody's got
their passions. We've got their insights. And all I want to know is what's their hot button so they'll contribute.
I don't care about if it's for the right reasons.
Who's the right reasons?
That's my judgment.
It's their reasons I need to get into.
And I think when you do that, you're more effective.
You're unbelievably effective in raising capital for businesses, and you've been really effective on the nonprofit side.
But I think you can't – here's my belief.
You're going to have a hard time influencing people when you're judging them. And the bottom line is, if you're not judging them,
you can influence them because you can take the time to understand what their needs are and meet
them. And that's what business is. And so philanthropy has to be looked at, I think,
through the same light. And that's what I do today. And the number of people that I've been
able to engage and involve now has gone geometric compared to when I just thought they should do it and got frustrated.
And let's be clear.
I'm not judging on what they should do.
It is do anything.
Do something.
That's still judging.
Ah, okay.
All right.
I'm not saying you're wrong.
You and I come from the same place.
But it's like your values are they should be building more of that.
But some of them are going to build that and they're going to give it away.
Some people are going to build that and they're applying all these jobs.
I mean, you've got to remember there's so many.
If a bumblebee goes and it's trying to get the nectar,
God arranged something pretty cool.
It doesn't know.
It's getting what it wants, but it's still playing a role in something larger.
I mean, you know the pollen sticks to the legs and that's how we have more flowers.
So it's like I have a different mindset about it now.
It's like if that guy keeps all the money forever and builds up his businesses, who cares?
That capital and those businesses are still providing jobs and opportunity.
But I'd like to find a piece of his heart.
I'd like to figure out what he's passionate about or get him introduced to something that once he experiences it or she
They go. Oh my god
I never knew it was like this or I never knew it felt so good to give in this way of my time my energy my
Intellect my emotion or and or my money and that it makes it more fulfilling while you're doing it
Yeah, the conversation I had was actually around an idea. We kicked around of the impact pledge. I said the giving pledge, right?
which is
Gates and Buffett is I'm going to give half of my money to a nonprofit while I'm alive. And it's
like, well, you can't take it with you. So you don't have that much of a choice. But and this
is where I was, you know, complimenting you. It isn't just your capital that you're giving on your,
you know, your billions now at hundreds of billions of meals. It's your capital and
your intellect and your relationships and your time. And so the question is, how can we incentivize
those who've got the means to really take on leaving the world a better place, making an
impact? And I agree. Listen, I'm a capitalist. I'm a capitalist libertarian.
More jobs, more businesses created. Fantastic. But at the end of the day,
it's how do we get them to call their shots and make it a larger impact? Is it just finding that heartstring or is there any other way? I mean, if the Forbes list gamifies wealth retention,
is there an impact list to gamify making an impact on the planet? What ideas do you have? Yeah, I think anything
that can tap into those different needs. Some people do things for the need for significance.
Some people do things for the need for connection with other people. Some people do it to grow. Some
people do it because they just want to contribute. Some people do it, you know, because they want
variety in their life and it's a new thing for them so instead of like having one universal approach i think we have to have multiple approaches but
gamifying impact i think is would certainly help those who like a measuring stick and want to be
known for the level of measuring stick they've developed and that's one type of person but i
think also it's like um again i think the i have a slightly different approach than i did with maybe
i was 50 or 40,
and that is I have no difficulty finding plenty of people that want to play at this level at this stage.
I think more and more people do, and I think as things get more difficult,
it tends to wake people up to what's most important to them.
And I saw, you know, winter is here, but we haven't hit the worst part of winter yet.
We've had some financial winter.
We're going to have a lot more difficult times. And the one good thing, I remember I was sitting
down with the president of the United States, President Clinton, years ago, and I went to Camp
David with him, and he was complaining to me. I remember I was like 31 years old, and I really
liked him, but he was just whining, it felt like, to me. I'm making my judgment in those days,
right? This guy's the most powerful guy on earth, and he's complaining because no one understands
what he's doing. It was at the time when he was really ineffective in the beginning and the Republicans had taken over
both the House and the Senate and he was on and on and on. And I remember just looking at him and
saying, well, sir, I said, think about it this way. You have to decide what you're going to make
your focus be. And it's got to be something that other people are inspired by. The things you've
done that you say no one notices, it's because no one's inspired by it. What are the targets you're going to set that are going to make this more alive and
more real? And I think today, the other thing he told me, the reason I thought of the story was,
he kept talking about, you know, he's the first president where there was an external enemy.
So for the first time, in a short time, we didn't have terrorism. We didn't have the Soviet Union,
right? So like now we're fighting amongst ourselves.
And I've always said, you know, I think Reagan even said this.
It's like if there was ever a time that America would come to the world, we'd come together as if some alien group came in attacking us.
We'd all be humans, right?
But there's something about bad times that will also make people come back together and unify and start to look at how they can serve something beyond themselves. And you look at World War II and you see some of the best entrepreneurs in the world there who gave up a lot of what they had for the war effort to turn things around.
I think the times that are coming will call to people to give more of all sorts, the entrepreneur,
the business person, the general population as well.
It'll create an alignment.
That's why we have seasons.
Winter gets rid of the old stuff.
It's tough as hell and it makes you grow. And then springtime is the reward. And then summer
is the test and then fall is the reward. It's this alternating cycles that human beings go
through and society goes through and history goes through. And for the entrepreneurs listening,
now is the best time to be looking for what your company is going to be, right? Some of the most extraordinary companies on the planet were born out of the, you know, the dot-com bust or the 2008 real estate
bust or out of COVID. So, you know, if you're looking to do something, you want to step up to
a bigger game, look around, find out what the needs are and help reinvent the industry that
you're passionate about. If you look at the Fortune 1000 and you think of the four seasons, financial seasons we go through,
there's springtime when things just grow like crazy. It's easy. You think you're a genius.
It's really the times that are going. There's the summer when now you planted all the seeds and
it's hot. It's not working so well. There's the fall when all of a sudden everybody's reaping.
Somebody wants to give you a mortgage, even though you don't have a house.
And then there's the winter where it looks like nothing's working and it's all falling apart. But winter isn't forever. No pandemic is forever. No war is
forever. It's a season. And if you do well in winter, you'll stand the test of time.
So of those four financial seasons, if I showed you the fortune 1000, more than 60% were born in one season of the four, it's not balanced. And I don't care whether it's
Disney during a depression or whether it was, you know, Apple during a recession, Airbnb,
we can go through them all. So it's like, this is your time. And I always tell people,
there's two businesses you got to always be working on the business you're in and the business you're
becoming. Cause if you don't focus on the business you're in and the business you're becoming.
Because if you don't focus on the business you're in, you're going to be attracted to all this cool, exciting stuff over here, and you don't have the cash flow to get there, right?
Or if you just focus on the business you're in, someone's going to be out there preparing for the future that you're not prepared for, and they're going to take you out.
So it's really that balance as an entrepreneur that really will make you successful over the long term.
Yeah.
If you were going to start a company,
what would you start? Do you have any ideas of where you want to go? I know you don't want to start another company, but some of the challenges that you'd go after out there, any place in
particular? I think for me, I would look at healthcare, obviously, as you and I already are.
And I would certainly look at finance, which has to be changed. It's abusive the way it's
currently set up and people don't even realize it.
The level of power that's concentrated in a few people
because people don't know what 1% means,
sounds like nothing, but compounded interest,
compounded fees, I would be looking at those areas.
And I have been educating people in both those areas
so they can make better choices
through my books and educational programs,
but I think they're there.
And then there's the use of all the tools that are coming,
nanotechnology, obviously,
AI.
We all know what's coming and what's here.
But as you know better than anybody, we're at the base of that.
We're at the beginning of the beginning of the beginning of what's going to happen in
those areas.
And I'd be looking for an industry where the technology is multiplying rapidly enough to
solve those problems that are not really solvable today.
Do you know, 100 years ago, at the turn of the last century, when electricity was coming online,
the entrepreneurial engine was taking something and adding electricity. It was like a hand drill,
an electric drill, a hand dishwasher, make an electric dishwasher, and so forth. And we're
going to see the same thing, I think, in AI in particular, where AI is going to be applied to everything. And yeah, so let's turn towards a subject.
I want to ask you a quick question. So what's your view, and I know you have a mutual friend
who's predicted the timeline on this, obviously, with Ray, but what's your view about where AI is
right now in terms of consciousness? I mean, we all heard the story of the gentleman who works for Google and we heard the take
backs from Google and he got fired.
You know, what's your view about where things really are?
And have you talked, I haven't spoken to Ray about it.
I was curious what Ray's thoughts are, if you know.
Yeah, I have spoken to Ray at length and he'll be with us both at A360.
He'll be there this year.
We can talk about it.
He's still holding the 2029
as human level AI. You know, Elon came out a few months ago saying 2025. Now, we both know he sort
of is, he hasn't hit all of his targets, but, you know, let's just, let's get a few months.
He's anticipatory, yes. So the second half of this decade. Now, what's interesting is AI is a field that's 50 years old.
And the idea of the Turing test came about some 40, 50 years ago.
And it was originally going to be just testing a system by typing at it.
Could you, in a typing communication, tell if something was a human typing back at you
or a computer typing back at you?
And I would argue, to a large degree degree that old style of Turing tests, the systems today can most definitely pass it.
But we've moved the bar up.
Yeah, we've moved the bar up significantly.
And I am anticipating and I am betting that we'll have human level AI by the end of this decade.
And the question is, how does it change your life and your world?
It changes everything, right?
In terms of your employees.
But the thing that people haven't pulled in is there's a lot of work going on in quantum
technologies right now, in quantum computation, which is moving very quickly,
which is going to itself advance the whole field of AI.
So it's fun.
It's fun and exciting, and it scares the shit out of most people.
It does, and they've got to be prepared because so many jobs are going to disappear.
New jobs will be created, but there's that timeline difference.
I mean, we were all farmers 200 years ago, 80% of America's farmers. Now it's what, 2% and we
provide food for the whole world. So it's like, it's much more efficient. But in that timeline,
that took, you know, 80 years of transition. Now the transitions are so quick. I think it's going
to be a bit jolting. I tell people, yeah, okay. You and I had, you and I almost started a series of conversations on technological unemployment.
Remember that?
We were fearful of, and we didn't.
And the challenge is that today there are like two job openings for every unemployed person.
It's never been this much.
And I remember-
But also the job participation rate is through the floor. It's not just the opportunities are there, right? People And, but also the job participation, the job participation rate is
through the floor. It's not just the opportunities are there, right? People have dropped out of the
system and, uh, and a lot of women have dropped out of the system. And now for millennials,
there's the new phrase. I'm sure you've heard about this silent quitting, which is how do I
do the absolute minimum amount of work to get my job? And it's so there's a, there's a, there's a
psychological difference that isn't
just an economical difference or environmental difference. You know, I tell this story, I mean,
this fear of technology causing mass unemployment isn't new. I tell the story that there was a
letter written by a number of Nobel laureates and top scientists sent to the United States about the impact of automation on
the finance market, on destroying all of the jobs in finance. And that letter was sent to Lyndon B.
Johnson back in the 60s, you know, when the first computers came out. But of course, we got more
bankers than ever before. So the question is, you know, you've probably seen all the stuff that's
coming out on Dolly and Dolly 2. I mean, it's extraordinary, right?
So it's going to be about human-AI partnership, at least for a time being.
The other thing I think about is that there's a lot of people who are doing jobs which they didn't dream about doing when they were kids, right?
They're cleaning bathrooms.
They're making beds.
They're waitressing.
kids, right? They're cleaning bathrooms, they're making beds, they're waitressing. And at the end of the day, how do we partner with AI to uplift those individuals? I think everybody who cares
about the future and cares about their kids for the future has to understand that there's no way
to predict what's going to happen. It's already accelerating so rapidly. So the one thing you can
control is your ability to learn. And the things that you have to learn are three things.
Three skills.
First, recognizing patterns.
It is the basis of human progress.
If you say, why is humanity where it is today instead of still out there,
hunter-gatherers trying to find food and survive?
It was one pattern, recognizing the pattern of the seasons.
Understanding there's this thing called winter.
And if you plant during winter, it doesn't matter how hard you work, you don't get rewarded.
There's only a specific, there's a right time for everything. And so the pattern of that recognition
allowed us to stay in one place, plant, grow, have communities, cities, nation states. I mean,
it's one of those profound changes in humanity. Well, there's also seasons of a human being's life.
And if you're going to be successful,
you have to recognize those seasons and second skills, learn how to use those seasons. Because
it's one thing to recognize. So things are no longer just chaos. Like, you know, looking at
where we are right now with the world, you know, you study Ray Dalio's work of 500 years of studying,
you know, of history of different, you know, countries growing and then declining and what
occurs. It's very predictable
what's happened. It's not like, oh my God, what's happening? No, this is a predictable pattern.
Now what are you going to do to use it so it doesn't use you? And so that's the same thing
in your own life. What season are you? Are you in the springtime of your life, zero to 20? Are you
the 22 to 42 where you're the soldier society and you're testing what you were taught as a kid?
You're deciding what you want. You're finding out life is much more complex. You're testing what you were taught as a kid. You're deciding what you want.
You're finding out life is much more complex.
You're not going to be a billionaire and the president of the United States and simultaneously all these relationships.
Yeah, I have to start figuring this stuff out.
Oh, I've got to raise the card.
Oh, my God.
Are you in that 43 to 63 range where it's the power years if you grew during the previous two?
Are you in that 64 to 84 to 104 to 124, right? Where you're the
mentor society. But if you can teach your kids and yourself to recognize patterns and to use
patterns, then you'll get to the third level, which you'll start to create patterns. And those
are the people that shape their world, their life, their family, their community, their company,
society, right? And those are the three patterns.
And if you do those three, it won't matter what AI does.
It won't matter what goes on.
You will be there.
It's like Warren Buffett the other day was doing his annual conference and people asked
him about inflation and said, you know, what do we do?
And he said, the thing you got to do is invest in yourself.
Because if the currency goes to hell and we're using poker shells and you're the best lawyer, you're the best scientist, you're the best business person, you're going to get the premium of whatever is available.
And they can't tax your skill set as your skills grow.
So I think we all have to grow our skills.
We have to know where the world is going to some extent, meaning the mountain direction of the mountain.
We know the precise place.
And we've got to recognize patterns, use patterns patterns and start to create patterns of our own and that'll put you or your kids
in control of their life no matter what change happens around them because that's the learning
experience let me add one more thing to that which is rather than becoming an expert in the
technology because technology is changing constantly yes it's under becoming an expert
in the problem right Understanding the root cause of
the problem, because then you can apply the next level of technology and next level of technology
to that. So I think that's a, that's an important thing to add. It's like the same thing in a
business. You don't fall in love with your product or your service. You fall in love with your client
because you understand who they are. The products and services are going to change so rapidly today.
I had a Sony Walkman. That's old I am.
And that damn thing was around for 22 years.
They changed the color, the shape.
It was the same product.
Now you've got a 90-day life cycle to a six-month life cycle on most products before it's knocked off by four other companies, right?
So it's much more competitive today.
Hey, everybody.
I hope you're enjoying this episode.
I'll tell you about something I've been doing for years.
Every quarter or so, having a phlebotomist come to my home to draw bloods, to understand what's going on inside my body. And it was a challenge
to get all the right blood draws and all the right tests done. So I ended up co-founding a company
that sends a phlebotomist to my home to measure 40 different biomarkers every quarter, put them
up on a dashboard so I can see what's in range what's
out of range and then get the right supplements medicines peptides hormones to optimize my health
it's something that i want for all my friends and family and i'd love it for you if you're
interested go to mylifeforce.com backslash peter to learn more let's get back to the episode
all right i'm going to turn us towards a topic of
common passion and love, which is longevity and healthspan. So I'll set the setting. You and I
are at the Vatican. We're at the Unite conference there. We're having an X Prize event I invited you to. And you're giving
your keynotes and I'm giving mine. I'm on stage with heads of different religions and
in the audience is...
And scientists.
And scientists. And in the audience are like four or five hundred scientists from around
the world interested in rejuvenative medicine and all of this. And I ask an innocent question,
which is how many of you here would like to live to 120 years old?
And I'm shocked. It was crickets. It was like a quarter of the audience raised their hand and I'm
like, WTF? I mean, what's going on here? Especially since the very people that you
were talking to, some people have context,
were creating some of the greatest breakthroughs and cancer breakthroughs and stem cells.
I mean, what they were bringing looked like miracles.
And yet when you brought this up, it was crickets.
And you remember what I said to you?
You were stunned.
I was not stunned.
I was.
Yeah, you were not.
So tell people listening why you weren't stunned.
Well, I wasn't stunned because I said, Peter, most people's idea of 120 years old is decrepit and broken down and not the quality of life.
I think more people care about the quality of their life than the quantity of their life.
And so when you can match them, too, that's different.
If you said, OK, who'd like to be 120?
If you could have total insurance, you have all your cognitive capacities at their highest level.
You'd have your physical capacity, strength, mobility, everything else. You'd look damn good. You could have a great
sensual life, still be alive. You can be stimulated at all levels. Then people might start saying,
well, I don't know if I believe it, but if that's possible, I'm in. But I think most people with the
minute they hear age like that, I mean, one of the great gifts for me is some of my best friends now
that I met when they were like 45 and they were 18 years my senior.
Like, you know, Peter Gerber is 80 years old, as you know.
He's one of my dearest friends.
You know, you look around and you see somebody like Steve Wynn.
He's 80 years old.
And Peter today, I met him when he was like 47.
So now he's 80.
The guy owns the Warriors, the Dodgers, the LAFC football.
He's a regent for the UC system.
He teaches at UCLA.
He makes movies.
I mean, the guy does more today at 80 than he did when he was 47 or 50, supposedly, in his prime.
Same thing with Steve Wynn.
And you look at Ray Dalio, I think he's 74, 75.
So you need role models that will have a quality life. Like you look at Peter, you'd never
think he's 80 years old, you know, not a trillion years. You know, people think he's late fifties,
early sixties max. So I think I would tell people goals are great and raising your standards.
Wonderful. That's the first step in anything. Raise your standard for what you're committed to,
what you want to have, whether it be how long you're going to live, the quality of your life.
But we got to make that standard real by having role models.
And then you need rituals to back it up that actually make what those role models do,
what do they do that you want to do as well.
That's the way I look at things.
But you're right.
Most people, they just want to get through.
Most people also aren't engaged in life enough.
They're like, you know, I think 70 or 80 years is enough for me.
But you and I are like, we don't want to sleep.
We've both learned to sleep a little bit together, but we don't want to sleep because we're so excited.
But not everybody is in that place.
And I think getting more role models, though, is really the key for people to see.
And the stuff that's coming out now, like the thing you sent me the other day where you could take off almost a year of age, you know, by those injections you were talking to me about the other day.
It's pretty amazing.
So, so, you know, I've changed the way I phrase it now, which is how many of you want to have
the aesthetics, the cognition and the mobility you have today for the next, you know, 20,
50, 100 years.
Some of them shitty, shitty, pretty shitty today.
That's true.
So, so let me ask you a question.
So let me ask you a question. I think you know my answer, but if you could have your cognition, aesthetics, mobility that you have today or even better, how long do you want to live?
As long as I could.
As long as those things could be intact.
I mean, for me, especially now, because I remember telling my wife, I've got five kids and five grandkids.
But when I still had four kids, I was like, I'm not having a kid past 50.
I'm not going to show up and be 70.
Well, now I'm going to show up and be 80 at my daughter's high school graduation.
So I got more reason, more incentive to love long time also because my kids are young and old and grandkids and everything else between us.
So for me, 120 has been proven again and again as the number
that most humans seem to be able, not most humans, a few humans have been able to live to. I think
with the technology and the changes, what, you remember the number, what was the number for the
average lifespan a hundred years ago, 150 years ago? Yeah, it was, it was about 40 and, and,
and it's increased significantly. I remember one of the conversations we had at the Vatican, I had one of the senior
rabbis was on my panel, and he talked about the biblical history that, you know, Methuselah and
Moses had 700, 800 years, but then, you know, humans did some wrong things in God's eye,
and he said, you should only have 120 years. I said, okay, I'll take 120 years and then I'll renegotiate after that. But, uh, and it's, it's interesting. I mean, can you feel, um, I mean, I'm sure you
can, the palpable speed at which this field is moving. Oh, you know, David Sinclair's work is
some of my favorite work and anybody hasn't looked at his work. We have in our book together and
he's become a dear friend for both of us. I think he's the cutting edge because what he's really showing us is that we can become younger as we get older,
meaning that we can literally not just slow down or stop, but perhaps reverse the aging clock.
That, to me, is the most exciting thing of all.
And I think so much money and so much energy is being poured into this by some of the wealthiest companies
and wealthiest individuals in the world because they don't want to just have what they have now. They
want to extend that life as long as they have in a quality way. And I think people just don't know
about it. So one of the reasons that we wrote Life Force and one of the reasons I was inspired to do
it in the first place was I want to get this out here because from the time that a clinician has
the breakthrough to the time it shows up and your local doctor, on average, is 17 years.
I mean, so we try to accelerate that by showing people it's here now.
You can go do this right now.
People just don't know.
And there are tools that can change people's lives, but you've got to get people educated
so they know.
So I have a question for you.
I had an interesting conversation with Elon about this.
We were at SpaceX, and we're talking about a whole slew of things.
He says, so what are you up to these days?
And this is about five, six years ago. I said, I'm really focusing in on longevity. I didn't
call it age reversal back then, which is what the terminology is right now, because we're really
trying to not slow and stop aging, but reverse aging. But I said, I want to add, I've been
pretty consistent, add 20, 30 healthy years. And then during that time, we'll reach other
technologies and add another 20, 30 healthy years. And he said, I don't think we should. He said, I don't think people should live
that long. I think the old guard needs to die to make room for the new guard. And I, you know,
he was in his early forties. My, my response to him was, uh, you're probably change when you get older. But I am curious.
If I'm seeing enough satisfaction when I'm 35,
I want to kill myself.
And now there's 75 doing it, right?
So I am curious about that because I don't buy that.
I mean, I see young individuals,
especially in the DeFi world and in the AI world,
independent of age coming in and disrupting
industries. Do you feel like, I mean, we have people like Putin and others who, you know,
we'd love to have gracefully disappear, but at the end of the day, how do you feel about that?
Do you agree with him at all? Is there any context that you agree with there?
I understand the context. The context is, you know, you don't want certain families, power individuals staying in power so long and
basically suffocating something moving up. But your point is well made, which is
if you really have something unique, if you have something grand in its impact,
they can't stop you. I mean, you know, Hilton's been around for 115 years and Airbnb, our buddies
over there, you know, have surpassed their market value by $20 billion and they don't own a single hotel room, right?
And Hilton and, you know, Western.
Ford versus Uber, right?
Same thing.
But I understand the nature.
There is a sense of are you messing with nature because there is a point.
And so I personally don't know if living forever is the
solution or not. I mean, I don't know if that's what people would really want, but I think
extending the quality of life and the length of it so that the wisdom could happen. Cause a lot
of history, you know, if you study the patterns of history happen, cause when the old guard dies,
like the world war two generation dies, everybody's idea of war is very different.
They don't know what it's really like. All these other wars we fought since then are nothing by comparison, right? Or the Civil War,
right? And people are talking about a Civil War right now. Why? Because the people who went
through the Civil War have been dead for so long, there's no living person to tell you,
are you insane? Let me tell you what it's really like. More people died there than any other war
we've had, right? So I think there's great enhancing the length of time I personally think is wonderful,
but is there a natural time for a transition? I mean, you know, Ray thinks you'll download your
consciousness into, you know, the computer and that's really possible, but I think life as we
know it has a cycle, but I think it certainly can be lengthened. And with the same reason you got
in this first place, tell people how you, what you thought about the whales, what got you thinking in this way in the first place?
So I'm in medical school.
I'm running a space company, but fourth year medical school, life is intense.
I see this television show on long live sea life.
And that species of whales, bowhead whales are living 200 years, Greenland sharks living
four or 500 years.
And I'm saying to myself, if they can live that long, why can't I? So, and it's either going to be an engineering problem or a software problem. And I said, we're going to solve that.
And I really think it's this decade, the next decade that we're going to have the tools to do
that. You know, and it's the thing that people don't realize is it's been a slow, steady progress, but the last decade has been this massive inflection and the acceleration with big data, with AI, with tools like CRISPR that we're beginning to understand, to quote David Sinclair, why we age and maybe why we don't have to.
why we age and maybe why we don't have to. And so, you know, Ray talks about something called longevity escape velocity that today, during a decade, we're adding on average two years per
decade, but there's going to be a point at which we're adding, you know, a decade per decade,
and then more than a decade per decade. Now, interestingly, Ray's prediction for that was
we'd have that in the next 12 to 13 years. I asked George Church, and I wrote about this in our book, Life Force,
I said, when do you think we'll hit longevity escape velocity? And he's a conservative Harvard
professor geneticist. And he said, in the next 15 to 20 years. And that blew me away. So anybody, so the interesting thing is if you believe you can
be healthy over the next 20 years, let's margin it 25 years, that means you're going to be
intercepting new technologies that will extend your runway. And you're, you're intercepting more
and more. I mean, it's basically, if you're under the age of 50, you're going to have the, probably
have the opportunity to make those choices, but it will be interesting though, Peter.
I'm hoping it's under the age of 65 for both of us, pal.
I'm with you on that. But here's the interesting thing. Not everybody's life is so meaningful that
they want to live longer. Yes. This is the other point I want to hit on, right?
This is the piece for me. It's like when people keep talking about these things, it's like,
it comes down to human needs, human psychology, human emotion. Do they have a
compelling future? You know, anyone can deal with a tough today if they have a compelling tomorrow,
but if today is not compelling and tomorrow's not compelling, who gives a damn about whether
living longer or not? And unfortunately, if you look at our society right now in the middle of
winter, psychologically, and so many people being medicated today, right?
And these medications don't make you get out of pain.
They just numb you, right?
I know you saw the SSRIs.
The whole studies are coming out
showing the whole philosophy around SSRIs doesn't work.
They just came out and talked about it.
It doesn't do anything, and yet they're still selling them.
The science is out.
It was meta studies.
So it's like, it's crazy to think about this.
But today, you got all these people
that have committed suicide. You have the largest number of overdoses, 100,000 plus
than we've ever had in the history of this country. There is a psychology about the future that is,
has to shift because being healthy is not compelling if you don't think the future
is worth living for. Yeah. I think that is one of the most important. I talk about having a longevity mindset. And I'm curious what your thoughts are around what that would mean. But one of them is actually having a bigger future than your past.
Yeah, please. what gives people energy at any age besides physical energy, the psychological, spiritual,
emotional energy that drives someone to do something unique is to find something they
care about more than themselves. There's only so much you'll do for yourself because it doesn't,
it's not that hard to get yourself to the point where you're comfortable and you're okay. And
you're fed well, and you're in the world we live in today. Even if you want to live off somebody
else, it's possible to do that. So in most modern countries, not everywhere, obviously, because we're having huge problems
because of COVID and because of Ukraine in terms of feeding people in many parts of the world right
now. That's why I'm doing this hundred billion meals challenge, not just the billion meals
challenge. But if you look at this, we're really missing for most people a sense of what am I here
to serve beyond myself because our society and it's no one's fault. Social media, the science of it has made us so self-oriented.
And the self is never happy or fulfilled.
You're happy and fulfilled when you're not thinking about yourself.
When you're serving your kids or you're serving your family or your community or some mission or your business or something you're going to live for.
But as long as it's just you, you won't have the energy or desire or drive to do much else. Again, you'll only have push motivation, which is coming from pain or pleasure versus pull motivation, which is something larger
that leaps you out of yourself, out of your own individual psychology and into a level of
consciousness of service, which is where people are most alive. You know, I always said I had my
two, my twin boys, Dax and Jet, when I was 50. They're 11 now.
And I said, that's part of my longevity mindset therapy, right?
And the same for you and your daughter.
It's a drive, yeah, for sure.
No question.
No question. You know, the power of the human mind, another amazing mutual friend, Dr. Mark Hyman, he tweeted yesterday or the day before.
friend, Dr. Mark Hyman, he tweeted yesterday or the day before he said, having a loving,
connected conversation with someone will turn on genes that shut off inflammation,
stopping inflammation with your thoughts. Talk about the power of the mind and a longevity mindset to, I think people can will themselves to death and will themselves to life.
Well, we know that's true. We know that from witch doctors that, you know, somebody comes and
they point the bone and the person has a heart attack and they die because the absolute certainty
that this is going to cause them to live or be a certain way. But I think the longevity mindset
to me is really about a life of meaning. That's what I was alluding to here. It's like, what is
going to give your life the meaning? It isn't going to be happy every moment. Happiness is
bullshit. Happiness comes and goes, right? But what's, what lasts is meaning
a depth of meaning that makes it all worthwhile. It's like, you know, sometimes, you know, you and
I get together with people that we love or we've succeeded. Most people, when you're, when you're
thinking about things, we're talking about things. If we're not talking about what we're creating
for now and for the future, we think about where we are compared to where we were. And you remember
those tough times. And they're like some of the most joyous things because they provide contrast. Like in order to have a foreground, you need a
background. And I think what we really desperately need to have people get a better sense of it
today is like, what is going to give my life greater meaning? What is going to make me want
to get up early and stay up late and feel fully alive? To me, that's the most important thing.
And relationships are the base of it all because look, you know, it's been said a million times in corny ways.
You know, no one's on their deathbed saying, I wish I spent more time at the office.
But it's just all the studies show that the longevity comes from having those meaningful, loving relationships.
It's what gives you joy. And it's so sad today that so many people are turning away from the concept of family.
So many young people today,
because they've been convinced the world is going to end, you know, climate change is going to
destroy us. I mean, look, if you really look at the statistics and where we are, we're not past
that point. And if you look at human history, how many times in your lifetime, we're both over 60,
have you seen the end of the world, the end of oil, the end of everything, right? And it's like,
it's never been true. I remember CNN was talking about just two years ago, three years ago,
the barrier reef is destroyed. And now the barrier reef is growing more than it ever has in the last
30 years, right? In Australia. It's just like, we look at things in this little shape here.
And we also forget that the earth has warmed and cooled many times before, before we were here.
And the world's doing fine. The real question is, how will we adapt?
And how do we make sure that we still create a compelling future?
Because so many young people today, they don't even want to have a family because they go,
what am I going to bring these kids into?
It's winter.
You need to grow during winter.
That was the turning point for when I wrote the book Abundance.
It was a conversation in a coffee shop and a guy and gal were having a conversation about
whether they should bring a child into this world.
And because it was so bad.
And I was like, I was like, in my own mind, like, what world are you seeing?
This is the most extraordinary world of opportunity ever.
There's there's nothing we can't do now.
People, people.
Here's the thing.
People have nothing to compare it to.
It's like interviewing these college students about America. I'm so embarrassed where else have you been nowhere like if they've never traveled
anybody else i was in the soviet union when it was still the soviet union i i've been down
you know in south america and some of these countries that were on the edge when they were
really on the edge so it's like i have i know what what it really means to have socialism
or what it really means to be in communism.
They have no reference.
They just have what they believe about where things are.
And their belief is being colored by the environment and by social media and by the current media.
And I think it's up to guys like all of us who see a better future to show people what's real, what's true, and to create some contrast for them.
They have no contrast.
Right now, we are living with less violence than any time in human history. Steven Pinker did this great study. And over the
last X number of centuries, it's been about 15% of people that have been directly involved with
something of violence. Today, it's 0.006. But, you know, we see it today because it's right there on
your phone. It's right there in your face. It's there every single moment. We have less violence. We have longer living. We have a world where we've got
more people out of poverty than ever in human history, even though there's still poverty and
huge challenges. We have these, everything in your hand. You know, it's crazy because we're
bombarded by the same murder over and over and over again in our living room and it just hits our amygdalas and it's it's insane um you know showing people that better future showing the potential of that
future is really going back to our first conversation on entrepreneurs would i really
want uh those listening to us to to internalize and and focus on It's how do we create a vision of that future?
And really, that's a little bit of where XPRIZE is going.
It's like, this is from a first principle thinking, this is possible in energy in the
future.
This is possible in education and health care.
And we can uplift every man, woman, and child.
Yes, no question.
No question.
And I'd say to those people also, especially the ones
that have, who've built some resources, it's like, where else are you going to go? I got to a point,
I can remember maybe 10 years ago where it's like, if I wasn't doing this for my passion,
what would I be doing this for? I've outdone everything I ever dreamed of. And there's no
thing that I want, you know, planes, automobiles, and none of that drove me anyway.
Impact is what's driven me.
So like, okay, well, I'm going to reach millions more people.
How do I make that game bigger?
And that's when I started setting these goals.
Okay, I'm going to feed a billion people.
That is a worthy goal on top of all the hundreds of millions or billion people I've had a chance to touch in other ways.
Let me provide food to them.
And then I remember I was in India
and I saw these kids dying of waterborne diseases,
so easy to solve. And so now I provide water for a quarter of then I remember I was in India and I saw these kids dying of waterborne diseases so easy to solve.
And so now I provide water for a quarter of a million people a day in India and I got the goal to go to a million.
Then, you know, I was fortunate enough to get my own plane.
I was like, I'm conscious about what that means.
It's like, okay, how many trees is that?
That's 5,000 trees a year.
So I planted 71 million trees.
I'm my goal to 100 million trees already. But not just trees, building farmland and showing people in Africa how to create these forests, these areas where they now have a new crop every
month instead of once a year. How do they go from $1.25 a day to $12? It doesn't sound like much,
but they're rich in their community and they're not trying to cross the desert and dying. And
when one crop doesn't work, they're still there. So I, it's like, so I go, okay, air, water, food.
Okay, how about freedom?
How about all these kids right now?
The slave trade is the largest it's ever been in human history.
Nobody wants to talk about it.
It's so ugly.
It's the fastest growing crime because they get to use it over and over again.
They don't have to send a new drug.
They use that child over and over again.
It's insane.
So, okay, now we got 28,000 children on the way to 50,000 children want to free.
It's bigger than the city I grew up in.
That was the target.
But these goals, you know, I want to create a community.
Where do people are going to live?
I worked with a 3D company.
We built 100 homes in Mexico.
People there showing a lifestyle and showing all these NGOs what's possible, how fast you can build a home in a day.
So all the things that I've been doing here, you know, from the planting of the trees to the food to helping people on the health side, they give me more juice than my businesses did.
And then that gave me more reasons.
I mean, I donate more now today than I would have dreamed of even earning at one stage.
And it gives me the reason to make the business even more successful, the companies I'm in, as well as look for businesses where I can have the highest and largest impact possible.
But you've got to find the buttons that are going to get you, and you've got to discover what it is.
And when you get around something, like I said earlier, something will strike you.
But if you stay in the same box, doing your business the same way every day, around the
same kind of people, the same kind of thinking, you might do well.
But are you going to be fulfilled?
Are you going to be driven?
Are you going to be excited?
Are you going to have a sense of meaning?
You need to find something big enough and bold enough as you
have done, Peter, and I've done, and the people we love have done that really will get you to
maximize who you are. Because in the end, the only thing we get to keep is what we've given.
This is the juice I wanted for people to hear, right? Because it really is inspiring them to
pursue that life of meaning, to make a bigger impact on the planet, to use whatever skills or treasures or tools they have to go and do that.
Because you have a choice where you invest your time.
All of us have today, you know, the same 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week, how
many days in our lifetime.
It's how we spend that time that we can choose and make a difference in.
And, you know, we have the ability more than ever
before to impact the world's biggest problems, uplift individuals, whether you're doing it
directly or you're doing it by the company you choose to work for or where you donate your money.
And I think that sense of impact, there's nothing more important. Now, the question is,
what percentage of people are living that life
of meaning and impact, you think? Without guessing a number and making it up,
a very small percentage, unfortunately, right? But I think it's a larger number at different
stages. I think right now there's so many people that have gotten to learn helplessness,
where after a while when you teach, you take that little elephant, you know the metaphor,
it's a little baby elephant and they tie a rope around it and they drive it in the ground and
it tugs and it can't pull. Now it's a big elephant. It could take the whole damn tent down. It doesn't
even try. I think the COVID experience has conditioned a lot of people to accept a life
far less than what they desire or deserve. But I also know there are other people that are going
to lead the way and show what's possible. And that's how life changes. You know, how do we go from no one ever running a four minute mile to Roger Bannister doing it
and 46 days later, another guy does it. And now there's over 200 people have done it because
when somebody shows what's possible, that's what drives the species to find the people that are
hungry enough to say, if that's possible for them, I can do it too, or I can do even more.
And I think that's the secret to human progress.
And by the way, if people listening, if we were to summarize the whole thing, in the end, what do you want to have?
You want to have a meaningful life.
You want a life that feels really joyful, happy.
Where does happiness come from?
Progress.
Progress equals happiness.
I don't give a shit where you are.
If you're not where you want to be physically and you just start working out and you lose a few pounds and you start feeling better, you're going to feel alive. If your relationship isn't where it was,
you attack it, you're going to feel more alive. If you're doing it around your finances,
whatever we do, progress is everything. And think about it. When people achieve their goal,
whatever their goal is, no matter how big it is, they feel great for how long?
Six months? A year? Five years? I don't think so. Most people, somewhere between six hours and six weeks,
and then they're on to the next thing. And the reason is because we're made to keep growing.
If we don't grow, we don't feel alive. And that's what progress is. When you grow,
you have something to give. When you have something to give, your life becomes meaningful.
Along that line, Tony, a gratitude mindset. I think for entrepreneurs in particular,
I think for entrepreneurs in particular, having a gratitude mindset is one of the things that allows them to play at the level they play consistently because they're going to be hitting the floor a lot of times.
I think you need a daily practice.
First of all, you've got to see why because it can sound so positive thinky.
But if you look at all the studies, what are the two emotions that destroy most people's lives, their businesses, their relationships, their happiness? You know, what is it? It's anger and it's fear and anger and fear have an antidote. And the antidote is really simple. It's called
gratitude. When you're, you can't be grateful and angry simultaneously. That's the beauty.
You can't be fearful and grateful simultaneously. So I think people need a daily practice and I do
too. And there are all kinds of ones. Mine, I call it priming.
And in essence, what I do every single morning, the first thing I do, I go do my physical things, my cold water, my workout, my exercise.
And then I sit down and I do 10 minutes.
And I do it as 10 minutes because if I said 20, you might say you don't have time.
But if you don't have 10 minutes for your life, you don't have a wife, right?
So it's like most people can do 10 minutes.
And a lot of times it goes more than that because it feels good.
But what I'm doing is I focus on this step. I first make a radical change in your body to get yourself out of the place you're in. I'll do like breath of fire, 30 of those breaths in through the
nose, out through the nose explosively, right? And you do that over and over. Like I do three sets of
30. Now my body's changed. I just do three things, three minutes on what I'm grateful for a minute each on three specific memories, something in my life that's happening today or
has happened. And I see it, feel it. And I step in like I'm there, like, like not remembering being
on a roller coaster over there, like remembering going over the front as you're dropping down,
you know, be in the experience. That's what makes it associated and connected. It changes your
biochemistry. And when you stack three of them,
it'll actually change your heart and brain rhythms.
It's been proven by a variety of studies, right?
You'll literally see them working together.
You get in this oneness kind of state.
And then I do just three minutes
of what would be like a prayer or a blessing
for the best of me to be used that day,
and then sending that blessing from my heart
into all those I love, starting with my children,
my family, my friends, my coworkers, all the way out to people I'm going to serve. And while that may
sound airy-fairy, there's been plenty of research, Joan, that when you go into a state of compassion
or love for others, including strangers, it rewires your brain in a different way.
And then the last three minutes, I do what I call a free to thrive. I spend a minute each and think
of something I really want to achieve, but I don't think about wanting to achieve it. I see it as
done, complete, and celebratory in my body, like it's actually happened,
convincing my brain that it's already there.
And I'm done.
And in 10 minutes, I have primed my brain for an extraordinary day.
If you don't prime it, it's going to be primed by the news.
It's going to be primed by what somebody tells you.
It's going to be primed by the first challenge put in front of you.
So I think using gratitude as a daily practice is really critical.
If people want to, they can go to TonyRobbins.com forward slash priming.
It's free.
There's a video that will guide you through it if you want to do it.
Or you can just do your own version of it.
Yeah, and I've done it a dozen times at all of your events, which I commend to everybody.
They're extraordinary, especially Date with Destiny, which has changed my life decade after decade.
Buddy, I want to turn to a final conversation around around moon shots
and I define a moon shot as
Going ten times bigger compared to what the rest world is going ten percent bigger and in you are an individual
Who has taken a number of moon shots over and over and over again?
Obviously what you're doing in feeding,
what's the target now? A hundred billion? A hundred billion. Because I'm quite near a billion right now. Yeah. A hundred billion. Yeah. It's not 10 X, it's a hundred X.
The psychology of allowing yourself to let go of the past of what is rationally doable
and going for something insane is super hard for people to do.
Right.
And it's, you know, at the end of the day, the day before something is truly a breakthrough,
it's a crazy idea.
And most of us don't embrace crazy ideas.
Institutions don't embrace crazy ideas, corporations, governments, and so forth.
It's really that individual who's got this vision of what YouTube or Airbnb or Uber or SpaceX or Tesla, whatever
these companies, they're crazy ideas until they're made to happen. And we have a large number of
entrepreneurs going after moonshots. I'd like to tell you what I think gets in the way. I call it
the tyranny of how. You got to avoid the tyranny of how. When Martin Luther King or John F. Kennedy
use either example, John F. Kennedy goes out and says in front of the American people, we are going
to put a man on the moon and return him to earth safely in this decade. And the people at NASA are
like, what the F? There's no way. So what did he do? He knew what he needed to do as the leader
of this country. And he knew why. The why was the Russians were beating us in space. Nuclear power was happening and it was concerned about their ability to destroy us.
This was not like, I think we should do this. It's like we have to surpass them in our technology to
protect this nation and continue to lead. And so when he put those irons in the fire, everybody
said it couldn't be done, but it did. When Martin Luther King got up and said, I have a dream,
and he shared that dream,
he didn't have any clue how.
In fact, the how wasn't clear.
And while we're still improving that area,
you know, we've had the President of the United States
for eight years was African American.
That was unheard of, unthought of.
It couldn't have happened without his dream first.
So it's like, what I tell people is,
when you set a goal and it's really big,
and what happens immediately, your brain goes like,
I'm going to do this. And then your brain goes, who are you kidding? Because it goes into the
how. I don't know how to do this. I've never done it before. And whenever you've not done something
before, you have no certainty. When you have no certainty, that produces uncertainty, which leads
to fear. The fear I'm not enough. Fear I won't pull it off. Fear I'm going to fail. And fear is
the only enemy here. So how do you deal with that? You first get so strong on
the what and why. What is it I really want and why do I want it with enough reasons? I always tell
people reasons come first, answers come second. If you get strong enough reasons why to do something,
you know exactly what you want and the target is exciting enough, you're going to go there.
So the guys that are B&B did not have a vision for where they were when they started. They were
just trying to pay their bills. That's what they want to get people to understand.
They didn't have enough money, so they put mattresses on the ground and there was a
conference in town. They were trying to sell it. It looked like a failure of a business for the
first five years. But here we are 10, 12 years later, and it's unbelievable.
So when I first started setting some goals, I can remember I was sometimes just putting the line in the sand.
I was at a grade school in Houston, Texas, 30 years ago.
I was 30 years old.
And I'll never forget, they asked me to come and speak to these kids to inspire them.
And then they put on this little mini program for me for each grade about how they'd applied my technology for the first graders, second graders, third graders.
And it was moving.
At the end, I got up and I said, they told me to come here to motivate you.
And I'm not a motivator anyway.
I said, I'm more a strategist.
But I said, you motivated me.
And I was like, I'll tell you what, I don't want this to end.
You sixth graders, you're going off.
You only have one year.
The rest of you have got many years of this ahead of you.
I said, I'm going to arrange to pay for all of your college educations as long as you
do a couple of things.
I did this on the spot I just remembered
seeing this guy in where was it
in Harlem who decided
to pay for the college educations of these kids
but I said you know but I don't have a college
education but I think it's invaluable
for you to have the experience
of it but in order to get it there's a couple standards
you have to keep a B average and I'll help
you get mentoring and you got to give me
25 hours of community service. Now, these were kids from the lowest
of the low incomes, single families, mostly African-American, Hispanic. And I remember the,
the people, the kids didn't, they cheered, but they don't know what the hell it was.
The school system thought I was proselytizing. I was some, you know, some cult that was doing it.
I wrote, I signed contracts for this. This was an amount of money back then that was doing it. I wasn't doing it. I wrote, I signed contracts for this.
This was an amount of money back then
that was beyond what I thought I knew how to do.
Wow.
I knew what and why, and I did it.
And I coached those kids.
They're called my champions of excellence.
And you know, guess what?
Now they're doctors and lawyers and teachers.
And I mean, they've got kids and children.
And this has, you know,
it's been going on for 30 years now.
They're at a different stage of life.
But same thing with feeding.
It's like, okay, I started with two families, then four, then eight, they got to a million. Then when I
came up with this idea, I remember it's like, okay, I found out how many people I fed in my
lifetime was 42 million. Like what if I fed 50 million people over the next five years? That
took me a whole lifetime. It's like, what if I met 50 million people in a year? Holy shit. What
if I met a hundred million people in a year? What if I did a hundred million meals for 10 straight years that a billion meals, the level of excitement of that, the energy of
that, the focus of that and the why the impact, the lives, the people got so big. I didn't even
know how it was just like, I'm going to do this. Then I started to figure out the how what's the
numbers and so forth. But I let the other be so large before the how showed up. If you bring how into the early stage of the conversation, it will kill your dream.
It'll kill your goal because you don't know how in the beginning.
How will be revealed if you put your ass on the line and have strong enough reasons that how will be revealed.
And revealed often in multiple steps.
So now I'm closing it.
I'm at 945 million meals.
And I'm like, whenever you have a goal as you're approaching the end, don't wait to the end before you set the next one. Cause it's a game to make you keep
growing. It's like, it's the purpose of goal is not to get the goal. The purpose is what it makes
of you as a human being. I love, I love that. There's a great, there's a great Joseph Campbell
quote that, that hits it. It goes a bit of advice given to a young native American at the time of
his initiation. As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm jump.
It is not as wide as you think.
That's cool.
I really love that.
And I think it's true.
But you've got to put yourself in the line.
You've got to give up the how initially.
Then you put your head into the how once the what and why is so compelling.
And you bring some other people on with you who also now see that vision.
And that's how you build something that matters.
And that's what you've done your whole life, Peter.
You're a perfect example of that.
Truth of it.
Thank you.
Thank you, brother.
I love you too.
You know, many people may not know that you, in your theme of helping to feed the world,
you co-funded one of our XPRIZEs, Feeding the Next the next billion along with the royal family out of Abu
Dhabi. And the goal there is reinventing how we produce food, right? It's instead of, you know,
we have one third of the non-ice landmass of the planet that is used for livestock. I mean,
billions of pigs, chicken, fish, you know, it's insane. And as we're raising the level of
standards of living for the world,
we can't afford to produce more high quality protein that way. So we've asked teams to create,
in this case, chicken and fish from stem cell grown meats or vegetable equivalents and
incredible response there. I have a question. And that prize, hopefully, we'll see the semifinals
very shortly in the finals within the next year. And we'll reinvent the food delivery program so
food can be delivered in downtown Nairobi or Detroit or Chicago, where the case might be,
one of the food miles, which costs a significant percentage of the cost of food.
costs a significant percentage of the cost of food.
What other place in the world or challenge,
if you were going to, if I was going to say, Tony, I've got full funding, an entire prize,
ready to go for whatever topic you want.
What's another place that you would love to see
entrepreneurs, innovators, scientists around the world focus on solving? What's another grand that you would love to see entrepreneurs, innovators, scientists
around the world focus on solving?
What's another grand challenge out there?
To me, I think we helped fund one of those, and we made great progress on it.
But I want to see it at a different level, and that's education.
Because when it comes down to it, if we can provide the food and the water and the basic
safety and so forth, then it really comes to people being able to create the future themselves.
And I think in order to do that,
in the world that we're in right now,
the internet is worthless if you can't read and write
and do basic arithmetic.
And as you know, we're still in a world
where 250 million adults are illiterate.
I mean, we're a quarter of a billion
and we're gonna bring on, what,
another couple billion, three billion people
on the internet soon?
So I know we've done that initial prize and we've got some technology in that area.
But I'd love to see that also tied with something that ties to emotional fitness, not so much emotional intelligence.
You know, emotional intelligence, intelligence is a capability, right?
You know, like you can be a smart person and not act very smart, right?
So, you know, when I think about fitness,
I think it's a state of readiness.
Like, you know, you can know what to do
and not do what you know.
You got to bring it up.
You got to make it active in your nervous system.
And I, you know, one of the reasons I did the project
I did with Stanford, where they did that study on us,
which was produced in the journal Psychiatry,
is that, you know, right now,
we have an epidemic of depression in the world. I mean, it's insane how bad it is
and how much we are dependent upon these drugs and that people self-medicate in so many ways today,
whether it's using Prozac or Zoloft or it's, you know, cocaine or whatever it is that they take,
meth or cigarettes or some distraction. I think we're living in a world where we've been trained to do that.
And the studies show how terrible it is.
I mean, the guys from Stanford showed me, the meta studies show that only 40% of the
people that take these drugs and go through therapy get better at all.
And the average improvement is 50%, which means they're half as depressed as they were.
Now, some people get totally well, but it's a small percentage.
And so there was a study done about three years ago at Johns Hopkins where they used psilocybin as an active psychographic drug, and they gave them cognitive therapy for a month, and they got results they'd never seen.
53% of the people 30 days later were not depressed.
Well, they decided to use that same study, duplicate it with the same control group, and do my date with destiny because they had two people from Stanford that were clinically depressed and came back
and they weren't.
And they said, we don't have any data on this.
So they did the study and it was so profound.
They didn't believe it.
And so to cover themselves, they sent the information out to different organizations,
double blind.
30 days later, 100% of the people, this is no exaggeration.
It's in the journal of psychiatry, double blind studies, 100% of the people had this is no exaggeration, it's in the Journal of Psychiatry, double-blind studies, 100% of the people had no depression symptoms, 19% had suicidal ideation before they came in,
none had suicidal ideation after just six days. All we did in those six days is train people
to develop a way of looking at life, a philosophy of life, a set of strategies, a set of beliefs and
values that would allow them to deal with the issues that are around them. It's kind of like you wouldn't take a standard car on, you know,
a desert 1000, you're going 1000 miles in the desert, or one of those ones to Saudi Arabia,
where they're out in the desert, you know, you have to have a special piping, special tires,
we need to reengineer our psychology for the modern world, where change happens at a whole
different level. So I'd love
to see that education, not just be able to learn, but also how to enjoy a life that is meaningful,
which includes contribution at its base and a way to find the good and what's going on.
Because what's wrong is always available. It always has been, it always will be.
And it's getting easier and it's getting easier to be available. There are two things here. One is,
And it's getting easier to be available.
There are two things here.
One is, you know, when you and I went to elementary school, whatever it was, 50 years ago to today, very little has changed.
It really is pathetic that so little has changed in that. And your daughter is going to be getting ready to go into that cycle in the decade ahead.
is going to be getting ready to go into that cycle in the decade ahead.
And I think about this with my two 11-year-olds, that I just find what they're teaching and how they're teaching, and they go to the best school here in Santa Monica, as far as I'm
concerned, is still, it is a travesty that we've not reinvented the educational process,
right?
I agree 100%.
And I think there are people working on it, but it's like,
why aren't we using the best teachers?
I know you know there's a couple of models like this already being tested.
Use the best possible teachers,
and then the time that they're doing at school is where they're being helped.
That's where their homework is.
The lesson could be at home.
They're watching and taking notes and doing those things.
Now, not now yet because we still don't have full enough internet and so forth, but the direction
is why would I take average teachers or weak teachers to teach me when I can get the very
best on earth to teach my son or daughter? And, you know, in my daughter's case, you know,
I'm fortunate enough to have done well enough in life and business, help enough other people that
I've got the economics to say, no, she'll, she will be homeschooled and she'll have the best teachers on earth because they're available and i think that's the direction
things are going and also the cost is absurd the government especially this i'm not being political
but to to give a trillion dollars away to a small number of people that are professionals
and when all the people that didn't go to school because they couldn't get the money or have it
you know to have a plumber being paid for or a taxi guy being paid for, someone who's getting an advanced degree or
a degree that doesn't mean squat.
And mention all the people like you and I who went to school and paid for the school
and did it on their own.
I mean, this is absurd, but that's why we have the problem we do, because they know
it's being guaranteed by the government.
I mean, when a country, you know, one of your beautiful schools as a $53 billion, basically annuity, they're really just schools
with, with, with, with private equity attached to it. You know, that's what they are.
No, I know. But, but this is when I go back to the issue of billionaires giving away their money.
It's like, really does Harvard need another billion dollars? I mean, honestly, do they
really need that extra billion dollars? Or Yale or Stanford, they're all great
schools. But the truth is, they're not putting students out there that are being productive in
the world. Let them reimburse these students instead of the plumber or the electrician.
So you hit a couple of points I want to come back to. The point you made about,
it's called the flip classroom, right? The Khan the Khan Academy where you, at home at night,
you learn about trigonometry or about history. And then in school, it's a conversation and doing the
work with a teacher there. And it really is. And we're seeing open classrooms around the world
from the top universities. And the other side, we talked about the notion that human level AI is coming, right? The notion of how do we enable AI
to be the best educator. And by the way, the cost of that is effectively going to be zero, just like
Google is, right? It's the cost of electricity. Now, you and I have talked about creating AI
versions of ourselves, and you've invested in a couple of platforms looking at that. And we should
catch up because I've got a new company I want to share with you that's going to digitize me and should do the same for you.
But the idea of having the knowledge that you've, you know, taking what you did with Date With Destiny.
And how many people are typically in Date With Destiny with you?
10,000.
10,000.
And now we do it digitally now.
So we used to do 5,000.
But now people can participate from their homes around the world.
So we doubled it.
And people get a huge amount by just being in the conversation and doing the work.
And I commend it to anybody.
You have to go through this.
It is a life-changing experience on so many fundamental levels.
You know, it's interesting.
I thought about, you know, how much I wish I had done it when I was 20, let alone 30 or 40.
But, you know, if you're 50 or 60 or 70, when's the best time to do it?
Tomorrow, you know, in this next cycle.
next cycle. But the ability to digitize yourself and the best leaders, educators, coaches,
therapists, whatever it might be on the planet, and making it available to an individual has the potential. I mean, when we talk about mental illness and people who need help,
it's this technology that I think has the biggest potential impact.
I agree 100%.
I've made several investments in them right now in negotiation with other companies, so
I'd love to hear what you're talking about.
The ability to really true AI, true interactivity, and it's not just me.
I can do that for individuals, adults, but instead of me working with 80,000, 100,000,
a million people as a group, being able to individually 24 hours a day, 365, be there for them.
And screw me, have you, have Ray Dalio, have all the different great leaders in the world be the teachers for people.
That's where education is going to go.
And it's going to drop the price to the floor.
We're still going to want to have the experience of being together in some locations and doing things together.
But I think it's going to be a mix of these things. And I think it's going to change things. Right now, it's the worst
investment you can make for most people. I mean, for some people, it's great. Depends on what you
get educated in, obviously, and what the quality of education is.
Take the time, let alone the money you would have spent, and go and do an internship with somebody.
Go and be an apprentice. I have a number of people who are my strike force members
who intern with me and they're in everything. In every conversation, you know a number of them.
And it's like, there's no, it's ridiculous, current college education. And we have to
differentiate between learning and socialization. Exactly. I'm saying the socialization you're
still going to want to do and are going to share experiences and so forth. But I just think it can be done so much more efficiently. And this is not sustainable. And, you know, we can't just keep, quote, you're not forgiving a trillion dollars or half a trillion dollars. You're making other people pay for it. I mean, how can you possibly justify that except to try to get votes? I mean, it's a political move. It's not a move that's based on what's right for society. And those things are, they're piling up.
That's why we have the economic challenges we have.
We're a little bit like Rome right now.
You know, you study Rome and Rome just got to a point where they couldn't sustain financially
what they'd built.
We're getting close to that if we don't turn things around.
And anyone who's listening, who is, has energy around some of these challenges, whether it's
in health or education, consider that's where
there are incredible businesses to be built. We're going to reinvent. The entire education
system and healthcare system is going to be disrupted. Those are the two biggest systems,
finances there too, government not far behind, that are going to collapse and be reinvented.
And so the question is, do you have a vision of what that would look like how you can uplift and help people?
We're gonna demonetize democratize dematerialize schools. It's gonna be an AI. It's gonna be in the metaverse
It's gonna be personalized where I get the education the way I want education. Do I want it visually auditorily?
Experientially, it's gonna be meet my needs, you know
It's gonna be a classroom of one where the AI knows whether I learned anything or I didn't.
Did it hit me or did it miss me?
Instead of a classroom where half are bored and half are lost.
But in the meantime, while you're waiting for that beautiful future that's being built, make sure you take control of your kid's education right now.
Make sure you don't just shift off to somebody else.
There's a few things in life that you want coaching from others on,
but you need to make the final decision. If it comes down to how your children are going to be
raised or their education, if it's coming down to your health, if it's coming down to your finances
or what you're going to believe spiritually, these are areas that it's good to get coaching,
but you have to decide because if someone else is sincere, but they're sincerely wrong,
it's going to destroy your life, whether it be health or whether it be relationships or whether
it be your children. So there's plenty of great tools available right now.
And because, you know, I'm now with a 17 month old, right? My daughter, it's like, I'm, I'm
immersing myself in all these different forms of education, the things that are appropriate for her
now and the things that are coming, they're available. So we don't have to wait for this
beautiful, compelling future and we can all participate in creating it as well. But I'd say don't stop right now just because
you're busy. Make sure you get those things in that matter most to those you love most.
Brother, thank you for spending Labor Day with me.
Seems totally appropriate.
Give my love to Sage and the family and thank you for all that you do.
Thank you.
I don't think people realize the extraordinary scope
with which you bring meaning
to not just your life,
but so many people around the planet.
It's a pleasure to call you
a brother and a friend.
Thank you, Peter.
I always love our time together.
Give your little boys
a big hug and lady too.
And I'll see you soon, brother.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Bye.