Peter Diamandis 2:04
I would say that it isn’t about any one technology. I think what Steven and I focus on the book is the convergence of technologies. And what’s different about what’s happening this next decade and beyond is it’s–it used to be that you could be an expert in any one technology, and you’d be amazing. But today, it’s really the combination of three, four, five of these converging and creating new business models. It’s not just augmented reality. It’s augmented reality + 5G + AI, reinventing retail; 3D printing + machine learning + robotics + material sciences, reinventing transportation, right? It’s, it’s these combinations. But Steven, do you have a favorite?

Steven Kotler 2:48
Whenever you pointed AI, you ask yourself the question: Is it going to be AI, or is it going to be quantum computing underneath the AI also, right? So I agree with Peter. I think the point is that we’re getting converging exponentials. You know, the big point with that is with solitary, exponential technologies progressing–nanotechnology or AI–but the level of disruption has been huge, right? But it tends to be along the lines of products and services. When you get converging exponentials, it scales up. And suddenly, it’s whole markets are being disrupted, or institutions are being disrupted. That’s what we’re talking about now. And it–the point of The Future is Faster Than You Think is that it really is right here, right now. Next ten years pretty much every major industry on earth is gonna be massively reconfigured.

Peter Diamandis 3:37
There’s a great quote from Sundar, the CEO of Google, who says that, in his opinion, “Artificial intelligence is going to be more important than the invention of fire or electricity to humanity,” and I would agree. And one of the things that I’m fond of saying that we talk about in the book is that, you know, in the next decade, there are gonna be two kinds of companies: those that are using artificial intelligence, and those that are bankrupt. And I think it’s that critically important. It’s like, you know, not having a–using the internet, it’s, it’s going to be fundamental to the competitiveness and the success of any company in the future.

Stig Brodersen 4:14
It’s fascinating how you look at this. And I guess for our listeners, who might be thinking that we are at a tipping point with technology, one thing comes to mind: What is driving the exponential speed of the progress of technology?

Steven Kotler 4:29
You know, it’s…I mean on a foundational level, Moore’s Law, right? This is what all the technologies that are exponential technologies that we’ve been talking about. What that means is they’ve become digital cartologies, right? You can program them, and the ones, zeroes use computer code, and once that happens, technologies jump on the back of Moore’s law, and they begin accelerating exponentially. So underneath it, right, the core thing that’s driving this is our computers are getting twice as fast for the same price every 18 months. And we’re using our computers to build even faster computers, and even faster computers, and even faster computers. And while there’s a–there are a lot of people who have been talking about sort of the end of Moore’s law. While it is true we are moving in that direction, there are six or seven different replacement technologies just sort of waiting to take its place to continue kind of this growth spurt. So I think, Peter, you might have something to add. But that to me is what, you know, is driving most of this forward.

Peter Diamandis 5:28
We have in our book a chapter called “Acceleration of the Acceleration” in which we basically show these series of forces that are compounding on top of each other, which are actually accelerating the rate at which technology is accelerating. So for example, there’s more capital than ever before, right? There’s more capital every year. In the last three, four years, we’ve hit an all time high in venture capital; in crowdfunding; in sovereign wealth fund investments that are coming down into the venture start-ups space. And that abundance of capital is causing people to invest in riskier and riskier things. And the day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea. And we’re seeing more and more breakthroughs. We’re seeing more and more crazy ideas becoming real. And so, those are accelerating things. At the same time we also have this massive demonetization of all of these technologies. So for massive bandwidth, it used to be very expensive. Remember back in 2000, you know, buying bandwidth from Akamai was my largest budget item. Today, bandwidth is demonetizing so quickly. Genome sequencing went from a $100 million for a single genome to a $100 for genome sequencing. So for a hundred million dollars, you can now sequence a million people. Things are getting cheaper and faster. And there are more people connected, and people are living longer. All of these things are accelerating the rate at which technology is transforming the world.

Steven Kotler 6:59
One of the forces of acceleration, Peter mentioned it briefly earlier, is the creation of new business models. And I know that sounds like the kind of thing that doesn’t sound particularly revolutionary, but if you look at the 20th century, we got roughly one new business model a decade. So in the 1920s, it was what they call Bait and Hawk, right? Buy, the razor is free; you’re going to pay for the blades later. The 50s, it was franchise models. They’re like McDonald’s, and then in the 60s, it was super stores, right? We are now–in the book, we look at eight different business models that either they’re unfolding now or they’re going to be rolled out over the next decade. These are entirely new radical, new ways of business that unlock–I mean, think about what franchise models unlocked. Think about what Badenoch unlocked. Think about what one of these things unlocked in terms of change to the markets; change to how we do business; and then think, “Oh, wow! We got one a decade for the last century, and we’re about to get ten in the next decade?” That’s a lot of change very quickly.

Preston Pysh 8:05
Do you think that–and I know blockchain is one of the areas that you guys have an expertise as well–do you think that with all the credit that’s been created; unbacked fiat currency over the past call it 30, 40 years that has provided this influx of capital, and, and Peter, you made the comment that the capital that’s being provided to the markets is going into riskier and riskier areas. I could make the argument; I think other people could make the argument that one of the reasons that blockchain, Bitcoin, whatever you want to refer to it at has emerged as a technology is because there hasn’t been this backing of capital. And that has led to this massive influx of investment in start-ups and in this entrepreneurial space. So if blockchain does become a technology that is a global standard in the future, do you have the opposite thing taking place because now you have sound money that is forcing central banks to act reasonably and appropriately. Is that a concern for the speed at which technology is going to be adopted in the future?

Steven Kotler 9:09
I don’t think so. I mean, first of all, let’s differentiate cryptocurrencies from blockchain, right? Blockchain’s technology that is beginning to see traction and beginning to see utility in this hyper connected world. And one of the things that enables blockchain technologies to be useful is that we’re heading towards a world where all eight billion people are connected at gigabit connection speeds. And we have sensors measuring everything everywhere. It’s something that people are not speaking about enough. And blockchain is simply a technology layer that’s going to enable us to connect with individual items and track movements of data and assets. But one of the challenges, when it comes to the financial world and capital is that the old world economics are broken. How we measure economics of a person’s productivity; a country’s productivity–all those things are invalid in this day and age, you know? If I had an extra year of time, I would pitch Steven on writing a book on 22nd century economics, but we’re heading towards a post-capitalist society.

I have to tell you, we’ve finished, Abundance, and I turned to you, and I said, “You know, Peter, I think the most interesting problems we uncovered are all in economics. And we have a spare four or five years, we can go back to school, get a degree, and write another book. I’m for it!”

Peter Diamandis 10:31
The challenge is that, you know, the whole sharing economy; AI, robotics; all of these technologies, which are creating value creation. They’re creating agility of capital. They’re creating value in ways that have never been measured before. Steven and I talk about this in our first book, in our first collaboration called, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think, in which, you know, we say, listen, a kid in–a Masai warrior or a kid in Tanzania with a smartphone or feature phone has a million dollars worth of apps on it that is never been accounted for in the economic system, right? And when all of a sudden autonomous cars in the next four or five years are giving people back two hours of productivity a day, where is that going to be accounted for? Or the efficiencies are coming, so economics are fundamentally broken.

Stig Brodersen 11:24
One thing that really impressed me is how you think about scarcity and how nothing truly is scarce. Peter, Steven, could you please talk to us about that concept?

Patrick Lee 11:36
Technology has this ability to take resources that were once scarce and make them abundant. And the example we’re all familiar with, and we give it abundance that is still I think relevant is film. When I was growing up; when Peter was growing up, and we went on vacation, we took our cameras, you took limited photographs because the photos were expensive to develop. The paper develop it costs money. And, you know, I was growing up in rural Ohio, we had to drive far away to get our film developed. Now the problem–that was a scarcity problem, right? Now the problem with photographs is I take so many of them, right? I have a sorting problem. I have an abundance problem. I don’t have a scarcity problem. I have an abundance problem. Information is another phenomenal example. Think about how expensive information used to be. Think about how much money like a World Book Encyclopedia was; an Encyclopedia Britannica. Or if you could afford the Oxford English Dictionary, right? Like that was something when I was in college, we were dying to have. Now it’s free. The whole things are free, and abundant, and everywhere. I say this a lot. And he likes to talk about energy, which is a great example. We have very scarce natural resources until we go to renewables. And we go to solar, and you realize, you know, we get 16 terawatts of power every 88 minutes from the sun for free. And, you know, so it’s not a question of scarcity now, we have to capture it, right? It needs technology to make it usable, but technology that tends to be a resource liberating mechanism.

Peter Diamandis 13:14
My favorite example is, you know, what would you think of is more scarce than a, a perfect diamond? A four, five, six carat, perfect diamond? But there’s a friend of mine, who runs a company called the Diamond Foundry, up in the Bay Area, has built a machine about the size of a large refrigerator. In one end comes methane, water, electricity; out the other end comes perfect diamonds: six, eight, ten, twelve carat diamonds. Would you like a flaw in it? No problem. Want color? Sure, you can add that. And so this is again and again, there is nothing that is truly scarce. Even time is being made abundant, right? If you think about it, as we are, you know, on this podcast together years, you know, decades ago, we would have to fly on an airplane; spend the day getting together in a recording studio; and doing this now we can use bandwidth and technology to instantly connect with each other.

Steven Kotler 14:09
In 1900, the average person living in America did fifty eight hours of housework a week. Fifty eight hours. It’s now an hour and a half, thanks to labor-saving devices, right, like running water, a shower, a vacuum…(*inaudible*), but that’s astounding. We’ve taken what was really like a work week and a half of hours and essentially removed it, and can now spend it doing podcasts with you.

Preston Pysh 14:41
Which I am extremely grateful for. And then you just think about how you’re replicating this conversation into other people’s lives, and then the access that they’re getting. It’s just–it’s totally mind-blowing how we’re able to disseminate that information, and then the access, and the gatekeepers that are gone, and everything else is just fascinating. Pulling a little more on the thread with time and scarcity, let’s dive a little bit into biology because Peter, I mean, you’re a doctor from Harvard University, I mean, come on this is crazy.

Peter Diamandis 15:10
Listen, it’s crazy what’s going on, right? And we have a chapter in “The Future is Faster Than You Think” on both how healthcare is going to be reinvented this decade and on longevity. So one of the things that’s extraordinary is we really have moved into a digital biology space where, you know, the cost of sequencing a single human genome–3.2 billion letters of your ATCs and Gs of your life used to be a hundred million dollars. Now it’s sub 1000, soon to be a $100. And to the point where every child born, or when you enter the hospital, you’ll be sequenced just so that they know what drug is working best for you; not for people who are your general, you know, age range, but specifically for you. We’re also seeing a revolution in gene editing. Everybody’s heard of CRISPR or CRISPR-Cas9, a new variant of that that was just announced recently at Harvard and MIT at the Broad Institute, can do very highly precise single nucleotide changes with the promise of being able to correct something like 89%; 89% of all genetic disease!

Steven Kotler 16:17
Thirty two thousand different diseases, genetic diseases are single, single base pair errors that, you know, CRSPER 2.0, right? It’s what I think what they’re calling it. That’s amazing, right? Like one development that erases 32,000 diseases literally, permanently.

Preston Pysh 16:37
This might be a lack of my understanding, when you get into the biology space, but some of the stuff that I’ve read from David Sinclair, and he’s talking about how the epigenetic portion of a person’s genome is what’s causing a lot of the information loss; it’s causing aging. But you guys are talking more down on the DNA strand specifically, not how the histones are–and the histone factors are interacting with the epigenome. So when you talk about those two, how they correspond with each other, do you find that one’s more important than the other in reference to epigenetics versus on the actual DNA strand?

Peter Diamandis 17:13
So first of all, David Sinclair’s amazing, and I loved his new book, “Lifespan” and commend it to everybody. So after you read “Future is Faster Than You Think,” read “Lifespan.” So, but they’re two different things, right? Our genome–there are 3.2 billion letters again of four letters: A, T, C and G–the four nucleotides; codes for the digital information as David talks about. And an error in that can cause thalassemia; sickle cell anemia; can cause a multitude of different diseases. And if you inherit that sequence, you have that disease. And up until now, you could not cure it. The best you could do is treat yourself, and these latest version of CRISPR gene editing could potentially cure and go into your own genome and replace that letter for you. It’s like going in a word processor and correcting a spelling error. The epigenome is critically important. David talks about the information theory of aging. He points out there’s a particular system in the body that does two things–it corrects genetic mutations that you accumulate as you get older–the sirtuin system; and it also turns on and turns off genes, so that a kidney cell acts like a kidney, and not like a liver cell. And the sirtuin system does both, and as you get older and accumulate more and more genetic mutations, your ability to regulate at an epigenome level becomes weaker and weaker.

Steven Kotler 18:45
There are nine different things that kill us basically at this point that we know of. And as Peter just pointed out, there’s three or four different approaches to each disaster. And so when you talk about the field of longevity or anti-aging, you’re talking about people going at all of these nine causes of death, basically.

Peter Diamandis 19:05
So we talk about these in the book. We talk about where we are with stem cells. We talk about wnt pathway communications, which are self cell communications. And ultimately, we are talking about an abundance of time. One of the things that we’re excited about and we write about is that people can begin to expect a longer healthier lifespan.

Stig Brodersen 19:26
Interesting. All right, so a lot of people in the audience are huge Warren Buffett fans. He always asked this silver bullet question to the management, basically asking: If you could remove one competitor from the marketplace, what is it that they do specifically well? Now I would like to spin that question a little, and then ask you, which lot industry gets the silver bullet, meaning which last industry will be completely disrupted next and how?

Peter Diamandis 19:56
Health care; education: top two. I think the whole educational system is fundamentally broken. I have two eight-year-old boys in school. They’re in a great school, but, you know, our school system–testing to test; having, you know, this situation, and it’s the majority of schools around the country. Not all are built for, you know, 200 years ago; they’re built for the industrial revolution, which everybody had to learn a certain number of skills. The bell rings, and people move into the next teaching slot. You know, when’s the last time you sort of did algebra or, you know, factored a polynomial? It’s just, you know, we spend so much time doing and teaching that, but we don’t teach the fundamental things that are critically important for us in society today, you know–how to pitch your idea; how to find your passion; how to be empathetic; how to be a great storyteller; you know, how to be an entrepreneur; whatever it might be. So we need to remember education fundamentally.

Stig Brodersen 21:02
Steven, what are your thoughts?

Steven Kotler 21:05
Cattle ranching, I think agriculture is going to massively change. I think it has to for environmental reasons, but I think the technology is coming. I think that’s one. It doesn’t see it coming at all. And I, and I gotta reiterate with Peter with health care, I–retail’s gone, as we know it. Like retail as we know it is gone. And some of that the writing is already really visible, so I don’t know if that’s as surprising. But if you look at the changes that, you know, AI bring to retail, and you start walking them forward, you know? And you get ten years out, and you realize that we’re not even the ones doing the shopping anymore. And our AI eyes are doing the shopping, and that takes out advertising with it because if you’re not doing the buying, you can advertise to an AI? The shift’s there. I, I think Peter’s right. That’s the point of the book. It’s hard to point at one thing because the book looks at ten years to change. The question I would ask, and maybe I’ll ask Peter this in the middle of your podcast, which is: Peter, can you think of an industry that’s going to be the same in a decade? What’s safe?

Peter Diamandis 22:08
That is a critically important question. And I mean, we made the statement that nothing is going to remain the same; that we’re seeing a transformation in every industry. You know, we are just beginning to see in the inflection point in AI. We’re just at the earliest days of gigabit bandwidth globally, and AR hasn’t even hit, where it’s going to see, you know, we’re seeing Magical Leap, and, and HoloLens, and Apple’s announced a product for circa 2022. But the thing that, that we really hit on in the book is we’re going to create more wealth in the next ten years than we have in the entire past century, and every industry is going to change. So…

Preston Pysh 22:50
So I’m kind of fascinated because you two can ask each other questions that are way beyond the scope of somebody like me that’s way on the outside of this technology front. So I’m kind of curious because I really liked what happened there, Steven. Peter, if you could ask Steven a question and vice versa, what would be a question that you would play stump the chump with, with your counterpart?

Peter Diamandis 23:12
So, so here’s a question, right? And I ask this now in every audience I go to: What is something that AIs will not be able to do that humans can do, right? And we’re going to find out what it truly means to be human because of that. So how long will it be Steven before an AI is much better at writing novels and books than humans?

Steven Kotler 23:37
That’s an interesting question, right? The best–we know this past, so I guess it was two years ago now, an AI came very close, right, to winning one of Japan’s big writing awards. It’s interesting. I think it’s going to be at ten years; fifteen years. How long until AI can produce things that are as interesting and riveting and everything else as a human? Three to five, six, seven years, I think. I mean even like if you look at some of the AI films that are now floating around online, they’re not like normal films, right? You wouldn’t watch them in the same way you would go home and watch West Wing episodes. But there’s something really weird about watching them. And they’re fascinating to watch. Because you’re like, “Wow, this is a non-human consciousness–built this thing that I’m watching, and that’s a very interesting experience.”

Stig Brodersen 24:27
Wow, I never heard about such a thing! So to clarify, you’re saying that films are being made right now that no humans have touched? It’s just purely AI generated?

Steven Kotler 24:38
There’s a couple of shorts out there. We write about one where they let an AI read hundreds of horror scripts, and then write one of their own. They used an AI. Morgan, I believe, was the name of the thriller. They used an AI; had an AI watch a hundred different horror movie trailers, and then they used it to make this trailer movie. Just type “AI movie” into Google and you’ll see some of that stuff.

Peter Diamandis 25:03
Yeah, there is a number of AI generated films that have come out. And it’s just the beginning, right? So, you know, for everybody listening, it’s, it’s like will an AI be the best comedian in the world? Will an AI be the best artist in the world? The best writer in the world? The best musician in the world? And, you know, the interesting thing is we’re going to find out soon enough.

Steven Kotler 25:23
There will never be an AI who’s the best writer in the world until, you know, especially if longevity; you keep me alive for a while I can hold on to that title, of course. But everything else, I totally agree with what he said.

Preston Pysh 25:35
You got to think big. So Steven, what would be your question, another question over to Peter?

Steven Kotler 25:42
So Peter like I know, like first of all, you just made your comments, all your feelings on education really clear. And I agree with you, right? And you’ve, you’ve taken an active participation in help–helping to reinvent education with the Global Learning XPRIZE, which was kind of aimed at reading, writing, and arithmetic. So you did that. If you were going to reinvent education, what’s the next step? What do you do next?

Peter Diamandis 26:06
I mean, for me, the thing that makes education amazing is going to be living it, you know? In medical school, we had the old saying, “Watch one do and teach one.” And in the virtual world, you’re going to be able to easily do that, right? Where, you know, the example I talked about a lot, and, you know, if I want to study Ancient Greece, what I want to do is put on my VR headset, and go and walk around Ancient Greece. And there will be some guy, who looks like Plato sitting on a piece of marble over there. And it’ll be an AI generated avatar that everything ever known about Plato is driving that AI algorithm, so when I speak to that AI it is as close as possible to Plato.

Steven Kotler 26:51
You think that’s the next step? That’s where you would, you would go next?

Peter Diamandis 26:55
I think that’s the most impactful, transformational next step. I think they’re interim steps. I think they’re things like, you know, everybody learns in different ways. Some people are tactile; visual; auditory. And, you know, can a person get their education in the exact way it’s best for them? Can we measure a person’s brain waves to know did they understand that concept or not? Because there is an ability to, you know, you know when you get to the “Aha,” that “Aha!” moment. That’s brain chemistry. There is a signal, when you have that happen. And if you don’t, if you’re confused, there’s signals there. In fact, there’s–I just came back from China–and one company that is using for kids using tablets and uses the forward-facing camera to do facial recognition on the kid, so that if the kid is not getting the idea, he can see that, and it tries it in a different way, and it tries in a different approach, and it learns the best way the kid learns. And it knows if the kid got something by the answer and by their facial…

Steven Kotler 27:58
Yeah, it’s the first step towards illustrated primers–the face reading component.

Peter Diamandis 28:02
Yeah, yeah. So it’s, those are things that are coming out in the near term.

Stig Brodersen 28:06
So let’s talk about a very popular topic these days: augmented reality. And for those people who might be not too familiar with this, you have likely seen it before in just one shape or form. It is a real world environment that is just enhanced by computers. And one example could be Pokemon Go, or it could be filters on Instagram. And right now you see a very interesting development with glasses with new features for augmented reality. Could you please talk to us about that, and how prevalent you think it will be in the future?

Peter Diamandis 28:42
We have HoloLens. We’ve got Magic Leap. We’ve got a dozen other small companies. The Kahuna that’s going to be coming in is Apple. And this device–the cell phone that we all carry around, and everybody is attached by this, you know, invisible tether to your cell phone. That phone is eventually going to dematerialize into a pair of glasses that you’re wearing. And Apple understands that, and Apple’s heading towards that direction. Augmented reality, 5G, and AI is going to transform every marketplace. In particular, retail and entertainment. The upside is giant. It’s not about the hardware really. It’s going to be about the software integration. And it’s this decade. 2022 we’ll start to see something. I’m sure we’ll, we’ll have seen the third generation of HoloLens; a third generation of Magic Leap; first generation of Apple’s headset; and then, it’s going to rapidly iterate from there. 2223 is what they just recently said, and, you know, they may come out before then. But, you know, it’s been rumored, and unrumored, and rumored again. They’re doing it. It’s a big deal.

Steven Kotler 29:57
We quote Tim Cook in the book, saying he thinks, “AR is an idea as big as the smartphone itself in potential,” which is considerable. And it’s certainly, it’s got an add in information layer to reality, right? Reality is about to gain. We haven’t changed reality in like the 200,000 years, since we got our basic brain. We hadn’t really changed reality. It’s happening, so that’s interesting.

Preston Pysh 30:26
So Magic Leap were doing something different with the optics. I’ve read a little bit that it seemed like it was different than what Microsoft had done with their–I saw some type of lens that they had that…Magic Leap was doing something optically that was transmitting something right onto your cones and rods. Is that a similar path that Apple is gonna take? Is that the most predominant technology that’s going to be able to bring the most amount of data to that sensor on the human?

Peter Diamandis 30:54
So there’s, there’s a multitude of different approaches. This work goes back years and years to the late 90s, where the Human Interface Lab up in Seattle. Fellow Dr. Furness did the early work. And early on, it just–you literally had a half, a half silvered 45 degree mirror that would like to see through, and then project into your eyes as well. One of the things that is the holy grail here is what’s called a “virtual retinal display,” where there’s a laser that paints an image on the back of your retina. One of the companies we talk about in the book is one that’s created hard contact lenses that you would wear; that would generate an augmented reality image. So you can look through the contact lens and see an image superimposed, and if you close your eyes, you can watch a movie. I mean that’s pretty insane, right? So it’s just beginning. We don’t actually know what Apple is going to be rolling out with, but whatever it is, it’ll be beautiful and expensive.

Stig Brodersen 31:56
I can definitely say for Preston, and me, and I’m sure for everyone else listening to this, we’re just amazed how you, Steven and Peter, have access to the newest, groundbreaking technology way before the public gets any insight into what is on the horizon. So I’m very curious about your response to my next question: Over the last two or three years, what did you guys see that really just gave you goosebumps, where you’re like, “Oh, my God! What is going on here?”

Peter Diamandis 32:29
I’ll tell you my first one. There’s a technology or company, it’s called Life Kind. And what they’re doing is they are digitizing people. They’re creating AI personas. The first person they’re working on is Tony Robbins. So I want you to imagine the following: you create a neural network, which you train on all of Tony’s video tapes; audio cassettes; live events; all of his books. And so you create an AI that first of all can generate exactly what it looks like; and exactly it sounds like, but that can respond as he would respond, right? So if you were to go to him and say, “Hey, Tony! Listen, I’m having difficulty in my relationship, and this is what’s going on,” and the AI would 99.99% respond as Tony would, except this AI can now have a million simultaneous conversations; a hundred million simultaneous conversations. So it’s, you know, it’s a Tony coach in your pocket, right? So that’s, that’s an amazing capability. And I’ve seen that is a blow-away. So imagine being able to have the best investors digitized in your pocket to have conversations with. They are–I’m very proud, I’m going to be the second person that they’re digitizing after Tony.

Steven Kotler 33:47
There’s a lot of them. But going back four or five years ago, six years ago, the Department of Defense was really worried about the rising tide of soldier suicide. It was a real problem. The best way to deal with that, you know, stem that is early detection of PTSD and depression. And the best way to do that is live interviews with psychologists. And there just weren’t enough psychologists. They just couldn’t scale them up. So they went to USC, and they built Ellie, the world’s first AI psychologist, and she…started out as a diagnostic psychologist. Ellie at the time they built her was reading si–sixty different emotional cues; affective cues; vocal tone; eye gaze, on and on. Now, I think it’s well over 160 a second. So first of all, it turns out soldiers prefer talking to Ellie than they do to actual shrinks because Ellie never judges, right? She’s a computer; she doesn’t judge. And I had a session with Ellie. Went to USC and had a session with Ellie, and went in thinking, “Oh yeah, whatever! I’m gonna talk to the AI shrink. Okay, whatever!” Like Ellie literally looks like a middle aged Hispanic woman. It’s really what she looks like, and cartoon of a middle aged Hispanic woman. And I gotta tell you, I got sent to shrinks as a kid. I was a bit of a wild child, so I had my run-ins, and it was–I don’t like them! They’re uncomfortable. I don’t–right? I walk in; I’m talking to Ellie, I’m like, “Holy crap! It’s the–I feel the same like I used to.” But for soldier suicide, she’s very–like the DOD is rolling Ellie out at scale, right? This is psychology at scale. It’s, it’s a diagnostic level psychology at this point, right? Trying to diagnose mental illness for intervention purposes; though it’s rapidly going up. It was talking to a computer that knew me better than I knew myself–was a very odd sort of moment.

Preston Pysh 35:48
We have young listeners in our audience that are in college and in high school. What is your single best advice for that young listener that is looking up to you two and just looking at everything that you guys have accomplished and thinking, “That is just impossible?” What would you–what’s your advice to that person that’s listening?

Peter Diamandis 36:08
One critically important thing that is independent of technology is get clear what you love to do more than anything else in the world. Doesn’t matter what it is. And focus on doing that. Be driven by your passion. Discover what we call your massively transformative purpose in the world. And once you do that, you will learn everything you need to do to fulfill that. And as new technologies come online that enable you to fulfill your purpose better, faster, you’ll learn those, too. If you’re doing what you love in life–not what you’re told to do by your parents or your teachers, but what you truly love to do–and you’re connected with that purpose, it’s magic. So that is the most important thing.

Steven Kotler 36:57
The thing I always, I always want to point out, right? I, I–you know, I’ve spent my career sort of studying what does it take to achieve the impossible, right, in pretty much every domain: sports, science, medicine, paradigm shifting breaks like that’s my core passion. And I’ve been lucky enough to meet, you know, hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of people, who have accomplished literally impossible things. Things people, you know, didn’t think were ever gonna happen. And the one thing that is over, and over, and over, and over again. First of all, most people who get that far surprise themselves, right? But the lesson that I see over and again is we are capable of so much more than we know. We’re just capable of so much more than we know. I think it complements Peter because I think the way you figure out what you’re capable of, is you figure out exactly what you love, and you do that. And I think that’s the first step. But I think the next set of discoveries is I can go a lot bigger than I thought I could.

Peter Diamandis 37:51
You know, let me, let me just put an exclamation point on that. We’re more powerful than we ever have been in human history. Today, anyone who really wants to solve a problem has access to all the capital computational power information they could possibly want. And I think one of the reasons for this book is to give people a sense of both hope and a sense of empowerment. The goal here is that we want people not to be fearful of the future. Because the rate of change is increasing so fast that people get scared about the world going. You know, am I going to survive? This book is a roadmap of where the world is going in this next decade; in a roadmap of empowerment, so that people get a sense of “This is an exciting future, and I can be part of it!” And I think one of it is–one of the concepts here is–we’re living in a world where instead of complaining about problems, you can go out there and solve them. And one of the themes is the world’s biggest problems; the world’s biggest business opportunities. Want to become a billionaire? Help a billion people. This book lays out those opportunities.

Stig Brodersen 38:57
Gentlemen, what an honor to speak with you. The name of the book is, The Future is Faster Than You Think by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler. Guys, where can the audience learn more about your book?

Peter Diamandis 39:10
The website for our pre-order campaign because we’re going to have a ton of amazing people, who order before the book comes out on January 28, is gonna be…

Steven Kotler 39:22
futurefasterbook.com.

Peter Diamandis 39:24
If you order the book in advance, you’ll actually have a chance to get a digital copy of our first two books, Abundance and Bold at no additional cost. For example, there’s hundreds and hundreds of dollars of bonuses for people who go there and order the book. So for us, the greatest compliment that Steven and I get paid is when people say, “My god, you’ve given me hope for the future. You’ve shown me where the world is going, and I’m excited about it.”

Preston Pysh 39:49
And, and for anybody listening, whatever podcast app you’re using, if you just go into the show notes, I’m gonna have a link for what Peter just mentioned. Just click on that link, and it’s going to take you right to that option for you to do the pre-order. So guys, thank you so much! This was so awesome!

Steven Kotler 40:06
Pleasure.

Peter Diamandis 40:07
Great. Take care.

Stig Brodersen 40:09
All right, guys. So if you’re really into tech like Steven Kotler and Peter Diamandis, and just really curious about what the future will bring, I highly recommend that you listen to a new show, Silicon Valley, here in The Investor’s Podcast Network, hosted by Sean Flynn. In this episode that I’ll play a few minutes from, Sean is speaking with senior research scientist from NASA, Jonathan Trent.

Sean Flynn 40:35
Could you talk a little bit about going to the moon, the history of it, and when are we going to go to Mars?

Jonathan Trent 40:43
I’m actually really excited about the idea of going to the moon and sending humans to the moon and Mars, and Mars exploration, but not for the same reasons that most people are excited about it. So Elon and I would be completely at odds about why we should go to Mars. But let me tell you a little bit about the conditions on the moon and on Mars. So you have a reason to understand why I’m not that interested in ever sending people there. So you need to understand that on the moon, the daytime, which lasts about 13 and a half Earth days, the temperature at the surface of the moon gets to about 260 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s about 127 degrees Celsius. And then, the following thirteen and a half days, the moon’s night, the temperature goes down to minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit, or about minus 173 degrees. The atmosphere on the moon is about a few inches a few centimeters thick. There’s no atmosphere on the moon. And if you’re in the sun versus in the shadow, the temperature difference can be 200 degrees. So the human body on the, on the moon is really at a loss for survival. But let’s talk about Mars because everybody talks about Mars is that we’re going to build a colony there. So you need to understand Mars has an atmosphere. It’s about 100 times thinner than the Earth’s atmosphere. And it’s made up of 95% carbon dioxide. So in contrast, the Earth has about .04% carbon dioxide, and we’re worried about it because it’s going up and it’s causing greenhouse gas. But Mars has a little bit of nitrogen in the atmosphere; about 2.7%, so less than 3% nitrogen, whereas the Earth’s atmosphere is 78% nitrogen. Now, here’s the key. The Martian atmosphere has only trace amounts of oxygen; almost unmeasurable, whereas the Earth’s atmosphere is 21% oxygen. It has a tiny bit of CO2. So what does this mean? This means we will never breathe the Martian atmosphere. And of course, we can make oxygen by stripping the oxygen out of the carbon dioxide, which is CO2, and we can take the O2 out of the carbon dioxide. But you know, in the Earth’s atmosphere, we breathe mostly nitrogen. So nitrogen is the carrier gas. So while we can get oxygen from the Martian carbon dioxide, where we gonna put the gas? The gas has to be carried by another gas. And in our case, it’s carried by nitrogen. So the Martian atmosphere is really a problem, not only for breathing, but also because it’s so thin. What does this mean? This means that the pressure at the surface of Mars is much, much lower; a hundred times lower than the pressure on Earth. What does pressure do? It influences the temperature at which water boils. For example, on the earth water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit or 100 degrees Celsius. On Mars, water boils at about the freezing point on Earth. It boils between 32 degrees and 40 degrees Fahrenheit. So what’s body temperature? Body temperature is 98.6, right? 37 degrees Celsius. So our blood, all the liquids in our body exposed to the Martian environment would boil. We would suffocate because we can’t breathe the atmosphere; our blood would boil. Oh, and then the temperature on Mars because Mars is considerably farther away from the sun. The sun’s radiation is about a third of what it is on the earth. Temperature on Mars really low. So let’s think about this on summer around July, the hottest time in summer at noon, the temperature gets up 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Gets up to, you know, about 20 degrees Celsius. That’s not so bad. But that same night, the temperature will drop to minus 100 degrees. So at night on Mars, that’s 100 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about minus 78 degrees Celsius. This is excruciatingly cold. So overall, the average temperature in a year during the day may get up to about 21 degrees Fahrenheit, which is still below freezing. And it’s about on average, somewhere around minus 63 degrees Celsius overall, day night. So the temperatures, and the pressure, and the conditions on Mars are really, really difficult to try to make human habitation. So why do I say that I’m incredibly excited about human exploration on Mars and the moon? Because imagining what it would be like to put people in that resource limited environment; in that place where there is no water, and there’s no atmosphere to breathe, and there’s nothing that remotely resembles food; that place where there are no–none of what we can take for granted as what we call ecosystem services–imagining what it must be like to live there means that the resources from the waste products of the humans that go there are more valuable than anything we find on the moon or on Mars. And that process of trying to envision how people would survive in these resource limited places, teaches us a lot about how, somehow come to terms with the resource limitations that we’re starting to experience on Earth.

Stig Brodersen 46:32
If you would like to listen to the rest of this amazing interview, I’ve made sure to put a link in the show notes. And if you would like to subscribe to our new show, Silicon Valley, and stay updated about the latest trends in technology, make sure to search for The Investor’s Podcast Network on iTunes, Spotify, or whatever kind of podcast app you’re using. And our new show, Silicon Valley, will just pop up, and you can just subscribe right there. But guys, that was all that Preston and I had for this week’s episode of The Investor’s Podcast. We see each other again next week.

Outro 47:06
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