Peter Diamandis 4:54
Well, I co founded a company back in the mid 90s, called scalar adventures. And we’re the only company it’s taking private clients the space station we’ve taken we’ve taken eight clients there, Dennis Tito was the first some Charles Simoni went second went twice. Gila liberty, a new show, I’m sorry, was you know, the price now is what $50 million a shot. And listen, Space Station is an underutilized resource by a long shot, you don’t spend 10s and 10s and 10s of billions of dollars to have, you know, anywhere between, you know, four to six people up there at a time. So yeah, it should be open those could afford to get there. We need more human guinea pigs in space. So why not?
John Corcoran 5:36
Great exponential technologies is a topic you write about a lot. You’ve written about it in abundance and bold, and you write about the difference between linear thinking and exponential thinking. Can you share why those two ideas are so important for all of us understand? Yeah, absolutely.
Peter Diamandis 5:51
So as humans, our brains are a, you know, couple of pound, kilogram and half mass. Oregon that has 100 billion neurons, 100 trillion synaptic connections, we have to realize is that our brains evolved. For a world that was very different in the world today, our brains evolved over millions of years. And continued to evolve. But majority of the time in a world that was local and linear. Nothing changed decades and decades, centuries, century, Millennium millennium, things were pretty much stagnant. And nothing affected you that was not within a day’s walk. And so our brains evolved for that world. But the world we’re in today is anything but that right to the world, when today things are changing decade to decade from year to year, that changing month to month. And things that impact you are anywhere and everywhere. Something happens in China, India, you know, by two seconds later. And our brains are not designed to think that way to react that way. We have all these cognitive biases that cause us to filter or all the information that we get, because our brains can actually focus on a fraction of the information, you know, single digit percentage and information coming in. And so we do shortcuts. Someone who looks looks similar to us, we trust more. We have a recency bias that we trust information or weight information heavier, that’s most recent to us. We’ve been negativity bias, we way negative information far more than positive information, which is why, you know, CNN, Fox, and all the news agencies are feeding us negative news all the time, because if it bleeds, it leads. So again, I think about linear growth and linear information and our linear world, we tend to make things look linear, we see a problem in the future. And we think it’s going to, you know, hit us right now. But we forget, we’re gonna have exponential growth between now and when that problem actually does hit. We tend to, you know, vastly over estimate things in the near term, but vastly underestimate things in the long term. So ultimately, what I teach at Singularity University, what I teach at in the abundance digital program, is how, how to recognize that we are linear thinkers, an exponential world and the challenges that we have, you know, one thing, for example, is we’re going to see more progress in the next 10 years than we have in the entire past century. And we’re going to create more wealth in the next 10 years than the entire then then we have an entire past century, we’re going to It’s an extraordinary time ahead. I just finished recording a webinar with one of the leading thinkers in longevity. And there’s amazing things coming down the space in longevity of how we extend the healthy lifespan, right, we truly are going to make 100 years old and you 60 no question about it. But then we’ll break through that 120 and 150. And all of these things are possible. And it changes how we see the world what we think is possible for us. What are the moon shots we can take? What are the massively transformative purposes we can engage in our life.
John Corcoran 9:14
One of the areas that you wrote about recently, you have a fabulous newsletter, which I recommend everyone go to DM honest, calm, subscribe to it. It’s just like a PhD in all kinds of exponential thinking. So definitely, I highly recommend it. But renewable energy is one you’ve written about. Really interesting. For the first time since the Industrial Revolution in Britain is obtaining more power from zero carbon sources and fossil fuels. And the in the US Americans were renewable energy capacity is overtaking coal for the first time ever, what are some of the implications for this shift to renewable?
Peter Diamandis 9:46
Yeah, so we are. So again, a lot of linear versus exponential thinking on the linear side, people see it inching along. But if you look at the fact that we have doubling rates, in the amount in battery efficiencies and solar power production, you know, every two or three years, you know, seven, doubling is later, you’re 128 times better, right. So things do not move in a incremental fashion, they’re moving in an exponential. And so a lot of the predictions that people don’t believe, and which I do is that a decade from now, we’re going to have solar at below a penny per kilowatt hour, right, coal is at four or five cents per kilowatt hour. Natural gas is below that. But we’re going to have renewable energy sources from solar and solar battery combinations, and solar wind battery combinations. And then eventually, you know, fusion and really failsafe vision that can give us an all electric economy. And so ultimately, it’s going to transform and we’re going to head towards a world of a squander bull abundance of energy. Well, you don’t think about energy at all, we live on a planet that is based in 6000 times more energy from the sun than we consume as a species in a year, we don’t have an energy scarcity, we are literally have more energy than we can consume and use that to have an abundant amount of energy, you’ve got all the clean water you want, you have the ability to pull co2 out of the atmosphere, you have the ability to, to do incredible things. I mean, we’re heading towards a future in which anything you want, is going to be effectively available for near zero cost. It’s a in one sense, it’s a post capitalist society. But everything comes down to the raw cost of materials, energy and information. When is that going to happen? It’s you know, maybe it’s 20 years from now, maybe it’s 30 years from now, it’s not much more than that.
John Corcoran 11:53
Another big topic that you watch closely is 3d printing. And frankly, it’s hard to keep track of all the new items that are being 3d printed these days. One of what you wrote about recently is a business that you’ve been watching. That is 3d printing 50 homes, I believe, over the course of this summer. So talk a little bit about the impact of 3d printing, there’s a 3d printer on the space station now it’s all over the place.
Peter Diamandis 12:15
Yeah, so 3d printing also can be called additive manufacturing, or digital manufacturing is a very efficient, you only put materials where you need it versus subtracted, which is you whittle away a hunk of metal or wood to get to the final product. There’s a it’s it’s moved, right? We don’t realize the fact that 3d printing started with a guy named Chuck Hall, some 35, almost 40 years ago, with stereo lithography, and it was a very crude technology, but it is moved exponentially where the doubling times have really have been have been halved. And we’ve gotten to a point where we can 3d print with 500 different materials with any color. We’re 3d printing rocket and engines for at SpaceX were 3d printing massive rocket engines for another sort of cryptic company here in LA. Yeah, a company called new story, which is a great organization is 3d printing 50 homes this summer as a test case, in, in Central America. And it’s crazy, right, because all of a sudden, you can you can print, not a single home, but a community. And I can print a different house because I have two kids versus you might have five kids and want this design. So it’s customized homes
John Corcoran 13:38
closed. For so I’m not that far off. You’re pretty accurate.
Peter Diamandis 13:44
We’re you know, dear friend, Martine Rothbart, who’s the CEO of United therapeutics is 3d printing. The basically the root structure is of lungs. So it’s, it’s amazing. What is possible. So, you know, we’re heading towards a point in the near future, where you’ll be able to have almost anything you want on demand at home, either it’ll be manufactured in your home, or be or will be transported from a local hub and spoke to your home. Right. One of the things I love is a future of food where based upon your blood, your blood glucose levels, and your vitamin D levels, and whatever it is, your meal is manufactured specifically to you. And it’s delicious, and it’s healthy, and it’s the right meal you eat right now.
John Corcoran 14:33
Yeah, and I wanted to get around to talking about the X PRIZE foundation. But I’ll mention it now. Because I know you have a your are announcing a new X PRIZE having to do with food you want to talk tell us a little bit about that.
Peter Diamandis 14:46
Yes, I’m broadcasting from X Prize, we’re here in culver city, we have launched about 160 $70 million. With the x prizes, we’re getting ready for another $200 million in prizes. And we’re looking for places where things are stuck, where things are not moving were a injection of vision and optimism and global attention can move the ball forward. So I’ll say a little bit but this fall, we’re planning to launch basically a, a stem cell grown protein competition. So can you go from a stem cell of Kobe beef to a steak, can you go from a stem cell of the best tuna to how much he you know, sushi? Can you go from a stem cell to chicken. And rather, you know, right now we’re living on a planet with one third of the non ice landmass of Earth, which is a huge chunk of the planet is used for livestock. And as we have increasing abundance, and I write about that, and I talked about that my my community is called the abundance community abundance digital, it’s about creating increasing abundance, increasing access to food, water, energy, healthcare education, to every single human on the planet. But as we raise the standards of living for people as they have access to more wealth creation, because they have access to gigabit connection speeds and access to funding on the on the cloud, or it might be they’re going to want higher value protein sources. And so what happens when the next billion people want access to steak and, and tuna, and, you know, the best protein products, one we’re going to destroy our fishing supply on the planet into, we’re going to start to take more and more of our landmass and make it available for cows and sheep and goats and so forth. And by the way, that livestock also consumes a massive amount of what comes out of our out of our farms for feedstock. So it’s a it’s a slippery cycle. You can’t say to them, you can’t have this product. Because I wanted to say, for the first world or for my kids, whatever, that’s bullshit, of course, you need to have it for everybody. But how do you produce it more efficiently as the question and so the ability to actually create protein products that tastes better, are healthier for you are cheaper, and are manufactured in downtown Mumbai, or downtown Abu Dhabi, or downtown in Karachi, wherever it might be, is where we’re heading. And so rather than, you know, collecting photons from 93 million miles away that hit a photosynthetic chloroplasts and a plant that then get eaten by a cow that then grow the entire cow to give you a steak. Can you bypass that entire process and grow the steak in the lab downtown half of the cost of the food you’re going to eat tonight at home or at a restaurant, whatever might be his food miles, it’s moving? the you know, the steak from Argentina, the wine from France and the potatoes from Idaho to your dinner plate
John Corcoran 17:57
contributing, of course, to climate change as well. Agreed? Yeah. Now, speaking of efficiency, the whole idea behind X Prize was that it was a more efficient way of allocating capital, right, you were inspired by Charles Lindbergh, the story of Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic to create the X Prize and that you found that a lot more this opened up huge industries. And that’s was the original idea behind the original X Prize for private spaceflight. So talk a little bit of about how the the idea behind X Prize was started.
Peter Diamandis 18:31
Happy to so I grew up in the 60s, Apollo sparked my passion and showed us what was possible that amazing scientific documentary called Star Trek showed us where we’re going. And that was what I wanted. I wanted to become an astronaut. I found out my chances of becoming a NASA astronaut, like one in 1000. And consequently, I said, Okay, how do I do this differently? How do I do this outside of mass? And how do I do this privately? And a dear friend of mine, Greg Marion gave me a copy of a book called The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles Lindbergh. And in it, he recalls the fact that he crossed the Atlantic on May 20, and 21st of 1927, not on a whim, but to win a $25,000 Prize. And as I read this, the story of this Orteig prize and said, aha, that’s it. I’m going to create a prize for private spaceflight, that $25,000 or take prize, which was launched 100 years ago in 1919. One in 1927, sparked $400,000 to try and win the $25,000 Prize. It was like wow, 16 times the prize money and you don’t pay any of the losers only the winner What’s not to like? So I long story. I ended up finding the Ansari family who funded the Ansari X PRIZE later right. started the foundation in 1994 25 years ago, announced the prize on to the arch in St. Louis in 1996. I took a huge risk announcing it without having the money right. Found the Ansari family in 2001. Five years later, it was won in 2004. Anyway, it worked. And on the heels of that I was able to attract Larry Page and Elon Musk and James Cameron and amazing Ilan and Ray Kurzweil and amazing group of individuals to support this vision of can we create these prizes. We just awarded a global learning X Prize. It was a $15 million prize funded by Ilan for building software, it can take children in the middle of no place in this case in Tanzania. And make go from illiterate to from illiteracy to literacy, basic reading, writing numeracy. The team spent $300 million going after the $15 million dollar prize. So this is really about efficiency of philanthropic capital. So I’m like shaking people saying, Listen, you spent a huge amount of money and time and energy and efficiency and focus making your money. And now when it’s time to give it away, you’re just going to like just, you’re happy with 10 cents on the dollar. So yeah, that’s the X Prize. We are launching two or three x prizes a year, go to X prize.org. And learn more about it.
John Corcoran 21:19
That’s great. You’re doing so many of them. You also had a one for water as well. Recently.
Peter Diamandis 21:25
Yeah. You want to abundance X Prize. Yeah, the water abundance X Prize was amazing. Take water out of the atmosphere, it turns out, yeah. water is scarce on the planet, a lot of parts. But guess what? It isn’t scarce in the atmosphere there quadrillions of liters of water. And we call it rain falls out of the sky? Can you build technology that will allow people to extract it from all renewable energy? For under two cents per leader? That was the goal. And we had a winner we announced last year. Yes, amazing.
Unknown Speaker 21:59
Yeah, it’s really good.
John Corcoran 22:01
disruptive change is another topic you write a lot about. And in bold, you wrote that 40% of today’s fortune 500 companies will be gone in 10 years. So disruption is, you know, in many ways, viewed very positively in my neck of the woods on near Silicon Valley, people are constantly talking about that other industries, not so much. They’re afraid of it. How should companies be adapting and preparing for these types of changes?
Peter Diamandis 22:27
So yeah, I think it’s, it’s
the case that most people fear the future. And they fear it because they don’t know what’s coming. And ultimately, my job, through the work that I do, the books that I write, the next book, which comes out in January, is called the future is faster than you think. And it’s a look at how converging technologies are going to transform every single industry this decade, every single industry, every single company is going to be transformed. You can read that as to corrupted, destroyed or, or recreated reinvented. And the challenge is, as a CEO, you have to be constantly looking at how do you use new technology and reinvent your business models? How do you digitize whatever you’re doing? How do you d materialize? Do you monetize democratize? So I teach about this in my abundance digital programs in my abundance, CEO Summit. And listen change, it isn’t slowing down. In fact, I chapter four of this book is how the rate of technological acceleration is itself accelerating. So things are not just getting faster, the rate of which things are getting faster is itself getting faster. And it isn’t, you know, sort of a bad dream or bad memory, it’s going to continue changing and, and you know, as an entrepreneur, that’s exciting. And so if you’re running a significant company, but not an entrepreneurial company, how do you manage that? Well, your job is to work with entrepreneurs who do what they do? Well, you have access to your brand, you have access to massive amounts of data, you have access to capital, you have access to customers, and how do you share that with entrepreneurs who have crazy ideas that might fail, but if they succeed, you can invest in those ideas, right? I’m fond of saying the day before something is truly a breakthrough. It’s a crazy idea. And if it wasn’t a crazy idea, it wouldn’t be a breakthrough, it would be an incremental change. So where are people investing in crazy ideas? Other thing I talked to people as Listen, doing anything big and bold in the world is hard. And it’s critically important that you are clear about two things. Number one, what is your massively transformative purpose? What is your MTP? And then within the guidelines within the framework of that, what is your moon shot? So let me let me address both of those one second, because I think all of everyone listening here, will benefit from understanding the importance of this. So a massively transformative purpose is something that has a significant amount of an emotional charge. It’s not something you sort of like, it’s something you love, or you hate, you’re inspired by awesomely, or you are just just ready to like, just smash this thing out of existence. And I’m stashing my hand in my palm here, right? It’s like you have this energy around it that wakes you up in the morning, and keeps you going at night. Ideally, there’s a great Joseph Campbell quote that I love, you’re pursuing your massively transformative purpose, like a man whose hair’s on fire, searches for water. Right? And, and if you’ve got that level of energy, that level of joy, that level of excitement, that’s amazing. Because when things get difficult and hard, you’re going to keep going where other people give up. And so one question is, where do you find your massively transformative purpose? And you know, a few a couple of of hints like number one, what did you want to do as a kid? Before the world told you you could not right so my first massively transformative purpose was to help open up the space frontier, right? And when I when NASA sort of shut down my dreams was like, screw that. I’m going to do this privately.
You know, I went on from there to having an MTP decades later around solving the world’s grand challenges and X PRIZE foundation and singular University came out of that, and my MTP of late has been how do I add 20 or 30 healthy years and everyone’s lifespan? How do we make 100 years old and you 60. And so once you have your MTP, right, which is your energetic fuel? Next question is, how do you find the moonshot? So I think of your MTP is your canvas. It’s a canvas for your life. It’s like, take a blank slate in an area that you’re passionate about. And your moonshot is a target on that, on that blank slate. So my first MTP was around space. And then my moonshot became around the Ansari X PRIZE. It’s like, Okay, I’m gonna create a competition that will inspire teams to build reusable suborbital launch vehicles. And then my then along that lines had a moonshot around allowing commercially to build a zero gravity company for parabolic flight. So, by the way, if folks do go to Diamandis com, to sign up for my abundance insider newsletter, if you go there as well, my team set up a special opportunity. If you go to Diamandis com backslash smart dash biz. You can download AA, a, what I call a purpose guide, or a guide around massive transformative purpose, like how do you find it worksheets and tools around that? I think any entrepreneur, any CEO needs to connect with their MTP and the moon shots in their life. It will just it’ll, you’ll have more fun. And you’ll do that much better than anybody else. Everybody else is trying to go 10 or 20% bigger in their lives. And with a with your moonshot, you’re shooting at, you know, not 10 or 20%. better, but 1,000% better 10 x better.
John Corcoran 28:35
Right, right. Yeah. And you. So you mentioned human longevity, Inc, which is your company, which you founded. And, you know, I did want to touch on that one. We’re running a little short on time. But tell us about the health nucleus platform that you developed there.
Peter Diamandis 28:54
Yeah. So it turns out that most of us walk around thinking that we’re fine. And, and you are during your youth. But as you age into your 40s 50s 60s 70s, you actually have no idea what’s going on inside your body. And you we all know of individuals who one day sort of like killed over and it’s like, oh, my God, Where’d that come from? Well, we’ve developed at the health nucleus, we have them all over the country. Our original one is in San Diego, we have now in LA and San Francisco and down in Naples, Florida. facility where you go, and you for three hours, you go to the facility, we sequenced you. We sequence your microbiome, we do a full body MRI stem to stern, we do an MRI of your brain, your brain vasculature, we do a coronary CT, a lung CT, we look at metabolism. And the goal is to find out is there anything going on inside your body and if there is fix it, right. And people say I don’t want to know and say bullshit, of course, you want to know you want to know about it as early as you can, because something is going to get everybody but if you can find it at that stage, you’re at stage one. And so the data is come back from the first it used to be cost it used to cost 25,000 bucks per visit, the price is now down to about five or 6000 I forget the exact number I I go every year I take my family with me and I get a sort of like a clean bill of health, okay, nothing is going on there. One day, I will find something and then I’m going to focus on solving it right. So of our first 1500 patients who paid 25,000 aka they could afford the best health care these individuals 14.1%, right. One out of seven people had something that was life threatening, they’d need to take care of right then in there. Well, right 3% had a brain or a owner aortic aneurysm. Two and a half 3% had a high grade cancer tumor. And just you really don’t know what’s going on inside our bodies. You know, if someone wants, you know, if you can afford this, I highly committed to you. It costs us much more than that six K to do right now. The prices will come down. And we benefit from the data and all of that. But if you if you send an email to VIP at health nucleus.com that the team there will respond and help you register for it. I just think it’s something that you can’t afford not to do.
John Corcoran 31:40
Excellent. Yeah, well, we’re running short on time. So I’ll wrap things up. Peter has been a pleasure. Let’s pretend we’re at an awards banquet, much like the Oscars or the Emmys and you’re receiving an award for lifetime achievement for everything you’ve done. At this point. Well, we all want to know is who do you think who’ve been those instrumental in your career, who you would acknowledge those who’ve inspired you know, not just family friends, which is cool. You can do that if you want to. But also, you know, mentors, business partners, you name it.
Peter Diamandis 32:08
You know, it’s interesting, I just wrote the foreword of my next book is going to be dedicated to the mentors, coaches who shaped my life. So I started making a mental list. Over the years, there have been many, David Webb and David wine. Gerard KO Neil from Princeton. Tony Robbins, for sure, Dan Sullivan, the head of Strategic Coach has been incredible. My dad, no question at all. You know, I’m forgetting a slew of them. But guy named Lawrence Young was my professor at MIT. Anyway, it’s been it’s been people who I’ve learned from Arthur C. Clarke, the author was an amazing Chancellor of our space University. And then there’s a multitude of business partners who are my brothers who I love dearly, and you know, anything I want to do in life, it’s always a lot more fun. If you have somebody by your side, someone you respect someone you can debate and discuss and shape the idea with. Anyway, a real pleasure to have joined you and thank you for your thank you for interested in
John Corcoran 33:16
Peter Diamandis com is the website, the future is faster than you think is the next book abundance and bold, the books that are currently available exponential wisdom with Dan Sullivan is the podcast, Peter is one of the best email newsletters out there about excellent exponential thinking, you must subscribe to this, I highly recommend it, go to the website and sign up anywhere else that people can learn about your work, Peter.
Peter Diamandis 33:39
I think that’s, that’s a great place. DMS comics, sort of a central hub. And if you want you can go to abundance digital if you want to I coach a few thousand entrepreneurs through my abundance digital community and, and go there and learn more about abundance digital,
John Corcoran 33:56
and I know many people who have been to your annual event in general you were in Beverly Hills and who just rave about it. So I would highly recommend that as well. I haven’t been there personally myself, but will be one day. So thank you, sir, so much.
Peter Diamandis 34:08
A pleasure. Take care.