Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - The Trends That Will Impact Future Generations | Dr. Jamie Metzl

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

This week’s conversation is with Jamie Metzl, a technology and healthcare futurist, geopolitical expert, and novelist.Jamie previously served in the U.S. National Security Council, State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and as a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations in Cambodia.In 2019, he was appointed to the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing.He is also the recent Founder and Chair of the global social movement One Shared World, which declares our world in deep and fundamental crisis and calls for massive expansion of efforts to meet the emergency needs of vulnerable populations as an act of global self-preservation.In this conversation, Jamie shares which future trends are most imminent and why he believes we all have the power to make a difference – we don’t need to just sit there and watch it play out from the sidelines._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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that world broke. All right, welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais by Trade in Trading. I'm a sport and performance psychologist. And so the whole idea around this podcast is to be immersed in conversations with people who are on the path of mastery to better understand what they're searching for, to understand their psychological framework, which really is about how do they make sense of themselves, events, the world around them, and then what are the mental skills that they use to build and refine their craft? Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort.

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That sounds like a lot, but that's what you get with graduate degrees from Oxford and Harvard and an undergraduate degree from Brown. Jamie previously served in the United States National Security Council, State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and as a human rights officer for the United Nations in Cambodia. In 2019, he was appointed to the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing. He is also the recent founder and chair of the global social movement One Shared World, which they have declared that our world is in deep and fundamental crisis, and they're calling for a massive expansion of efforts to meet the emergency needs of vulnerable populations. And that is an act of global self-preservation. And that sets a tone for this conversation. at remarkably important times, the way that we manage this, the way that we express what we are capable of is going to be a significant shift in the future of our generations and

certainly of our planet. And so in this conversation, Jamie shares which future trends are most imminent and why he believes that we all have the power to make a difference. And you know, if you've been part of this community, part of this podcast, that flat out, we are about developing agency and self-efficacy. And I know those are big words if you're not familiar with psychological jargon, but it's really this idea that we get to dictate our own experience in life, even when the conditions are bleak.

And so coming from a sense of agency is that, okay, what can I do to improve this moment, the quality of my life, my inner life first. And so that sits underneath this conversation. And with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Dr. Jamie Metzl. Jamie, how are you? I'm good, Mike. Nice to be with you. Yeah, my pleasure. I've been looking forward to this conversation. And you're working to get your arms around something that is coming. And it's complicated. And it's nuanced. And it's a little scary. At the same time, it's pretty exciting. And so let's set the framework just a little bit as a futurist, if you will, how did you come to be, to sit in this lane that you're in?

Just give the quick backstory of your, your, your adventure here. Yeah. It's kind of a crazy journey, but I'll give you the full thing. Quickly, when I was 18, I met a classmate of mine, a brown, who had survived the Cambodian genocide. I mean, this guy had really just been through the worst, lost his whole family, escaped through a minefield, adopted out of a refugee camp. And it really hit me. And I just felt like, wow, this had happened in my lifetime nobody I knew

knew a thing about it at that at that time so that summer I was an 18 year old kid I quit my job on the first day in Kansas City had a garage sale of all the crap in my parents house bought a plane ticket went to Thailand and finagled my way to volunteer in a refugee camp with Cambodian refugees. And what I saw there, it just blew my mind. It just, the loss, we're talking about the realization of potential, that was the sad loss of potential. And all these amazing people, and it broke my heart. And then I started to think, well, how do we think about these kinds of problems? And first answer is well we have to help people who are in these in this situation and there's refugees even now all around the world but for me I'm

kind of a systems thinker and so I thought well where the refugees coming from and the refugees are coming from wars and where the war is coming from the wars are coming from bad decisions and a broken world. So I started to think about how do I travel upstream? That led me over the course of my education and law and other things to the White House where I was on the National Security Council. So I figured if a government like the United States makes smart decisions, you don't have all these downstream problems. And it was there, and this was in the later 90s, I was working for a really amazing person,

very close friend, Richard Clark, who at that point was unknown after 9-11, when he was the guy who had essentially predicted 9-11. Later, he became very well known. And Dick used to always say the way to be effective in life is to see around corners and then act as if the thing you're seeing is going to happen urgently. And so while everyone was talking about some kind of junk, he was talking about terrorism, and he was really the person who predicted, as I said, 9-11. And so for me,

at that time, the issues that I really saw, and this was 23 years ago, was that the genetics and biotech revolutions were going to fundamentally transform our lives, but people weren't really talking about it, talking about the big picture implications. So just like when I learned all about Cambodia, I just started educating myself, reading everything I could find, interviewing people. And when I was ready, started writing articles about the genetics and biotech revolutions, was invited to testify before Congress, felt this was a really important story. I'd already written two books on Cambodia, a history book and a historical novel.

And I thought, I need to tell this story in a way that brings people in. And that was the basis for my sci-fi novels, Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata. And then when I was out in the book tours for those books, and I explained the science to people in the way that someone who had just taught themselves would, and as a storyteller, I could just see people who got it. And that was when I realized I really had an obligation to tell the big picture story of the genetics revolution and what it means for us. And that's certainly what Packing Darwin is about. Now I'm a member of the World Health Organization International Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing. And what we're doing is trying to figure out what or suggest what

should be the rules of the road for probably one of the most powerful technologies that are that are one species among many has ever has ever possessed. Yeah. And so thank you. And that's why I wanted to speak to you because, you know, the genetic foundations to better understand the future of humanity is, I think, almost tier zero. I'm not sure in our community, the level of awareness of genetic manipulation, genetic modification, and some of the scary implications and some of the really exciting ones. Before we get to the future, I want to understand, are you basically optimistic or pessimistic? I'm inherently, deeply, and probably pathologically optimistic. I think things can work out.

I think they probably will work out, even though there's some really dark possibilities. And I guess the reason why I'm an optimist is I feel a sense of personal agency and responsibility for being part of that change. I think if I was a pessimist, I would say, well, who knows what's going to happen in the world. And certainly my actions and my behavior and my thoughts and my words aren't going to mean anything because these issues are bigger than me and maybe bigger than all of us. I don't believe that. I think that we all, whether it's true or not, I think we have to feel a sense of agency in our lives. That's the first step that unlocks everything else. Okay.

Now you're talking to a psychologist. I can't let that go. I want to get to future stuff, you know, in genetics, but I can't let that go because you were, as you were talking about your adventure to get here, you talked about reading everything you could get your hands on, then writing, which is a refinement, a calling, a making sense mechanism for you, then sharing, and then delivering it into storytelling, right? So that was actually your application of the knowledge that you're acquiring. And then we talk about a basic framework of optimism. That's a learned behavior.

That's not something that you are genetically born with. As best we know right now, you might chin check me on that for sure. And then as well as you're now talking about agency. So as an agent, we're strapping that back to self-efficacy, a sense of power. And I don't mean power in the abuse of power, but like, hey, what I say matters and how I organize my thoughts and my words and my actions. I have a sense of that I can be potent with the way that I live my life. Okay. Where did your agency come from? Because whatever you're about to share about your future and the current state of genetics or the future vision in the current state, it wouldn't be meaningful without a sense of agency, optimism, and a true knowledge

base. So you already hit like some massive boulders when it comes to becoming your best, you're actually living it. Yeah. So, so I would push back a little bit on, on something you said. I definitely think that there is, even though we don't fully understand it now, there is a genetic foundation of personality style. And we know a little bit about that and we're going to learn more. And I, and if you ask most any parent, what do you know about your children from the first moment? A lot of people will say, oh, I could tell they have a, had a sunny disposition or a dark disposition. It could all be self-fulfilling prophecies because they get that over time. And I don't think we, we fully know. So I, But I do think there are people with more optimistic natures. And we know that at least that part of that is genetic because when people have mania and other expressions of things that in their milder forms

we call optimism. We maybe call sunny disposition. So that's one piece. I think that probably some decent amount of that is baked in. But then there are all the things that happen over the course of life. Birth order, relationship with parents, reinforcement loops. You know, I come from my mother. I mean, if you would go to my parents' house in Kansas City, it's like a shrine, like all the kids' bedrooms, it's like Pompeii. Nothing's been touched in decades. Every artwork that you bring home was like a masterpiece. I think there's a lot of reinforcement that creates that sense of confidence in the world. And then it's continually reinforcing and you kind of live your life believing that you know what you're doing and saying, acting like it. Most people aren't

really confident. If you act like you know what you're doing and you sound good, they say, well, I guess that must be right. So it grows. Okay. So do we have an actual marker for optimism, pessimism? It's not a marker. And I think that with genetics, in the old days, people would say that there's like, oh, there's a gene for that, an optimism gene, a pessimism gene, a tall gene, a short gene. And there certainly are things called these single gene mutation disorders or even single gene mutation attributes. But most of life is genetically complex. So something like personality style, like intelligence, even like height, there could be thousands or even more genes that are all saying something.

And the genes, most of them, almost all of them are very small amounts. And so it all is really complicated. It'd be much easier. Like if you have sickle cell disease, it's one gene. You either have it or you don't, and we can test for it. This other complex stuff, we will be able to test for it, but the data set just needs to be a lot bigger. We need many, many millions and ultimately billions of humans in these massive data sets of genetic and life information. we need massive computing power to try to find these complex patterns because different genes behave differently in different people. But at the end of the day, the core answer to your question is there is, in my view, a genetic foundation to a pretty significant portion of personality, and it will ultimately be knowable and understandable by us. That doesn't mean we'll be predetermined. It's just that everybody has a range of possibility.

I think genetics in many ways set the upper and lower limits of that range. Okay. So I've spent some time with a geneticist and he believes that he can quite clearly predict who is more predisposed to choking, performing, you know, struggling under performance, not specific performance conditions, but conditions that create pressure. And, you know, we're heading down a path that's like, oh, okay. So he's looking at like, not like to your point, not one rung, but like the phenotypes, the polymorphism type, like there's lots of different ons and offs that might create a picture. Am I tracking in the right direction there? You're tracking in the right direction over time in the sense that maybe 10 years from now, we're going to be able to do that pretty effectively and pretty well.

But right now it's really difficult to do for these complex traits. Because even with sprinting, you send in your 23andMe and you get back, oh, I have fast twitch muscles or slow twitch muscles. And if you get fast twitch, you think, oh, I should be a sprinter. And if it's slow twitch, oh, I should be a sprinter. And if it slows twitch, oh, I should be a marathoner. But we don't, and let's just say that in this case, this ACTN3 gene is statistically relevant. But that's one gene out of a much larger number. We don't even know what that much larger number is.

And so, yes, of the people who win the 100 meters in the Olympics, there are some small numbers of genetic markers that are beginning to feel like there's a pattern. But wherever we are, we'll look back at now, five years in the future, and say, oh, that was the Pong phase of genetics. And so it feels sophisticated now, but this is the Pong phase. And the next thing will feel like the Pong phase. And I think that's the point, is that because all of this is moving on this exponential curve, we're going to know more and more. And the human body is not infinitely complex. It's just very, very massively complex. And because of that, there'll be an intersection is where we get this exponential realization, right? So we're on a curve and then that is, you know, in some respects it, I'm not sure. So, okay, let me pause because I think some people right now when I say this will not understand it, but love is overwhelming for many people.

The completeness of love is such a swell internal that many people will pull away from it. Same with joy and happiness. They'll pull away from it. They'll look away. They'll giggle away. But to stay in it is really quite challenging. that framework laid upon human realization you know like wow what like really what's it going to be so let me do some fun stuff here okay um i have a sense uh that you trust people basic you have a basic trust of people but i i don't want to assume that is that right yeah it's true okay and then i think you have a future sense of abundance as opposed to scarcity. You know, what I would say is I generally do, but I feel in life there are these pivotal threshold moments that determine so much of what comes after. Most of us live big chunks of our life on cruise control. We're just going in a direction. And as long as we stay on the highway and pay some level of attention, we'll kind of get where we're going. But then in each person's individual life, and certainly in our collective life,

there are moments of just huge change. And if you stay on cruise control in those moments, like when there's a big turn in the highway and you're on cruise control going straight, unless you have a Tesla, you're probably going to crash. And so that's why it's not that I feel there's any kind of inevitability. There's no inevitability. I just feel that if we keep our eyes open and we see what's coming to the best of our abilities and we are always learning and adapting and we're building connections and communities that we can find a way does that mean terrible things won't happen terrible things will happen i didn't mention this before but i myself am the son of a refugee and they were living their perfectly what they thought normal life in Austria, my father and his parents, my grandparents.

And then boom, in a moment, everything is gone. And so to be an optimist doesn't mean you have to be an idiot. It doesn't mean you have to bury your head in the sand. It just means you need to look at the world and you need to recognize there are real dangers, but that you have confidence that if you really put your heart and soul to addressing them, you can. And that's where you have to have the optimism, the courage, and the vision to say, here's where I'm going, and I'm going to get there as quickly as I can. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be

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And together, these foundational nutrients support muscle recovery, brain function, and long-term energy. They're part of my daily routine. And if you're ready to fuel your brain and body with the best, Momentus has a great new offer just for our community right here. Use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 35% off your first subscription order at livemomentous.com. Again, that's L-I-V-E Momentous, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S, livemomentous.com and use the code F use the code FindingMastery for 35% off your first subscription order. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Felix Gray. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can create the conditions for high performance.

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no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout. Again, that's felix gray you spell it f-e-l-i-x-g-r-a-y.com and use the code finding mastery 20 at felixgray.com for 20 off so let me lay out a couple scenarios one we're currently in a covid pandemic and um who's going to take the vaccine right because we're racing to a vaccine who's going to take it well some people are going to take the vaccine, right? Because we're racing to a vaccine. Who's going to take it? Well, some people are going to take it

and some people are going to hesitate. Okay. Is it going to be available to the wealthy, the rich or the poor? Hopefully all, but who takes it? Okay. Now, same scenario is that we know that the planet is, the sun's going to explode. We know that our planet at

some point is going to die. We've got people like, who's the founder of Tesla? What's his name? Elon Musk is trying to get us off this planet for whatever reasons to save the human race. So that's one strategy. And who's going to go in the first couple of rockets? Well, the wealthy are and the risk takers are. So what happens using your understanding from genetics and the future conditions that are going to lay out, what happens to the wealthy, to the rich, to the poor, to the smart, to the hard workers, to the, you already addressed the cruise controllers, but what happens to each one of those segments of the population? And the answer is, it's up to us. We don't know the answer to that question because the question

for us is what values will we deploy in the process of making decisions. There's nothing inevitable that says that rich people will get vaccines before everybody else. That's a societal decision that we would make about which lives, assuming the vaccines work, about which lives are more valuable than others. And other societies will make different decisions. And it comes back to this point of agency. That is, we can't just take the world around us as, oh, that's just the world,

and we're going to respond. Oh, it's just the normal world where rich people have access to healthcare and the poor people die of preventable diseases. Yeah, it seems that's the way it's been for a long time. But that's, I mean, that's why I'm an idealist. It's like, why does it have to be that way? Why can't we change it? Other societies do a better job at that. Why can't we be more like them? And I think that that's, you know,

people feel that like the technologies come with their own value systems, but they don't. The technologies and all tools are agnostic. And that's why we have to have our overlay of who we are and what we stand for. And that's just in life. I mean, in life, there are just so many new situations. You can't prepare for life by saying, all right, if X happens, I'm going to do Y because there's an unlimited number of Xs. And so however many possibilities you've prepared for, something else is going to happen and you're not going to know what to do. The only thing is to say, here's who I am. Here's what I stand for. Whatever happens, whatever comes my way, here are the principles that are going to guide me. And that, I think that's it. That's the essence of everything. You talked about this going to Mars. I have to say,

for anybody, rich people, poor people, adventurers, don't be the first person who goes to Mars. Be the 10,000th person to go to Mars, because the first people who go to Mars are going to be criminals escaping death row and people with terminal diseases that don't have much time to live. Mars is a tough place to be. And I do think that we're going to have to leave this planet. I mean, certainly our sun is going to become a red dwarf, which probably will screw Mars too. We're going to have to go someplace else. And that colonization always, I mean, there's two things that could drive colonization. One is optimism. Oh, it's probably going to be better. Life is going to be better someplace else. Or it's fear. Life is so terrible here that I guess

I better go through that dark forest or go to Mars because how much worse could it be? Probably if you're the first guy to go to Mars, it probably will be worse, but at least that's a motivation for going. Okay. All right. So there's so much in here. I mean, I just got to put a note, but I don't want to spend too much time here. You sounded like me, or I sound like you. Is that the important variables are to know you're, we must, we must be, I got to check my combo, uh, Cambodian. Yeah. Um, so I think that the principles that I just want to say the importance of having principles and the ability to course correct, um, are essential, right?

What is the value structures? What are the core principles? What are the unwavering principles? So do you have a couple unwavering principles that guide your thoughts, your words, and your actions? Yeah. And I think everybody, it's such a cliche for people to say, well, everybody needs a mission statement. We kind of do. And it's the kind of thing where you, I think you have to articulate it for our, for ourselves, as I said, because there are so many, um, new situations. And so my thing, and I actually, it's, I do this to a fault, which is always try to speak

as honestly as possible, except when too much honesty will get you in trouble and always at least try to do the right thing that helps the people around you. And it just, it seems so obvious and probably everybody would sign on to that. But every day in life, there are always these little encounters, little moments where you think, well, no one's going to know. Or, you know, yeah, I know what the right thing is. I know what it means to take the more magnanimous approach in this situation, but it's inconvenient or it's harder. Or even I feel afraid. And I talked about my father being a refugee in their little village in Austria. They'd lived with these people, their best friends,

for generations. But in a moment, my father and grandparents got taken away and nobody did anything and nobody said anything and they were afraid. But there's always, in every moment in life, there's the more magnanimous and the less magnanimous approach. And I think people in their gut know what the more magnanimous approach is. If it was costless, everybody would always do the magnanimous thing. And I think we all have to kind of remind ourselves that everything is a choice. Every decision is a choice. And I certainly try, I don't succeed, but try to live by that. And then the other thing is to always be learning and always be growing.

We all screw up. Whatever you're doing, however good you are or aren't, you're going to screw up. But we always have to strive to do better, to learn more, to get feedback from other people. And I have so much further to go than I have from where I am now. Even right now, I'm in the middle of this wild, wonderful journey creating this global movement called One Chaired World. And it's been great. It's played to all of my strengths

to found an organization and 35 days after the first Zoom call of a bunch of people from around the world responding to my call saying, hey, we need to fix this, talk about optimism, hubris, fix this pandemic, the challenges of this pandemic through a global movement focusing on our interdependence. 35 days later, we founded a global organization that is now a community of people in around 100 countries. But it was that same skill set, that same ability to say, all right, we're going from here to there, which is my greatest strength at this second phase of growth is also my greatest vulnerability. Because when you're on your own, you can march really fast. But the more that you have people join you in any kind of movement, there's another skill set of listening, of community building. And it's kind of inefficient.

And for those of us who are used to say, well, I want to get from A to B in the fastest way possible, sometimes that's the right thing to do. Sometimes it's the wrong thing to do. And then that's why there are all these, we can have kind of principles, but then we have to apply those principles. And sometimes our best principles don't fit in a certain situation. We have to learn from that. And so just constant adaptability, I think, is just really, really important. You're a systems thinker. What systems have you put in place for you to be a learner, to apply your learnings, to be better? Like, what are the systems, the daily, the weekly rhythms that you put in place to help you? So, and I know again, I'm not great. It don't do exactly what I do. It's not even working for me. How can it work for anybody? Okay. Onto the next question. But what I will say, I'll, I'll up. First is just personally, taking care of myself. I'm an Ironman triathlete and an ultra marathoner.

And if I don't exercise every day, something feels wrong. I want to eat healthy. I try to sleep, although I'm the world's worst sleeper. And I think your listeners can already tell why. It's like I'm too demanding of myself. So one is to take care of yourself and myself. Two is just constant learning. I mean, I wouldn't say it's an allocated, but I read every day. And I'm a huge consumer of books. And I generally read every night before bed. I write in my diary and I read. What do you write about?

It's two things. One is just a log of days, because especially now, particularly in the context of the pandemic and the founding of One Shared World and the world falling apart. There's just so much that's happening. And we always feel we're going to remember everything. And you look back at something from two years ago, three years ago, it's like the most passionate thing is a distant memory. And the other is just charting my personal emotional journey. Because every morning we all wake up and we look in the bathroom mirror and we look pretty much exactly, maybe our hairs or your hair, I don't have enough to matter, but pretty much exactly like you did last night when you went to bed. And so it's like, if you didn't have a log of

all of the mornings, you would think, wow, I'm not aging, which is why nobody thinks they're aging. Everybody on earth thinks, wow, I look really great. You know, that other person who I haven't seen in five years, who I now just saw, they're really getting old. And the reason is we habituate to ourselves every morning. And so keeping a log, it tracks where I've been and where I'm going. So that's the thing on the personal level. And then I'm constantly reading in the day and I just have all kinds of newspapers and magazines and now it's all digital. So that's in terms of that. But for me,

you're right, I am a systems thinker. As a matter of fact, I pride myself in that, in that I think it's probably my greatest skill is to take all these little disparate pieces of information and put them together into a story. Like right now, my story, which I believe, is that this is one of these transitional moments in life and in the world, like 1918 at the end of World War I, like 1945 at the end of World War II. I feel 2020 is one of those moments. And so for then, when I feel like I see this big picture, and this is, I guess, I mean, I'm both,

it's this, I guess, logical combination. I have a PhD in history, and I'm a self-declared futurist. No one, there's no, like, no, but the queen doesn't little, doesn't dove you with the sword. You are a futurist. You just say it one day and then you try to live up to it. But I feel like I can see these, these big picture trends. And then what I try to do is say, well, if this is where we're going, if this is where we're going as a civilization, as a country, what are the options like what's the range we talked about genetics there's a range of possibility so starting from here there's a range of possibility and the goal of life is always to optimize toward the more desirable end of that range and so in this case it, well, we have these two different futures and one looks

pretty good and one looks pretty bad. How do we work backward from that future goal? And what does that mean? And that I think for me is probably the core organizing principle of my life. I talked about with one Shared World. I know now we're triple clicking because we're going to go back to it. But it's this global movement and there's a debate within the organization now, are we a campaign with a movement or a movement with a campaign? The way that I work is I'm going to identify this big goal, and then I'm going to start marching toward that goal. Thoreau has this wonderful quote that I've used for years, which is, if you've built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That's where they should be. Now build

the foundations under them. Like that's kind of the organizing principle of my life, coming back to your question, as an idealist, as somebody who's imagining the way the world ought to be. I'm marginally pissed off that the world isn't what it could be. And then I feel this agency to get from here to there. And that path from what is to what should be, I mean, there's a lot of details. There's a lot of logistics that go into that. And it's, it's hard. I mean, my, my girlfriend, I don't know if it picked up on the microphone, but she just tiptoed around. So she didn't disrupt our, our, our conversation. And she's kind of, she lives a little more in what is world, which is great.

And I live more in the, what could be world. And both of them are valid, but life is a negotiation because if you're just in what is, you're not seeing possibility. But if you're just in what could be, you can be separated from the real stuff of life. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day.

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What are the major trends that you're seeing? And then I want to get into the first human engineered person. It's happened. It's like, I think it happened in, was it 18 or 17 in China? 18. And so that's already happened. So I want to hear the big trends. And then I want to go down a fun rabbit hole about, you know, what comes first, you know, and I want to play with that a little bit, but share the trends. Okay. So big trends, one, what we call it's a boring word, but the post-war international order. Basically, you fought two world wars at the end of the Second World War, 1945. The United States basically led, in many ways, dictated a process of building this whole world, what we now call

globalization. It has these institutions like the United Nations. It was guaranteed by the U.S. military with all of its flaws. This whole world that we have lived in for the last 75 years is done. It's broken. This is it. Historically, when we look back at now, we will say there was this thing, the post-war world, it lasted from 1945 until 2020. In 2020, it was already breaking. But with the pandemic and all of the implications and all of the cascading effects of the pandemic, that world broke. It's one of these big historical years, like the end of the Roman Empire or whatever.

And something came after. And the game is on to figure out what that thing is. So that's certainly trend one. It's going to color every person's life. As a matter of fact, the rest of every person's life. And that's why when I hear about people sitting home on their couches, binge watching Netflix, I say, get up. This is all hands on deck moment for our species.

And everybody has a role. So that's number one. Number two, with technology. Our technology is on an exponential curve, which is why it's getting faster. It's getting better. It's a shorthand for us to think of different technologies. But really, there's a super convergence of technologies. All the technologies are coming together.

And that means that the rate of change is going to accelerate. And now in the context of the pandemic, it's accelerating even more. The way I describe it is that the future is crashing into the present. And that is going to be so discombobulating to people because our brains aren't designed for this speed of change. Our brains are designed for the kind of change that happens when you're a nomad in the grasslands of Africa, not for this. And so the second big struggle is going to be, as I mentioned before, what values do we infuse

into these basically godlike tools that we suddenly have access to? And I think how we figure that out is going to be really important. And then third, again, we're renegotiating the role of human beings. There are a lot of things that humans do that our tools are just going to do better. And we get a lot of identity from these tools. And if you're a radiologist, that's a big part of your life identity. What happens when, not if, when, all of these jobs

that are pattern recognition. We don't recognize them as pattern recognition because sometimes we call that wisdom. Sometimes we call it experience. But when AIs can do better at those tasks. And the answer is we're going to have to identify what does it mean to be a human being? What's our best essence? And if we build that society right, it's kind of wonderful. So I don't want to do something that a computer can do or an AI can do better than me, but I want to be the best effing human that I can be. And that in my mind is pretty exciting. But again, all these changes are really discombobulating. And we have so much change. At the same time, people get afraid. And when people get afraid, there's a tendency to pull back. And that's why I hope that the forces

of inclusion and construction can win the day now. but there is an equal chance that the forces of exclusion and destruction will win. To your point, to your last point there, which is, I think, if I, again, chin check me if this is not right, but the first genetic modifications for humans were really about creating an ultimate soldier. And that could be just urban myth. I don't really know how to know that for sure. We have right now, as far as we know, three genetically modified humans on earth. There could be more, we just don't know about them. There probably is. There probably could be more. So of those three, the goal of the scientist named Ho-Jong Kuei was to create a disruption to one gene in an effort to give them increased resistance to the HIV virus.

Doesn't look like he succeeded, but that was the goal. And it was crazy because it was premature. But now, you could imagine, with everything that we're going through with the pandemic, if somebody said that they could create a single genetic mutation, they would protect people from maybe this coronavirus, or maybe all coronaviruses, or maybe possibly someday all viruses, which probably wouldn't happen through a single mutation,

but probably could happen, at least so far in animal models, if through multiple mutations. Would people want to do that? I don't know. At some point, if people felt it was safe. I'm pretty confident there are no genetically modified super soldiers in existence. And I think it's likely that when we get to the place, the competitive advantage may not be genetically modified soldiers. I think it will be super societies. Because right now, if the US military fights against some other military that has genetically modified soldiers, I mean, it, this, this joke that I started when people talk about genetically modified soldiers and let's say, I say, all right,

let's say we're at war with your, um, your country. Tell me what genetic modification you have and I'll tell you what we're going to do in response. And it's like all right super strength shoot them hold your breath underwater shoot them doesn't need to sleep shoot them and so it's you realize that it's like the combination of all of the capabilities makes any organism and any community stronger and so we're going to have to think think collectively having said that, there will be, I'm certain of it, once we get to the point where there can be modifications that help, all kinds of super rich people are going to find ways to get that. And if it's banned in their countries, they're going to go to modified cruise ships in the middle of the ocean or space stations or out-of-the-way

countries with lax regulatory environments to get what they need. So that future is coming. And on that, we know that. That's definitely happening. So what do you think? This is a guess. But do you think people are going to choose, I don't know, let's say there's some barriers in here and you can only choose two or three characteristics, right?

Are people going to choose intelligence? Are they going to choose, I don't know, physical enhancements that look good? Are they going to choose like disease prevention? Yeah, what do you think people are going to choose? Here's how I see this playing out i mean people imagine sometimes they were that this is going to be like going to the build-a-bear workshop in the mall i'll take the brown fur and i'll take green buttons for the eyes biology is pretty darn complex so in the excuse me in the first phase we're going to select for or against some pretty simple single gene mutations, either to prevent bad things or maybe to give things that people want.

Then the next phase, I think the greatest power is using IVF and embryo screening, and you sequence all of them of these pre-implanted embryos, and then you'll get a pretty decent amount of a readout with some information. It'll get better over time about which of those 15 is giving you whatever it is that you want and all the issues that you raise. If we get to that point, which we're not even close to now, but if we get to that point, you'll have to say, well, here's what I value within this range. And I write about this at length, as you know, in Hacking Darwin. Beyond that, what I think will likely happen or could happen is we'll increase the number of eggs. So right now I mentioned 15, which is your rough average from in vitro fertilization, but if you use stem cell

technologies and basically you could take a skin cell and deuce fat into a stem cell, stem cell into egg cell, let's say you have a hundred thousand eggs and you fertilize those eggs with sperm cells are kind of a dime a dozen. So with sperm cells, then you have 10,000 fertilized eggs from which to choose. Or you could genetically modify at some point in the future, again, not ready for prime time, the eggs or the sperm in advance. If you're choosing from 10,000, now you really have options. Then you could mate pre-implanted embryos with other pre-implanted embryos. You could really push evolutionary level changes through a population in that way much more efficiently than if you had to make so many, like intelligence. We don't even know how many, many thousands of genes have something to say about intelligence. So you make 5,000, if it's one gene and there are some genes that have,

you know, better and worse. So some people with certain small numbers of genes could have higher IQs, but maybe they have greater incidence of autism or something like that. But when you start to make those big numbers of changes, then the complexity gets dangerous because it's not that each gene is doing one thing. It's like a symphony and all genes are doing lots of things at the same time and different things in different contexts. So I think that the real power is going to be in embryo selection even more than in the genome editing, even though I think we also will do

genome editing. So procreation changes. Yep. Fundamentally changes and which forces, you know, the 7 billion people on the planet, let's say that, I don't know, 4 billion, I guess I'm being conservative, have some sort of religious affiliation that they're connected to. I think it's more like five, but I don't know the exact numbers. And there's a story amongst the 11 world religions of procreation and the purpose. And there's virtues and right conduct associated. Is that going to go out the window? It's not going to go out the window. I was at the Vatican last year and had an incredible time meeting with cardinals and bishops who were very, very thoughtful and

thinking really important thoughts about what we're discussing. What does it mean to be a human being? But it's my view that more and more of us will procreate through in vitro fertilization, embryo screening, and ultimately pre-implantation genome editing, just because we're going to be able to eliminate things that we're afraid of. And we're going to get things that over time, people will feel both are safe and they want. But not everyone's going to opt in. And even the people who opt in may be wrong for opting in. I mean, it's going to take a while to figure out where everything, how everything works. And it's connected to your point about the vaccine, about who's going to get the first vaccine. Everyone wants a vaccine, but when we have these rushed timelines for vaccines

and we're not doing all the trials that we normally do, there could be real dangers of being the first. And so I think this is going to have to be a negotiation. And that's why, even though I'm very sympathetic to this kind of transhumanist community because our biology is really buggy. We're adapted for a world in many ways that no longer exists. And so I don't feel some kind of nostalgia for humans in just the way that we're born because people are born with fatal diseases and all sorts of terrible, deadly, painful things. I don't want that. But at the same time, we need an inclusive process that brings everybody together to figure

out the right way forward. The healthcare system is really a fight against genetics, you know, environmental conditions that trigger this, that, and the other. But most people, as soon as they have some sort of diagnosis or some sort of condition, they take action to try to remedy it. And that's why there's this feeling that genetic manipulation is somehow sacred, but radiating your body with radiation to kill cells, that's natural. And none of it is natural, or you could say everything that we humans do is natural because we exist in nature. And so, again, we kind of have to negotiate what feels right individually. And we're going to have to do it communally on a regional and national and also global level.

So let's play this out. Okay. So the current, I think, thinking around potential and quickly gets into longevity after you get out of some of the more mechanical stuff and gets into longevity. And like, how long are we going to live? Well, it'd be really nice if I had my faculties in full when I was on the planet for 95 years, you know, and I had full faculty and I've experienced a lot. Okay. And I'd like to get a number where you think kind of we're going, but also if we played it out and we shifted the game just a little bit and said, now, what would the world look like if

each person resonated at their highest frequency, they're fully connected, there was this loving compassion thing? What would happen? Would we come and go like nirvana? So this is going back to Zoroastrianism. You know, we're shot off into the cosmos like we did it. You know, and there's a little bit of that in some of the religions that say, you know, we come back, you know, but once we figure it out, we go, you know, and so, okay, so is longevity the game? Is that the right game? And then if we are living longer, what's the quality? Yeah. So first, I totally agree with your

Zoroastrian approach, which is let's optimize everything. But longevity on its own is a curse. Health span is the game. There are some people who say, well, we give too much health span. We're going to be overrun. I don't believe that for a minute because when we have, when we extend health span, we're getting so much more love and wisdom and innovation and entrepreneurship and free babysitting and

whatever else we're going to get. So I'm all in with extending healthspan, healthy lifespan. If we just focus on lifespan and not healthspan, that can be dangerous. And if we just focus on our own healthspan and our, frankly, our own lifespan, that's also dangerous because the same point I made earlier, we're part of communities and we're connected to each other. And our well-being resides, yes, in ourselves, but also in everybody else in our community. And that's what this virus is showing us, that our health is connected to the most vulnerable among us. And so we're stakeholders in those other people's well-being. And so if we want to extend healthspan, the first thing we need to do is focus on average healthspan. And the good news is people are dying of things that were diseases that were cured hundreds of years ago of preventable outcomes because of lifestyle or institutional issues, structural issues.

Let's fix that. And frankly, if we do that, we're going to de-stress our lives and we'll all be better off. I think that will translate. And, you know, I'm part of this world also. We need to be doing research into what does it take to extend healthy lifespan? Because we say, oh, extending lifespan is bad, but fighting cancer is good and fighting heart disease is good. But all of those diseases are correlated with age. And so if we make aging a gentler process, we're fighting cancer, we're fighting dementia, we're fighting heart disease. And I say, I'm all

in. I love it. Let's be super practical. And I want to honor your time here is, are there some other things that are actually quite specific that you say, hey, let me get these things right? It's learning. It's learning. It's creativity. Because that's the core skill. Our world is changing so fast that whatever strategy you have now is going to be less and less relevant. And so we always need to be learning, changing, adapting, growing, trying to see the big picture, and then trying to constantly connect the big picture to the small picture, to the experience of the lives as we leave them.

And we need to have continuity between what we're imagining for the world and hoping for the world. I certainly invite everybody, if you want to be part of this crazy, slightly audacious, mostly audacious mission to save the world, please go to oneshared.world and learn more. But there's a connection between big picture ideals and little decisions that we make in our lives. And I know so many people feel, well, what can I do about whether it's the pandemic or climate change or whatever? But there's actually a lot. And with this virus, we're experiencing these super spreaders. These people, one person who's been infected and all these other people are infected. But Mike, you're a super spreader.

That's what a podcast is. And everybody who's listening, you're a super spreader. And you can be a super spreader of something toxic, of anger and hate and or whatever or you can be a super spreader for something good and if you were ever to kind of unpack the world it would look like a weaving of everybody is a super spreader for something and it comes back to your original question about agency, optimism. One, you're a super spreader. Two, you're already woven into the fabric. So, however crappy you feel, quarantined at home, you're part of the fabric and the world needs you. I love it. Jamie, what a fun conversation. You know, I appreciate your intelligence. I appreciate the depth that you've explored. And I appreciate the lightness that you bring to the conversation about our future. All with the sense of like, hey, we got to work. And this relentless pursuit that you're on is inspiring. And so all the notes that we're going to that we've talked about and where people can find you, I'll make sure that that is abundant and facing forward for everything. So I want to say thank you. And I love what you're doing.

Awesome, Mike. Really? My pleasure. Thank you. Awesome. Okay. Have a great day. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the

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