Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Bill Perkins: Winners DIE WITH ZERO! (#098)

Episode Date: November 28, 2020

We all have limited time on Earth, so how should we spend it? Financial advisors urge us to be more like the ant than the grasshopper: work hard to maximize our earnings, save early and often, and, in retirement, reap the fruits of our labors and the rewards of compound interest. “What a monumental waste of human life,” says multi- millionaire Bill Perkins. If you spend a lifetime working and die with lots of money left over, you’ve squandered a huge amount of life energy, bypassing the opportunity to enjoy your money — or to give it away — during your lifetime. Our lives are only as fulfilling as the sum of our experiences, Perkins argues, so the more time and money we invest in experiences during our lifetime, the richer our lives become. “Bill Perkins’ Die With Zero opens up a completely different avenue of thinking to realize that your life can be maximized through memorable experiences. Why wait? Being present is a priority. This book provides an amazing blueprint to living your life while using your resources correctly!” —Kevin Hart, Award-Winning Comedian, and Actor Follow Bill on social media: https://www.diewithzerobook.com https://twitter.com/bp22 https://www.instagram.com/billperkins https://www.instagram.com/diewithzero/ https://www.twitch.tv/thirstlounge Brian Keating’s most popular Youtube Videos: Eric Weinstein: https://youtu.be/YjsPb3kBGnk?sub_confirmation=1 Jim Simons: https://youtu.be/6fr8XOtbPqM?sub_confirmation=1 Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1 Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/V6dMM2-X6nk?sub_confirmation=1 Sarah Scoles: https://youtu.be/apVKobWigMw Stephen Wolfram: https://youtu.be/nSAemRxzmXM Host Brian Keating: ‍♂️ Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating Instagram at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating Buy my book LOSING THE NOBEL PRIZE: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Subscribe for more great content https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 ✍️Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php Join my mailing list: http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php Join my Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/losingthenobelprize Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic. Five, four, three, two. Talking to Bill Perkins. He is the author of Die with Zero, which is an uplifting book, despite what you may think of the title. The book is extremely uplifting to me, and actually I think it fits in really nicely with some of the themes we talk about here on the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. into the Impossible podcast. Welcome Bill Perkins. You were on a boat somewhere.

You don't have a landline connecting you to shore, do you? No, no. We're going Wi-Fi. We've got tangled technology here. Oh, that's awesome. So we're in the Virgin Islands in Christmas Cove. Oh, wow. Okay.

Oh, nice. That's great. So, yeah, it's a great pleasure to be here. I just wanted to give a shout out to our mutual friend, James Altucher, who is one of the people who gives the encomer. or the props to you on the back of the book here. He says about this book that it's life-changing, and he agrees with Kevin Hart, comedian Kevin Hart,

who says, Die with Zero opens up a completely different avenue of thinking so that your life can be maximized through memorable experiences. Why wait? And Bill, you might be wondering, why are you talking to a scientist, although you are an engineer, and I know that. You're trained in engineering. But the first thing I want to say is, Do you know what Albert Einstein's said was the greatest invention of the human mind?

No, give me a guess, because I've had all these false clothes by Einstein, like compound interest, you know, what is it? He said it. He said compound interest is the greatest invention of the human mind. And of course, this is somebody who invented relativity, coined the word the photon, did all sorts of things. But I think it's apt. And your book really made me think about compound interest, not with money. but with regard to memories. And I first want to ask you, can you say something about the book?

Describe it for my audience. Don't give away the goods, although you give away so much value in this book, including free worksheets that I've worked on and filled out and a mailing list that people can subscribe to. But first, just give me the 10-second overview. How will this book change other people's lives the way it's changed my life already?

Okay, so one of the things to, to when you think about our lives of human beings we we die and we deteriorate and because we die and we deteriorate that implicates what we do today a lot of people think oh you know you heard the question what would you do if you're going to die tomorrow right but what are we going to do if you die 10 days from now so basically what you do today is kind of like this integral right backwards integral of your death date and the rate of your deterioration and you know you're a scientist you model when you model things, you tend to get them right or closer to right. And so this book is really about modeling your life from now, wherever you are, to the grave, so that you optimize and solve for maximum fulfillment.

That's what the book is. It's a modeling book. Yeah. And it's about resources. And it's about conversion of resources and the fungibility of resources that people don't think about. I tweeted out to my microscopic fan base today that this medallion, this Nobel Prize medallion, is really the result of a failed estate plan, according to none other than Bill Perkins. Because Alfred Nobel left all his money, he never married, he had no kids, he left all his money to endow this prize only after he died. And it's grown much, much more slowly than compound interest on other investments might grow. So I wonder, you know, people look at this as sort of the ultimate thing to aspire to in science. This is chocolate, so, you know, I can eat this.

But that's not a real one. I don't have one. And after writing my book, losing the Nobel Prize, I certainly won't get one. But I want to start with another book about death. And this book is called Denial of Death. And it's by Ernest Becker. And I should say that this book, Bill, I need a guy like you in my lab because it's impeccably researched. I read all the footnotes.

I didn't find a single typo in this book. I know you put a lot of effort and energy into it. I just want to salute that. But the footnotes are golden, my friend. Thank you so much for including. such a well-researched book. Yeah, I had a good team. We worked with people to make sure that, you know, there's going to be people,

you're trying to get this message out to the maximum audience, right? Because it fits everyone. Everyone can, everyone's, you know, trying to have a fulfilling life, right? An adventurous life or however they define it. And I wanted to give them the mental models to make sure that they were able to do it. But if they reject the idea outright, right, well, the data doesn't show this, Or I'm going to wind up, you know, if I use all my resources and allocate my resources in this place, then I didn't play insurance agent for myself at 65, and then I'm going to need all this money at 65.

And I have to have the data that shows old people don't spend money. Yeah. You know, I'm just going to cut to the chase. I'm not going to be polite. I'm not going to whatever. You don't spend the money. My theory is they can't. Right.

Their temperament has changed. Their abilities have changed. Their health has changed. And they are sitting on stacks of resources that. they exchanged hours of their life for to never use. Yeah. Right? And I say, you know, delayed gratification at its extreme is no gratification.

And so I want to make sure that people allocate their resources properly throughout their life to get the most out of it. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And part of your training as an engineer must have included risk modeling, risk management and mitigation. And I think about that all the time. People think, oh, you're a cosmologist.

You spend your time looking up at the heavens. I spend about 1% of my time looking at the heavens. I spend about 1% of my time looking at. at the heavens and the rest of my time thinking about all the ways something can go wrong in the quest to do that. And most people think about either it's impossible. And even you, to give, to be a little bit contrarian here, even you say it's impossible to die with zero. Of course it is exactly to, you know, to the penny. But on the other hand, I would wonder, you know, in terms of risk management, would you err on the side of dying with negative $1 or or positive a million dollars?

Yeah, I mean, I think I demonstrate in the book how the more fulfilling life, right, of your choosing, right? However you want to live it is to shoot for the negative dollar, right? Or negative $10, right? That is the, that is going to get, that's going to bring you closer to the optimal life that you're able to have, right? Of your design, right? So I don't, I don't tell people how to live, like you should do this or you can go here. It's not a cookbook, right? It's a model on how to take your money, your health, and your time, those resources that you have throughout your life in varying degrees, and get the most out of them.

Yeah. Right. And it's about application of resources when it matters. You talk very touchingly about your daughters and wanting to watch a Winnie the Pooh Hufflelump movie. And they wanted to watch it probably more than you when you were a young man earning your way. and yet when you wanted to watch it, it was too late. They didn't want to watch it with you anymore. Talk a little bit about that vignette.

Because it was so it was very moving to me. First, I've got daughters and I've got sons. It was very moving to me. Talk about how that felt when you had that realization. Now they're teenagers. Let me tell you, they don't want to see me at all right now. They've gone to the dark side of the moon. I don't know how they did it, but they went there.

The concept of this is that, you know, we all know that a lot of people have this nebulous. date in the future when we're going to die, right? And they understand deterioration. It's still far off. But what we don't realize is that there's seasons of our life, right, that come and go and pass us by. And certain experiences, choices, decisions, whatever you want to call them, are meant

for those periods. They're not transferable to another period. And the story I use is with my kids, you know, having young kids that don't want to watch a Disney poo half a lump movie with you, sit there and hold your hand. sweet and deering story, that time is going to come to an end. I don't get a flag that says, you know, 30 seconds so that period's going to end, but it does pass. And so that experience of watching that movie with my youngest daughter, Risa, came and went. And so if I didn't get all my Poo Heflam watches in during that period, I'm not getting anymore, right? And that's just

one example, but there's, you know, you're a young single person, you're in your 20s, You're a college student. You're married. You have young kids. You're, you know, you're a businessman. Like, we all have different seasons in our life in different periods of which we are to allocate certain experiences where they're best enjoyed. Yeah. And once that season passed, they're either difficult to transfer to another period or impossible.

Yeah. Right. And, you know, the easy ones that are impossible is like, look, I have a degenerative cartilage in my back. skiing for me in 75 is seems unlikely you know technology might come along etc but it seems like if I don't spend my ski dollars now I have wasted my ski dollars they need to be allocated to something else problem is is as you deteriorate right the number of activities and experiences you're able to convert your money into positive life experiences that conversion gets less and less and less and less and less and less right it's like that the resistance goes it's like resistance in a in a in a

wire, right? As it goes up to infinity. The older you get, the higher the resistance goes for your ability to convert your money into positive experiences. And that's why, that's one of the reasons why we see it so hard for older people of all wealth grades to accumulate their assets and convert them into experiences, right? Yeah. And I think what's so interesting is that we and my channel is not only for technically minded people, but a wide variety of audience members comprise the the subscriber base. But many of them are technically minded. And yet, I find they spend almost the least amount of time thinking about the end of their

life and what they're going to do. And the simple realization that hit me like a ton of bricks from your book was that there's basically this optimization problem. It's a mini-max or maxim-in problem that you can do. A calculus problem. One of my listeners is already, she's already gotten the idea, Church of Entropy. She's saying it's a calculus problem. If you drop a trillion dollars on my little.

newborn kid, it's not going to do anything for her. If you drop a trillion dollars on my aging grandfather, he's not going to do anything with it on his deathbed. So that means there's an optimum, a 40-year-old, a 30-year-old, they can do a lot. And so I find your book so useful because it's counterintuitive. There's also another curve you can overlay, and I'm working on some models of this. I was doing some coding. It was so much fun. But you already did this for me. So I don't need to do it. You've got an app that you can link to, and I'll have in the show notes a link to to your awesome website. You have a tool to go through this.

It's not for billionaires alone, because all of us will have a maximum utility value of a dollar. At some point in their life, it's a date. It's not an amount, as you point out. It's not an amount. So there'll be some day when a dollar is worth the maximum value to you out there listening. And there'll be a day that that correlates to in terms of your health. Can you spend it on hiking the Alps?

No, not when you're 90. So I think that that is really driven. And I want to ask you, psychologically, do you think it's psychologically the fear of running out of money and not being able to bounce the check to the undertaker that causes people not to die with zero and to die with huge wasted resource of the time value of money? What is the number one cause that people don't die with zero? USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%.

tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usaa.com slash bundle restrictions apply i think i think it's part cultural and autopilot so culture is another word for autopilot like you get into a culture and these are the things the way it's done you know think about it whatever you just go on going to your job punch the clock call home watch your sports etc you're not thinking about when i'm going to die how i'm going to allocate my time what you know what do i really want right like you got good at something Most of us got good at something in order to survive, food, shelter, and water, right? And then we developed habits to get even better at that, right, and protecting ourselves. And we have little vacations, et cetera, but we really don't think about, like, hey, what is the arc of my life going to look like from cradle to grave?

What does my health look like at at this point? And what is the deterioration of my body look like from wherever I'm at to the grave? And how do I, you know, what experiences am I putting when, right? And am I optimizing? You know, people are busy. They're on autopilot. There's a lot of distractions going on, and the culture just has them that way. The other thing is, is people are so more, they need to move their fear.

They fear running out of money as opposed to fear of wasting their lives. Right. Like, my, I shifted my fear from, holy shit, I do not want to look backwards and be like, I fuck this ride up. I only got one ride, and I don't want to have a thousand would-a-cote-should-a-should-should-a- should-ist, right? Or I didn't take this chance, or I didn't allocate it, or I have a trillion dollars in the bank that I could have spent or went here or had these, you know, done this charity event

or hung out with my parents or whatever it may be, whoever you are, right? So that is my biggest fear, is fear of missing out on my own life. Right? More than fear of running out of money. And that fear of missing out on my own life leads me to model it. Right? If you're going to go from here to California,

you're going to Google Maps it, you're going to waze. If you're going to put stops in, you're going to put it in, it's going to figure out the, optimal route for you to do every single thing in your journey, right? But here on planet Earth, our journey is the grave. We know the destination. It's death. So get used to it, get comfortable.

That's where you're going. So we need to optimize our journey, right, to get as much as we can, given our resources that we have. And so this is what this book is about. It's about optimizing your journey. So I'm reading another book about death. It's called The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. It's a classic book I quoted in my life.

my book, losing the Nobel Prize, because I think it's something that I believe Alfred Nobel did, and he could have used your book in a sense, because he didn't die with zero. He died with millions and millions of dollars in the bank. And I think it's partially due to what Ernest Becker calls the denial of death, that we all know, as you said, our final destination, we're all going in the same place, Warren Buffett, and the, you know, when I used to be a dishwasher, I used to think about, oh, I could be like Warren Buffett. Well, nobody here gets out alive. And so the question, you know, is why do we have this obstinence, this resistance to it? It's the one risk we all know we face.

It's like last year I was putting together a risk register with my colleagues on the Simon's Observatory, this huge telescope project, 300 people building in 17,000 feet in the Atacama Desert of Chile, super exciting, going to transform our understanding of the Big Bang. And we all put down, well, there's a risk that there'll be concrete prices will fluctuate. There's a risk that Chilean peso will do this. Nobody had coronavirus. Nobody had global pandemic. And I wonder, when you think about these risk modeling, we know that we're going to get older.

Our health curve is also going to decline. I've got a sketch of it on the blackboard over here. But our health is going to decline. We know that. That's a known known. But what about all the unknown knowns? You have a very interesting and unique perspective on how to model these one-off risk events, not like you can buy COVID insurance two years ago, but talk about the kind of hedging and the risk management

that you offer as a solution. to the anxiety confronting the denial of death. Right. So one of the things I try and get people comfortable, and I had this conversation with my in-laws. Like they were like, oh, we want to go here and go on this trip, but we need to save money for our health, right?

And so, like, and I said, well, what calamity that you're saving for that you think that money will cover, right? Either your insurance is covering it or you're dying. Like, let's just be real. Like, you don't, you're not, you're not, You're not, you're not, you're not, AIG, you're not, you're not any of these. So what, thread the needle? Like, thank God I had $5,000 for that, right?

And so that was one. But, you know, talking about the tools, you know, there is a product out there to, from people that have the law of large numbers on their side, right? Making a 7% return or 6% return to take the risk that you don't want to have. Right? So if you're worried about longevity risk, well, I'm going to lift the 200 and I'm worried about running my money. Buy an annuity. You know, insure that risk out. If you're, you know what I mean? People generally buy life insurance risk. They're worrying about dying early and not having a breadwinner for their family. So they buy, you know, I'm going to die early. So they buy life insurance. But there's the opposite of that, right? And so, you know, I self-insure, you know, the risk I'm willing to take or if I want to, if I feel like I want to be a little bit of conservative, then I'll aim to die with.

$1,000 or $2,000, right? And I'll model, and this is not like you do it one day. It's static and that's it, right? You're constantly updating based on the situation that you're in. Every five years. Every five years you recommend. Every five years you can model. Or if your taste change or something's like, no, I saw something on this trip.

I went and now I want to do this. So you can remodel. Like, you can continuously update it. Originally, this was going to be a program. It should be. You should do a program or a seminar or whatever. Yeah, and so, you know, that's the program that we have is generally macro, and it's a search algorithm, right? And it, you put in these outputs, and it searches the optimal path of spending and saving in order to get experience points, et cetera.

And then we have other modules that are like, well, diminishing returns, you're not going to ski 100 times and et cetera, right? So there's all kinds of tweaks and other people. I wanted to have, like, modules that people could add in and make this better and better. But, you know, in terms of risk, right? I, you know, there's a part of the book where I say, you're not a good insurance agent. You're just not. You're just terrible at it, right? You have no expertise in the risk.

You don't know how likely it is to happen. And by using hours of your life working at a job to save up the money for, you know, robot, alien space invasion insurance, right? I have that here. I do need that in California. You have that insurance? You bought that? It's like you're being. wasteful. It's inefficient. You're much better off paying it off to an insurance agent to cover that

risk, right? And that's when I talk about annuities, right? People are worried about longevity risk outliving their money. And there's other products, right, that people use in every day. And it's not necessarily to sell annuities. It's just to get them to think about what they're doing, right? Because you get a lot of resistance from people being like, well, I can't take that trip now because what if this happens in the future? I'm like, buy the annuity. What about long-term care insurance? buy the long-term care insurance. You know what I mean? Like, it's cheaper than you slaving away two, three years of your life

to sock away that money. Yeah, right? Absolutely. To cover this calamity, right? And so I say, stop trying to be an insurance agent with a customer of one. And they are the most common objection that I hear is, oh, that's selfish, you're not going to give it to your kids. No, the whole point is you are, you have forethought.

You think about your kids. You allocate the money to them, but you point out the average age for people to die nowadays, about 81 or 82 if you're a man, maybe a little older for women. And when they die, their kids are going to be in their 50s or 60s. And to use an extreme example, you know, somebody that dies at age, you know, 120, the biblical age, you know, that you're supposed to wish people to live to, their kids are going to be 90, 100 years old. Like, what are you going to do with $100, you know, $100 when you're... They're going to pass them by and they've deteriorated past the point where they can actually convert that much. money into experiences. If you think about it, like, money isn't abstract and it distracts people. It's like when you go into a casino, they give you chips, right? Right. And you're just like,

hey, here's a tip, $25, let it ride. Like, you're just so capricious because they gave you chips. Right. Because they turned, it's like money is already an abstraction, and then they put an abstraction upon an abstraction and turn them in chips. And then next thing you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're spending like it was like water, right? And so, what happens here is that people people need to think about what does money represent and it represents hours of their life that they exchanged right it's that's the best definition is something we exchange

hours of our life for right and I think days years whatever and so when you exchange your life for money and don't get the experiences out of it you're wasting your life, right? You're literally wasting your life. And so when you're trying to help your kids and give them money, what you're trying to do is help them and give them experiences, choices that they can make, right?

Well, when can they most take advantage and convert that money and have experiences? When is the optimal period? When is the maximum power of that gift? You want to think about that, right? And so when you're dying with zero, you're dying with zero your own money, not your kids' money. that should be separated out and allocated to them. Almost immediately.

It doesn't mean they get control of it, right? Like, my kids have their money. They can't touch it. It's in a trust, right? They'll get it. Really, you're not giving all your money to your teenage girls right now? No, no, they're not going out. There'd be slurpees and I don't know what they do.

They just, but they're going to reach mental maturity, as most people do, around 28, right, according to the science, right? And physical maturity around 33. Right? That's kind of around there. And so somewhere around 28 to 33 is maximum impact, right, in terms of that gift. After that, each dollar I give them is worth less, right? To them. Yeah. And their ability to convert into experiences. And so, you know, people might ship that earlier or later, but basically the thing is to actually be off autopilot, deliberately think about what you want to give to your kids, set it a So if you get in an accident and get sued, you don't you don't vaporize the kids money. It's their money, right? That also frees you to take risk Right a lot of times. I used to take flying lessons and ride a motorcycle right and then I had a baby and I was like you know what? I'm okay with this risk, but I don't have the right to take the risk for my kids Right. Yeah, so I like to gamble. I like to travel. I trade big. I take all kinds of risk but I have the right to take the risk for my kids, right? That I put them in this environment. So their money is set aside in a trust. Right. You could put you. Yeah, you could you could actually take the and the one thing I took away,

because I am a pilot, I fly, you know, engines, you know, dual engines. I always have a flight instructor with me, et cetera. So I minimize the risk. But one point I took away is, yeah, you could take out life insurance. So God forbid you get killed in a plane accident, but you can't take out experience insurance. There's no such thing. So my kids would get denied that. And I look at it and I came away with residents with what you said. I'm a practicing Jewish person. And every Friday night, we have a certain number, we have Shabbat where we get together. We have a family meal. It's a, it's a type of experience and bonding that we have. I figured out not too hard to calculate 18 years at home, 52 weeks a year, multiply those together. That means I get a thousand

shabbas with each one of my kids. That's it. So that means if I'm going to go, you know, speak at the Bill Perkins conference in West Virgin Islands, it better be worth more than 0.1%, right? Because that's one Shabbas out of the thousand. I'm going to lose. And I have to exchange that if I'm going to be not working, but if I'm going to be away from my family, away from my wife and kids, I think about that. But you crystallized it in this book. In terms of building up experiences, experiences and attention are the least fungible of all resources. And I find it really fascinating that you go through and you actually you take issue with Steve Jobs. I don't know if you know this, but Steve Jobs never gave away his money while he was alive.

Are you aware of that? No. Yeah, he never gave. He said, I'm a better investor than anybody will be. And putting the money in Apple computer will make more money than they could use if I gave it to them now. So I'm a better at investing. But you basically... Except they're starving and dying right now.

Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Anybody who's... been you know rushed to the hospital knowing that they're going to die or didn't have the ambulance care you know etc it's like okay it's too late you know i don't know what future humans you're helping and maybe it's work but like you know charity is now life is now life is urgent and i just haven't seen a return better than education and helping people currently yeah yeah i say travel travel is a form

of education you can buy you can buy iq points by traveling and it seems like you do that you're you're you're on these trips these these extravagances i want to ask you you have an interesting backstory you started as an energy trader if i'm not mistaken uh talk about like what did that give you what tools did that give you and what is um i have the psychological theory that maybe you're uh you know you're so into poker because you've actually hedged your risks so well in your life that there's still this need this anxiety that you do want to gamble in some way because you're not gambling stupidly with your money you're super brilliant about that but why do you gamble what does it attract to you are Is it possible you could get addicted to it?

I think it's a puzzle. I think there's addiction to winning and getting lucky. Like you want the feeling of getting lucky, right? Like, you know black jacks against you. People play. You know craps against you. You just love that like I got lucky. Yeah, look at the casino.

It's like this palace. How do you think they got the money for it? Yeah, it's this form of entertainment and social aspect of it that I think may have been missing. But I think, you know, going into energy and being exposed. to, you know, people who were, when I was dead broke and they were having large sums of money, you know, it really forced me to ask the questions of what why and what for. And, you know, most of the people were older and I was younger. And so I had a distorted view of what old was, right?

I would be like, who cares if you're a millionaire? You're old. You know what I mean? Like, right? Maybe my age now. Right. 50. Yeah.

What are you going to do with it? Drive your kid to school. You know what I mean? Like, you know, I'd just be like the most. arrogant, you know, snobby, snoddy look at these older rich people. I was like, I got to get rich before I'm 30. And a lot of people want to get rich young. There's a reason for that.

I mean, even though my ageism was wrong in magnitude, it was in the right direction. Right. I was like, well, I'm working hard to be a billionaire by the age of 90. What am I going to do? You know what am I going to do with that? You know what I mean? And so that put me on the course to figure out, okay, when is the optimal age? Right?

When does money have the most fun? At that time, it was just fun. When do I get the most girls? And when do I have the most fun? But later in life, it's like, when does it have the most utility for me? Right? How does my life order? It's like, is it better to be rich after you're married or before you're married?

You know, like things like that. And how does the ordering of your life go? And how does it place? And then I was like, well, when I was a baby, it was useless. And when I'm 90, it's useless. So like you said, in the beginning of the conversation, there must be a curve, right? There's got to be a utility curve.

And I'm like, well, how am I going to figure this out? I need an economist and a mathematician to help me. I need some health professionals to talk to me about, you know, frailty curves and bone frailty and bone density and lung capacity and watts per kilograms to climb a stairs.

Like, one time I was reading this article, researching this, and it didn't make it into the book, but it talked about the watts per kilogram you need to climb a flight of stairs. And how, you know, your muscles atrophy and etc. And after you get to a certain level, you can't climb a flight of stairs, right?

And how much energy you have? And so I was like, wow. And I read this book by, I don't know if you know James, Jay Gould, James Gould. Yeah. He wrote Deep Hot Biosphere. Yeah.

It's one of my favorite books, whether the theory's right or not. In the beginning, he's talking about life and how all living things are energy processing units. And I talk about this in the book. And machines are energy processing units. And when you are no longer able to process energy, you die. You're declared dead, right?

And when a machine can't process energy, it's broken. It's, you know what I mean? Like it's done. And so, and that allows, that processing of energy allows you to fire your neurons, fire your muscles, and allow you to propel you through our universe, right? In this organic spacesuit that we have to have all these experiences. And so it hit me real hard. So I took that and I was like,

shit movement is life processing energy is life the more energy you are processing the more life you get right in the broadest terms right yeah and so I thought shit if I can't move around I have less life when my body starts to deteriorate and I can't process the energy and I can't climb no stairs I have less like which is true because when I went to st. Petersburg it's great beautiful city I like to walk around. They let you climb these 210 steps and walk around the churches and look around. It's like, wow, they'd never let you do that in New York City.

You know, like for all the rest reasons, you would say, right? And I noticed the tour buses that were lined up, not a single one of those tour bus people got off and climbed the stairs. And when it hit me and I was like, St. Petersburg is not the same St. Petersburg. To me, I'm getting a 10 St. Petersburg. Because I'm able to explore more and climb these steps and see this view and do this whatever.

For them, they're getting a six, right? In absolute terms. Relative, it's a 10 for them because they're doing what they can do right now. But I'm just saying, like, maybe they should have came to St. Petersburg in their 50s, as opposed to their 70s, right? Yeah. And so life is like Tetris. You've got to get the order right in order to get the high score, right?

God goes, in the beginning you're up in heaven. It's like, here is the bucket of experiences you can have. have on earth. It's a giant ass bucket. You're like, great. And he goes, but you got to get the order right or else you don't get all of them. That's right. Right. And I think a lot of people are going through life not thinking about the order of these things and getting these things allocated and these resources applied at the right time so that they don't get the maximum out of the bucket that God has given them. Yeah. And I think about that. That really resonates with me as a, as a Jewish person, again, there's a famous rabbi.

Now, rabbis in Eastern Europe, you know, in the 1800s, they weren't known for, you know, going wakeboarding. And I don't know if they are nowadays. But there's a famous rabbi, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. And he said, almost on his deathbed, he told his students, he said, my students, take me to on your backs and carry me up to the Alps. He was in, you know, Germany or near Switzerland. He was like, and they're like, what are you talking about?

Like, why do you want to go to the Alps? Like, that's not a very Jewish thing to do. What are you going to go skiing? snowboarding, get some Ollies. And he said, no, God made this beautiful world. And I'm going to die in a few years. And I'm going to be up in heaven. He's going to ask me, why didn't you see my beautiful Alps?

I made them for you. I made them just for you. And I got that. I got the chills when I was reading your book because it's the same philosophy. God made this world. Whoever made this world. Is it more mysterious if you create? To me, they're both miracles in a way.

I had a wonderful conversation with a physicist earlier this week. and we were just talking about like there are some things that are mysteries of life and there are some things of puzzles what's the difference between a mystery and a puzzle well a mystery might not have a solution a puzzle you might not be able to solve but somebody smarter than you could solve it

and again I'm thinking about like games and the enjoyment and correct me if I'm wrong but when you're playing poker you're doing all your crazy stuff with that guy Dan Bolzerian I guess is his name I don't know anything about him are you in that flow state that you just crave like the poker like you already

said you need a team to play poker you need people to play poker you're obviously a team player you played football in iowa in college that's probably responsible for your knee uh but uh well first of all actually would you trade that experience like would you have a little more cartilage in your knee and forego those awesome experience of being a college scholarship athlete at a top premier football school i walked on but yeah i i i don't know i i'm actually now that like i'm you know it's a it's hard it's hard not being able to run the sim on your life what would happen the relationships you had the friendships you had the friendships you made etc to say oh no I wipe those over

and do it over for the cartilage I'd like you know for the friends and the love that I had I'd give them a piece I'd give up the cartilage you know and I would give up that piece right because the memory dividend and we didn't talk that much about it but you know when you when you invest in the bank right you get interest right yeah and and you can get a certain amount of money out and withdraw it. When you invest in an experience, when you recall that experience, you get a portion of the joy. Sometimes the joy is actually greater than the original experience, but sometimes it's a great portion of it. Sometimes it's just a little bit, right?

Tell the story of your first kiss. Recall the time you got married, your daughter's graduation, the first time she was in a school play and delivered it, whatever it is, right? Whatever experience it is. And then you get that dividend. You get the neurons firing. You get the endorphins. You relive it. And that's called a memory dividend. It's an experience. experience in itself. And so those memory dividends, right, have been paying themselves for years and years and years and years. And sometimes they compound, right? I tell the story about a football thing. The other guy goes, yeah, with the Hawkeye, whatever, we start a friendship. And boom, a new experience off the memory dividend going on. And so that has to go into the calculus of how you

live your life and when you allocate having any kind of experience, whether it be charitable or hedonistic, right and so you know the one thing I'd say is when you invest in a bank there's only so many so much you can withdraw an interest yeah when you're tested an experience it's infinite yeah you go there all the time yeah and I I tell a off-collar joke I was like ask anybody who masturbates you know ask anybody who masturbates about the memory dividend they get a little more kosher example of that yeah exactly no no it's so you know but anybody who hit a home run like how many times have you heard You know, you get it. That's memory dividends and action, right?

And that's the stuff of life. That's what you're going to retire on, right? When you can no longer move and you're sick of watching Jeopardy for that day, you're going to reminisce on the adventures, decisions, choices that you made throughout your life. So you need to make sure that you invest heavily in these experiences so that you have a retirement. And the earlier, the better. It is a retirement. Right.

Yeah, exactly. The earlier, the better as well. I always envy my friends that had kids in their 20s. I didn't have kids until I was 30s in my 30s. And looking back on it, and you know this because you're an engineer by training and you know a lot about it. But most people can't comprehend exponentials. And that's why Einstein thought of compound growth is so interesting. You know, one of my friends who I've had on the show, Alex Hayne, he's a big time YouTuber. He makes the point. Let's say you want to lose 10 pounds in a year. year. Okay. And you're going to lose 1% a day. So you're going to lose like 1% of the 10 pounds a day, but you're going to keep compounding that. So that's going to grow and grow and grow. So as you know, the rule of 72, right? They haven't repealed that rule, right? So you take the number 72, you divide into the interest rates. That's how many days or time the doubling period's going to be. Now, so if you have 1%, that means it's going to double in 72 days. How many doubling periods are there in a year? Well, there's 365 divided by 70%. 72, let's call it five doubling periods. That means your money or whatever is going to double five

times in a year. So that means 3200, two to the 30, sorry, 32 to the fifth power. So 32x. Now, apply that to losing weight. That means if you're losing 10 pounds, in the last 72 days, you're going to lose half the weight. Like, that's just the way the doublings work, right? So every period. So that means in the first doubling period, the first 72 days, almost three months, you're going to lose like a couple of ounces. That's all. And you're, You're not even going to know. You can have a beer with Dan Bolzerian and it's going to blow it away. But think about it.

If you start early, that means that that last period of time, which is in your life, the life bucket where you're about to die, the last five, ten years, you're going to double that memories. All the memories you've ever had in your life. It's really magical. And I agree with Einstein. You know, he had a pretty good, he was a pretty good guy. He was a pretty smart guy, this guy, Einstein. He had a good view.

He had an interesting perspective on things. So, yeah, I, I'm like, listen, using the power of compound interest. And, you know, like, when you hear Warren Buffett and these guys talk about investing, like invest early, early, early, right? Because you want to take advantage of the compound interest. I'm like experiences, invest early, early, early, take advantage of the compound interest of memory dividends. They are a real thing.

There's a lot of neuroscience out there that goes on. When you drink a Coke, you don't just drink the Coke. You drink all the commercials and good times when the Coke. When you have a meal with food science, right? When you have a meal, like you have Shabbat, right? When you have Shabbat, not only do you have that experience, but you're having the Shabbat of all the Shabbat, all the culture, all the history, all the memories, et cetera, right?

It's playing into that current thing. And then it goes on and it produces its dividend and compounds on and so on. So I'm like, take advantage of that and see how it applies in your life, right? Yeah. To whatever experience you want to have. And so it's not like, hey, do this, do that. It's have the mental model, right? to create and model your own adventure so that when you get to the end, you die with zero regrets.

Right? Die with zero. Now, on a practical basis, how do you go through this risk matrix or this end-by-end matrix or whatever? Let's say I'm inviting you to come speak at this imagination conference. You know, I'm going to pull you off the boat. I'm going to pay you. You know, you're going to get some money, but let's be honest, we don't do everything we do for money. I mean, that's like the least of why we do what we do. You're doing it for...

This book is not about money. This is about saving lives. Yeah, I mean, this book is a bestseller. It's not like number one in the New York Times, but that's not why you did it. That's not why you gave away all these free resources like I'm linking to on the web page right now. But there's other forms of remuneration that... And so my question to you is like, how do you differentiate?

Like, okay, so we know we're not going to die with millions of dollars in the bank, you know, thanks to the stock market performance today. No, no, but we're not. And I'm a state employee. I'm just a simple state employee of the California state. But what about the other experiences? Like, there is a high you get from being with this guy that I keep hearing about. Or you get this high for being in a poker.

At some level, you have to be honest, you're... Sorry, I'm just watching the background behind you there. But at some level, you're going to have to trade attention to your kids or whatever. And so how do you go through that rank ordering yourself? I mean, it's very difficult because I try and I try and say, okay, what are my priorities? I try and get in touch on my priorities. A lot of times the first thing I do, I got to slap myself, get off autopilot, right? Because a lot of it's just like, go do this, oh, whatever.

Somebody invite you to do it. Yes, go. You know what I mean? Not thinking about how does this fit in the grid and where is the time I've allocated for it, right? So you can constantly, you can wind up in over-allocating your time to certain things that you normally wouldn't while you're on autopilot. So the first thing to do is slap myself off autopilot.

see what my priorities are and see how they conflict, right? Because we all have conflicting priorities, right? I want to have a great time. I want to be a great dad. I want to be a great dad. I want to do this. I want to play poker. So sometimes these conflict, and we have to, like, be aware and rectify them. And a lot of times, like in certain decisions, you know, like, speaking of Dan, like, he's

like, why are you leaving? We're out here in India. Why are you going back to go to a soccer game, flying 12 hours? like Dan I made that decision 16 years ago I didn't know it but that was a dynamic decision that I made 16 years ago right so I'm not deciding now I already decided right so a lot of times it's just me getting aligned with my priorities right and and and and and behaving in that way but it's you know sometimes they use future regret when I look back on this time period well I think this way you know I

I use a lot of mental tools and tricks to get in there. And one of them is just modeling my life from now to the grave. And I allocate and I say, okay, what am I going to do here? What am I going to do here? When I'm in a clear space, right? These five years or these three years, this year, this whatever. And then I go, oh, this doesn't fit. This would be nice to do, but it doesn't fit.

It's not here. It's in conflict with the arc of my life. Now, I can change that any time. But I don't want to be willy-nilly about it, flapping in the wind. based on circumstances on there. I want to find my true north, my priorities and my goals, and I want to kind of stay, I want to kind of stay into that. Yeah, absolutely.

I want to ask you. It's difficult. It's very difficult, right? We live in a, we live in a paradox of choice, right? We have a lot of choices, right? It's not like, hey, what are we going to do today? I'm going to farm and I'm going to, you know, melt the cows and go back to the God. Pray to my God.

Right. Go to bed. You know what I mean? Yeah. We have the paradox of choice now. So it's not easy. I'm not saying it's easy. But it's, you know, a model is better than no model.

Absolutely. And we'll have links to that. I just want to remind everybody we're talking to Bill Perkins, who is a legend in the financial industry. He's an all-around awesome guy, friend of the show and friend of James Altitcher, good friend of the show. This is Brian Keating's Into the Impossible podcast or talking about all sorts of things different from my normal science fair. So make sure, as Bill recommends, get your exercise. Exercise your finger right now. Press the subscribe button.

press the like button and subscribe to this channel and then go over and press the click Die with Zero website that I put up as well and buy this book this book is awesome it'll change your life it doesn't matter how much money you have I've getting some questions for you bill I hope you have a few more minutes to answer a couple of audience questions awesome okay so he wants to know my friend one of my listeners Rolf wants to know have you thought have you considered you know some of the the writings or teachings of Jordan Peterson how does that play in if at all into your life into your thinking He's a very religious guy as well as I understand.

Super controversial. I haven't read much of his stuff. But he talks about entropy and chaos. And what do you feel about that? For the moments that matter, choose Kyrad Naturals. Infused with aloeuvreira and vitamin E. Kirad Natural's bandages protect your unexpected scrapes, cuts, and burns, while also moisturizing your skin.

Find deeper relief with natural ingredients you can trust to start the healing. When life surprises call for the best, choose cure ad a deeper level of care shop the full collection on amazon or visit curad.com to learn more well i feel entropy is inevitable right but i haven't read i haven't read as i haven't read as work so that's the that's the first answer the first blunt answer is but if you talk about entropy and chaos and trying to make order and sense of the world is like you know from my perspective it's you do your best that's all you can do so if we're eventually going to get swallowed up by the sun right and then you know everything is going to you know explode and then everything's going to go dark

right if you're a big if you're a big crunch guy then everything's going to become hell or if everything is going to become ice that'll be our next podcast bill okay right now stick to your book stick to your book absolute zero it's the point of it all and I think the point of it is to do your best and enjoy yeah right and enjoy the ride and so regardless of entropy chaos circumstances right is to maintain the attitude that I am going to do my best and be stoic about it. Yeah, I found that also to be a theme running through the book, that we are going to reach our end. I'm going to have Ryan Holiday on the show, hopefully in the next few months.

And he talks about this. It's like, it doesn't matter if you win this Nobel Medallion, a real one, or you've got a million dollars in Bitcoin just sitting there. You're all going to the same place. And what's that? I can't see that. That is my death date. This is the entropy date, right?

Like, that is the estimate of the day I'm going to die, and it's counting down backwards. Ah, okay. It's the company grips with it. Yeah, just confront it. So one of my listeners is wondering, how do you handle extreme risk? So, obviously, you take some risk, you're prudent, but I know, you've done podcasts about Bitcoin and all these other things, energy trading. I mean, you were doing options, futures, derivatives. We've had Jim Simons on my podcast before, you know, the king of the quants, the original quat.

how do you deal with extreme risk like i would think you wouldn't want to be dealing with bitcoin um as you you've spoken about another podcast like james the podcast but uh yeah go for which category so financially i i've always been comfortable with taking extreme risk right the leverage because i when i looked at it right when i was screen clerk driving limo at night trying to make ends meat right i was like wow i can be a waiter and and have a better life right like i can have i can make more money. And I look at the safety systems and the jobs around. I was like, I can always drive a garbage truck. I can always do this, right? So I always looked at the downside as I'm surviving. I'm having a great time as a broke kid now. I'm surviving. You know, I'm having a great time.

Parks are free. I can walk. I can hike. I can hack. I can spend my my time hacking trips and, you know, figuring ways to live the ride at my level. And so I was always like maximum, maximum financial risk of which I've gone broke twice so that happens you know when you're doing that in terms of financial risk right that I am allowed to take etc i always look at the reward and it's an equation for me so I like writing motorcycles right and I think if you drive a motorcycle for a year I think the odds of dying is one in 10,000 if you drive every day for a year whatever that's right a thousand and I'm like but I don't drive a motorcycle so I use that I'm like is this More enjoyable than riding a motorcycle.

Yes. Okay, then I could take, maybe I could take motorcycle-type risk, one in 10,000, right? If it's less enjoyable than riding a motorcycle and it's one in 9,000, I'm not doing it. You know what I mean?

So for each person, you know, with their risk-reward ratio, they have to figure out what they're comfortable with and kind of find a metric, right? Like, kind of find where they're at. Like, if I like cigarettes, enough, I would smoke them. I don't like them enough.

I don't want to take the risk. You know, for me, everything's risk-reward. That being said, I generally encourage people to take as much risk as they possibly can stand, as much as they can, and then add a little more. I tend to believe that is a more adventurous, fulfilling life. And I think it's all about net fulfillment over net worth. Right. And so that is my – and that can be saying, I love you first, right?

That's scary sometimes, right? That's a big risk for some people. That could be from a city to another city that you're unfamiliar with to go take this job or this, take this adventure, et cetera, right? It could be a lot of things, right? That are risky to people. So I'm like, you know, as much as you can,

look at how much risk you can take and just add a little bit more. That's fascinating. That could be your motto, your next model, add a little bit more. Yeah, Homer Simpson once said, or actually see Montgomery Burns, who's Homer's boss. Yeah, I love that.

He once said, you know, Homer said, you're super rich, you know, and he goes, yes, but I'd trade everything for just a little bit more. I thought that was funny. So I have a question from one of my listeners, Esquire. He's wondering, a lot of us take care of our parents, not only our kids. And I wonder, on his behalf, I have a question about kids from another listener in Hawaii, but this listener's wondering, you know, how do you deal with that? Because they're closer, you know, I used to say my late father when he was alive,

he used to say, like, you've got to come to me because my time is worth more than your time, you know, because he didn't have that much left, and it turned out to be true, unfortunately. But for those of us that are struggling, taking care of young kids, taking care of old parents, how do you deal with that, those confounding risks? I mean, just to be extreme, your daughter says I want you to come to my tennis game, and your mom or your nana or whatever says, I need to see. I want to hang out with you too. Just not that they need you, but how do you play it off?

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, I use future. So, you know, in that scenario for me to get to a decision, I would be like, my dad's dead, my daughter's still here. Did I have the right time with him, whatever? Like I would use some sort of, I really love zero and I really love infinity. Because when I put things at zero infinity, it helps me get perspective. Right. I can find out things in the beginning, right? And so with the, with the dad and the daughter scenario given, okay, move time forward 50 years, dad's dead, you're about to die, whatever. Are you happy that you chose your daughter, go spend time with your daughter at that moment, then your dad or not? And each person might have a different answer, but I'm just saying that that would help me get to the decision. You know, I was taking care of my dad during his last years. And, you know, model.

It's part of the model, right? It's part of the model. Like, okay, this is the money that I have set aside to take care of dad or a percentage of my earnings or whatever. This is the money that's going, percentage of my earnings that's going to the kids. The rest is for me to model for me to the grade, right? And so the more you compartmentalize a model, the more efficient you'll be with your resources and their resources as well. Yeah, I'm putting up on the screen, I've got a list. I've got your, the mental models free workbook, which I've got.

through and I thank you so much for doing it. I thought it was important to do it during this time, Thanksgiving time, et cetera, people thinking about the end of the year and trying to get a leg up. Last question I have before I get to some more of my listener questions. I don't know if you know this guy, Gary Vee, but this guy's like, I'm hustling. I'm sorry, I'm going to dump on him a little bit. Not that he's ever going to hear this, but, you know, he's like, I'm always hustling. Like, you always see the guy. He's always like this, like on his phone. And I know you've got like all these prop bets with people like Balzarian and other people about not using your phone. or else you get a $10,000 an hour fine above five hours a day.

I think that's awesome. I like all these bets for losing weight. I got to get you on a prop bet so I can get a six-pack at least right before I die. But Gary Vee, I've got to do this. Why are you doing this? And even Kevin Hart, even your buddy, Kevin Hart, he said, you know, oh, I'm doing this. Why am I doing these tours for my kids? I just think that they're not being honest with themselves, Bill.

I mean, I think they're doing it for themselves at some level. Yes, they have so much money. I mean, the difference between Kevin Hart and Bill Gates is functionally zero. They can both do exactly the same things with their money. And because, you know, there's only, as Gordon Gecko said, or Charlie Sheen said to Gordon Gecko, how many yachts can you? Yeah, and you're on one now. I know you got two water skis back there, but.

I, you know, I never try to, like, tell people, oh, they're working for nothing. I do got them to identify it. I had a friend who was like risking and trading. And I was like, you got to get the yacht. You got to get this yacht. You got to get a bigger yacht. You have the money. You get a yacht.

And he's like, well, I lost the yacht trading this month. It was a bad month. Whatever. And I said, so you risk the yacht for what? What was the bigger thing you were going to get? And he was like, good point. Right. So there always has to be something out there that you're working.

So if they can identify. what it is, then I'm okay with it. I'm not going to, you know what I mean? They could say, I want to buy the nation anambia, whatever. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know what it is or what their goals are or whatever. I can tell you, if you buy a yacht, it's pretty expensive. You're going to need a lot more money than just the purchase price.

You know what I mean? I know, I don't buy a cheap yacht. I did that once. I bought a cheap yacht, but, you know, there's a saying that that boat is so cheap. I can't afford it. Correct. That's yachts and planes in general. But, you know, I do believe that.

much like, you know, Kevin has a glorious job and he loves it. He loves being a comedian. He loves making people laugh. He loves the line. Like, those are the type of people. So I think there's part of that. But I also think there's part of it in everybody where they get habituated, right, whatever they're doing.

And so they're like, they start making up reasons why they're doing it, you know, as opposed to the original reason, right? Like a rat in the wheel who's not getting cheese. It was like, I like running in the wheel. I like running in the wheel. No, no, no, no, we conditioned you to run in the wheel. Yeah, you got a chapter. It's like, but I like this job.

I'm getting in shape and then it gets my lungs going and I love running in his wheel, right? That's what the rat's thinking, right? You're going, no, dude, we conditioned you, right? And so I think there's a lot of that going on in everybody, myself included, right? Like, they're just like, no, I love my job. And the people and the co-workers and the water cooler and the thing. And I'm just like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That is not what your dream is.

You did not have this as your dream. This is not, the universe of things you can be doing, this is not your goal. Who are you kidding? Get off autopilot. Right. And so it happens to all of us. And we just make up reasons why we're doing it, you know?

Yeah, I agree. You have actually a section. It's like, but I love my job. It's just so awesome to read this stuff. Because I'm reading this book and I'm thinking like, but wait, I've got the subject. that Bill's never thought of, believe me. Bill's thought of everything in this book, everybody. I want you to get this book. Guy was zero. It's got graphs for my techno nerds out there,

of which there are many. Got to get the graphs. Got to solve the optimization problem. Do the derivative of this. It'll be a homework exercise. I was just thinking, as you're saying that, Bill, you know, one of my favorite things to notice is when somebody, let's say somebody retires or gets really fired, and they say, I'm going to spend more time with my family. And then they come back, because they're young. They come back to some other job like Meg Wittenden or something. like what you got tired of your family like like why'd you come back did they get tired of you i i should write another book or have a book like on interviewing people and what's going on but my theory is this is that you're 17 18 19 20 you have all these dreams

of things you want to do experiences you want to have whatever and then you go out into the world to go acquire the funds and resources to do those things somewhere along the way you get disconnected and the job becomes the goal not the things you wanted but the job right I'm good at what I do I just keep doing

I gotta close another deal or sell another house or whatever run another company if you're Meg Whitman et cetera and that becomes an end of itself

and if we disassociated from ourselves after 10 or 15 years or 20 years of doing this thing you know you spend a lot of time a lot of hours

a lot of waking hours getting good at that but how many hours did you spend learning how to socialize learning how to travel, learning how to interact with your family, learning how to get in touch with whoever, you forget it, and it's a skill

you need to work on it. That's why when people were tired, like, I don't know what to do with myself. You know what I mean? I'm like, that's because all you've been doing is running in the goddamn wheel. That's right. Like a hamster. You're just like, I just want to go back in the wheel. Can I go back in the wheel? Can I run in the wheel? You know? You don't even have to give me

cheese. I don't even need the cheese anymore. Just give me the fucking wheel. Who move my cheese? Who move my cheese? They don't even get there for the cheese. Just give me the fucking wheel. I've been doing the wheel for fucking 15 years. I just want to be in the wheel. And that's what happens to us. And the wheel is everything. It's the educational system. It's the job system. It's the retirement system.

But this book is a psychology book. I want to commend you. You don't have training in that, but you are a stealth psychologist. And there's a lot of references in this book, Die Was Zero. I can't commend it to you highly enough. it'll appeal to the technologist or the total Luddite technologically speaking. I've referred it to many, many people. One of my top gifts of the year is going to be this book. So please follow Bill online. Bill, if you've got another minute and a half, I want to ask you the final questions I ask all my guests.

Is that okay? Okay. Yeah, it's fine. Okay, good. So the first question I have is can you unify quantum gravity with space-time dynamics in a way that will be quantum mechanically coherent in all space-time integrals? In two years.

Okay, good. Okay. All right. Can you unify quantum? Quantum mechanics and gravity. The funny thing is I've thought about that. Every time there's an article out that's kind of there, I go read it, but it's not there. The string theory guys think they have it.

I don't know. Subscribe to my channel, Bill. This is a plug. We talk about theories of everything, Nobel Prize winners, et cetera. But my serious question for you is there's a concept in Judaism called the ethical will, a Zava-a. It's what you give to your children, not only your biological children, your ideological children, the people that you mentor, of which you have many. And I want to ask you, what wisdom or something would you put, not your material will, because you're not going to leave anything. It's

going to be all zeroed out by the time you hit the grave at 120. But when you hit that magical, biblical age, what do you want to leave in terms of wisdom for future generations to heed to? I would think, like, the main thing people always ask, like, oh, what would you tell your 20-year-old self? coming that's coming I would say forgiveness forgiveness forgiveness and the most important person you need to forgive is yourself we're the hardest on ourselves and it puts us into shame and shame and addiction they're interchangeable no one knows where shame begins and addiction ends and shame begins they're just all wrapped up in there you know you want to say you want to be I've done a bad thing

not I am a bad person right and that's a that's a that's a monument mental difference, right? Or I am stupid, no, you're not stupid, you did a stupid thing, right? And so that keeps people from becoming scientists or astrophysicist, right, as opposed to, oh, I just got a bad grade on this test. I just did poorly, I didn't study or whatever. So that is the number one thing and other people. So that's it.

Yeah, great. Yeah, I always say Einstein wasn't always Einstein, you know, when he was a baby, you know, he didn't have this mustache when he was a baby, right? last question then is you ever see the movie 2001 a space odyssey a couple times yeah so you know there's an opening scene with these animals these apes or primates or whatever and they chuck this thing up in the air and they discover this monolith and this monolith is like a time capsule meant to encapsulate human knowledge to our knowledge from some alien civilization years billions of years in the past I want to ask you

if I gave you a time capsule here I made it at UCSD give you a time capsule I say Bill, it's going to last for a billion years. And if I did that to you, what would you put on the time capsule, in the time capsule? What do you think is most worth preserving about the human species or the planet Earth? You can encapsulate, like, what am I going to encapsulate in there?

Well, I don't want to stick anybody in there to be like, wait, wait, I wanted to live in this period. You know, so, what? What? I would try and find acts of kindness and helping. You know, I would, I think that is like, I think the greatest thing about humans is that we are a social empathetic animal, animal. No other animal cares.

The monkeys, the gorillas on one hill don't care about the gorillas on the other hill. They're not worried if they're starving or they have enough bananas. They don't give a shit. They don't care. It's like, it's not their problem, not their circus, not their monkeys, I like to say, right? Like, and so, but humans do, and they're empathetic. And they're, and they're, and they're, and they're, and they, and they, and they, and they, and they, like, if you're hurting, I'm, hurting right and so I would want to somehow stick that quality in there and be like for future

super intelligent people I hope you have some of this right I hope you have some of this I hope you do too and I want to thank you for this book it's a gift to to the human race I hope everybody out there buys it I've got a link to the website mental models are available 23 pages I read it I worked on it you can see it here it's actually the ideal thing to do tomorrow Thanksgiving because it'll make you give thanks to what you're actually most what's most important to you and it'll make you focus on what's important. So go through print out the mental models, print out the time bucks. You can actually see what Bill's are. Bill actually listed his here on this piece of paper, so you'll be able to fill that out. You'll be able to get to know Bill. Perkins's a little bit better.

But Bill, I want to thank you so much for going into The Impossible with me. I know we didn't know each other before this, but I want to thank you for a wonderful gift that I am now in turn going to pay it forward and allow many of my friends to die with Zero. Thanks to your wonderful, awesome book. Thank you so much. I'm so glad you got value out of it, and I'm very happy that other people will too. Thank you.

Thank you, Bill. If you enjoyed this episode of Into the Impossible with Professor Brian Keating, please subscribe, comment, share, and review. Watch on YouTube, listen on iTunes, Spotify, Google Player, Stitcher. We appreciate hearing from you and are always open to your suggestions for future episodes. For more information, and to sign up for Professor Keating's mailing list, go to

Brian Keating.com. Follow Professor Keating on Medium and Twitter at Dr. Brian Keating, DR. Dr. Brian Keating. For more information on the Clark Center, go to Imagination.ucsd.edu. Into the Impossible is a production of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination at the University of California, San Diego, in the Division of Physical Sciences. Eric Vary, Director, Ryan Keating, co-director. Produced by Ryan Keating and Stuart Volko.