Moonshots with Peter Diamandis - EP #28 The State of America (Live Twitter Spaces AMA) w/ Anthony Scaramucci

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

In this episode, Anthony and Peter dive into Twitter Spaces to discuss the economy's state, education's future, passion-born careers, and more.  Anthony Scaramucci is the Founder, Chairman, and Managing Partner of SkyBridge, a global investment firm, and SALT, an international venture studio. He also briefly served as the White House Communications Director in 2017. Check out Anthony’s podcast, Open Book. You will learn about: 22:44 | Advice for a 20-year-old 47:30 | Restructuring the education system 1:01:35 | Why community matters _____________ I only endorse products and services I personally use. To see what they are,  please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: Levels: Real-time feedback on how diet impacts your health. levels.link/peter  Consider a journey to optimize your body with LifeForce. _____________ I send weekly emails with the latest insights and trends on today’s and tomorrow’s exponential technologies. Stay ahead of the curve, and sign up now:  Tech Blog. _____________ Connect With Peter: Twitter Instagram Youtube Moonshots and Mindsets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That's the sound of unaged whiskey transforming into Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around 1860, Nearest Green taught Jack Daniel how to filter whiskey through charcoal for a smoother taste, one drop at a time. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. Anthony, are you there? I am here, Dr. Diamandis. How are you? And happy birthday to your mom. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it was so funny. I was on CNBC yesterday. I guess you saw the segment at the end. I said, hey, Kelly, one sec, my mom's watching. Got to wish her a happy birthday. And the other guy who was on the show with me said, well, it's my dad's birthday today.

So both of us were on the show. It was very sweet. It was very nice of you, and God bless. I'm a good Greek boy. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, of course. So something most people don't know is we grew up really close together. We're both Wong Island boys. You were in Port Townsend and I was in Great Neck. That is a fact. We also, I think people probably do know this about us, that we were on the same basketball team, given the fact that we're both below five feet. So we were on the basketball team. We were on the vertically challenged basketball team growing up. But you had a great outside shot, so we always beat the taller guys.

Yeah, we did. I used to tell people my chances of becoming an astronaut were better than my chances of becoming an NBA All-Star. But I'm not only vertically challenged at 5'4", but I'm also challenged from a point of view of sports and anything that's socially acceptable these days, but that's a different story. Well, I'm sure your mom told you that good things come in small packages. I was told that every single day as I was trying to get my posture up to gain a quarter of an inch. You know, in all seriousness, there is a direct correlation, inverse correlation between longevity

and height. The taller you are, the shorter your lifespan. So you and I have a real advantage there for sure. All right. Well, don't tell Dwight Howard that. He's become a new friend of mine. We did the Special Forces show together for Fox and he's a solid seven foot one. And I have to tell you, he has no body fat, but I have read those studies. Well, you should get to know him quick while he's still around. Anyway. So, buddy, it's been an incredible journey and I've enjoyed our friendship. I mean, I can't turn left, right, or center without seeing you on Twitter or on the news. Are you having fun?

Yeah, but I mean, apparently I'm like the most important asset manager in the world because they write about me every week. As you know, I'm running about $3 billion, but they make it like we're running 3 trillion or something like that. I don't know. I'm saying that obviously with great irony, but truth be told, we got into a couple of bad situations last year. One was, you know, we're into growth and Bitcoin digital assets, as you know. That was a rough year, down 60% across the board. Our core fund was down 38% because of that. And then, of course, I sold a piece of my business to Sam Bankman Freed, who became arguably the largest fraud of the space. And there were several other frauds in the space last year that he was competing with. So it was a double kick, if you will.

All up from here, buddy. All up from here. Well, amen. I mean, listen, I think you and I know that because of our three decades plus of being in business. There are trials and tribulations. And it's like what Churchill once said, when you're in the middle of hell, keep going. When you're going through hell, keep going. You know, you got to you got to get to the other side of things. And so we will. And of course, we're off to a very strong start this year. I don't know if that's a bull trap. It could be a bear market trap, making you think it's a bull market, or it really could be on the start of something that's more robust than that. If you follow the stock trading almanac and you listen to the

Hirsch family who's been writing that almanac for 50 years, this being the best January, the best four or five week start in a long period of time is usually a good sign for 50 years. This being the best January, the best four or five weeks start in a long period of time is usually a good sign for the year. Yeah, it's really tough reading Ray Dalio out there and reading many others where the end is coming. Money is going to become disintermediated as we know it. It's really tough. But the important thing is you got to be looking at the long-term trends. And for the last 150 years, and specifically over the last 40 years, we've had this incredible growth in abundance, right? The amount of time you have to work in order to earn any commodity goods or service has dropped

72% in the last 40 years. And it's driven by technology. It's not politics. It's not human intelligence. And as long as we have this It's not politics. It's not human intelligence. And as long as we have this innovation engine, we're going to be creating greater and greater abundance on this planet. And it's not for the faint of heart to stick it out in terms of days, weeks, and months. You need to have a 10-year journey here at least. Well, I mean, there's so many different reasons why I love you, but one of the main reasons is you are the anti-Thomas Malthus. You are the anti-Malthusian. And so what happens is people think linearly. We're encapsulated in this 100,000-year-old piece of machinery known as the human body. It hasn't had a software upgrade for 100,000 years, yet we're watching our phone go from iPhone 1 to iPhone 14 in 15 years. And so we're trained to think linearly. It's part of our survival mechanisms. But as you point out in your bestselling books, the world is growing exponentially. And so Malthus

got it wrong. He said we were going to starve. The population was going to outpace our ability to produce food. But he left out all the great technology. It turns out we have more people dying from obesity-related illnesses than food. You're old enough and I'm old enough to remember peak oil. I remember that. Yeah. I was sitting in a class in 1985. My economics professor told me we were running out of oil. I said, okay, sir, when is that? He said, well, that'll be 2010. Oil will be $2,000 a barrel. I said, oh, wow, this is going to be an apocalypse.

We're running out of oil. He left out fracking. He left out the re-drilling of wells, the vertical nature of mining now, some of these natural resources. And so what ends up happening is people, the doomsdayers, the apocalyptic people get things wrong. But I want to ask you a question, if you don't mind. I know it's your pocket. I'm an HR. I want to ask you a question. 2023.

Yes. I want to take you back 100 years to 1923, and I'm going to give you $150,000. I'm a wealthy man. Yes, you're'm a wealthy man. Yes, you're a very wealthy man. So that's equivalent to almost $12 million of purchasing power today if you do the inflation adjustment. Or you can live then with $150,000. Or you can live today with $150,000 of 2023 dollars, but you're living today in this society versus the society from a hundred years ago, which one are you- 100% today, but not even by a little bit, right?

Okay. So say why for people that are listening in. So provide them insight as to why. So here's the reality. And I actually did this work. I run my Abundance 360 program for CEOs. And every year in this program in March, I need to get you to come out and be with me on stage for one of these sessions, buddy. I know the SALT events you have are epic. Every year I talk about what's occurred in the last year, one of the breakthroughs.

And it's extraordinary breakthroughs in the last 12 months. I look back 100 years ago and I say, okay, what were the breakthroughs 100 years ago? What was the rate of innovation? And it's pretty easy to go and look at the headlines and the patents filed and so forth. So I don't have it for 2023 yet, but for 1922, there were seven breakthroughs.

Want to know what they were? I mean, like for the entire year. First of all, Vegemite was created in Australia. Insulin was used for the first time. The retractable hardtop for a car was invented. The water ski, which was two boards and a rope, was invented. And there was a couple of others, but that was for the entire year. And today we demonetized and democratized so much. We don't realize that on our cell phones we have what's equivalent to millions of dollars of free stuff that we would have had to pay millions of dollars just 30 years ago. And we're all living like kings. You could have never purchased the luxurious life that the average person has today. Infinite access to entertainment, education, music.

It's amazing. So back to you, Anthony. Why are people so dystopian? I have one group that I blame. I'll see if you have the same one. But why are people so bummed out about life? I mean, too many people are depressed. So there's a couple of answers to that, and I'm going to give my answer, and then two people I respect a feeling of doom because the world order has been shaken. If I take you back 50 years ago, we had a Cold War going on, at least in our minds, U.S. good, Russia bad.

There were protocols in place that were keeping a cold peace. We got through the missile crisis. There was a nuclear test ban treaty. Nixon was going to China. He was meeting with Brezhnev, and there was a cold peace. And the people that we were fighting had uniforms on, and there was some kind of order, at least so we thought. It was good and bad. It was clear. even though the incidence of a terrorist attack is quite low, but because we went from zero to some terror attacks, we have some personal safety issues. We've decided rightly or wrongly, and again, I'm just being observational.

We don't have to make this political, but we've decided rightly or wrongly that we're going to adopt certain policies that are going to allow for petty crimes to exist in our cities. And you know from the broken window theory as it relates to crime theory, you clean up the broken windows and the petty crimes, people feel safer. They don't feel safer in these inner cities now. We can go across the country. And even though, Peter, some could make the case that crime is down

or murder rates are down. There is a feeling of unsafety. So those are my opinion. All right. Let me give you, you go to, I'm going to give you mine one second. I mean, you're dead. I put the blame squarely on two things. One are where our brains are wired. And the second is the news media, right? Our brains are wired to pay 10 times more attention to negative news and positive news. News media has one business model, deliver your eyeballs to their advertisers. And because we pay 10 times more attention to negative news and positive news, you are constantly being fed every murder on the planet over and over and over again in your living room. Yes. And our brains are neural nets.

Our brains are wired by the information we bring in, what's on your walls, who you talk to, what you see. And if you're constantly being bombarded by negative news on every source of news media, you're going to think the world's going to hell in a handbasket and you're running for cover. Right. But we ignore all the incredible breakthroughs going on all the time. It's extraordinary, but we just don't hear about it. This episode is brought to you by Levels. One of the most important things that I do to try and maintain my peak vitality and longevity is to monitor my blood glucose. More importantly, the foods that I eat and how they peak the glucose levels in my blood. Now, glucose is the fuel that powers your brain.

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doing eventually this stuff is going to be in your body on your body part of our future of medicine today it's a product that i think i'm going to be using for the years ahead and hope you'll consider as well well let me let me test something on you get your reaction okay so charlie munger who just turned 99 i don't agree with him on his opinion on cryptocurrency, but he said recently, to your point, in the last 100 years, we've had a six times move in the standard of living. So whoever was considered to be not wealthy or underprivileged 100 years ago is doing way better by a factor of six. Obviously, the wealthy are doing better than that. But the point being is why are people dissatisfied? He blames it on social media. He blames it on the filter effect that we are feeling in social media and the comparative

analysis that people are making now to each other as they look over each other's spend. I agree with that. And they see greener grass on the other side of the fence, not their side of the fence. And so he says it's related to the human feelings of comparison, envy, et cetera. I want to, again, if you don't mind, I agree with this. Let me say one thing there and then come back to your question, which is I agree that people are comparing themselves to their neighbors in the moment, not to what their life was like 10 years ago, what their parents' life was 30 years ago, because the trend is up and to the right. But social media allows you to see everyone that you think is your peer group, even if they are or not, and you're constantly comparing yourself and you forget of the incredible access to everything that we have.

And like your original question said, would I rather have that money 100 years ago? Hell no. Anyway, your question, please, buddy. Yes. So this is related to this. Okay. So I read Blake Crouch's book, uh, upgrade. I don't know if you know, Blake. I know Blake, but I haven't read it.

Yeah. Okay. So it's a great science fiction, a writer. I'm not going to give away the whole plot, but there's a, the idea of an upgrade. There's a mad scientist that's working on upgrading a human's capacity to learn.

It's sort of a, so actually I, I, I did read the book. Yes, Genetically Upgrading the Human Capacity, sure. Yeah. Right, so it's a biological neural link, if you will. But what he says in the book at the end, I'm not giving up the book, it's a great story,

but what he says is, we were designed to get to where we are by having empathy and relationships with about 200 people. When you talk about that neural network of your brain, we have the capacity to get in touch with and get close to about 200 people. And that was sort of the community. It's called Dunbar's number. And the number is about 150. And it was based on, again, Okay, there you go.

by neural engineering from the size of tribes, which is why in military, 150 people are, I don't know anything about the military services, anywhere near what you do, but the size of a, what's 150 size in the military? Yeah, it's probably a brigade or a battalion. I'm not sure, but the point he's making is that Dunbar's number is limiting us now because we've got 8 billion people and we have a trash issue, a potential environmental issue, but yet we're drinking our bottled water out of plastic and we're throwing the plastic away with relative disregard because we're not able to

upgrade empathy into thinking yes we're not able to upgrade beyond dunbar's number to think of the consequences multiplied by billions of these plastic bottles being thrown into the ocean there isn't another point there to make, which is when you think about who your peer group is, it used to be your peer group was your neighbors, the people that you ran into the street who live next door. Now your peer group on social media, on your Facebook group or whatever, they're Cardassians. You tend to have those individuals that you follow consider part of your Dunbar's number. And that's where this disequilibration, whatever, comes into effect, that you're comparing yourself

to people that have not typically been the people you compare yourself to. And it sets up for a very difficult challenge. Let me switch our subject here to something that we might talk about in our um in our conversation with uh everyone on twitter which is coming up in a few minutes because when we're getting ready for this uh we were talking about longevity so one of the big conversations i spend as you all know um through your your son aj who i love dearly who have had the chance to mentor. We can talk about that too. But I'm spending most of my time these days focused on how to add 20, 30 healthy years on a person's life. How do you make 100 years old, maybe 60? How do we really bust through the upper

limits? How do you feel about that? I mean, you and I are about the same age. Do you feel like you have more energy and more excitement about life now, or are you ready to retire in five years? No. Come on. I'm getting a little shaky. Yeah, come on. I'm doing special forces.

I'm jumping out of helicopters with these 30-year-old Olympics shots. I wasn't trusting anybody. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready to go, but I'm a little different than you this way. And I want to set the scene for you. I grew up in an accordion playing, cigarillo smoking, bocce ball courted family that was crushing grapes in a bathtub. that was crushing grapes in a bathtub.

They were slaughtering pigs and turning them into prosciutto in the cellar, salting them and drying them in the basement. And so this was like a- Was this in Port Washington? Yeah. This was in Port Washington. Yeah, my Uncle John's house, he was stepping on grapes. He was cutting the head off of eels on the morning of the 24th of December, getting them and frying them for the seven fishes.

And we are pasta lovers, okay? And I'm telling you right now, it's your mother's birthday and I guarantee that your mother thinks you're too thin. Absolutely. 100%. You're not eating enough. You're getting thinner. Yeah, because you're into all of this like, you know, deprivation, thinking like probably 47

different supplements. And you got David Sinclair as your like spiritual guru. He's now the new Orthodox Greek priest for your religion. And like, you know, so we're a little different that way, though, meaning like, you know, you're going to probably live to be 300. Okay, so we're a little different that way though, meaning you're going to probably live to be 300. Okay. So we'll have to see what happens. You got to probably get a new set of teeth and all kinds of stuff like that. I'm not living at 300 because I'm eating the pasta. My relatives that still live in Italy, half of my family still lives there. When I go back and visit them once a year, they tell me that I'm not Italian, Peter, and it hurts my feelings. And they remind me that I'm an American. And I say, well, why do you say that to me? It hurts my feelings. They say, well,

you're American. You think you're going to live forever. You've got Peter Diamandis and David Sinclair telling you not to eat the cookie and drop the pasta. He said, but we're here in Italy. We know we're going to die. Okay. So what we do, if we have an extra piece of cheese, we drink an extra jug of wine, they end up having four mistresses, the whole thing, right? And so for me, I love you and you're going to be like 300 years old, which is good for me because my sons are close to you and they'll always have you in their lives. But I'm probably checking out a lot earlier than you. I don't want to be 150 years old because I think I'm going to look like, you know what, at 150. And, you know, I mean, you know, I'm living my life. You get one great life if you're lucky.

You and I have been very blessed with great lives. We have. You know, but I mean... Well, listen, you know, the good news is... Excuse me, did somebody pass me the cookies? Excuse me. The Amandas is like needing wheatgrass. Did somebody pass me the Davis cookies? I'm having a Mediterranean diet.

Get that. When is the last time you shot a Pez out of a Pez gun into your mouth? Sugar is a poison. There's no question. Sugar and coke is a poison. I got it. But you can still enjoy life.

And I did have some red wine last night. But I think it's unbelievable. Having said on that, there is a question, right? There's been a little Twitter debate going back and forth that I've jumped into with Sinclair and Elon, which is, should you have the right to live as long as you want? And I think very much so that you should have the right, if you can extend your life. And this is the conversation, it's happening seriously right now. It used to be like this crazy idea, you would lose all your funding research five years ago,

if you talk about the idea of age reversal. But now now epigenetic reprogramming is a real thing. We're talking about can we add 10, 20, 30 years on your healthy life? And then by the way, science doesn't stop during that 10, 20, 30 extra years. It's continuing. And so the question is, if you, Anthony Scaramucci, beloved European brother of mine, had the ability from some breakthrough that AJ funded or David created, whatever it might be, and get ready for a longevity XPRIZE. I wouldn't say more than that. But wouldn't you want to add an extra 30, 40 years? I mean, if you could have your current diet, is that the only thing? Or are you getting bored with life? No, I love... No, no, no, no, no. Don't misunderstand me. I want to live.

I absolutely love life. But I just want to point this out. Where did Elon come out on this? He wants to stay alive forever? No, no. I had this conversation with him at SpaceX eight years ago. He said,

I don't think people should live that long on the basis that I'm going to die to make room for people to come. I'm going to tell you why I'm in his camp, okay? I'm going to tell you. Oh, you don't want me that way. No, but let me just explain to you why I'm in his camp, okay? Because right now as we're sitting here, okay, without the longevity movement, okay, 100 years from this moment, okay, very few people alive today will be here on earth. And 100 years ago, we've had almost 100% turnover. Let's use 120 to make the

example more vivid. 120 years from now, assuming the longevity movement is not making people live to 200, but you get my point. Just in the current medical health where we are right now, 120 from here today, none of us will be here. And there'll be a whole new group of people here. And 120 years prior to today, there was a different set of people on this planet than today. And I think that there's something human about that. And I think there's something about the human condition that makes life for whatever reason, richer or sweeter. And now I'm going to say something you're really not going to like. The super wealthy, okay, will have the capacity to do that, right? And the poor will likely not have the capacity to do that. And there's a little bit of a dystopian thing that happens when that happens. And so,

you know, as an example, if I can live to 300 with my earnings capacity, you know, I'm going to be very wealthy just because of the laws of compounding, Peter, and a result of which there'll be even greater concentrations of wealth in the society. So I hear you. I absolutely love life. Don't get me wrong. I want to be a vampire and live 5, 10, 15 centuries. I'm totally into life, but I'm talking about it from a literary perspective. I'm talking about it. Let's use the word, the Greek word pathos. Let's use the words that Sophocles would describe about being human, the frailty of being human, the recognition that there's an impending death death which increases the intensity of your

life decisions. You see what I'm saying? I see what you're saying. I totally disagree. We've got other questions. Ask me more cookies. Could someone... This guy... Pass the olive oil.

This guy's going to be 300 years old. Can you pass him some more NAD? This guy. Hey, listen, you're paying attention, at least. Your mother is telling you to thin eat manja bread or manja. Your mother's telling you to thin. So listen, the average human lifespan used to be less than 30

years old, right? So by that same logic, we should not be alive today. You know, you at 58, 59, me at 61. At the end of the day, if we make it to 120, I would love to be able to have this. And the technologies we're talking about, which are eventually going to actually make a dent in human lifespan, this epigenetic reprogram in success, it is going to be under a hundred bucks. We're heading towards a period where we're going to have a massive underpopulation of planet earth. We're going to peak at nine and a

half, 10 billion, and then drop off. Another conversation for Twitter spaces, I'm going to say two things and invite everybody in here. Number one, I'm going to make a statement that maybe someone will pick up as a question. I think anyone who wants to run for president shouldn't be allowed to. I think it should be a drafted position. I'd love your thought on that. And number two, on education, what the hell should someone who's in their 20s today be thinking about getting an education? Does an MBA even matter anymore? Or should you go and be doing an apprenticeship and learning on the job? Those are two ideas I'd love to put

out there in the ethos. A brief note from our sponsors. Let's talk about sleep. Sleep has become one of my number one longevity priorities in life. Getting eight deep uninterrupted hours of sleep is one of the most important things you can do to increase your vitality and energy and increase the health span that you have here on earth. You know, when I was in medical school years ago, I used to pride myself on how little sleep I could get. You know, it used to be five, five and a half hours. Today, I pride myself on how much sleep I can get.

And I shoot for eight hours every single night. Now, usually I'm great at going to sleep. If I'm exhausted, you know, I've worked a hard, usually I'm great at going to sleep. If I'm exhausted, you know, I've worked a hard day, I'm right out. But if I'm having difficulty, and it occurs, I'm having insomnia or my mind's overactive and I need help to get that eight hours, I turn to a supplement product by Lifeforce called Peak Rest. Now, Peak Rest has been formulated with an extraordinary scientific depth and background. It includes everything from long-lasting melatonin to magnesium to L-glycine to rosemary extract, just to name a few. This product is about creating a sense of rest and really giving you the depth

and length of sleep that you need for recovery. It's a product I hope you'll try. It works for me and I'm sure it will work for you. If you're interested, go to mylifehorse.com backslash Peter to get a discount from Lifeforce on this product. But you'll also see a whole set of other longevity and vitality related supplements that I use. We'll talk about them some other time. But in terms of sleep, Peak Rest is my go-to supplement. Hope you'll enjoy it. Go to mylifehorse.com backslash Peter for your discount.

Let's talk about this. Does an MBA degree have any real value? Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, would you advise someone who's looking to go into business to instead actually go into business? So the short answer is it's conditional on the person's circumstance. When you and I were kids, I would have said that it was mandatory. I don't think it's as mandatory today. Since you're a surrogate father to my oldest son, Alexander. I am.

Known as AJ. I know he worked for you for many years and he applied to and got accepted to Stanford Business School. When he asked me about it, I said, you should do it. The network effect of Stanford Business School and the alumni association and the brilliant people, the men and women that you're going to meet at Stanford, not just your classmates, but I'm talking about people trafficking through Stanford to speak, the professors. I think it's worth it. What I said to AJ at that time, he was 25 or 26. I said, join Stanford

Business School. It's almost like you'll have some great flexibility in your mid-20s to do some really fun things that I don't want you waiting to your mid-60s to do. And so he made the decision to go. I don't think he's on this Twitter spaces right now. But if he was, I think he would tell you that it was the right decision for him. For the network, right? Yeah. I know other people. I know other people and it's not the right decision. You and I both know the computer entrepreneur, brilliant, incredibly generous man, Michael Dell.

He dropped out of school. I'll just tell this story quickly. He's a contemporary of ours, right? He's 56 or 57. Michael Dell dropped out of school. He told me this story. He was one of the early investors in Skybridge, helped me get the firm started. He told me this story that he was building computers in his dorm room. He was buying wholesale parts and he figured out that he could build them themselves cheaper than what they were being sold to people. And he convinced his fellow students in the student body to buy the computers from him, and he would service them for him. And he was not doing as well in his pre-med curriculum. His father, who I believe was an eye doctor, came to the University of Texas and said,

Michael, you got to step this out. You got to be my son, the doctor, my son, the doctor. Michael turned to his dad and said, well, dad, what if I could make $200,000 a year doing this? And his father lit up. He said, well, of course, if you can make $200,000 a year doing this, you should do this, but you're not going to make $200,000 a year doing this. This is your hobby. And then Michael turned to that, he said, well, it's February, I've already made more than $200,000. And the point being is that people either have it and they're driving, Bill Gates was that way, Michael Dell was that way. I'm sure we figure out other people that are that way.

My other son, Anthony, who I'm very proud of, dropped out of school. He's produced 75 music videos, has over a half a billion views. And he's now working on three different screenplays as he transitions from music to film and movie making. And so I'm very proud of him. That is a journey he's taking without college, not to say that he's not taking courses in writing and editing and English, and he's not on Gahan Academy learning and doing all different types of reading. He's still educating himself, but he's not educating himself in that formal structure

that you and I were taught to educate ourselves. So to me, I think it is situational. And as a parent, since you're asking me the question, I have great flexibility with my children. I'm not the parent that says, oh, I'm disappointed in you. You didn't follow this to the T of whatever it is. And remember, I will tell parents that, listen, you don't want to be that douchey parent at the cocktail party bragging about your kids. You want to be the parent where your kids know you're their advocate and you're there to help them find the thing about their lives that they're the most passionate about so that they never have to work a day in their life. Yes. I agree. By the way, that's my focus. So, you know,

some people should go to school. Other people frankly should not. Yeah. The three things I want for my two 11 year olds is find their passion that will drive them because I found my passion was space. It was Star Trek and Apollo, and that got me going. Learn how to ask great questions and grit, right? And if you have those as engines, you'll succeed in life. But what are you advising the 20-something-year-old would-be entrepreneur to go towards? Obviously, whatever they're passionate about, but anything else? So what would you tell the 20-year-old version of yourself today? So what I would tell the 20-year-old, I got lucky because I ended up doing something I

really love, but what I would tell the 20-year-old version of myself- Not Bitcoin. Not Bitcoin. Well, yeah, but that wasn't invented back then. But I would say to my 20-year-old self, and this is something that Byron Wein, Peter, do you remember Byron Ween? Do you know who he is? He was the strategist. Okay, so he's over 90 now. He's a brilliant man. He was adopted, was an orphan, lived in Chicago, went on to become a brilliant economic and stock market strategist for Morgan Stanley. He's now at emeritus. He's in an emeritus position at Blackstone. I've known him for 30

years. He was a guest of mine on Wall Street Week. He says something to me that I'll share with everybody, which I believe is true. There's something that you did from the age of 12 to 19. Maybe it was you pricking your finger and looking at blood cells under a microscope. Maybe it was me hawking Long Island Newsday to Italian, Irish, and Jewish women in the local blue-collar apartment buildings. But the point being, there's something that you were doing 12 to 19, figure out what that was and do it and figure out what that was and stay on it because what ends up happening, that's the true labor of love for you. He was a coin collector and he was a baseball card collector and he transitioned all of that into analyzing security, stock and bond securities,

and then the overall macroeconomic market. He's still working today. Warren Buffett, you want to talk about longevity, he's 91 or 92. I'd have to Google it on Wikipedia. I think Munger's 99. People that love their work stay working, and I think the work gives them a level of vitality. So- A purpose-driven life, yeah. 100%. And I would say to the 20-year-old version of me,

what do you like doing? Well, it turns out what I like doing is blabbing, Peter. I like blabbing, okay? And you do it so well, brother. Yeah. So I'm blabbing. I've been blabbing since the age of 12. I'm now 59. I'm still blabbing. And it's been very fun. And the great thing is because of my intellectual curiosity, I'm on Wall Street, which is basically a business where you get to learn about all different types of business, including biotech, computer technology, nanotechnology, insurance companies, financial services companies,

right? And you get a smattering of all these things. And so I am forever energized by that and ever alive. My son, Anthony, he has no interest in that, but he could watch every one of Stanley Kubrick's films and he could take notes on them. And then he could go to Stanley Kubrick interviews on YouTube at the time those films were made or shortly thereafter to understand the craft, or he could take Oliver Stone's movies. And when we used to buy DVDs, they always had these little special feature sections. You can get an Oliver Stone movie where he's narrating over the movie and explaining why he cut it a certain way or why the lighting on Anthony Hopkins' face in Nixon is a certain

way in the beginning of the movie, and it's a darker lighting towards the end of the movie as Nixon's going through his problems. And so to me, that's a labor of love for him. And so I want him to do that. I want him to be successful in it. You mentioned AJ. AJ is into what you're into, which is the life sciences, AJ. AJ is into what you're into, which is the life sciences, unlocking- Starting companies. A hundred percent. You and David Sinclair believes, and I've read both of your works, and I love your writing, by the way. Your writing always inspires me and makes me feel more optimistic about life. And what Sinclair writes and what Diamandis writes is that longevity,

writes and what Diamandis writes is that longevity, aging may in fact be an illness. Aging may be in fact something that we can correct, okay, and we can stave off the aging, okay? And so that is brilliant eureka-like stuff. And so listen, for me, I'm sitting here with you, super optimistic about the world, but I would tell the 20-year-old today, what'd you do from 12 to 19? Let's reverse engineer into a profession or before the world said you can't do that exactly but we're living in a world where you can exactly you can make a career out of out of anything well like that i meant well that's the other thing you know we're power you know what do your parents want to do they parents when you have a great life right yeah so my my mother told her if i probably shouldn't tell people this but i am going to. My mother told people that Goldman Sachs was a law firm. And I was in Rosado's Deli on Main Street in Port Washington. And one of her Italian friends was in the deli. And I was ordering, I don't know, like a prosciutto hero. And she turned to me and said, oh, Anthony, your mother's so proud of you that you're working at that law firm, Goldman Sachs.

These people didn't know anything, right? They weren't educated. I said, really? I said, Goldman Sachs is a law firm? She said, yeah. Yeah, the law firm, Goldman Sachs. I said, oh, thank you, Mr. Somasura. I went home, and I said, Ma, why are you telling your friends that Goldman is a law firm?

And she said, oh, I'm just so distraught that you went to law school. I thought my son was going to be a lawyer and you didn't become a lawyer. So I can't break it to my friends. Can't break it to my friends. I've got this thing, right? So I go to medical school and I graduate, you know, just barely graduate from Harvard. And I go into my space businesses. And every time I'd come home, my mom would ask me two questions.

First of all, are you dating anybody serious yet? And the second thing is it's not too late for you to go to do your internship in residence and become a real doctor. That's what they knew. That's what they knew. They knew lawyer, doctor, engineer. That was it. But also they wanted to go, they were playing Pinochle.

My mother wanted to tell friends, my son, the lawyer, my son, Dr. Diamandis. What do you mean he's got some biotech company where he invented the X-Rise, which is like the Nobel Prize for innovation? What do you mean? Who cares about that? Is he practicing medicine?

Is he writing prescriptions? You follow what I'm saying? And this is the gift that you can give your children. This is the gift that I can give my children is the neuroplasticity of life and their careers and their experience and the boldness, the braveness- The permission. The permission to do something out of that realm. Another thing I'll say to you, okay, not to get overly philosophical, but I get my ass kicked in the public domain. So if I'm having a bad year, it gets reported by every newspaper outlet. And if I get fired from the White House, which is absolutely brutal,

I get lit up by Saturday Night Live, although I thought Bill Hader needed more hairspray, and I get lit up by all the cable news pundits. But was that the best thing that ever happened in the last 10 years for you? Getting fired? Yeah. Well, we'll talk about that in a second, but I'm making this point that I want my kids to see the travails and the tribulations. that I want my kids to see the travails and the tribulations. You and I have a lot of rich friends that try to pretend to their kids that everything went up smoothly. My life went up on a four. You know how many memoirs I've read where the guy's life is going up

at a 45-degree angle perfectly and there's no slip-up? It's a lot of bullshit. What is this guy talking about? I would rather my kids see the whole thing, okay, because then they have space now to fail, and then they also have role modeling about resilience and get your ass up, dust yourself off, take the millstone of regret of bad decision-making

and put it down. Take it off of your neck and put it down and go forward and so forth. But yes, you're asking about the firing. No, the firing was absolutely brutal, Peter. I'm not going to BS you. Oh, it was the greatest thing you've ever... No, it sucked.

If anybody's on this space is listening and it's not a health issue and you're having a bad day, Peter will give you my cell phone number. I will call and cheer you up. And I will offer you a comparison to my day on the 31st of July, 2017, where I was blown out the front door of the White House, rolled into Pennsylvania Avenue, and then lit up and destroyed by every media outlet globally to the point where my son was actually working for you at the time. Okay. He was.

I met him in Santa Monica where I believe your XPRIZE offices are near there. Yeah. And we were walking on the third or fourth street, that open shopping mall. Yeah, the third street promenade, yeah. The promenade. I'm walking on the promenade with him. It's a week after I've been fired he's 25 he turns to me he says hey hey pop are you gonna be okay and i looked at him i said what do you mean he goes well this is a disaster i mean you're getting

destroyed by everybody and i looked at him and i said first of all it's not a health issue secondarily if you're going to go into politics you got to be able to take your lumps it's like being in the nfl you wear a helmet in the NFL, you're guaranteed to get a concussion. This happened abruptly. It was embarrassing. It was very humbling, but watch what I do with it. And so I took lemons, Peter, and did the very best I could to turn them into lemonade, but I'm not going to be asking. You are one of the most giving, loving, intelligent people that I know. And the fact of the matter is one of my biggest concerns, I think America is the greatest country on the planet. One of my greatest concerns is that our political system is fraught with too many lawyers and

professional politicians, and not enough scientists, doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs who are actually driving things. Hey everybody, this is Peter. A quick break from the episode. I'm a firm believer that science and technology and how entrepreneurs can change the world is the only real news out there worth consuming. I don't watch the crisis news network I call CNN or Fox and hear every devastating piece of news on the planet. I spend my time training my neural net, the way I see the world, by looking at the incredible breakthroughs in science and technology, how entrepreneurs are solving the world's grand challenges, what the breakthroughs are in longevity, how exponential

technologies are transforming our world. So twice a week, I put out a blog. One blog is looking at the future of longevity, age reversal, biotech, increasing your health span. The other blog looks at exponential technologies, AI, 3D printing, synthetic biology, AR, VR, blockchain. These technologies are transforming what you as an entrepreneur can do. If this is the kind of news you want to learn about and shape your neural nets with, go to demandus.com backslash blog and learn more. Now back to the episode. Yeah. Hey, Peter, it's been a long time. Hi there. It's nice to see you. Okay. So nice to see you um okay so the education piece you

brought up the education piece there's actually a few things I want to touch on one Anthony I know an entrepreneur that is in that space on that day right now um and so it's really really great to hear you guys talk about the the stories it's like it's really not a linear trajectory to success. And I think a lot of people struggle with that perception. And so it's always good to hear the people that have been successful, kind of like been through their year as well. But yeah, I wanted to touch on the education piece. So there's something that I think anybody who's a parent now can do to start really early. And I actually had a friend of mine who has a small child. And he had received a video from his wife that was it was like, around the time his child was four or five years old. And he just had joy. He was singing a Beatles song. He was coloring this really creative thing. He was just very like fully self-expressed. And I remember my friend saying, my only job in the world is to make sure that he doesn't lose that.

So that's like something that I think parents should keep in mind very early on with their children. And then you don't even have to do this backwards exercise where you're like, what did you like between 12 and 18 years old or whatever? So I think that that's one thing we can really nurture. And then in terms of the education piece, besides just really concentrating on obviously mathematics and spelling, grammar, kind of that piece. I think we really need to shift the education system completely. And this might have been one of your ideas that I'm absolutely stealing from you, Peter,

is we really need to be teaching the four skills, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity, because every job that exists now is probably going to be obsolete in the future. And any kid going into kindergarten, if they don't have those skills, they won't be agile and able to adapt to this new economy. So I think that that's really the direction we need to go with education sooner rather than later. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, Septima, first of all, thanks for the questions here. And I'll jump on the second part first and hand it over to Anthony. Yeah, I don't think our educational system is getting our kids ready for anything. You know, the problem is testing to the test. And, you know, I go, I speak a lot on large stages like Anthony does. And I ask in the audience, you know,

how many of you here are using any of the skills that you learned in seventh, eighth, ninth grade, whether it's multivariable substitution or trigonometry or geometry and so forth? And the majority of people are not. What we need is passion-driven education where you find your passion, your goals, and you learn what you need to do to implement that. But the other thing is the stuff that I do use now was never the stuff I learned at MIT. It's how to organize your thinking, how to present your ideas, how to lead, how to put compelling arguments, right? How to envision strategically where you're going.

These are skills that are independent of technology. They're human-to-human leadership skills, which I think are so critically important. Anthony? Well, first of all, I think it's incredibly insightful, and I don't know exactly how to pronounce your name. Is it Septima? Is that how you pronounce it? Yes.

Okay. What I would say septima um is that where we're failing and i want to make it too broad because i want to be specific and answer your question but i want to explain to you at least my philosophy where we're failing now as society is in the business of equal opportunity okay so. So I am not for equal outcomes. I can prove to you sociologically as human beings, we're just not geared for equal outcomes and it would diminish innovation and economic efficiency and growth. I want there to be Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who are adding value and are getting excessive economic rent from the society.

We can debate how much they can be taxed and so forth, but I want those things to happen. What I don't like of what's going on in the society is the unevenness. We're too rich of a country. There should be a platform of services for people from K through 12 or pre-K through 12 that get them educated. If you tell me the public school system, you tell me the zip code of that public school district, I can tell you with pretty good clarity whether or not that kid is going to get a good education. And so Peter's right, the curriculum may be flawed, but it's more than just the curriculum. There's a gross unevenness to the way we're educating our children in the country.

And then secondarily, and some people are not going to agree with me, particularly Republicans, but we have to come up with a package of services on the health and jobs training for all Americans. OK, because I'm telling you right now, you could grow up in the middle class like I did or Peter did. You could get ahead if you were born in the 1960s. If you're born in the 2000s, it's way harder. That's what led to the angst. Whether you like Donald Trump or dislike him or Bernie Sanders or you dislike him, they both saw that 20% of the country has disaffected from the social contract because they no longer feel that they're getting a fair shake in the country. And I'll just speak for myself for a moment. I grew up in an aspirational

working class family. My father was a crane operator, 42 years in hot and cold weather operating a crane, but he knew that one of his kids was going to be successful or two of his kids would achieve the American dream. Those very same people forget it. That job that my dad had, the real wages associated with that job today are down about 30% in terms of purchasing power. So there's a big systemic problem. So yes, there's certain things in the course curricula, and there's certain things that we have to do broadly in terms of defining the agenda for education, but we have a very uneven and, in my belief, an unfair system.

I didn't pick the family of my origin. I believe you didn't either. And yet, if I was born in the inner city, I don't know if I could have achieved the level of success that I have right now. But I would add, Anthony, that the mechanism, and I love this idea of equal opportunity versus equal outcomes. I mean, the only mechanism by which we enable equal opportunity across the board is going to be these converging exponential technologies, right? We are going to demonetize and democratize education. Just like Google, for the poorest child and the wealthiest child is identical, we're going to head to a place where AI-driven education and AI-driven healthcare is identical for the wealthiest and for the poorest, and it's 10 times better than what we have today.

generation of technologies, which I think we're going to see in this decade. I think we're going to destroy and disintermediate today's educational healthcare system. And it should be, because it's adequate. Amen. Those are heavy words, but I believe it. Especially in America, we're paying so much for these and getting so little. Hello, I'm from Borneo. Pardon for my English, but I try my best. First thing, Peter Diamandis is my idol. You're very kind, Chris.

What do you think about people from ASEAN or Southeast Asia in terms of technopreneurship? Yes. So listen, Chris, thank you very much. And your English is excellent and thank you for jumping on. You know, this is an amazing world where you and I

can connect like this literally from the other side of the planet. I'm in California and you're in the Pacific right now and the opportunities that you have

are, I think, immense because ultimately when I speak to entrepreneurs, I say it's okay for, I think, immense because ultimately when I speak to entrepreneurs, I say, it's okay for, you can either be an expert in the technology, like in AI, 3D printing, synthetic biology, or you can be an expert in the problem space. And if I had to choose, I would be an expert in the problem. In other words, understanding what are the challenges for the people that you care about and you love in Borneo? What do they need? And then how do you bridge this exponential world that you're obviously following through these technologies, right? Because access to all this information, this conversation is free. I mean, that's amazing.

So how do you bridge the challenges that you have in uplifting your fellow citizens and people in the region of your world with these technologies? I mean, your job is to pick something that you're most passionate about because doing anything big and bold is hard. And unless you're driven by passion that wakes you up in the morning and keeps you going through the day. And when you hit a wall after a wall after a wall, right? Anthony was talking about that. I got told 150 times no on my crazy idea about this $10 million spaceflight competition, but I believed in it so much. So what is a first problem that you want to solve? Don't try and do everything. Pick something specific and unique. And when you solve that thing, when you solve that thing, people will then believe in you to solve the next thing.

And I wrote a book called Bold, How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World and all the lessons I've known for entrepreneurs, and in particular, someone like yourself. So get a copy of Bold if you can. Yeah, that'd be what I would say. Hi, Anthony. So Anthony and I know each other from the hedge fund of business. I used to go to Salt. I used to have a small fund, and I used to have a radio show a long time ago, and Anthony was nice enough to be a guest on my radio show a couple of times. So how are you doing, Anthony? Yeah, my question for you, Peter, or Anthony, probably a good question for Anthony, is on the MBA issue, I mean, I have a kind of point of view on it. I think it probably is not worth the money anymore. I think a lot of even employers are even now starting to not look at whether someone even went to college, but whether they

can code in a certain language. But I think there are certain basic skills they teach you with an MBA. I think anybody who goes into any kind of business should learn. I think you should have basic concept of difference between an income statement and a cash flow statement and a balance sheet and understand the basics of that, understand the basics of the time value of money. I think there's certain basics, but I don't think you necessarily, you don't need to get an MBA. I mean, you can learn it online, you can learn it from a book, but I think there's just certain, those basic things that you get from an MBA program, those particular ones, I think are skills skills that everybody should learn, whether you

get an MBA or not. And that's really my only thing. And you guys can say whatever thoughts you have on that. Anthony, go ahead, buddy. Well, I mean, first of all, Ken, it's great to hear your voice. I guess what I would say, and Ken's bringing also up, because I'm looking at Twitter, when I said 12 million, I actually got that number from Larry Summers, and I'm talking about the 2023 versus 1923. From a CPI perspective, you're right, it's about 250,000, but- I said 2003. I didn't know you were talking about 1923. I thought it was 2000. Oh, no, no, no. 1923, because it's also, if you think about the housing, also the medical, there's just certain things that are usually valuable. Like, would you pay a million dollars

for an open heart surgery? Of course you would. Would you pay $50,000 for that if you had that access in 1923? But let me just go to your other point, which I, again, this is just my opinion. You are 100% right from an education point of view, from an academic curriculum. I think you can learn the trades of business without going to business school. But where I think it may have positive externalities that go beyond just the trade or the course curricula is the associations. And so my son, and I think Peter knows this, he just started a company called Bored Cow, which is basically making whey from plants. And so rather than bore everybody, how does a cow

make whey? They chew on grass, it gets converted in their bodies into animal protein. And so, you're taking the cow out of the equation, but you're using all the enzymatic properties to turn plants into animal whey, if you will. The name of the company is called Bored Cow, right? Because the cow is bored. You're doing without the cow. The guy running it for him is a classmate of his. And the guy's brilliant. He would have never met the guy if he didn't go to that school. Do you think AJ is the best networker on the planet? No, but he is. And Peter knows this. He's the smarter and more mature version of me. And of course, I set the bar really low, so it was an easy. But the point

I'm making is that he never meets that guy, Ken, that student who's now an adult and thriving, if he's not in that class. So could he have learned counting, P&L, could he have learned business, entrepreneurship, courses in finance? Absolutely, without the MBA. But does he actually go to dinner with that guy six times a week while they're studying? Okay, he develops into that business relationship. That probably doesn't happen without that MBA. Does that make sense? Anthony, your point is an important one, which is community matters, right? And you need to put yourself in a community of individuals who can inspire you and who you can collaborate with and have a mindset, right? If you want to have big moonshots, go hang out with people with big

moonshots. If you're eating way too much pasta and cookies and you're overweight and you want to get skinny, just saying, Anthony, you can go and hang out with people who are in better shape and skinny. Right. So it's like, who do you want to be? What mindset do you want to have? And go hang out with those mindsets. I think Peter, hey, Ken, I think Peter just fat shamed me on Twitter spaces, which is totally fine. Okay.

I could own that as I'm like totally fine with it. But I'm telling you, Peter, well, next time I see you, I'm bringing fine. I could own that. I'm totally fine with it. But I'm telling you, Peter, the next time I see you, I'm bringing baklava. I'm bringing that Greek pastry. And I'm going to channel Mrs. Diamandis, the 87-year-old superstar. And I'm going to tell you to eat.

What the hell are you doing? I love you and I miss you. Next time I come to New York, you're going to take me out for a great Italian dinner. Well, I mean, I just- And I'll take you out for a great- I just can't fit. Thank God Elon Musk is not on here because there'd be 150,000 followers and I'd be getting fat shamed by Peter D. Moore.

Listen, you're the only guy I know who goes and hangs out with the most extraordinary elite military forces. What, you're on Hulu now? How many episodes is the total program? So the answer to the question is there's 16 people on the show. There are 10 episodes. This is the Special Forces. This is Special Forces World's Ultimate Test. We had two British SAS servicemen and two Navy SEALs

take us through their survival training. They drowned me in a car. They made me backflip off a helicopter. They let you on fire. They lit me on fire. Although when they lit me on fire, Peter, you'll enjoy this. I said, man, I've been fired before, but never like this. This is like a new form of firing. They dropped me off a cliff in a controlled vertical drop where I had to trust one of the other castmates to break me on the way down. It was absolutely brutal car crash like experience. But here's the thing I learned and people want to watch the show. The show is very well rated, but here's the thing I learned. I'm 58 years old. Half of it was physical. Half of it was mental. I was petering out after day six

because I just didn't have the physicality to do it anymore. But here's the thing I will tell you what that show taught me. You can do more. You can push yourself further. There could be people listening right now that may be having a tough time in business, or maybe they got clocked in the bear market like I did last year, or maybe they're having a problem in their family, or maybe they're fighting with their spouse or loved one. Fix it. You can do more. It doesn't have to go in the trajectory that you think it's linearly going to go in. Nudge it, push it, get up earlier and hit the treadmill. I'm teasing Peter, but have one less cookie if you're severely overweight. Go to the gym,

go to the library, read for 30 more minutes today than you read yesterday. You can do these things and all of a sudden all these habits roll into great... It's caught interest on your life. Yeah, but it's also great positivity. When I walked out of that shell, I'm like, all right, I got my ass kicked, but at least I was able to fight my fear. I'm afraid of heights and these nutcases, they made me jump off the Tower of Aqaba. You could look it up on Google.

It's 210 meters in the air. And I had to jump and rappel off the tower. Now, I look like a Thunderbird Muppet doing it. I'm not saying I didn't do it. But at least I had the gumption to do it. You can push yourself to do more. Let's keep going. And folks, this is fantastic.

We've got a couple more people on stage. We've got a bunch of people in the queue with their hand raised. At the same time, I'm getting DMs with lots of questions as well. So, you know, Anthony, this one is for you. And it's talking about, of course, FTX and SBF. And, you know, we know that you were close with them.

We're just wondering, can you speak a little about SBF just in general, about him as an individual, about the marketplace, about venture capital, just all of that going on, because I think a educator. He takes the time to share with people what he's learned. Now, unfortunately for me, some of the things that I've learned have been bad things. And some of the things maybe don't reflect well on me, my judgment for working for Donald Trump as an example, or what happened with me and Sam. I trusted Sam and I liked Sam. And I thought Sam was building the architecture for the next generation everything exchange, not just a cryptocurrency exchange, but he had a vision for tokenizing illiquid assets. He had a vision for using the blockchain

to trade stocks and bonds, which would shorten the transaction times, increase the volume of transactions and the speed of the transactions. And I bought Hulk Line in sync or into what he was doing. I'm going to tell you right now, the CFTC did as well. They were very close to giving him mortgage approval. There were 50 or so legislators and governmental officials and bureaucrats. He was the darling of Washington. There were 25 venture capitalists and sovereign wealth funds that gave him over a billion dollars in venture financing for his business. He was affiliated with the NBA and Major League Baseball. And I got to know his parents.

And I got to tell you something, I liked his parents. They were tenured law professors at Stanford. And last March, which is 11 short months ago, I went with Kevin O'Leary to what was once called the FTX Arena in Miami, where Sam was sponsoring some public school children, middle and high school children, but they were from poorer areas of the city of Miami. They were in attendance on a Saturday morning in March of 2022, where Kevin O'Leary and myself did a mock short tank, and we awarded prizes to people that had good business plans. And everyone at the table got something from the charity, and Sam's 80 plus year old aunt was running the charity. So I got bamboozled in a number of different ways, but I think there was a lot of people that got bamboozled because, guys, the way you commit a crime is you have to have a very

small group of people. When I set up SkyBridge, we have Bank of New York as the custodian. We are overseen by JP Morgan. We have top four accounting firm, blue chip accounting firms overseeing the funds. There are five or six people inside the organization that have to turn keys before money goes. Because if you have a lot of people working on something in finance, there's always a person of conscience that raises their hand and says, okay, this is wrong. Something nefarious is happening. But in the Madoff case, it was three or four people. In Sam's case, he had it to three or four people that were literally moving money out of customer accounts, but creating accounting backdoors to make it look like the money was still in those accounts.

creating accounting back doors to make it look like the money was still in those accounts. So when he had audited financials or you went into his data room, the data room looked pristine. It would have been hard for me to imagine the malevolence or the nefarious behavior. Did it start that way for him or did- I don't know, Peter. I can only guess at that, okay? I don't know. Yeah, well, what's your guess? So I think it did, actually. I think-

You think it started? Wow. I do. I was going to give him the benefit doubt that- No, I think he had a God complex. I think he made a decision that his actions were justified by his righteousness. And so, okay, I'm making good money here at Alameda, but wait a minute, if I open up this thing called FDX, I can use free money from these customer

accounts. I'm such a smart guy that I'll move it over when I need it. And of course, I'll trade beautifully with it, and then I'll put it right back in the account. Nobody will be worse for wear. And I'm such a brilliant guy that, of course, I'll be able to do all of this. And then the bottom fell out of the cryptocurrency markets in the May, June timeframe. And then I think he said, okay, the bottom's out of the market. Let me move $7 billion over. And what I'm then going to do is use this customer money to become the white knight, to become the JP Morgan figure, the good Samaritan that's rescuing these other businesses. And that burnished his reputation and that made him look like, okay, he must've had great risk management and he must've been

smarter than everybody else in the market. And here's the thing, we have circumstance where that happens. I was in Davos, Switzerland when Mark Zuckerberg arrived. He had a t-shirt and a hoodie. Everyone else was in a Seville row business suit. And people were looking at him and say, okay, this guy's 20 years younger than me. What the hell is he doing? He goes on and creates a trillion dollar company, or maybe it's a half a trillion dollar company today, but you get the point I'm making. It goes from zero to something like a half a trillion dollars. He makes 30, 40, a hundred billion dollars for himself, pick the number. And so you see this

idiosyncratic behavior by Sam, t-shirt wearing, gym shorts from 1979, white socks from 1960. Jim Shorts from 1979, White Sox from 1960. And you're like, okay, I'm going to accept this because I'm going to be open-minded to it. And of course, I got it wrong. And I got it wrong alongside of a lot of other people. So now what happens is, this is a weird thing about our culture and our society. We like to demonize the victims of things in our society. So when the Theranos fraud happens, we take out the list of all these brilliant luminaries and we say, look at these dopes. How could they have purchased Theranos? How could they have bought into her story? And now we're doing that with Sam. Look at these venture capitalists and these sovereign wealth funds. How could Scaramucci not see? I was at the Yale School of Management. Jeff Sonnenfeld invited me. It was an absolutely

brutal situation because there were 250 people in the room, 75 of which were in the fortune CEO category, maybe the fortune 250 CEOs. And he showed a interview of me on Squawk Box where I'm announcing the deal and Sam and I are teaming up together. That was September the 7th. On November 11th, so two short months later, I'm sitting there with a concerned look on my face. I've just flown back from the Bahamas and I've got to tell Andrew Sorkin that something is really rotten in the Bahamas and the partnership that I thought turned me into a hero, I'm now sitting here before you as a goat. And so now he juxtapositioned those two interviews and he said, well, what say you? And what I said to that group, and I'll say it to this group on Twitter Spaces, I got it wrong. I couldn't see

the fraud because that's what good fraudsters do. They make it so clever that you can't see the fraud. I got caught in the fraud. The good news is he gave me the money, Peter. So I received the money. He bought a piece of money from me. I've now got to work on buying it back. And you're buying I can copy and do it. Yeah. And I will, but I got it wrong. But here's the thing. I said, there are people here that are CEOs hiding in these big corporate structures and God bless them. They would never want to suffer the self-consciousness or the shame of what I'm going through right now as an entrepreneur, but that's okay.

You don't go from the blue collar neighborhood that I grew up in to where I am today without taking risk. And when you're throwing the ball metaphorically, you get sacked, you get intercepted, and you fumble the ball. And so this is obviously a combination of those three things, but I'm here really to speak to the young people that are going to Yale getting their MBA. It's not going to stop me from taking risks, guys. I'm going to be out there again throwing the ball and I may get something else wrong. But the truth be told, I'm not going to let Sam Bankman Freed and the fraud that he perpetrated stopped me from seeking economic innovation or growth or investing in something that I think could potentially dent the universe positively. Amen, brother. I love you for it, right? Because that's what's amazing about America. In a lot of other countries, if you have a failure like this, you're blacklisted for life and you cannot recover.

If you have a failure like this, you're blacklisted for life and you cannot recover. In America, as an entrepreneur, you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off, unless you've been Me Too'd, which has much longer consequences. That's why I get into that right now. But you can pursue your next start again. I'm curious about one thing, the speed at which Sam made his wealth. Should that have been a signal to folks? I had dinner with him. I remember I was texting with you and I was having dinner with him in New York during the Clean and Global Initiative.

And I was talking about XPRIZE and longevity and all of these things. We had like two hour back and forth and like he's in a t-shirt and shorts and everything else, you know, in the restaurants and a suit and tie. shirt and shorts and everything else in the restaurants and they got suit and tie. But it was like the speed of which his wealth creation, was that a signal that was not witnessed? Well, yeah, the short answer to that is yes, but let me provide context because he was a quirky guy. He was idiosyncratic. You know, he was a quirky guy. He was idiosyncratic. Bitcoin has gone up 132,000% since the origination of Bitcoin. 14 years ago, not long ago. Not long ago. So if Sam was an early adopter, which he said he was, and he was exploiting the

inefficiencies in the markets before the markets got more mature. They're not as mature as the stock and bond markets, but the spreads have tightened. You would have to believe that it was possible because we know, you and I do know legitimate Bitcoin billionaires. We do know people like the Winklevosses that put the Bitcoins away. Mike Novogratz is a friend of mine. He is a billionaire. Michael Saylor, right? Michael Saylor. I can name you people. And so, yes and no. Yes, there's all the tells now, the way he was dressed, his quirkiness. We can all blame it on that. But the truth be told, you know, he fit the box of outliers. He fit the box of idiosyncratic behavior.

Irreverent. Irreverent. You know, look, I mean, I don't want to make comparisons because it's unfair to these people to stand back and read, but Steve Jobs, the Theranos lady dressed like him. Do you remember this? She wanted to pick up that affect so that she could do people. Bill Gates drops out of college. He's a college dropout from Harvard.

He develops the greatest software company and becomes one of the richest for a long period of time, the richest person in the world. for a long period of time, the richest person in the world. Jeff Bezos, a little bit more traditional, but also idiosyncratic, goes on to create, he's arguably the richest or among the richest five people in the world. Your friend, it's somebody that I know and admire, Elon Musk, people would describe him as idiosyncratic. Okay, I think so.

I mean, look at where he was. And brilliant. And brilliant. But look at where he was in 2003. Hey, listen, I'm going to take the proceeds from PayPal. I'm going to roll them into making electric cars. And oh, by the way, I'm going to go into commercial space. I'm going to compete with- I'm going to spend everything I've got and go into debt and deal against the largest

companies on the planet. Yeah. And so he becomes the richest man in the world or among the richest men in the world doing that. It's idiosyncratic. It's not normal. But you made bets on him. My friend Antonio Gracias made bets on him and became very wealthy doing this. My point is Sam fit that genre.

Okay. Now, am I to be castigated for getting it wrong? Sure. I'll accept the castigation alongside of the 25 luminaries and the million people that believed in them and the NBA and Major League Baseball and everybody else. But what I'm not going to do is say, okay, now I need to wear a scarlet letter and I need to walk with shame. Brett Harrison, the president of FTX US, he did everything right. He was regulated by the US regulators. And so he had one-to-one and he was solvent the day that FTX collapsed. Okay. He left FTX thankfully in September and he's not a target of the investigation, and he went out and raised money fored. Moreover, we did an event in the Bahamas,

assault cryptocurrency event. We called it Crypto Bahamas. Sam was the big sponsor. His imprimatur was on that event last April. It was probably one of the best events we've ever done. I'm not going to let Sam and the taint of him deter me from going back to the Bahamas. I built a relationship with the prime minister. I have friends at the Bahama Hotel. I have the owner, Emery Chang, who owns the Rosewood, is a 30-year friend of mine. So what am I going to do now? Sam tainted the Bahamas. We're never going back to the Bahamas. No, I'm calling my friends and saying, hey, growing at these exponential rates that we are, there are going to be disruptive moments in the negative as well as multitude in the positive.

And it's going to come from people. I would like to believe it was stupidity and not malevolence that led him in that direction, but we'll find out from what the investigations show. Let's try and squeeze in a couple of other subjects. But thank you, Anthony, for being so open, transparent with everybody about this. I love that about you, right? You don't try and-

I agree. The game's over. You are- Like that. Look, I want people to learn from this stuff. Yes. I made a mistake. Here's the mistake we made.

Here's why we made it. And hopefully, listening to me, maybe that will prevent you from being in the position that Skybridge and myself is personal. Peter, yeah, big fan of yours. I'm actually a medical doctor and took your exponential entrepreneurship course whilst on an entrepreneurship fellowship here in the UK as a doctor. And I've gone super into tech. And and Anthony I remember your big room on clubhouse back in the day as well so incredible to have you both here I had a question so we've seen as Peter often talks about exponential you know change in technology and everyone's talking about augmenting humans with you know chat GPT and we're seeing these innovations come to light and I'm a big fan of health and longevity as well. And with Elon

Musk's company like Neuralink, Peter, what are your thoughts on the convergence of humans and technology? I would love to hear that. Thanks. Yeah. So thank you, Saeed. It's an area I'm excited about. We are converging with technology. We are in the process of giving birth to a new form of life and intelligence on this planet. And we're either going to merge with it ultimately or be bypassed by it. You know, today, I'm speaking to audiences of thousands of individuals. And just for fun, I'll say, is there anybody here who does not have their cell phone? And like, raise your hand. And like, nobody raises their hand. I mean, like a few years back, someone raised their hand and I said, oh, really? You don't have a cell phone? He goes, no, I lost

it at Uber on the way over here. But you know, it's like, we become dependent. That's part of, we outsource our, so much to that device, right? Our memory, our capabilities, and it augments our brain. We can't make our brains any bigger today because we wouldn't be able to go through the birth canal. But what we can do, just like your cell phone is, you know, connected over 5G to the edge of computing on the networks, we're about to connect our brain to the cloud as well, right? There is probably about

40 companies, probably many more we don't know about that might be even in defense departments and so forth, working on connecting your brain, 100 billion neurons, 100 trillion synaptic connections to the cloud. The person who's the best predictor of this by far, one of my mentors, Ray Kurzweil, my co-founder of Singularity University. He's now the futurist at Google. And his prediction of when we're going to reach high bandwidth brain-computer interface is the early 2030s, call it 2032, 2033. And so what happens when that happens? Well, all of a sudden we're becoming hybrid in that regard i can think in google i can uh in a meta intelligence standpoint which i wrote about in my

uh my previous book uh future is faster uh you know if i if you're connected to the cloud and anthony's connected to the cloud i'm connected on the cloud we Anthony's connected to the cloud, I'm connected on the cloud. We can basically share thoughts. And by the way, going back to one of the earlier conversations, Anthony, that level of connectivity, that level of empathy is going to be one of the most important things we have for society. One of the things I'll mention, Sohib, is that we are, as you well know, as an actual practicing physician. I barely graduated medical school and never did as individual life form. And we're 8 billion people who are being connected and becoming hopefully, eventually conscious at a new level. So I think we are giving birth to a new evolutionary version of Homo sapiens. There are many names being given to it. I think that's happening not a thousand or a hundred years from now. I think it's happening over the next 20, 30, 40 years maximum. Ray calls it the singularity as part of that.

So it's an exciting time to be alive. I say, don't blink. Anthony, what's a closing thought for you here, buddy? So I'm inspired by Peter Diamandis. I cite his books. When I talk to people and when I close out a speech, I talk about Thomas Malthus. I talk about peak oil theory. I talk about historically we're designed biologically to think linearly, but the world is moving exponentially. And when I read a book like Abundance, or I hear Peter speak, or I listen to one of his podcasts or a YouTube presentation that he's making, I remind people that the things that we're worried about will likely not come to pass because of human innovation and because of the best of man and womankind.

And so what I want to end this with, whatever the apocalyptic stuff that's being said out there, we can rise above that. We can overcome it. It doesn't even matter who our political leaders are. rise above that, we can overcome it. It doesn't even matter who our political leaders are. The great innovation in a country like this, well, the surprise for everybody is whatever the problems are, my guess is human innovation, the technology, the best and the brightest will help us solve those problems. And I want people to think like that and stay positive. Anthony, you're at Scaramucci. Where else can

people find your work? So I'm at Scaramucci. I also have a podcast, which I'd like to get you on, Peter, and some of your co-authors. Done. Called Open Book. I love reading. And so the name of my podcast is Open Book. I'll just say this quickly. It used to be $10, 10 hours of reading, you got 10 years of experience. Now because of inflation, it's $20, but you get the point. And authors inspire me because they work on a subject for a long period of time and they give you their knowledge. And of course, we have a 5,000-year dialogue going back to the ancient Greeks. It's a one-way conversation, of course. We're forced to listen to them in our heads as we read their stories and their personal feelings, their shortcomings, and their philosophies. And so rather than read the whole

book, you can come to my podcast and hear me hash it out with the author. Well, I'd love to, buddy. And for those listening here on Twitter spaces, you can see this again on my podcast, Moonshots and Mindsets. I'm at Peter Diamandis. My closing thoughts here are, it's simple, and I've been pretty consistent for a decade. This is the most exciting time ever to be alive. The only time we're exciting than today is tomorrow. Each of us have more power than the kings and the queens, the heads of nations 30 years ago. We have the ability to change the world. The only scarce resource today is the passionately committed human mind. If you think you can, you have a chance of doing it. More access to technology capital. And my mission is how do we uplift

humanity? How do we uplift the life of every man, woman, and child? And that's what's going to make the world an amazing place. And speaking of children, I've got two kids waiting for me to pick them up from school, which is the fun part. Being dad is still my number one desire to be the best dad I can. Anthony, it's been a pleasure to get to know your family. I love you, buddy. Thank you for being in my life. Thank you for joining us today.

Dave here, man. It's amazing to be here with you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity and the honor to be on with you, man.