Moonshots with Peter Diamandis - I'm Working with OpenAI to Make Work Better for Humans w/ Arianna Huffington | EP #126

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

In this episode, Arianna and Peter discuss the state of the current healthcare system, how to fix it, and what big corporations are getting wrong about well-being incentives.    Recorded on October 21st, 2024 Views are my own thoughts; not Financial, Medical, or Legal Advice. 05:02 | Scientific Advice for Entrepreneurs 36:17 | The Power of a Reset 01:01:38 | AI's Future Depends on Humanity Arianna Huffington is the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, a company focused on ending burnout and improving well-being through evidence-based solutions. She is a prominent entrepreneur, author, and media mogul, best known for co-founding The Huffington Post in 2005, which became a leading digital media platform and the first to win a Pulitzer Prize. After its acquisition by AOL in 2011, Huffington shifted her focus to wellness, launching Thrive Global in 2016. Author of 15 books, including Thrive and The Sleep Revolution, she is a global thought leader frequently named among the world’s most influential people by Time and Forbes. In 2024, she launched Thrive AI Health, a personalized AI-powered health coaching platform developed in partnership with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to revolutionize chronic disease management and health equity. Learn more about Thrive Global: https://thriveglobal.com/  Follow Arianna on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariannahuffington/  ____________ I only endorse products and services I personally use. To see what they are,  please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:  Get started with Fountain Life and become the CEO of your health: https://fountainlife.com/peter/ AI-powered precision diagnosis you NEED for a healthy gut: https://www.viome.com/peter  Reverse the age of your skin with OneSkin; 30% off new subscription orders with code PETER at oneskin.co/PETER  _____________ 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:  Blog Apply to my executive summit, Abundance360: https://www.abundance360.com/ _____________ Connect With Peter: Twitter Instagram Youtube Moonshots

We have a healthcare crisis, I think is the way that you put it. It isn't just a US crisis, it's a global crisis. It's infinitely preventable and or reversible. We are not going to change hearts and minds through numbers. We need to tell stories. I wanted to do something more. I wanted to help people change behaviors. Elevating these issues from the

warm and fuzzy, nice to have, to kind of business imperatives. We call them productivity multipliers. What CEO wouldn't want to maintain productivity multipliers even when you're cutting budgets? productivity multipliers even when you're cutting budgets. Ray's belief is that we are going to merge with AI. I completely disagree with him. I think that human beings have a soul and AI doesn't. Everybody, welcome to Moonshots. On today's program, I'm going to be interviewing an incredible female CEO, a dear friend, Arianna Huffington.

She is the founder and CEO of Thrive Global. We'll be talking about how she's looking at revolutionizing the entire healthcare industry. She was also the founder of Huffington Post, which she started in 2005, leading to winning a Pulitzer Prize. She sold that company to AOL in 2011, then went on to start Thrive Global in 2016. She's the author of 15 books, Thrive and the Sleep Revolution. She's incredible and then went on to partner with Sam Altman and OpenAI to create Thrive AI Health. By the way, Ariane Huffington is gonna be with me on stage at my private event, Abundance

360, next March. I usually don't open it up to the public, but if you're interested, I do reserve five tickets for moonshot listeners. If this is you and you want to talk to my team about it, click on the link below or go to Abundance360.com. All right, let's jump into the episode. Hi, Arianna. Hi, Peter. What are you doing? Very good.

What did you say? Very good. You know, this is going to be conducted in Greek, right? We're going to translate, you know, this podcast, this moonshot podcast goes out in Portuguese and we're going to put it out, this one in particular in Greek, so we wouldn't have to translate that part. But it's great to see you. I'm in Santa Monica at this moment, yourself in New York. And I'm in New York.

But as you know, I spent quite a bit of time in L.A. I still have my home there. How long have we known each other now? It's been a while. We met shortly after I launched the Huffington Post at a dinner that Larry and Sergey had for you in San Francisco. And you invited me to join the board of X-BRIZE.

Yeah, so it must've been 2004. So Larry joined at the end of late 2004, which is probably one I invited you as well. We had quite the board. We had you and Larry. Elon was on the board. We brought Jim Giannopoulos. James Cameron had joined. He was quite a rock star.

The board grew like 25 people to the point where I couldn't call a board meeting anymore because it was impossible to get everybody's schedule aligned. It was crazy. But now, man... Amazing, great, amazing board meetings. Yeah, you know that this year, Arianna, is our 30th anniversary. So we've known each other for 20 years. Yes.

Happy anniversary.th anniversary. So we've known each other for 20 years. Happy anniversary. Happy anniversary. Our friendship has lasted longer than my marriage. That's good. It only lasted 11 years. Your marriage has been much more successful. It's tough. Marriage is tough. It's part of the stressors in our health. But it's an important part of our health as well. stressors in our health, but it's an important part of our health as well. It's interesting. This is our 30th anniversary. Ariana, we've launched 30 X prizes about close to

$600 million in cash purses, driving nearly $10 billion in R&D. So, very proud of what we all created together. It's been quite the journey. I'm very proud of you. It's been really incredible. And I'm proud of you. You are quite the entrepreneur, young lady. It's amazing. In your intro, I was just noting all of the different successes you had. And one of the things, we're gonna get into healthcare, how insane our healthcare system is, how broken it is, the importance of using tech and AI to bolster us and what you're doing with Thrive Global.

But I wanna hit something else. A lot of our listeners around the world are entrepreneurs. And we're so driven. And in our early entrepreneurial careers, you at Huffington Post, myself at XPRIZE and my other space ventures, where you've got this insane dream, this moonshot you're going after and you're willing to work at it 24-7 and sacrifice everything to it, relationships and health. What advice do you have for entrepreneurs in that mind?

in that mind? Well, my advice came from my own experience and from tons of science and data. You know, two years into building the Huffington Post in 2007, I had bought into this collective delusion, as I call it. I love that collective delusion. In order to be the super founder and super mom of my two little girls, I didn't have the luxury to take care of myself. Sleep, to eat right, exercise, etc. And I literally

collapsed. I hit my head on my desk, broke my cheekbone, and that was the beginning of my journey And that was the beginning of my journey. Yeah. To not just change my own behavior, but become an evangelist about encouraging entrepreneurs and others to really look at the data and the science. You know, it's kind of ironic Peter, because as entrepreneurs, we are very data-driven. We look at all the metrics.

And yet when it comes to the unequivocal science that we are going to be the most productive, most creative versions of ourselves, if we also take care of ourselves, we tend to ignore it. Yep. You think of it for somebody else and not for myself. And I, if in fact, if everybody else is doing it, but I push a little bit further, I'll be able to get ahead. So, you know, at the Huffington Post, after my own collapse, I started covering these issues exhaustively. And I remember sitting at a dinner with Jeff Bezos and he said to me, you know, I had just written my book on sleep. And he said, you know, I sleep for eight hours a night.

I said, you do? He said, yes. He said, I have analyzed my decisions. And when I'm sleep deprived, my decisions are not as good as I have gotten a good full night's sleep. And he said, as a CEO of Amazon, which he still was at the time, I am judged by the quality of my decisions, not the quantity of my decisions. That's amazing.

That's actually brilliant of him. It is amazing. And I said to him, you must write about it. He said, no, I'm private and we'll write about it. I said, it's not about you. It's about teaching people who admire you, admire your success, how to do it. And finally, after I kept texting him for three months, he did it, I think to get me off his back.

And then CNBC picked it up, different business publications, it became a part of the culture. So Satya Nathela is another one who talks about how much sleep he gets. I was at a Microsoft CEO summit and he came up to me and he said, you know, I didn't get all the sleep I wanted last night, so I won't be my best. So these are people who are incredibly effective, incredibly successful, who also know that if they take time to unplug, recharge, they're going to be the best versions of themselves.

And also, Peter, we see that from athletes, right? Sure. Elite athletes know that recovery is part of peak performance. It is, and you know, I changed my tune, you know, all through medical school, all through graduate school, and the first 20 years of an entrepreneurship, you know, I'll sleep when I'm dead was my motto.

Yeah, I know. And it was like minimizing. I remember having lunch with you at the Crosby Hotel in New York. You could barely finish your lunch because you were rushing to get a plane and I was trying to convince you of that and you were like on the edge. I think soon after that you were convinced but you know you are really a hardcore I'll sleep when I'm dead guy. Yeah. My dad used to say your fork is on fire.

Um, you know, the Prune said, not, not me. You know, it's like it was, it was, uh, I was judging everything incorrectly. Uh, and today I'm in bed at 930 every night and you know, consistently of sleep cycle and eight hours is my objective every single day. I mean, I always get it, but it's my objective. And I can feel my next day if I don't, right? And in particular, it's not just the eight hours, it's trying to get an hour of deep sleep at least.

Yeah, which is when the... In particular, it's not just the eight hours, it's trying to get an hour of deep sleep, at least. Yeah, which is when the... I think what you said is very important. There are going to be nights when we don't get it. Yeah. This is not about doing this perfectly. We are all works in progress and the worst thing we can do is judge ourselves when we don't get it. do is judge ourselves when we don't get it. You know judgment and we'll talk about this later, we judge ourselves. Humans around us inherently judge us and we each other and the beautiful thing about AI is it doesn't judge you. That's one of the most spectacular things. There's not that sense of oh no I have to lie to it because it will think badly of me You know, you can be completely honest and you know, it's gonna be empathic and sympathetic and we'll get to that in a little bit

I want to start with You and I have a common passion and belief That we need to completely destroy obl obliterate, burn down and sprinkle holy water on the current healthcare system. And it needs to be reinvented because it is, and I won't say that as dramatically, but the healthcare system is broken. And the numbers, and it's not just healthcare care, it's the food system, and it's many different

elements of our society. We are, we have a health care crisis, I think is the way that you put it, right? And I wrote down a few stats, and I know you have some of your favorites too. And again, because we're speaking to entrepreneurs going after moonshots, I think one of the biggest opportunities on the planet is the fixing this healthcare crisis and delivering new systems, new capabilities. And I'd like to give some of the stats as motivations if you if you don't mind

I'm happy to go first. If you have your favorites you can go as well. I'm Written things down. I don't know if you have these memorized or not, but it's it's crazy Well, first of all, we should stress because this is a global audience. Yes, but it isn't just a US crisis, it's a global crisis. Correct. We have over 8 million people in line for healthcare in the United Kingdom. We spend 18% of our GDP, $4 trillion in the US on healthcare and outcomes are getting worse every year. I mean we work at Thrive with many self-insured employers and they're alarmed at the increase in healthcare costs every year. So this is a universal crisis,

but you know what, Peter, from my days in the media world, I have learned that we're not going to change hearts and minds through numbers. We need to tell stories. And there is a story which actually the New York Times covered. Please. In Austin, Texas, which has become the amputation capital. What? For people with diabetes. You know, last year there were 150,000 people with diabetes who had their legs or toes amputated. It's crazy. That's an alarming number. It's alarming, it's barbaric, and also it's, not to mention

the incredible cost in dollars, you know, these operations, prosthetics, infections, the cost in human lives. And human hope and human well-being and, you know, belief that life is a better tomorrow. I mean, if you've had part of your body cut off, that's got to be soul crushing. Exactly. Everything you've said about optimism and how optimism helps us be healthier. But the story in the New York Times was the story of one man, Robert Perez, 39 year old record producer, not an old man. 39, yeah. And he was shown in a picture being fitted with a prosthetic.

And he said, and he was diagnosed with diabetes four years earlier, and he said he could never believe that it would get to this point. So how come that people don't know what's available to them, not just in terms of medication, but in terms of behaviors, in terms of what they eat, their stress levels, their sleep, and how all that impacts the progression of the disease. And the sad thing is it's infinitely preventable and or reversible. Yes, or manageable. You know that's the thing

you know as you know Thrive works on these five behaviors you know sleep, food. Actually let me let's take let's take a second and and give the overview of Thrive Global because I think it's important for context for the rest of our hour here. So when did you start Thrive Global? And what does it do? I started Thrive in 2016. And the reason I did is because I wanted to go beyond just raising awareness, which I could have continued doing through a media company at the Huffington Post.

You had sold Huffington Post to AOL? But I sold it in 2011. And I continued running it. And my intention was to continue running it. But after I started covering these issues exhaustively on the Huffington Post, writing two books on the subject, Thrive and the Sleep Revolution. I wanted to do something more.

I wanted to help people change behaviors. I didn't just want them to know that they need to get a good night's sleep or not eat a lot of sugar and ultra processed foods. I wanted to help them do that. And I couldn't do that through a media company. I had to build a behavior change technology company. And that's why I left the Huffington Post in 2016

to launch Thrive. And frankly, I'm grateful to my mom, my amazing Greek mom, who had taught me. What was her name? Her name was Ellie. Okay. She had taught me not to be afraid of failing.

And that's something for all entrepreneurs here. You know, when you leave a very successful media company in 18 countries with a pool, it's a- Yeah, it was amazing. And a great newsroom. To start again, there are no guarantees of success. My mother used to say, don't be afraid of failure. Failure is not the opposite of success.

It's a stepping stone to success. Smart woman. So I literally left the house. Sophia. Sophia started again, you know, raising money, hiring people, et cetera. And the goal was to be a B2B company where we could go into enterprises and help them reduce stress and burnout and Make the connection between improving well-being and health

Reducing stress and burnout and improving business metrics kind of Elevating these issues from the warm and fuzzy Nice to have two kind of business imperatives. We call them productivity multipliers, I love that reframing, you know, because who, what CEO wouldn't want to maintain productivity multipliers even when you're cutting budgets? Exactly. Otherwise, it becomes the first thing to be cut. Yeah. In tough times and uncertain times, which is what we have

all the time now. So, you know, we were very lucky. We brought in some great partners, you know, Accenture, Salesforce, Walmart, AT&T, et cetera, and started seeing the results. And the results that got me to move more and more towards health are the results at Walmart, because we're in our sixth year there, working with many of their associates, as they call their employees, who are minimum wage,

who through these five behaviors that we work on, sleep, food, exercise, stress management and connection, started having real health results, reversing hypertension, reversing diabetes without obviously any medical interventions. This is all digital, what you call these micro steps. Micro steps, yes. Our behavior change methodology, we have a great scientific board, BJ Fogg from Stanford is the chairman, great behavior change economists like Kevin Volpe and David Arsh from Penn. Everything is broken down into micro steps, tiny, daily incremental steps that become

healthier habits. And you have a great quote by Aristotle in your book. That basically our habits are who we are. Here it is. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit. And one of my favorite quotes. And so if we repeatedly do small incremental things that are good for our health, we are going to build cumulatively healthier habits. And I love this. I think one of the things that's been a great insight for me and I wrote about this. I added a chapter to my upcoming book, Longevity Guidebook on routines because I realized that it was the single most important thing I was doing was learning these routines, learning these habits and a great habit is something you do so you

don't negotiate with yourself. It's just something you're going to do. Right? So if you are, you know, if you're warm and cozy under the covers in the morning and the alarm goes off because you've scheduled yourself to go work out, if that's your habit, you're going to do that versus negotiate yourself out of it. Well, I'm going to gonna just I'll do it tomorrow Exactly, and I love another thing you have in your book which I'm halfway through and loving your new book. Thank you It's coming out in December. So yeah, yes, you say win the morning to win the day. Yeah truly

It really is it's the most controlled time in most people's schedule where you wake up with a very clear mind. You've processed while you're sleeping a lot of the issues you've had. You have an infinite potential in the day. Yeah, it's a beautiful time to take control. Did you see the movie Oppenheimer? If you did, did you know that besides building the atomic bomb at Los Alamos National Labs, that they spent billions on bio-defense weapons, the ability to accurately detect viruses and microbes by reading their RNA?

Well, a company called Viome exclusively licensed the technology from Los Alamos Labs to build a platform that can measure your microbiome and the RNA in your blood. Now, Viome has a product that I've personally used for years called Full Body Intelligence, which collects a few drops of your blood, spit, and stool and can tell you so much about your health. They've tested over 700,000 individuals and used their AI models to deliver members' critical health guidance, like what foods you should eat, what foods you shouldn't eat, as well as your supplements and probiotics, your biological age, and other deep health

insights. And the results of the recommendations are nothing short of stellar. As reported in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, after just six months of following Viom's recommendations, members reported the following. A 36% reduction in depression, a 40% reduction in anxiety, a 30% reduction in diabetes, and a 48% reduction in IBS. Listen, I've been using Viom for three years. I know that my oral and gut health is one of my highest priorities. Best of all, Viome is affordable, which is part of my mission to democratize health. If you want to join me on this journey, go to viome.com slash peter. I've asked Naveen Jain, a friend of mine who's the founder and CEO of Viome,

to give my listeners a special discount. You'll find it at viome.com slash peter. You know, Ariana, those five elements are so critically important. And I do want to hit just a couple of points on the numbers. And you're right, it is. We learn in story. And for any entrepreneur, it's like giving numbers is one thing. Telling great stories is 100 times more powerful, which is why Ariane is such a great entrepreneur. But I am going to hit a few numbers here.

And the thing that is so scary is the health care obesity epidemic, right? We're at 41.8% obesity in the US and rising, and it's causing diabetes and heart disease and cancer and There are multiple causes But small changes small micro steps as you teach can can change that and the other element here is

You know the numbers that I pulled were like 400,000 deaths per year are preventable because of diet or tobacco. You know, I haven't seen a tobacco carton in a long time and I saw one in the trash the other day. And I don't know how, how can they be more explicit? It says, this package will kill you. It's like skull and crossbones. It's crazy.

But you know, what we are finding is that people are more likely to change behaviors if you focus on what they're looking forward to. Yeah. Like on the fact that they want to take their grandchild to the park or celebrate their daughter's wedding or be able to still go on a hike as they age, these are much more likely to get them to do what's good for their health than if you tell them you're going to die.

And that's why behavior change methodology is so important. And Peter, we have been doing it wrong for so many years. First of all, we've been focusing on new year resolutions, which tend to be abandoned within two to three weeks in jail because they are so big, you know They're like I'm going to go to the gym first thing in the morning for an hour every day Or I'm going to completely give up sugar. I know you and I have completely given up sugar But it was gradual for me It I didn't wake up one day and did it. And now it's like effortless.

It is effortless and for me it was doing it in a group setting, going through it with a community, right, which is supportive. Yeah, you got to find your, we call them accountability buddies. Yes. People who will support you and then you begin to feel better and it becomes easier and easier until there's no more self-negotiation. It's like you don't have the dessert put down in front of you, period. Yeah, that's my hack. Just I don't want to see it. I don't want to be negotiating with myself. You know, I don't want to see it. I don't want to be negotiating with myself. I don't want to be tempted. Just know. You have to know yourself.

I have an addictive personality. Like, there are people who can say, I'm just going to have a bite of this dessert. I'm not, I'm just going to have a bite person. Right. Like I'm not going to have any or I'm going to have the whole thing. The other thing is that Right like I'm not going to have any or I'm going to have the whole thing the other thing is that I

Found that what has changed all my habits around exercise Was what we call a thrive habit stacking you and A habit you enjoy or you do regularly on top of another habit Which you it's it's harder for you. So I have added watching my favorite shows only when I'm on my treadmill or on my bike. Love it. Love it. And it's been amazing.

You know, when I wanted to see the end of Succession or recently, what was the? And I wanted to see the end of succession. Oh, recently. What was the, Mame maison and Apple show. I literally was on my treadmill for two and a half hours. I didn't want to stop. Yeah. The heck. Find out what is it that you need that's going to end the self-negotiation.

Absolutely. You know, for me, I do my board calls. If I'm not presenting on my, it's right over here, my Techno Gym bike, just because I think of sitting as the new smoking. And we spend so much time sitting down, it's insane. I know, so exactly, you found your own way to combine something with something else. Talk to me more about a user coming onto Thrive, onto the Thrive platform.

So, I mean, I think, I wanna understand where it is today and where you're going with it and how it collects the data so that, you know, we can give people a vision of the future here. Great. So, to give you the vision of the future, I need to also tell you that we launched a new company which is funded jointly by Thrive Global and OpenAI with two strategic investors Eli Lilly and the Alice Walton Foundation. And the purpose of this company is to just create an AI health coach.

And that's called Thrive AI Health? Thrive AI Health, yes. So the original company, Thrive Global, is focused on meeting people where they are at work. Like, if you spend a lot of your day on Microsoft Teams, Thrive will meet you on Microsoft Teams. If you spend a lot of your day on Slack or Webex, we meet you there. By the way, you've got an important stat there, which I'd love you to share because I've heard this. And it's, again, a really important entrepreneurial tip on on meeting people where they are versus trying to get people to come to you.

Could you describe? Yes, let me give you an example. Pfizer is one of the companies who work with. The numbers on engagement, you thrive colleagues as they call their employees engaging, Pfizer colleagues engaging with Thrive on the Thrive app is 14%. 14, okay. Pfizer colleagues engaging with Thrive, exactly the same content, the same micro steps on Microsoft Teams is 76%. Because they're there already.

Because they're there. We come to you. We eliminate friction. Yeah. And I think that's such an important lesson for entrepreneurs to realize, you know, don't expect the users you want to always come to you. You know, where are they hanging out? What water hole are they in already? And how do you present yourself there? An easy, you know, increment, small micro step, as you say, to get to you. Yeah.

Yes. Yes, but also at Thrive, we have what we call a cultural activation. So that when we start a partnership, we have a fireside chat with the CHRO or even the CEO or a business leader that sets up what we are doing and why so that people at every level of the company have cultural permission to engage. As you know culture is changed at the top. Yes, for sure. And I mean I have done so many amazing fireside chats with CEOs who talk about their micro steps, what they are doing, how they learn for example to put their phone away at night. As you have Peter, are you still doing it? Yeah, I'm like my one of the hacks I learned from Matt Walker, who wrote also an amazing book on sleep,

is I will only look at my phone while I'm standing up before going to sleep. And then when I lie down, the phone goes away. And I get very tired at night sitting there like last few texts or emails and then it's gone. Yeah. You know this is the most important sleep micro step. I do remember you built these little beds for our phones to charge. This is the only physical product we have produced at Thrive is the little phone beds that we

sell at cost on Amazon in mahogany and light wood. And the idea is to live outside everybody's bedrooms and be the place where everybody's phones go. Yours, your wife's, your twins, your twin boys. The twins don't have phones yet. They're not going to have phones till they're 16. I've drawn the line. But once, I'm going to send you the new version, the new improved version of the phone bed.

So when the twins get the phone, they learn phone hygiene. Yeah. From day one. Your phone doesn't sleep with you. Yeah. Because that is an issue for a lot of teens right now, you know, they bring their phone to bed And they're under the covers on social media You know which will steal two hours of sleep and people need to realize You get your deep sleep at the beginning of your sleep cycle, right?

Which is so critically important. If you wake up too early, you're going to eliminate some REM, but you'll have gotten your deep sleep already. But that's why you see, by having this cultural activation, these fireside chats, these webinars, leadership journeys, who have over 50 facilitators, by having all that in an ongoing way, we actually create a culture

where the platform and the digital products can be embedded. Yeah, and accepted. And accepted and practiced. And then we collect stories. Yeah. From the CEO down, you know, how are you doing it? What micro steps are you using? Which inspire others to join. You know, one of the things that you did as part of this is your reset program. Yes. Which I found fascinating. Can you explain what that is?

And I think we have teed up a 60 second Ariana reset. So it's actually kind of one of my absolute favorite features at Thrive because in 60 seconds you can have such an impact. It's based on the neuroscience, as you know, that while stress is unavoidable, there is nobody who has a stress-free existence, cumulative stress is avoidable. And it takes 60 to 90 seconds to move from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system away from the fight or flight response. Yes, to the rest and digest, yes.

Exactly. So whether you are on Teams or Webex or Slack or on the Thrive app, you have access to hundreds of Thrive resets that have a breathing bubble so that you can breathe consciously because as you know our breath is our superpower. Music, images, quotes, and you can pick what you like. One of my favorite illustrations of the power of resets is we've brought them into dozens of contact centers around the world and you know contact center agents are among the most stressed populations and Because time is so precious. Yeah, we only give them three resets a day and

The employer decides what the triggers are. The results have been amazing. The results in productivity and customer success. But my favorite data point is Synchrony, the financial company, did a survey and asked their agents, do you prefer continuing to get three thrive resets a day or get three five-minute breaks? So 15 versus three minutes. And 76% said would rather get the resets. Wow. Because if we get the five minutes, they talked about what they're going to do. They're going to go doom scroll the news or go on Instagram and get more stressed

out comparing their lives to somebody else's life. And this is like a 60 second reset. Now it's a fuel for your soul. Fuel for your soul. Fuel for your soul, exactly. And we've now created a system where you can go on Thrive and build your own personal reset with things that give you joy and remind you of what you are grateful for in your life. And I love that. And I built my own 60 second reset. And we made a partnership with Universal Music so that you can take 60 second of Universal Music songs and you

can update them. Mine was recently updated with a picture of my grandson, Alexander. Congratulations, yeah. Thank you, yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah, yeah, Huffington when he's... Well, why don't we take a look at your reset video so people can see what this is and how the power with imagery and music to calm your soul and to put you

into that parasympathetic mode. We've talked about this before of just taking a few deep breaths and in particular before eating your lunch or dinner so you can put yourself into a rest and digest situation instead of a fight or flight which is the wrong place. First of all to be making making decisions from, and secondly, to be consuming your nutrients. So, if we could, let's play Ariana's reset. The I'm going to be a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a That's beautiful. It worked for me as well, which is amazing.

Would you like to see mine? Yes. Oh my God. I'm so happy you made one. I could not not make one. That's fantastic. Yeah. It's an early draft, but I think this shares a little bit about who you are in an intimate fashion. So let me share a little bit about who I am. All right, let's roll my reset. Music The Wow, this is amazing.

I absolutely love it. Thank you. And just seeing your twins and your parents and your wife and favorite quotes, I mean it has an impact on me. Yeah. I was so excited about it when I saw yours and I was like there's so many times during the day That I'm stressed Because I'm just I'm running Non-stop and you know again many entrepreneurs are in the same mode where it's like back to back to back to back to back You know who creates this crazy schedule? Who can I blame? You know yourself? Having just the ability to know that you're stressed and to play that.

Everybody, I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love. The company is called Fountain Life. And it's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented physicians. You know, most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body. We're all optimists. Until that day when you have a pain in your side, you go to the physician in the emergency room and they say, listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have this stage three or four going on. And, you know, it didn't start that morning. It probably was a problem that's been going on for some time.

But because we never look, we don't find out. So what we built at Fountain Life was the world's most advanced diagnostic centers. We have four across the US today and we're building 20 around the world. These centers give you a full body MRI, a brain, a brain vasculature, an AI enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque, a DEXA scan, a grail blood cancer test, a full executive blood workup. It's the most advanced workup you'll ever receive. 150 gigabytes of data that then go to our AIs and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning when it's solvable. You're going to find out eventually. You might as well find out when you can take action. Fountain Life also has an entire side of therapeutics.

We look around the world for the most advanced therapeutics that can add 10, 20 healthy years to your life and we provide them to you at our centers. So if this is of interest to you, please go and check it out. Go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter. When Tony and I wrote our New York Times bestseller Life Force, we had 30,000 people reached out to us for Fountain Life memberships. If you go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter, we'll put you to the top of the list. Really it's something that is for me one of the most important things I offer my entire

family, the CEOs of my companies, my friends. It's a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans. Go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter. It's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners. All right, let's go back to our episode. I want to get a little bit now, well I'll say one other thing which is these are intimate and they share what is the most meaningful part of your life. So every night when I go to sleep,

I will do my best to focus in on what I'm most grateful for. The three things I'm most grateful for from the day. And typically it's 90% the things that an entrepreneur doesn't think about. It's your kids, it's your friends, it's the hugs and all of that. And so that realization is really sort of amplified in this. And so it can ground you once again very quickly. And also again it's based on the science that gratitude is an antidote to stress and anxiety. So you know stress and anxiety are part of life but when we Stress and anxiety are part of life, but when we remember what we're grateful for,

that's more powerful. And you know, the other thing we do is we start team meetings with spinning a wheel and one of us plays the reset. That's amazing. So you get a little bit of an insight into everybody's lives. Yes. You get a little glimpse. I will want to do that for my, for my team meetings for sure. You know, I think what I really want is my AI to be measuring my cortisol levels and my heart rate and the, the tenor of my voice and to like say Peter excuse me a second watch this video yes well that's what the coach that's what we're training the coach to do yeah so the AI the thrive AI

coach is trained on only on peer reviewed literature, not on the whole of the web. Yeah. On our behavior. That's a good thing, not on the whole of the web. There's a lot of shocking recommendations out there. Our behavior change methodology, thousands of micro steps, videos, articles, resets, and also a very, very thorough onboarding. So when we onboard you, we'll get all your biometric data, lab data, medical data, but also all your preferences. The foods you like to eat, the time you like to go to sleep, the exercise you like, everything,

so that our recommendations and nudges and micro steps are going to be hyper-personalized. I think that's really the superpower of AI. The level of hyper-personalization would not be possible without the context window of AI, billions and potentially trillions of data points. And the multimodal version, right? We're all going to have... So I speak about this a lot, the notion that we're all going to have some version of Jarvis from Iron Man.

Call it a co-pilot, call it your coach that knows everything about you. You're gonna give it permission to know anything and everything about you so that it can maximize its support of you, right? It's measuring your sleep. You'll give it permission to listen to your conversations, to read your emails. And at least I believe there's going to be a future where it heard my conversation with somebody, I walk into the room, it knows I'm stressed, the music changes, my reset video comes up on the screen, and I'm psychologically reset.

At the same time, my AI is measuring my blood sugar, my vitamin levels, my mRNAs, whatever, and it's telling the robot in the kitchen what meal to prepare needed for my blood markers at this moment. And you know, I love the fact that there is so much that's possible right now and then there are things that are going to be possible maybe sooner than we think, like a robot in the kitchen preparing our meal. But I think it's important to know how much is available right now. Yeah. Because people are hurting. Yeah, and I love the fact that you've really come, I mean, you and I have approached this from two different ends of the spectrum.

But Thrive Global and Thrive AI has really made this possible on a de minimis cost, right? And I think the fact of the matter is this is a price that an employer is willing gratefully to pay because of increased productivity and less days missed and reduced health care costs and it's a win-win-win. And I'm sure the numbers are pretty dramatic. I quoted you in the book about some of the numbers. Do you have them there accessible? Well, the numbers are dramatic and thank you for quoting them in the book, both in terms of productivity, absenteeism, recruitment, all the metrics that matter to an employer. But also, Peter, what we are doing now, and that's kind of the additional new part for Thrive,

is working through big companies like Eli Lilly. So, neither Thrive Global nor Thrive AI Health are going to be a consumer product. At some point, maybe Thrive AI Health will launch a consumer product, but right now, the model is B2B and B2B2C. And just to give you an example of the B2B2C, Eli Lilly wants to go directly to consumers. They want to have a direct relationship with consumers, so they launched Lilly Direct. Thrive is already a partner.

So you go to Lilly Direct, you have a telehealth appointment, you get your obesity, diabetes, migraine, soon Alzheimer's drug, whatever you drug you're on, and then you are given the coach for free. Yes. Now as you know, as an amazing entrepreneur, incentives are superpowers. They are. I built a whole X-Prize around that. Exactly. So we need to understand why would a pharma company give you a coach for free to improve your daily behaviors while you are taking your drug? And the reasons are so clear. One of the biggest problems pharma companies have exactly is adherence. 25% of people do not even feel the first prescription. Now, if they have a coach that is involved in their daily behaviors

and their relationship is not just transactional, but much deeper and more intimate. You are improving adherence categorically. And also another thing is pharma companies, PBMs, payers, providers are dealing with a reputation problem at the moment. Yes, they are, for sure. Well, you know, building a relationship, it's not just transactional. It's a huge reputation hello. So we are just always looking at what are the incentives here

so that we can scale. and the goal of the coach is to democratize access to what the people you and I know and you work with are already doing. People with resources are already optimizing for these five behaviors. Well, the more wise you get and the more you, the older you get bluntly, the more you realize that these things are fundamental. I love life. I want to see as much of it as I can and it's not going to happen without optimization. Exactly. And the things that you can do

today are sleep, diet, exercise, mindset. Those are literally free and low-cost things that you can alter. But people don't because it's easy to continue doing what you've always done. And also because the majority of people don't have access to that expert level coaching that so many people with resources do have access to. So that's really the reason why Alice Walton invested in the company is because her whole goal is to bring the power of AI to the heartland.

To basically democratize and scale everything that we know scientifically that AI makes possible. And that's really what I'm so excited about. You know, the health inequities for me are the biggest inequity. Yeah, I get it. You know, you and I are going to be on stage together at the abundance summit in March and going into depth on this and excited to see you personally, give you a big hug, hopefully before then, but at least in March.

You too. I'm going to have the team from Fountain Life that will be there, which has been my diagnostics and therapeutics center. You know, we're taking a different part of the sector where we're really gathering 200 gigabytes of data about your current state of physiology, right? It's full body MRI, brain, brain vasculature, coronary CT, DEXA scan, lung scan, microbiome, metabolome, all of that. And then through a functional medicine lens, answering the two questions, is there anything going on inside your body you need to know about right now? Because sadly, we're all optimists about our health

and we actually have very little idea of what's going on inside our body unless you look. And then what's likely to happen to you down the line and how do we prevent that from happening and optimize you in that way? but What you're doing is so important as the upfront portion of that at scale and so I'm Super thankful and I really want to see if we can deliver Thrive Global to all of

our members there. Can I ask you, you got Sam Altman involved as a co-founder of Thrive AI. How did that materialize? I know that Sam is interested in longevity. I've had those conversations. I've had him on the abundant stage as well. And I know he had he partnered with Joe, Joe Betts-Lecroi to create retro biosciences, looking at epigenetic reprogramming.

Was this something that he approached you on or did you approach him on? How did it materialize? You know, we got to know each other. We met at a conference three years ago. And during the time we spent together, we found an alignment around behaviors. For him, for two reasons. One is that personally he talks about how he was dealing with

crippling anxiety and how he started prioritizing his sleep, his meditation. You know, he's a meditator, he's been to retreats, to just actually connect with a deeper part of himself, food, exercise, all these things that we're talking about, how he brought them to his life and how he changed outcomes and made him infinitely more productive and also able to be in the eye of the hurricane, to deal with multiple stresses and crises and problems as he's dealing with everything. He is in the eye of the hurricane for sure. But learn how to be in the eye of the hurricane.

And also, he wanted to tell a fuller story around AI. Because right now, the story around AI is either around productivity. It's going to make us more productive. You'll have an assistant who can do anything great, fantastic. But it doesn't affect millions of people. Or it's about razzle dazzleazzle features, you know, this text will become a video. A feature movie. A feature movie. Your wife will tell you about a podcast she loves, not give you the name,

but AI will find it great, fun, fun, okay. But, you know, I'm struggling. find it great, fun, fun, okay. But, you know, I'm struggling. 130 million people are struggling with their health. Chronic diseases. Can you do anything for me? So I think being able to tell a story for what OpenAI describes as everyday people is a very important part for all of us

who care and believe in AI. It can't just be a tool for the elites, while millions of people are simply anxious about AI taking their job. If I might, you are very much in the eye of this AI hurricane as well. I mean, you know most of the tech elite to use that term. How do you feel about the future of AI? I had Elon and Jeffrey Hinton and Ray Kurzweil on stage with me at the Abundance Summit last

year. And the sense was, in summary, there's 80% chance AI is going to be amazing and we're great, 20% chance we're screwed. It's like, how does the public think about that? How do you think about that? What's your advice for people thinking about that? Well, my advice, and actually I just wrote a piece about Yuval Harari's new book, Nexus, and he is a bit of an AI doomsayer, but in a very, very interesting, fascinating way because he's brilliant and an amazing public intellectual. And my piece focused on certain things he has said that I totally believe in, which is why AI has a long way to go. So do humans.

We are also a work in progress. And if you don't acknowledge that, if you don't acknowledge that AI can help us become the best versions of ourselves, then I think we are doomed. Because ultimately, what we do with AI depends on humans. I know that AI is not just a tool, it's an agent, etc. But ultimately, we can't be deterministic about technology. And, you know, Yuval said something actually not in his book, but on the Daily Show that I end my piece on his book with, and which I want to read it to you, if you don't mind.

Please, I'd love to, yeah. Because I think it's everything I believe about the future of AI. He said, if for every dollar and every minute that we invest in developing artificial intelligence, we also invest in exploring and developing our own minds, it will be okay. But if we put all our bets on technology, on AI,

and neglect to develop ourselves, this is very bad news for humanity. I get that. And of course, there are two points of view here. You know, Ray's belief is that we are going to merge with AI. Definitively we're giving birth to a new species, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent in so many ways, but there is a sense that we will be able to merge with it into the future. You know, I like to say, quote one of the Singularity faculty, Neil Jacobstein, who

said, I'm not worried about artificial intelligence, I'm worried about human stupidity. But my point is that human stupidity is obviously a fact of history, but it doesn't have to be. And I love Ray, I think Ray is totally brilliant, but I completely disagree with him. I think that human beings have a soul and AI doesn't. And the more we can connect to our soul, we will connect to our own wisdom. And when we connect to our own wisdom, we can yet use AI to be the best versions of ourselves. And you know, so, Jonathan had this great quote about how every human being is a mixture. He actually said the line between good and evil goes through every human heart. So how can AI help us and activate the best part of us? That for me is the greatest hop of AI.

And AI doesn't have a soul, it doesn't have consciousness, and we do, and we need to access it more. You know, why do you think reset works? Peter, it works because we all have a place of peace, wisdom, and strength in us. Most of the time we're disconnected from it. The more we can connect with, the more we can tap into it, the better everything is, the wiser we are, the more compassionate

and empathetic we are. And I believe that whether people call themselves atheists or not is irrelevant. They still have that place in them. Real quick, I've been getting the most unusual compliments lately on my skin. Truth is, I use a lotion every morning and every night religiously called One Skin. It was developed by four PhD women who determined a 10 amino acid sequence that is a synolytic that kills senile cells in your skin. And this literally reverses the age of your skin.

And I think it's one of the most incredible products. I use it all the time. If you're interested, check out the show notes. I've asked my team to link to it below. All right, let's get back to the episode. I want to pick up something we mentioned earlier, which is the notion that will AI be empathic? Will it be empathic? Will it be, it will be infinitely patient? You know, the notion, it was an interesting study and I think it was in JAMA looking at how if

you compare empathy of physicians versus empathy of AIs, the AIs won by 10 to 1. That you know the AI was infinitely patient, infinitely there to reflect back on you what you said. While a physician, I was talking to a doctor yesterday who you know has transitioned in her practice, but she says you know I had an iPad with a countdown timer. The patient would walk in, I would hit it, and it would count down from seven minutes. And by the time it was zero, that patient was out the door, with or without being all the questions being answered. And that has been American medicine, filled with paperwork and insurance forms and all of that stuff. How do you think about AI's being empathic and being therapists who don't judge you and will take all the time to help you? I completely agree with that. That's not

AI having a soul. It's AI having a soul. Agreed. And I totally agree. It's what you said. The key thing is that you are not being judged. It's a little bit like the GPS in your car. You know, if you take the wrong turn, the GPS doesn't say, oh, Peter, you're such a ... It simply recalculates. And that's what AI does, which is great and empathetic, but it doesn't mean that it's a transcendent being. You know, I mean, I happen to be a deep believer in a transcendent reality.

And whatever religion you are at the heart of it in its esoteric form, whether it's Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Judaism, you know, there is that truth that unites us. And as I said, most of the time we're not connected to it. Yes, our mind is whizzing away. Our mind is whizzing away. We are driven by fears, anxiety. The more we can connect to that, the wiser and the healthier we'll be and the more empathetic. And you know, that's one of the things the coach is going to do. And you know, that's one of the things the coach is going to do. Let's say it will find out from you, Peter, what are some of the things that must connect you to the deeper part? It could be a piece of poetry that you barely remember.

It could be a song that you heard in Greece. It could be a hymn because a lot of people who are atheists may have gone to church early on and there is a hymn that evokes something in them. And we feed you these things. You know, our Greek compatriots said, know thyself. Nobody's going to know us better than atheists. Yes, you know and it's uh, so some people who are uh, cynical will say oh, so you'll just get manipulated by ai to To be but you're choosing to ask the ai To help get you into a better state of mind because no one likes being stressed And also peter

We're being manipulated all the time right now. By the news media, for sure. But we're by social media, news media, but we're being hacked, you know, to be the worst version of ourselves. We're being hacked by tapping into our biases, our outrage, our anger. I believe companies can make a lot of money by hacking into what's good in us. I believe that, Arianna, and grateful to you for this third act in your entrepreneurial life. I want to balance an idea off you, which is the idea of wisdom. Sophia, if you were to ask the question, what makes a person wise, or people who are on

a sort of a wisdom counsel, I would imagine it is because they've seen enough things to have experienced them to be able to say young woman or young man, if you go down that path, it ends in a poor fashion. This way has a possibility, but this way, while it's more difficult is you know, and they have that wisdom through experience in their own lives and passed down from previous generations and I think of that as wisdom Do you agree with that? Absolutely So here's the question I Think we're gonna see a world in the very near future

Where a eyes are able to simulate billions of scenarios in society to be able to say probabilistically for the situation that you're in, this is the path that is the greatest, you know, greatest probability of a positive outcome. And so I do think we can see wisdom from that definition coming out of AI simulation systems. But I think there is more to wisdom. First of all, can we all agree that at the moment we are drowning in data? There's never more data in the world and we are starved for wisdom. I would say those are both true statements. And it's not because we don't have amazing technology. Wisdom is something more. Wisdom is connected to the deepest part of ourselves, to our intuition,

deepest part of ourselves, to our intuition, to our sense of wonder about the universe, to the ability to forgive and to love. You know, it's connected with the deepest things that make us human. It's not just about deciding what road to take. It's about, you know, if you take Marcus Aurelius, who I believe is the greatest leadership philosopher, I have his book Meditations on my nightstand and read a page before I go to sleep because he was in the world. He was the emperor of Rome for 19 years. He dealt with every crisis, plague, betrayals, invasions, and he was able to be unflappable. He epitomized wisdom and his philosophy was that I can, I, Marcus Aurelius, I, Ariana, you, Peter, cannot control events. The only thing we can control is how we respond to events. Yes.

And if we learn to respond without being reactive, angry, in reality, I don't mean not showing it, I mean not feeling it. Yes. Then we have what Hugo Harari in his book calls the self-correcting mechanisms. We all need sharper self-correcting mechanisms because we are human. We are going to make a lot of mistakes. How quickly can we course correct?

And how quickly can we forgive? I think forgiveness is at the heart of wisdom. I agree, I've got you know one of their own please it's it's my mom will love You for saying all of this for sure, but that's it the wisdom of your mom and my mom Yes, that's it. The wisdom of your mom and my mom. Yes. That's wisdom. You know, and it's different than your mom or your mom giving us advice as to what decision to make, which AI can absolutely help us do. But what your mom and my mom taught us was deeper. Yep, which is the root of family as foundational in society.

Exactly. Arianna Moo, I am so grateful for this time. I want to say thank you for all you do. It's not a surprise that you're the number one woman on LinkedIn, the fifth most followed person on LinkedIn in general. They can find you at Ariana Huffington on LinkedIn. Is that your social? And then to learn more about Thrive Global, where should they go?

Should they go to their companies and ask their companies? They can go to thrive global dot com. All right. Ask your CHRO to, to get your company on thrive global, uh, so that your company company can make more money and have happier employees and healthier employees. For sure. And Peter, I just loved these, you know, I treasure our friendship, my God, 20 years, and I love how we you know, I treasure our friendship, my God, 20 years.

And I love how we are both constantly learning, improving, doing all the things that we care about. And I look forward to being together on stage. Yeah, for sure. Fabme, thank you. Yes, we're in. Bye. Yeah, for sure. Thabma, thank you. Yaswara Redna. Bye. You well? Yes, sir.