We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP452: Elon's Twitter Takeover and Field Trip's Psychedelic Future w/ Dr. Ryan Yermus

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to attend the All In Summit in Miami put on by billionaires, Chimoth, Paula Habatia and David Sacks, as well as ex-Google exec, David Freberg, and Angel Investor Jason Calacanus. We recently interviewed Jason on episode 433, and we also interviewed Chimoth on episode 354, so I recommend you go and check those out. It was a three-day event with a wide host of expert speakers. The highlight, of course, was a near one-and-a-half-hour,

Starting point is 00:00:30 conversation with Elon Musk. In this episode, we're going to review a few talking points around Elon's Twitter takeover, Tesla's business structure, and the future of SpaceX. While I was at the event, I met Dr. Ryan Yermis, who's joining me on today's show. Ryan is, of course, a medical doctor and also a co-founder of multiple publicly traded companies. His latest venture is field trip, ticker FTRP, which specializes in progressive treatments using psychedelic molecules from ketamine and psilocybin.

Starting point is 00:01:00 After our summary of our experience at the Alland Summit, we do a deep dive into field trip and psychedelics in general. So it's a pretty eclectic episode and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Ryan Yermis. You are listening to The Investors Podcast, where we study the financial markets and read the books that influence self-made billionaires the most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. Welcome to the Investors Podcast. I'm your host, Trey Lockerbie. And today, I'm really pleased to have on the show, Dr. Ryan Yermis.

Starting point is 00:01:46 Ryan and I met recently in Miami. We were at the Allen Summit together. And we became good buddies. And Ryan, you have such a fascinating story. I wanted to share about our experience at the event, what our takeaways were, and then get into the publicly traded company that you co-founded. and the future of the treatments that you're working on. I find it all very fascinating. So welcome to the show. Thanks, Ray. Great to be here.

Starting point is 00:02:12 Looking forward to the discussion. Okay, so first things first, this was quite an interesting event. I've never been to something quite like this where there was such a wide array of different topics, different speakers, everyone from VCs to real estate discussions to political discussions, supply chains. Elon Musk was there. We'll talk about that. were some of the highlights that you most enjoyed from the three days that we were there? It was amazing to be around all these people who came to Miami not exactly knowing what to expect, you know, following the podcast, really taking a leap of faith to show up there and see what

Starting point is 00:02:50 the weekend held. And so, I mean, I found it like really inspiring to meet people who were so open and ready to talk and ready to relate with each other. I mean, it was fantastic. In terms of the talks, they were almost all home runs, in my opinion. I really enjoyed each and everyone, I think you can kind of, at least for me, I can tell how much I'm enjoying a talk by how much I'm checking my phone. And I really didn't check my phone very much. And for those who don't know, the All In Summit was put on by Jason Calicanus, who's been on the show, Chimoth Paula Hopatia, the billionaire investor who's also been on the show, David Sacks from the PayPal Mafia, and David Friedberg, the in-house scientists, I would say, as part of the group. He was an expert on

Starting point is 00:03:37 all things on food and supply chain and had a really great perspective on a couple of topics that were discussed. So the main ones that stood out to me were around just general market sentiment. So there was a talk from the founder of Divi, who spoke about the housing market. And her take seemed to be that the housing market will slow down, but that it'll probably take well into next year for that to actually happen. I think there's just still so much demand and despite the fact that interest rates are rising and mortgages are getting more expensive, the demand is still there and there is still, I think, at this point, enough liquidity chasing the finite amount of homes that at least here in the U.S., the home appreciation will probably stay flat or continue to rise

Starting point is 00:04:19 a little less aggressively than it has, but we probably are going to see a dip sometime next year. And then you had Bill Gurley and Brad Gersner talking about the wider market sentiment. And what What were your kind of general takeaways on their approach to the market today? Bill Gurley talked about it from mostly the venture point of view, investing in early stage companies, pretty much sounding the alarm bell that the multiples that they had been investing at have been drastically cut down now. After COVID, you know, the economy was stimulated so heavily that multiples went out of control and they had to fight for investments and term sheets are being thrown at at interesting companies. And now it's different. Now it's sort of a

Starting point is 00:05:02 buyer's market and funds are going to be more careful with which companies they invest in and at what valuations. And then Brad's talk talking about public market sentiments as well, saying that, you know, we should think about public markets coming back to, say, a five-year average in terms of multiples and ratios, probably not prudent to say, oh, this stock is 75% off of it. And it's all-time high and benchmark at the all-time high, but rather try to figure out what the five-year average would be for that stock and benchmark against that as where things will get back to. I was a little bit inspired by the fact that he thought that a year from now, the market would be higher than where it is today, although he didn't rule out the fact that it could still

Starting point is 00:05:46 go down further before it makes its way back on. There was a couple of other really interesting talks as well. Ryan Peterson, who is an expert on supply chains, had a discussion It was actually a prettier picture that I was expecting him to lay out. Basically, there's this sentiment, I think, around supply chains that it's just going to continue to get worse. But he kind of had a different angle. It seemed that things are actually improving and we're still on maybe a one to two month delay on deliveries, but prices are maybe coming down.

Starting point is 00:06:18 What was your main takeaway from Ryan's talk? The thing that struck me was when he talked about how the baseline average to ship a container from China to the U.S. is traditionally in the sort of $3,000 to $4,000 range, but that it got up as high as $20,000, took twice as long. Interestingly, you know, the prices started to come down, it seems, which is great. He also mentioned that the shipping companies themselves are investing in fleets. There will be more ships coming on board as well, which may lead to a reduction in price. One other talk that I also appreciated was Nate Silver, and most people know Nate around his political predictions that he bases on statistics.

Starting point is 00:07:01 He was kind of able to apply that approach to life in general. It could be applied to investing. And it was kind of a more general talk than I was thinking it would be. What were a couple takeaways you took from Nate Silver? I love the way he talked about probabilistic thinking. So this idea that when you're making decisions in gambling, in investments, in life, in try to weigh the odds of a successful decision. And so you could make the right decision and still end up with the wrong outcome.

Starting point is 00:07:30 So if you've done your calculation and you've got an 80% chance of winning in poker, probably a good time to make a big bet. However, one in five times that 80% is not going to hit and you end up losing. But at least you can be content with the fact that you got your money in at the right time. More often than not, you're going to win there. One thing I was thinking about, though, when he was saying that is, How do you manage the risk of ruin? So, for example, if you're playing in a tournament, you may do the odds in your head and have a 55% chance of winning, but is that worth going

Starting point is 00:08:03 all in with all your chips? Because even though the odds are technically in your favor, it's not by all that much. And if you do lose, you're out of the tournament. The parallels to that, I think in life and investing are pretty important to think about. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo Freedom Forum is. From June 1st through the 3rd, 2026, the Oslo Freedom Forum is entering its 18th year bringing together activists, technologists,

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Starting point is 00:12:28 So Jason, Chimoth, David and David, Friedberg and Sacks. They had a couple of really great moments as well. So there was a couple of Ask Me Anything moments from the audience and they were able to kind of stretch out and talk about different things. The theme that kept coming up and they were really driving home was that if you're a founder, and you're running a business, you better have cash on hand. That kept coming up again and again and again. And it really just, I think, spoke to their sentiment and their outlook on the current market. And Elon, who we're going to talk about here in a minute, touched on this.

Starting point is 00:13:02 But the average recession period is usually about 12 to 18 months once it begins. So there is this expectation that we are probably in a recession currently. We're waiting for the numbers to come out, but that seems to be the general sentiment. And once that proves out, not saying it's a guarantee by any means, but once it comes out in the numbers, we might be looking at something like that, 12 to 18 months of not only volatile markets, but depressed multiples on valuations, money drying up. People are a little bit less likely to let go of their cash. As a founder, you know, for example, it's harder to raise money. It's certainly harder to get the valuation you once had. So that kept coming up again and again

Starting point is 00:13:44 for me. And the basis of this thesis is basically that the Fed is a lagging indicator, if you will. They're basically not a proactive group of people. They're reactionary. And so they're looking at the data, the economic data, not just the stock market. They made very clear to get that point across as well. The Fed is looking at much more data than what is just found in the stock market. So, for example, they're looking at inflation numbers that don't seem to be quelling as rapidly as they hoped. There is, I think, a higher probability, another couple of 50 basis point. hikes are coming. And while we might sit here and think that that seems like the dumbest idea, because you're kind of raising into weakness here, they are really trying to tame inflation,

Starting point is 00:14:24 to get interest rates back up to where they need to be. So when there is something that breaks in the market, they can lower again and ease a little bit more. But on top of the interest rate hikes that I don't think is being talked about enough is the 190 billion or so of liquidity that is being taken out. So I remember Chimoth talking about $3 trillion. that they basically injected into the market once COVID started. And now the Fed has basically come out and said, okay, over the next three years, we're now going to take out $190 billion a month. And so that roughly equates to $3 trillion, if you do the math.

Starting point is 00:14:57 So basically they put all this money in. Their plan is to take the money out. Once they do that, it actually exhausts that money and that money kind of disappears. So hopefully that will quell inflation and the markets will recover. I think the big question right now is how much of this is priced into today's markets? because it remains yet to be seen how much of this is factored in. My general thesis was that it's going to get a little bit worse before it gets better. Yeah, they definitely did go out of their way to convince people not to expect a Fed put. Many investors have gotten in the habit of the Fed coming

Starting point is 00:15:30 and saving the day, but it does appear this time the Fed should be believed, or at least that was the message that we were being sent. Yeah, because 12 months ago, how much of the narrative was around the fact that the Fed can't possibly raise rates, right? And here they are, raising rates up to 75 basis points now and going higher probably. So these things that were at once seemingly fact are kind of being dispelled a little bit. And that's something to be very wary of. All right. So shifting gears a little bit. I want to talk about the man of the hour. It's undeniable that this was the real headliner of the entire event. Elon Musk, who was a good friend of Jason Calacanis and the group that was on stage, came in for a fireside chat.

Starting point is 00:16:10 It ended up lasting about an hour and a half. It was much longer than I even expected. And he came in much more relaxed. He was laughing. He was cracking jokes. And it wasn't like a TED talk, you know, where you typically see him and he's very serious talking about Mars and whatnot. He did touch on these points.

Starting point is 00:16:25 But there was just a general relaxed nature to him. And I hadn't quite seen that side of him before. I totally agree. It was very casual. He was at ease having a conversation with his friends. But at the same time, I think he had the whole room mesmerized. You could hear a pin drop. I loved how transparent he was about his discussions with Twitter right now.

Starting point is 00:16:46 Yeah, so we're actually going to play a clip from the event here where Elon's talking about the Twitter deal because they came right off the bat talking about Twitter. Everyone's been following along with this. But what was surprising to me is how bearish, I would think, his sentiment towards Twitter really was. The contention here is that he's basically alleging that Twitter is claiming to have fewer bots than they really do. So, for example, in the public filings, Twitter is saying that they have around 5% or less bots.

Starting point is 00:17:15 He's claiming that it's four to five times that. And he said the lowest estimate was closer to 20%. So we're going to play the clip here. If anyone's invested in Twitter right now, I think you should definitely pay attention to this clip. Is this Twitter deal going to get closed, do you think? What are the chances here? Well, I mean, it really depends on a lot of factors here.

Starting point is 00:17:34 I'm still waiting for some sort of logical explanation for the number of sort of fake or spam accounts on Twitter, and Twitter is refusing to tell us. So this just seems like a strange thing. Wait, sorry, are they refusing to tell you or you don't think they really know? I mean, there's a good chance they may just have no idea. They claim that they do know. And they claim that they've got this complex methodology that only they can understand. But the guy who landed two rockets simultaneously can't understand. When you do this cauldron and then you throw the nuffalo,

Starting point is 00:18:12 and then suddenly it comes to you in a dream. I don't know. But there should be some, you know, objective way to sort of thing. Because this is a material, you know, it's a material adverse misstatement. If they in fact have been vociferously claiming less than 5% of fake or spam accounts. but in fact, it is four or five times that number, or perhaps 10 times that number, this is a big deal. It's not the, it's like if you said, okay, I agree to buy your house.

Starting point is 00:18:42 You say the house has less than 5% termites. That's an acceptable number. But if it turns out, it is 90% termites. That's not okay, you know. It's not the same house. Your house will disappear. So, you know, that would obviously just not be appropriate. So in making the Twitter offer, I was obviously reliant upon the truth and accuracy of their

Starting point is 00:19:02 public filings. And if those those filings are not accurate, it's simply not, that's, it's not, you can't pay the same price for something that is much worse than they claimed. And you know, they say, Elon, life's in negotiation. So at a different price, it might be a totally viable deal, correct? I mean, that, I mean, it's not out of the question. You know, the more questions I ask, the more my concerns grow. Um, so, you know, At the end of the day, acquiring it has to be fixable and fixable with reasonable timeframe and without revenues collapsing along the way and all that sort of stuff. And so, you know, I really need to see how these things are being calculated.

Starting point is 00:19:47 And it can't be some deep mystery that is like more complex than the human soul or something like that. I think we can apply the scientific method to this and try to figure out what's really going on. And Twitter's revenue is primarily dependent, I think 70% or some of that order on brand advertising as opposed to specific purchase advertising. This is a big deal because brand advertising is not a purchase that results from that. So it's basically how much mind share or like basically if you're a big company, how often

Starting point is 00:20:20 do they hear your name as opposed to something where you can directly measure the outcome. So that means that they're somewhat going on faith. And if that faith is undermined or reduced because of the reality of the situation coming to the fore, put his revenue will be significantly impaired. And that's a major problem. Elon, did you have a chance to ask these questions during your negotiation? The, like I said, I was relying upon their public filings. So to the degree that they're probably public, and this is normal for a public company.

Starting point is 00:20:51 If you, you know, if you make a formal filing, that is what investors are. relying on whether they are making an acquisition offer or simply buying some shares. The accuracy of these filings is important whether you're buying one share or the whole company. And so if these filings are inaccurate, if they're sort of potentially blatantly, it's a big deal. Elon, do you have a sense of why this has been such a persistent problem for Twitter? Do they not have the technical capabilities to solve the bot problem? or is it more of like just they've underprioritized the issue or been unwilling to because potentially their implications for ad revenue?

Starting point is 00:21:33 I don't know. It's sort of speculative at this point. So the, you know, the worst interpretation would be that they don't want to look too closely at the thing because they might not like the answer. That would be the worst interpretation. I'm not sure what the best interpretation is, but the least bad interpretation would be maybe they thought it was this way, but the way they were doing it was wrong and they didn't realize they were mistaken and simply weren't paying enough attention.

Starting point is 00:21:55 It does seem as though it should be a lot easier to get rid of the bots and spam and trolls. Then, like, this is not some, we're not trying to put the atom here. My favorite part of this clip is the termite analogy, where he's basically saying, if you have a home that has 5% termites, that's reasonable. But if the home has 90% termites, that's a different story. If I'm being honest, I was actually more convinced of this argument than I was going into it. So, for example, at his TED talk, Elon said that he basically was buying Twitter to protect free speech and that he even said, I think, quote, the economics don't matter. And I found this

Starting point is 00:22:30 really interesting because, you know, J.P. Morgan is quoted to put $26 billion into this deal. I mean, how did the economics not matter? You know, and I don't think you rally J.P. Morgan to put in 26 billion on free speech. I just found it a little too convenient that while the Twitter stock tanked, while all the rest of the market was tanking, here comes up this idea that, oh, these bots are a real issue because the revenue stream might be affected and there was all these arguments made, but I was really skeptical going into this argument because I thought, well, if the economics don't matter, then why bring it up? But it sounds like this might be a harder problem to solve than he originally thought. And I thought he was actually very convincing. What did you think, Ryan?

Starting point is 00:23:09 I agree. Although, firstly, I would argue that if my house was 5% termites, that would also be unacceptable. You know, if you're focusing on bots as the issue as it pertains to advertisers, then that is a different narrative than thinking about free speech. And the guys were talking about how the Twitter bot situation may qualify as a material adverse change or a MAC as they were describing. That's more in pertaining to advertisers and less so of an issue, I think, around free speech. Unless, to your point, Trey, it's too hard of a problem to solve. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because MAC is a legal term, right? material adverse change, and that's a big deal because there are billions of dollars on the line here.

Starting point is 00:23:54 If what he's saying is actually true where the actual bot count is different than the public filings, then we're talking about shareholder class action lawsuit level issues. I mean, this is a really big deal and a really big allegation that he's laying out very publicly. So I just found that to be really interesting that he was so cavalier about how he's even thinking through this deal, I just found that to be kind of refreshing, but also kind of concerning in a lot of ways, too, because if he's in fact not correct on this allegation, that that could really blow back on him as well. So one of the other points that I believe David Sacks highlighted was the fact that Elon has got a billion dollars committed to this if he walks away.

Starting point is 00:24:36 He's got to lay up a billion dollars just to kind of walk away from this deal and cut ties. But David said something interesting, which is essentially that he expects that there would be many lawsuits before Elon pays up a billion dollars, especially if there's these types of allegations on the table. But this is a really big deal. I think for those who are holding onto Twitter stock hoping that this deal will close where it's supposed to, I would start to second guess that. All right. So one of the other topics that Elon touched on that I want to play a clip around is this idea of how you should break down Tesla. And this is something that gets overlooked a lot because it's really simple to just say, Tesla is a car company, and if you compare the market

Starting point is 00:25:14 cap, it's valued over all the other car companies combined, or at least it was at one point. It's gone down quite a bit at the time of this recording. But it's really important to note and kind of dissect Tesla a little bit in this way that he did because he's basically started to frame out all the mini startups that are within Tesla and how vertically integrated they really are, which over a long period time could be a huge advantage. All right, so let's play the clip. There was a Bloomberg article that said the following. So the setup is this.

Starting point is 00:25:43 It said, since you went public, Tesla's up 22,000 percent, 11 quarters of sequential profitability, so hitting on all cylinders. But the public analysts... That's a car joke. Analysts, when they put out their projections, okay, it's one of the most enormous bands for any company in America. The price targets for Tesla, despite all of this success, Some have it at 200, some have it at 1,600.

Starting point is 00:26:11 It's all over the place. You tweeted a couple months ago, Tesla's not a company. It's like six companies inside of a company. Like you've had to build. Yeah, maybe more. Can you just explain to people all these companies inside the super company just so folks have a sense of what had to be done to get here? Okay.

Starting point is 00:26:27 I mean, this question requires the order, and I'll probably be leaving out quite a few things. But if you look at say what, what does a typical car company do? What they do is they assemble vehicles and they send them to dealers and they manage a supply chain. They might make the engine. Typically, we'll make the engine, but most of the parts are made by suppliers. And a lot of the actual technology development is done by suppliers. And most of the vehicle software is done by suppliers. So the actual amount of real work done by car companies, what do you think of sort of like a GM or Ford

Starting point is 00:27:01 is not actually that much. And so they don't do, they don't do sales, they don't do service. So in the case of Tesla, for example, we do our own sales and service. We don't have dealerships. Then Tesla also has by far the biggest network of supercharges, sort of the electric equivalent of gas stations. So we've built an entire global supercharger network, which is still the most advanced and by far the best way to charge your car when traveling long distance or if you live in a city and don't have the the ability to charge your car as a street parking or an apartment. We deployed it. I think we have out of 15,000 supercharges globally. You can travel anywhere in America right now with the Tesla

Starting point is 00:27:40 Supercharge Network. Then in terms of vertical integration, we make the battery pack, the power electronics, the drive unit. We're more integrated in the parts. We actually make so much of the car internally. We're vertically integrated, not necessarily because we think that there's some religious reason to be about integrated, but because the pace of which we needed to move was just much faster than the supply chain could move. And to the degree that you inherit the legacy supply chain, you inherit the legacy constraints, including their speed, cost, and technology. And then Tesla is as much as software company as it is a hardware company. So the software that runs in Tesla it operates the car, operates the screen, does the charging. All of that stuff is developed by Tesla.

Starting point is 00:28:23 And so we have sort of a car, a Tesla OS in the car. Tesla has built an autopilot AI team from scratch. That is the best real-world AI team on Earth. And if anyone else has got a better one, I'd like to see it demonstrated in a car. The full self-driving beta at this point very often take you with zero interventions across the Bay Area from Santa Zeta Marin. Through complex traffic, it's really quite sophisticated. And I invite anyone to join the beta or look at the videos of those who are in the beta.

Starting point is 00:28:53 We've got like 100,000 people in the beta, so it's not tiny. And we'll be expanding that to probably a million people or a million, I don't know, on that order by the end of the year. We also built a chip team because there wasn't, it wasn't hardware that we could run the friggin AI on. We couldn't just fill the trunk with a whole bunch of GPUs. They would have taken a trunk full of GPUs that would have been very expensive and take a massive amount of power and cooling, just to be able to do what the Tesla designed, full-self driving computer can do.

Starting point is 00:29:25 So, and we started a chip team from scratch, designed it. It was the best in the world and still is the best in the world several years later. And we're also then developing a dojo supercomputer to be able to process the, all the video that's coming in from billions of miles of data because just sort of like the way that it's critical to compete with Google because they have so much data and they have all the people doing searches all the time and humanity is training it. The same is true of Tesla. You really need billions of miles, ultimately tens of billions of miles of training data,

Starting point is 00:29:55 combined with sort of a vast training computer and then optimize inference hardware in the car and say the art AI and training and specialized software across the board to be able to achieve a full sub-driving solution. When he opened Tesla Gigafactory, remember this? Yeah, yeah. I'll just tell the audience his story quickly, Elon. He puts a slide up there and he says, guys, we're not actually building a thing. factory, we're building a machine that makes machines and he puts the layout of the factory and it looks like a chip. And it was basically like how you would actually lay out a microchip

Starting point is 00:30:30 if you were or you know, you were like a layout engineer. It was the craziest thing I'd ever seen. I was like, that was when I first got it. And you have an insurance company. Now you're doing insurance for Tesla owners. And an Uber competitor. Right. And eventually a Robotoxy Uber competitor, RIP paid. The car insurance thing is a bigger deal that may seem. A lot of people are paying, you know, 30, 40 percent as much as their lease payment for the car. in car insurance. So the car insurance industry is incredibly inefficient because they're just, first of all the, you've got like so many sort of middle entities. You've got from the insurance agent all the way to the final sort of reinsure, there's like a half a dozen companies each

Starting point is 00:31:05 taking a cut. And then it's all very statistical so that there's, even if you're a very good driver, like you could be like, you know, 20 years old and a great driver, but they, it's all statistical. So you can't get, you either can't get insurance or it's extremely expensive. So but Tesla, for real-time insurance based on how you actually drive the car. If you drive the car in a safer way, you actually have lower insurance. So ours is, is, is, is based on how you actually drive, not how historically people that, you know, fit your whatever demographic have drive. And then you can close the loop around your insurance rate by simply driving better and looking at your score and lowering your insurance in real time. And people do. It actually promotes safer driving.

Starting point is 00:31:51 So one of the most mind-boggling things he said in all of this was just how big the Tesla Gigafactory in Texas is. It's a mile long, a quarter mile wide, and 80 feet tall, three times the size of the Pentagon. I found that really incredible. And this idea that it's a machine that makes machines. I thought that was kind of an interesting framework. And to me, it was just a snippet of how Elon runs his companies, how he lays things out for his employees to kind of understand the mission and the bigger picture.

Starting point is 00:32:20 I just thought that was kind of an interesting takeaway because I'm always looking for ways to how this guy runs all these many companies as successfully as he has. And I felt like that was just a glimpse of how at least he approaches his employees and communicates the narrative. That's kind of bite-sized and easy for everyone to digest. The first thing that I'm not sure if I realized before that was that traditional auto manufacturers don't actually build each part of the car. They assemble it more than they actually build each component. And then you parallel that with Tesla that is actually building most of the components within their cars, and some of which are extremely complicated that nobody else has even the capability to build. That to me was quite eye-opening.

Starting point is 00:33:04 Okay, so lastly, I just want to play this clip from Elon where he's talking a little bit about the grand mission behind SpaceX, how they're actually going to fund the mission, say, to go to Mars. And really this segment got interesting when they started talking about sustainable energy. David Friedberg brought up fusion, for example, how viable an option that is. And I thought Elon had some really good points around that. So let's take a listen. You know, when you think about the importance of going to Mars versus solving critical energy and climate change problems here on Earth, obviously the effort with Tesla is related to sustainable energy. And I think going back to like probably the 1950s, there were engineering designs around

Starting point is 00:33:39 plasma fusion or fusion-based systems that have evolved to these plasma systems, to these Tokomak systems. And every year, every decade, it's like, hey, next decade we're going to have it. What's your point of view on where plasma fusion systems are? Are we going to have fusion energy this century, this decade? And does it create limitless energy where the electricity production goes up by 10,000 fold? And the price of electricity drops by 10,000 fold. And then what does that world on Earth look like if that happens? So I guess the question is like, is that technology real?

Starting point is 00:34:12 when does it happen and what happens to the world here, when and if that happens? I'll answer that question, but then I'll let me sort of point out what the actual issue is. If the question is like, is it possible to solve fusion energy? 100% yes, definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely. For sure. So the and really just using a Takamak style, which is like basically a donut ring with with electromagnets that control the plasma. The way to solve that is simply scale up the token mark.

Starting point is 00:34:44 Fusion is very much a scale-based thing. You want to minimize your surface to volume ratio. So as you scale up a token mark, you reduce your surface to volume ratio, which means like the volume we have relative to the surface, you now have much more. You can basically have a hot zone in the center that's relatively far away from the walls and more of a hot zone. So it's not in my mind a question as to whether you should. fusion can work, but there is a question as to whether it is economically viable and whether

Starting point is 00:35:18 it is competitive with alternatives. I think the economic viability of fusion is a much bigger question, and I think the answer probably is that fusion is not competitive economically. I think that is, I would say it's probably not competitive economically by an order of magnitude. Is it a materials breakdown or where does it break down? So you can't just use normal hydrogen. You know, you need to use like deuterium and tritium, like unusual forms of hydrogen. helium three. Helium three, you know, there are some other types of fusion that could be used.

Starting point is 00:36:00 But these are just not, they're not like, there's not a lot of this raw material. It's quite difficult to get the raw material. So first you have to get the raw material. that's expensive raw material. And then it's not just about generating the energy. You've got to turn that energy into usable electricity. You can't just have a hot thing. So the hot thing has to translate to usable electricity.

Starting point is 00:36:25 So I think you've got a cost of fuel issue, which is very significant. You've got a whole bunch of knockdowns from when you generate the heat to when you actually convert that into electricity. You've got some very difficult maintenance issues with a fusion reactor. And that should be then compared to alternatives. The sustainable energy alternatives that I think are overwhelmingly more competitive are solar energy, wind, geothermal, hydro, some tidal and energy. But it's really primarily solar and wind. Now, you can really say, why bother creating fusion on Earth when we have a gigantic

Starting point is 00:37:05 fusion reactor in the sky that just works with zero maintenance. And it shows up every day. It's pretty consistent. Yeah. But Elon, can we scale to 1,000 X or 100x our electricity production here using solar and other renewable sources? Yes. So the amount of surface area you need to power the United States is remarkably tiny.

Starting point is 00:37:29 So you need like basically roughly 100 miles by 100 miles of territory. And it's obviously just in one place. in the United States to power of the United States. It's like a little corner of Texas or Utah. And then if you, you could basically power, you probably 10x, just with solar alone, without displacing anyone's home, power and economy 10 times the size of the United States,

Starting point is 00:37:54 in the United States. If you extend that to water, because Earth is 70% water, I mean, you could say, okay, now we could probably have a civilization that is 100 times as energy intensive. as we currently have it. And so what does that look like was the last part of my question, which is a world where

Starting point is 00:38:10 energy costs are say, it's 100 times cheaper than they are today and we have 100 times more energy production capacity? What changes about civilization? What do we do differently and what do we see change most kind of dramatically? Well, currently we're not, because of just generally low birth rates almost worldwide, the civilization is not headed to have a population that is an order of magnitude greater than where we're currently headed towards a population decline. And this is almost everywhere in the world.

Starting point is 00:38:42 You know, it basically seems as though as soon as you have like urbanization and education beyond a certain level and income beyond a certain level, birth rates plummet. And so as countries get wealthier, their birth rates plummet. It's somewhat counterintuitive because people will say like, well, it's too expensive to have a baby. Nope, the wealthy of the y' are the fewer kids you have. The more educated you are, the fewer kids you have. So it's the inverse.

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Starting point is 00:42:32 Fundrise.com slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right. Back to the show. All right. So overall, the whole talk was over an hour and a half. Elon gave us a lot of time. It was really fun to hear him talk to his friends, especially and have that dynamic. But as cool as Elon is, I want to talk about Ryan Yermis, because you and I met at this event And we hit it off and I just found your background so interesting. You're a medical doctor and you're an entrepreneur. You've founded or co-founded a couple of companies now that have gone public. So talk us through your background how you became a medical doctor and then how you found

Starting point is 00:43:07 yourself co-founding all these amazing companies. I'm an addictions doctor. I've been practicing addiction medicine for the better part of a decade now. The field of addiction is really interesting in that addiction is not caused by just one thing. Addictions are often what we call comorbid. It also often is the result of traumas in the past or people's upbringing, that sort of thing. I've been frustrated with medicine in general, you know, though we try really hard to help people with behavioral health issues. There really aren't many fantastic tools that are disposed to do that. You know, the standard of care for mental health is to take a pill or two or three a day that sort of if you're lucky is able to alleviate symptoms. or at least minimize symptoms for a time. A lot of times these medicines don't get people back to quote-unquote feeling good, just maybe feeling better than they felt when they were depressed or anxious or had symptoms of their trauma.

Starting point is 00:44:04 So we were looking for better solutions. You know, in starting field trip, we came across the field of psychedelics. And psychedelics is really science-led. You know, people may know of Timothy Larry back in the Harvard days, you know, many decades ago. You know, that sort of ended what at the time was the emergence of psychedelic therapy. psychedelic medicine. I would argue that we are right now in the midst of a reemergence of psychedelics, this time being led by the science. And the science is overwhelming at this point. We've got studies being done by a non-profit called MAPS showing that MDMA is extremely effective at treating people

Starting point is 00:44:42 suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. We've also got plenty of research coming out of NYU and Imperial College in London and some other drug development companies showing that psilocybin, which is the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, can be used to treat depression. When we're looking at these treatments, I think the important thing to think about is the fact that rather than needing to take a medicine every single day for weeks or months, these treatments are self-limited. This is working with a therapist for several sessions and then taking a single dose of a psychedelic in a comfortable therapeutic setting, and that can actually lead to the resolution of their symptoms

Starting point is 00:45:23 and getting them back to feeling normal again without the need to take more pills afterwards. And so what we've done at Field Trip is we've looked at this problem from a few different angles. We actually were traded on the NASDAQ and under the ticker FTRP. And we've just recently announced that we're splitting off the two arms of our business. So the two arms of our business are one is in novel psychedelic molecule. development biotech. We believe that we have a molecule in FT104 that is a better, more user-friendly version of psilocybin. The idea will be that psilocybin lasts about six hours or more and takes a full day for a person to actually have that experience. What we're hoping to show with FT104 is that

Starting point is 00:46:09 we can deliver a psychedelic experience that's therapeutic in a much shorter period of time. The other benefit of FT104 is that we've got patent protection over the molecule itself. The other half of our business is the services business, so essentially the delivery of psychedelic therapy. And so we have a network of 12 clinics across North America and one in Amsterdam that's delivering psychedelic assisted psychotherapy today. In North America, we're using ketamine as the psychedelic medicine and combining it with comprehensive psychotherapy to treat people. And in the Netherlands, we're actually able to use

Starting point is 00:46:49 psilocybin truffles, which are permitted in the Netherlands. And so we're able to do that now. On that point, what are you seeing as far as the benefit from ketamine versus psilocybin? They're trying to achieve, I think, somewhat of the same thing, but there's obviously legalities involved, as you mentioned. So are you seeing that the psilocybin data coming out of Amsterdam is more promising than the ketamine for any particular reason? Are they just different or used for different treatments altogether? Ketamine is very fast acting. The experience itself lasts just over one hour. And so that's quite beneficial. Ketamine itself, though, needs to be administered if you're treating depression several times over the course of a few weeks. Whereas

Starting point is 00:47:35 with psilocybin, the idea is that someone could take a single dose, spend a day, in our centers and hopefully emerge from it feeling much better. The centers that we've built out are sort of purpose built for psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. And that's important because one of the main principles of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is that the setting that the person's in actually contributes to the therapeutic effect. And the mindset that someone has when they engage in that experience actually contributes to the outcome, either positive or negative. So for what you just said, I imagine ketamine, is it similar to psychedelics or how people

Starting point is 00:48:16 think about that where, you know, say it's the Beatles turning into cartoon characters, flying on rainbows or yellow submarines? I mean, is that the kind of psychedelic effect we're talking about here or is it something more subdued than that? Talk to us about maybe the doses doses that are used in these types of treatments and what the, what you're striving for for an ultimate outcome and how you measure that. Before people start our program, we're doing standardized questionnaires to measure their symptoms of mood, anxiety, or trauma. The goal of the treatment is to improve upon those metrics at the end of the treatment. In terms of the actual subjective experience that the person has been reported that there are parallels to other

Starting point is 00:48:58 psychedelics. The good thing about ketamine is ketamine is an approved medicine. It's approved as an anesthetic. It's a dissociative. And one of the reasons why it can be used, in this setting is because it's a very safe medicine to take in the acute setting and that it does not negatively affect breathing. The doses that can be used in this setting can elicit a psychedelic experience safely. You know, everyone experiences ketamine differently, but people do report, you know, visions or colors or just feeling as though they're sort of outside of their body. That's something that we hear quite a bit. So if I'm not mistaken, you're using psilocybin in Amsterdam. Obviously, it's illegal here in the U.S.

Starting point is 00:49:42 and it's got this stigma around it. To my understanding, it's illegal because it goes all the way back to, I think, the Nixon era where he kind of lumped psychedelics into, you know, along with cannabis and some other drugs, into this Schedule I category, which is the most kind of severe type of drug. But when you compare it to alcohol, there is a lethal dose of alcohol, whereas with something like psychedelics, there's not. So I'm just kind of curious. What is giving you confidence that something like psilocybin can overcome the Schedule 1 regulation and actually become a legal drug? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, Schedule 1 is reserved for substances that are deemed to have no medical use.

Starting point is 00:50:22 I mean, I think you could make a strong argument that psychedelics don't belong on that schedule. But, you know, the work in the United States is being done at the level of the FDA. So with FT104, for example, which is a psychedelic, we're starting our phase one trial shortly. And the idea is to move on to phase two and then phase three and then get it approved as a prescribable medicine that a doctor can prescribe to a patient. Right now, there are other companies. One is compass pathways that is bringing psilocybin to market. I believe they're on their phase two study or the beginning of their phase three study to bring psilocybin to market. to treat treatment resistant depression. Ft.104 is a very similar medicine to psilocybin,

Starting point is 00:51:09 and so, you know, we're confident that we should be able to get that through as well. My understanding is that a lot of funding going into this research is also coming from ex-athletes, because if you think about, you know, football players, hockey players, high-contact sports, there's a lot of injuries that come from that, specifically brain injuries. And it seems like as the research is kind of catching up, these injuries have long-lasting effects. And so it's driven a lot of people in the athletic domain to provide resources for this research because it seems to be more of a sustainable way to overcome those types of brain injuries. So I'm curious, what exactly is going on in the brain when you're taking a psychedelic?

Starting point is 00:51:51 The science is still being done in this space. But the gist of it is that when you're someone who is depressed, or anxious, you get these thought patterns in your head that are really hard to shake. If you think about these sort of loops of thought that are going around in your head, and regardless of what you try to do, they tend to come back. And so that's referred to often as the default mode network. What psychedelics can do is they can actually sort of clean the slate. People will get out of this sort of negative thought loop, and it allows new thought pathways to form, new neural connections to form. People may reemerge without this sort of negative,

Starting point is 00:52:32 depressive or anxiety-provoking thought patterns as a result of it and sort of be able to have some distance from what was causing their depression or their anxiety. Another exciting part of psychedelic research is this idea of neuroplasticity. People are actually making new brain connections. And what that allows is people to relearn things or to learn new things. or to get out of old assumptions or old thoughts that they may have had. And so it's all fascinating, fascinating stuff. Part of the reason, you know, you may get athletes or artists interested in this space is, you know, that they may have had a personal experience that impacted the way that they view life

Starting point is 00:53:17 and they just want to share it with others. Do you find any resources coming from the military or even the clients coming from the military, because I've heard that this can also be used as treatment towards something like PTSD. Is that correct? And are you seeing that in the research as well? Yeah, absolutely. So in Canada, we actually do help a lot of military veterans with their PTSD symptoms. And we've been seeing fantastic results there.

Starting point is 00:53:45 In the U.S., it is sort of one area that appears to have politicians on board with. And this is the idea of using psychedelics, often MDMA. assisted psychotherapy to help military veterans who are suffering from the effects of post-traumatic stress. You know, it's exciting to think that this may soon become a treatment option that's available to more of them. I love what you said about repaving these pathways. I've heard this analogy with psychedelics around it being like fresh snowfall in your brain. So if you think about you go sledding, one guy goes down on the snow, it carves his path. And if you go follow him, your sled might fall into that same groove. But you get new fresh snowfall. And then you

Starting point is 00:54:26 pave new pathways. Does that idea speak to your interest in psychedelics as it relates to addiction? Because I imagine addiction comes with similar thought patterns that you're trying to break. Absolutely. You're right in that the thought patterns in addiction are similar to other behavioral health issues. But oftentimes addiction can be even more complicated because they're sort of situational. If you go back to a home where everyone else is using a substance and it's right in your face, it's going to be really hard to avoid it. For me, addiction is multifactorial and more complicated than many other behavioral health issues. For that reason, it's sort of harder to pinpoint and treat, but I do believe that there will be a place for psychedelics in the treatment

Starting point is 00:55:17 of addiction. There's one psychedelic medicine called iBogaine that has traditionally been used to help people with addictions. It's not something that we've started to do at field trip, but it's out there and it's interesting. The thesis around psychedelics helping depression is really interesting because, yeah, while I understand that you can create these new pathways in your brain, my understanding with depression, for example, is it's almost like a chemical imbalance. So there's actual chemicals involved at or at play here that are causing those thoughts in the first place. So do the psychedelics have any impact on like stabilizing the chemicals in your brain or or helping in any way in that front? The main treatment right now for depression is the use

Starting point is 00:55:57 of medications that fall into a category called SSRI selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. And so that's your medicines like Lexopro or Zoloft. Those medicines work by keeping serotonin in the brain synapses. So serotonin is a neurotransmitter. it gets released and then it gets taken back up. And so these medicines stop the taking back up of the serotonin. And the result is that, or that hopeful result is that the person feels happier. With psychedelics, they work in a different fashion. So FT104, for example, is a 5HT2A receptor medicine. It acts on these specific serotonin receptors. And what it does in the moment is creates a really powerful reaction, but once it resolves, it's sort of like the brain is back on its own,

Starting point is 00:56:52 but to your point, ideally it carves a new, healthier path down the hill. So FT 104 is a molecule. You guys have actually developed, designed, you're patenting it. Does that mean, while it'll be used in treatments, if I'm thinking really long term for this company you're running, does that mean it'll ultimately manifest potentially in something like a supplement or some kind of product-based thing that you could. use it for, given that the regulations are relaxed on the actual molecule itself? Or would you say that's not really in consideration for a company like field trip? FD 104 specifically, we envision

Starting point is 00:57:28 as being a prescribed medicine that a doctor would prescribe to a patient for use in a setting in which is conducive to these psychedelic experiences. So I don't see a world in which it's not a prescribed medicine, but I suppose anything is possible. I guess I was thinking about the idea of microdosing, right? That's become kind of a trendy concept recently. Is there any benefit to microdosing in your opinion? I mean, I don't really exactly understand the levels how it compares to something like the dosing you're doing at a treatment center. But does that even have an effect in your opinion or is there promising research behind that at all? So microdosing, the idea of microdosing is that you take an amount of the

Starting point is 00:58:10 substance that's just below the amount that is perceptible. So someone should If they're taking a microdose of a substance, they shouldn't actually feel the effects of that substance, or at least the immediate effects of that substance. I mean, there have been reports of people microdosing with psilocybin and reporting benefits of increased creativity, less anxiety, that sort of thing. It has not been studied, I think, to the scientific rigor that it should be to draw conclusions, but the limited evidence that I have seen, hasn't really shown too much of an effect. Let's talk about that evidence because I'm curious how quantitative the research gets, especially say at your clinic, your treatment centers. How exactly do you gather the data?

Starting point is 00:58:58 For example, are there just surveys? What was your experience? Do you score things like depression, anxiety, PTSD, and you check back in with that person over a matter of weeks or months and you score them again? Just walk us through the scientific method here of gathering the data. That's exactly right. before someone starts our program, they'll fill out standardized questionnaires, sort of similar questionnaires that are done in research studies to measure depression, anxiety, and trauma.

Starting point is 00:59:28 And then we'll ask them to complete those same questionnaires midway throughout the treatment after the treatment and then one month, three months, six months after the treatment as well. And what we've been able to show is that we're achieving significant reduction in these symptoms when people fill out these surveys. And so it's extremely exciting and we're really proud of the amazing experiences people are getting in our centers. Now, do you have access to similar research for SSRIs, as you highlighted earlier? Are you compare, is that the benchmark, for example, to compare to when you're looking at your research compared to currently prescribe medication? It's hard because it's a bit of an apples to oranges comparison. SSRIs, in order to be approved,

Starting point is 01:00:13 have to beat a placebo just by enough to be statistically significant. Though we've not done a head-to-head comparison, so I want to be careful what I say, you know, I believe that our treatment outcomes would beat, you know, the average SSRI. Many of the people who come to us have already failed one or more courses of SSRIs, meaning that they've tried them. They either didn't like how they felt or they didn't work. And so they're looking for a different solution. It's my understanding, and I could be wrong, but are SSRIs an addictive medication, meaning they're harder to get off of and therefore this type of treatment is better

Starting point is 01:00:52 in that it's not addictive at all? What are some of the ways that you compare with the current medication, what it pertains to addiction? Well, I would say that SSRIs, I don't think they're necessarily addictive by the sort of true way that we think about addiction. So someone may become dependent on a medicine, meaning if they don't take it, they feel unwell. But when we think about addiction, you know, you start to think about, okay, what are the negative implications of this person's use of the substance? So for example, if someone is using fentanyl every day, they need to use fentanyl in order to avoid feeling sick. And if they've been using it long enough and they no longer have access to the fentanyl anymore,

Starting point is 01:01:35 they may resort to doing bad things to get the fentanyl, or they may no longer show up to work, or it may impact their relationship with their family and their friends. And so you start to see these negative constellation of outcomes as a result of that person's addiction. And then, of course, it can get even worse from there. In that sense, I don't know that SSRIs are necessarily addictive. Ketamine, the way that we use it has a low risk of addiction. but I should say that ketamine itself can be abused on the street. So people use higher doses, perhaps more frequently, can get addicted on the street.

Starting point is 01:02:17 When it's used in a clinical setting, the doses are lower, it's observed, and the outcomes, positive outcomes for patients, you know, speak for themselves there. What was the thesis around going public with this company? Is it a matter of it being hard to give funding? in the private markets, given that this is sort of a controversial approach to medicine? Or was it that this would raise more awareness around it and get the public involved and kind of expedite the awareness? What was the reasoning around taking this company public, especially so early? The founding team, there are five of us, we had experience in the Canadian public markets

Starting point is 01:02:56 years back. And so we became familiar with the workings of the Canadian capital markets. When it came time to raise the second round of funding for field trip, my partners would go into these investors meetings. Essentially, the message was, we want you to go public. You know, we weighed the pros and cons of doing so. But in Canada, going public on the Canadian Stock Exchange, you know, was, we thought worthwhile. And so we ended up raising our round and went public on that exchange. And then eventually, actually pretty quickly, uplisted to the Toronto Stock Exchange,

Starting point is 01:03:32 big board and then cross-listed over to the NASDAQ where we are today. I think it's a really, you know, exciting time. It's the right time for these two halves to split off and really just focus in on their individual mandates. And for me, most of my time, I think, will be on the clinics and health and wellness side. Well, Ryan, thank you for the education today. I'm fascinated by what you guys are doing at field trip. It was really great to meet you in Miami and get to know each other. Thanks for coming on. This was a lot of fun. I hope we can do it again soon. Absolutely. It's great meaning as well. Thanks for having me. This is great. All right, that's all we had for you guys today. If you're loving the show, don't forget to

Starting point is 01:04:14 follow us on your favorite podcast app. And if you want to check out field trip, the stock, look no further than the TIP finance tool. Just Google TIP finance and it should pop right up. And lastly, we always love hearing from you. So either leave a review or reach out to me on Twitter at Trey Lockerby. And with that, we will see you again next time. you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to millennial investing by the Investors Podcast Network and learn how to achieve financial independence. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only, before making any decision consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written

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We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP452: Elon's Twitter Takeover and Field Trip's Psychedelic Future w/ Dr. Ryan Yermus

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