EP #12 Gaming Will Save The World w/ Jane McGonigal

In this episode, Jane and Peter discuss the power of gaming, Jane’s journey to becoming an alternative reality video game designer, and the gamification of the education system. You will learn about: 49:35 | Jane McGonigal's challenge for the Web3 community. 53:32 | Why the gaming system is better than the education system. 59:22 | Can game developers be nominated for a Nobel Prize? 1:04:01 |Taking the gaming mentality & using it to fix the world. Jane McGonigal is a world-renowned designer of alternate reality video games crafted to improve real-world problems. She is the Director of Games Research & Development at the Institute for the Future and is best known for Inventing and Co-Founding SuperBetter. This game has helped more than 1 million players tackle health challenges such as anxiety, depression, and traumatic brain injury. Her TED Talks about gaming and longevity have over 15 million views, and she’s been named by Fast Company as one of the “Top 100 Creative People in Business.” _____________ Resources Urgent Optimists - an Institute for the Future community, urgentoptimists.org Buy her book, Imaginable - https://www.spiegelandgrau.com/imaginable Levels: Real-time feedback on how diet impacts your health. levels.link/peter Consider a journey to optimize your body with LifeForce. Learn more about Abundance360. Learn more about Moonshots & Mindsets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I always say the reasons we look ahead to the future are so that we can be ready for anything. That's the risks, the disruptions, the crises, but also so that we can imagine what could be possible tomorrow that isn't possible today, so that we can, I guess, motivate ourselves to stay with the hard work of making a better world, right? By really imagining that exponential benefit.

• 0:25Peter Diamandis?

  And a massive transformative purpose is what you're telling the world. It's like, this is who I am. This is what I'm gonna do. This is the dent I'm gonna make in the universe. Welcome to Mindsets and Moonshots. I'm super excited to be speaking today with a friend, an extraordinary author, Jane McGonigal, a world-renowned designer of alternate reality games, games that are designed to improve real life, solve real problems such as hunger, climate change, and poverty. I love that one of Jane's goals is to see a game developer win the Nobel Peace Prize. She's a game designer, New York Times bestselling author, future forecaster.

• 1:10Peter Diamandis?

  Heard TED Talk on how games can improve the world and that games can give you 10 extra years of life, have more than 15 million views, and are among the most popular TED Talks of all time. She is best known as the inventor and co-founder of SuperBetter, a game that has helped more than 1 million players tackle health challenges such as anxiety, depression, and traumatic brain injury. She's been named as one of the top 100 creative people in business by Fast Company. Oprah Winfrey called her "one of the 20 most inspiring women of all time." MIT Tech Review has hailed her as "one of the top 35 innovators changing the world through technology." Her most recent book, one of many, is called Imaginable.

• 1:53Peter Diamandis?

  It is more than a book. It's a mindset upgrade. It teaches you to think more creatively and optimistically about what's next. You'll be excited about the future rather than fearful of it, which is everything I love and stand for and what this podcast is all about. Dr. McGonigal received her PhD at the University of California at Berkeley in Performance Studies. Jane, it's a pleasure to have you here.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  Peter, thank you and congratulations on this new podcast. What an important topic. I'm really excited to be a part of it.

• 2:24Peter Diamandis?

  Thank you. And it's a topic that we both share a passion around. I love the new book and I was honored to have a chance to blurb it. I think what I'd like to do is start in the area of passion and purpose and get your thoughts about why a purpose-driven mindset is so important for people. What is it that you get out of that? Why should people strive to be clear about their purpose in life and how do people find it? Let's start with that small subject.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  I love that question. You know, I've had a very strange career path that I have followed, starting out as a game developer and trying to figure out if we could invent games that might have a more intentional impact on people's real lives or on the problems that we all live with. And I think as part of that journey, I have observed that when we have a purpose that is bigger than ourselves, we think more creatively, we're less likely

• 3:40Speaker 00

  to give up in the face of setbacks and obstacles, and we can push aside feelings of anxiety and replace them with feelings of hope because we're being driven forward. By our goals, by our ambitions, by the biggest positive transformations that we can imagine. And in my work now as a designer of games that help people simulate really hard to think about futures, thinking about big future challenges, things that might be hard to live through, and how we would help others and help ourselves during those types of crises and disruptions. What I've seen is that when you ask people to imagine how they would help others, how they would serve a bigger purpose in these crises, whether

• 4:25Speaker 00

  it's a new kind of pandemic, or unintended consequences of geoengineering, or whatever else we might be imagining, mass climate migrations, that if you ask people to imagine how they would help others, then they tend to approach these possible futures with less anxiety, less dread, less hopelessness, and a feeling of power and purpose.

• 4:48Peter Diamandis?

  I love that. So reframing it, rather than, oh my god, how is this going to impact me? It's like putting yourself on top of it from how can I help others? It brings a whole new set of cognitive capabilities to the table.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  Yes. And so before I have people imagine specific future scenarios, I always have them play a quick little game called Pack Your Bags for the Future, where you answer a few questions about, you know, what are you good at? What do you know more about than most people? What do you care about more than most people? What are the communities that you're a member of, that you're connected to? And you make this list of essentially all of these assets that you bring to any future, no matter what challenge or disruption, you will have this knowledge and skills and these relationships. And then we throw the scenario at you. And for me, this methodology, it really clicked into place when I started

• 5:46Speaker 00

  simulating pandemics back in 2008. We were imagining the year 2019, because you know, futurists, we love to look a decade ahead, so we have enough time to get ready for whatever we imagine. And the, this was the first time I really tested this methodology and I played the game myself, uh, because I always want to get the experience and the benefits. And I said, well, I bring game design to this crisis. So I had to imagine what a game designer would do during a pandemic. And, you know, it occurred to me that there's a stereotype of gamers, they're, they like to stay at home, they're antisocial, they play in their basement instead of going

• 6:27Speaker 00

  out into the real world, which is a bit of a stereotype and unfair. But in reality during a pandemic, what, what does the CDC want you to do? What do public health experts want you to do? They want you to stay at home and be antisocial. So I imagined, you know, how could the CDC and game developers work together to drop new game releases during surges and, you know, incentivize people essentially to stay home, play more, stay connected. And interestingly, when the real pandemic rolled around, the game development community actually did that. You might recall early in March and April 2020, um, there was a huge push from the game community to say, look, you can stay connected, you can do this, we've

• 7:10Speaker 00

  got this, play the games. If you've never played these games before, come into our community. And more people started gaming than at any other time in human history as a result.

• 7:20Peter Diamandis?

  I, I love this idea, pack your bags for the future. And it's interesting, right? Because when you take a self-inventory of what you have, what your superpowers are, no matter what they are, your relationships, your capital, the technology, your degrees and so forth. And then you map that against, uh, significant objectives in life, like, uh, whatever grand challenge you want, or whatever business you want. I, I think if you do, if you're self-reflective and you say, wow, my assets are really good in this area and I'm excited about applying them. That passion starts to evolve into a purpose.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And, you know, in my line of work, we're having people imagine what they might do. They're not necessarily founding a new company or rolling out a major program when they're imagining the future scenario. But oftentimes, I do find that these ideas that people come up with in the games, they keep rattling around, they keep kind of fueling our subconscious thoughts and motivations. And then people do start to prototype and build, and you don't actually have to wait a decade for the future to happen. Once you've realized that there is, as you said, a connection between your skills and your passions and this new purpose that maybe

• 8:40Speaker 00

  you've learned more about because you've been simulating this future and you've been exposed to new opportunities to help, you can take action now.

• 8:48Peter Diamandis?

  It's interesting, right? Like, the definition of luck is actually, you know, being prepared to embrace the things that are coming at you. In other words, if you've thought about this future and you meet a person, have a conversation that is useful towards that future, perhaps you would not have had that conversation if you hadn't been thinking about that. So, that's fascinating. Let me take you to your, your purpose in life. Do you have a defined purpose that you want to share?

• 9:20Speaker 00

  I mean, my overarching purpose is to try to help alleviate suffering using my skills as best I can. And my career has been dedicated to figuring out how can gaming and forms of organized, structured, goal-oriented play help people alleviate things like anxiety, depression, social isolation, feeling a lack of purpose, or a lack of, of hope for their own future. And that's, that's what I do.

• 9:55Peter Diamandis?

  And I, and I, and I love you for it. Let's take you back to those earliest days. Can you talk about when you started discovering this passion and purpose and how it evolved? Have you had it since childhood?

• 10:08Speaker 00

  I mean, talk about, yeah, I mean, I was lucky. My parents bought us a Commodore sixty-four, a used computer. My parents were both school teachers, public school teachers, so we didn't have a lot of money, but they were always trying to expose us to new technologies, which is great, you know, build our confidence that we can learn new tech. So we had a Commodore sixty-four used that came into my house when I was about nine years old, started learning basic programming, started playing the games that had modes where you could actually design your own levels. And I definitely felt that passion early on, like I can build things that I can make predictions about what people will do when they play my games, but then you sit and watch and you're surprised by what people think of that you didn't think

• 10:52Speaker 00

  of, and they have different strategies and different reactions and just that whole mode of, you know, predicting how people will feel and react, trying to design something that elicits those behaviors or those emotions, and then studying it and watching it, you know, that kind of iterative scientific process of experience design. I mean, I was doing that from a very young age.

• 11:13Peter Diamandis?

  So you started playing, which is great. And I remember the Commodore sixty-four, which dates us both. But what happened next? When did that go from a potentially a passion to a career and a purpose?

• 11:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I, in two thousand and one, I rolled up to Berkeley to start my PhD program intending to study how scientists communicate their research to the public. I had this idea that we might have forms of play that could help people learn difficult, but interesting scientific concepts. That was my intention. And then in my first year of grad school, I was kind of weirdly became enmeshed in a new community that was just bubbling up in San Francisco. The earliest experiments in

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Using mobile phones to create location-specific gaming. So there was a startup that advertised on Craigslist that they needed people to work on a new game that was going to send you out to the city and payphones would ring and you'd get secret codes and you'd dig up boxes that would have inflatable rafts and you'd take it to the lake and you'd like roll it to the lake. Sounds like fun. Yeah, super fun. And I had a background in theater, working off Broadway in New York City as a stage manager. And I was like, hey, I'll stage manage your games. Like, you know, you'll have props, you'll have actors, you'll have players. And what happened was, as I was starting to write, design these games, write them, help

• 12:44Speaker 00

  stage them, the players would come back to the next, you know, version of the game, the next round of the game, and they would say the most interesting things to me. They would say, you know, I hadn't really hung out in the Mission District before, but now I'm going back there because I feel, I just, I have like this positive association. And they would say they, they were more curious, they were more likely to talk to strangers, they would go into, you know, restaurants they hadn't seen before, they'd read the graffiti in the alley. It was like, just having this day of play in an unfamiliar location, it permanently changed their mindset when they were in that space. They felt confident, comfortable, curious.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  And, and I thought, you know, this weird slippage between the game. Yes. And then their real-life behavior and mindsets, to me, became very interesting. And so I started looking for other examples, you know? Are people playing World of Warcraft trying to, you know, organize the equivalent of a raid in real life to solve real problems? Like, what could I find that would, and maybe provide evidence that, yeah, people who play games are approaching their real lives and real-world problems with this gameful mindset? And when I started writing about that and giving talks in grad school about that, suddenly everybody was very interested in my research.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  And that was actually one of the most important things I learned in grad school, was if, if, you know, if professors are like, "Come to my office, you need to tell me more about this," or people like, "I have to, let me, I have to play this game." Like, if people are interested... Then that's a sign that you're on to something that you should, you know, continue building and following up. And if you're constantly pushing the boulder up the hill and nobody wants to help you, I mean, maybe that's not going to be the most impactful purpose. And so I left the science communication behind, which was fun, but it didn't create the same sense of, for me, wow, this is a purpose I could have, but other people want

• 14:47Speaker 00

  to take this on with me. And it could be a really big deal if we all pursue this possibility together.

• 14:53Peter Diamandis?

  I love that. And it's so true. When you come to a situation with a different perspective, it gives you the freedom to engage in a very different way. And also, the idea of that game in particular, getting people curious and getting them out of their comfort zones into exploring new geographies and new conversations they wouldn't normally have.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  By the way, that game company still exists. I should give them a shout out. I never actually mentioned, it's called the Go Game, and they're still running games all over the world. So, yeah.

• 15:31Peter Diamandis?

  I love it. Hey, thanks for listening to Moon Shots and Mindsets. I want to take a second to tell you about a company that I love. It's called Levels, and it helps me be responsible for the food that I eat, what I bring into my body. See, we were never designed as humans to eat as much sugar as we do. And sugar is not good for your brain, or your heart, or your body in general. Levels helps me monitor the impact of the foods that I eat by monitoring my blood sugar. For example, I learned that if I dip my bread in olive oil, it blunts my glycemic response, which is good for my health. If you're interested, learn more by going to levels.link/peter. Levels will give you an extra two months of membership. It's something that is critical for the future of your longevity. All right,

• 16:17Peter Diamandis?

  let's get back to the conversation in the episode. Let's go into the curiosity mindset, because, you know, I think curiosity is an underrated mindset, but it's so critically important. What are your thoughts about a curiosity mindset? What's it valuable for? And can people increase their level of curiosity?

• 16:38Speaker 00

  I think that One of the most important habits that we all need to cultivate and practice heading into the next decade is finding ways to essentially unstick our mind about what we believe can and cannot change. You know, what is true today? What has historically been true? We tend to get stuck in old ways of thinking or drawing too heavily on patterns of the past. You know this as well as anyone. When we get trapped in this kind of normalcy bias, we stop being curious about, well, could we do this differently? Could, could work change? Could society change? Could, could learning change?

• 17:22Speaker 00

  When we assume that things more or less have to continue as they are or as they have been, then we, we innovate less. We have less hope for the future. We have less ambitious goals. And so I do, I personally have a habit that I teach when I, when I teach futures thinking and that I practice in my own life, that helps me develop my curiosity. It's very practical. Can I just tell you how it works? Yeah, I would love that. So I call it flipping the world upside down. And you just make a list of things that you believe are true today and are likely to be true in the future. So basically you're trying to, you're trying to stump yourself or like, so people will often say, well, humans need oxygen to breathe

• 18:06Speaker 00

  or you need a man, you need genetic material, let's say, from a man and a woman to make a baby. You can't just have, you know, a woman can't have a baby on her own. And you make a list of all these things and then you rewrite them so that the opposite is true. And then you go look for evidence that these seemingly impossible ridiculous facts could actually become possible in the future. So I will literally just, I have, I have a sort of running list of these facts and then I'll just go to Google and I'll do a new search. Okay, humans don't need oxygen to breathe. What comes up? Well, it turns out German researchers are working on essentially a kind of photosynthesis for animals, including humans, so that we could breathe carbon dioxide instead of oxygen

• 18:51Speaker 00

  in environments where there's not a lot of oxygen. Could be useful for space travel, right? Now, I don't know if I'll ever be on a spaceship needing to breathe carbon dioxide. Like, it might not affect me personally, but the benefit of this is you start to... Get better at believing confidently that transformative change is possible so that you're not getting stuck, you're not slow to notice change, you're not setting these like sad little tiny incremental goals for yourself, you're really thinking about exponential improvement and you're thinking about the moon shots. And so, you know, even with the genetic material for babies, now I'm like obsessed with this topic, even though

• 19:33Speaker 00

  I've had my babies and I don't intend necessarily have more, but knowing now that the researchers are working on ways that two same-sex parents can create an embryo, a human embryo, so that you could have two men be genetic parents for a baby, no women involved, or two women and no men involved. And they're already doing this with mice. They've already figured out how to create living mice with genetic material from two same-sex mice parents. Like for me, again, even though it might not impact me personally, it just opens up my mindset so that I am, now I'm feeling ready for anything, totally unstuck, and

• 20:16Speaker 00

  able to imagine that the future really could be different, right?

• 20:19Peter Diamandis?

  I love this, flipping the world upside down. I love that that practice. And so, you're clear, you're not necessarily born with a curiosity mindset, you can develop one over time, yes?

• 20:29Speaker 00

  Absolutely. It's just a matter of, you know, finding what makes you curious, you know? With flipping the world upside down, I'll do this in large groups and we'll flip 100 facts. And then I say, well, which are the ones that really jump out at you and make you wonder, you know, what would it be like if, you know, if, what's a good, you know, well, the three-day work week, for example, let's say that sparks your curiosity, your imagination, what are we doing with the other four days of our week? You just have to find, I guess, the questions that connect with your passion.

• 21:08Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, here's one for you. What if kids didn't go to school and they just played games every day?

• 21:13Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I'm quite sure we could produce probably a better education.

• 21:18Peter Diamandis?

  A better educational system, absolutely.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  But schooling is a great one, you know, one of the most exciting future scenarios that I know for sure people are working on now that came out of flipping facts upside down. A number of years ago, I was working with an education, future of education group, and they flipped the fact about majors, right? Like, what would you do in college if we got rid of majors? Like, just throw it away. This idea of concentrating in these sort of archaicly-defined subjects, you know? And one of the upside-down possibilities was that would be that people would major, major in challenges. And instead of studying English or history or economics,

• 22:02Speaker 00

  you would study climate mitigation or adaptation. You would study economic equality or economic security and food innovation. And whatever, whatever fueled you, this is the world I want to make better. This is the problem I want to help solve. And all of your coursework would be geared toward experiences, knowledge, then wisdom that would allow you to be of service when you graduate to that problem.

• 22:30Peter Diamandis?

  By the way, you know, parents often ask me when I'm on stage, you know, what should my kids major in? You know, what should they study? And my response is, you know, study the challenges and the problems. Become an expert in what the issues are, because the technology is constantly changing. And if you understand fundamentally what the issues are, how people are suffering, what, why things aren't working, you're gonna have, you're gonna have valuable contributions to society forever.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  Yes, I love that. And I think it's a good, possible intervention at the high school level as well. And if there's any area of learning that really needs to change because of the amount of suffering that exists in the current model, it's definitely high school. You know, people feel like they're forced to spend, I mean, some of the most curious, energetic, creative years of their lives studying things that they don't have a natural passion for. And what a waste of young minds. If I could liberate my own children when they get to high school from having to just study things that they would rather, I mean...

• 23:37Peter Diamandis?

  I totally agree. How old are your kids?

• 23:40Speaker 00

  They're seven, so there's time. We have a little bit of time to reinvent high school.

• 23:45Peter Diamandis?

  I have fraternal twin boys that are 11. They're going into fifth grade, so a little bit more urgent. But I agree, it's like, I do not think the current educational system is, is even 10% in the right direction.

• 24:03Peter Diamandis?

  You know, I often tell my kids, I have three wishes for my, for my, my kids. I want them to find their passion and purpose first and foremost. I want them to have grit, learn not to give up. And then the thing I tell them is ask great questions. That, and let's, let's talk about that because in a world of Google where you can know anything you want, I think the questions you ask are far more important than the knowledge that you have. What are your thoughts about that?

• 24:33Speaker 00

  We have a whole wall at our house, you would be excited to know, that we call the question wall. And it's by the dining room table. And we have all of these rainbow colored index cards. And whenever a question comes up, if we're, you know, on a family walk, or we're over dinner, or we're watching a show, we say, okay, put it on the question wall. And then we'll write down a question. So my, one of my seven year old daughters, who got really into Encanto this year, the Disney movie, she just sort of randomly, out of nowhere, one day, we were in the car, she said, why do people sometimes break out into song when they're, when they're in a movie to express their feelings?

• 25:18Speaker 00

  I'm like, that's such a great question. Like, where did this come from? This idea of we'll, we'll just break out into song as a form of storytelling. So we were like, put it on the question wall. And there's all sorts of weird questions, like, what was that dead animal I saw on the road? We're like, put it on the question wall. We'll try to figure it out when we get home. And then once a week, everybody pulls a card off the wall. And we all spend, you know, 15 minutes trying to figure out the answer, using Google, using YouTube, whatever we can. And then we report back to each other what we learned.

• 25:49Peter Diamandis?

  I, I love it. What a great way to spark curiosity and creativity in your, in your home world. I think I'm going to add a question wall to my kitchen someplace. That's awesome. I keep on saying this is the most exciting time ever in human history. And the only time more exciting than today is probably tomorrow. And, you know, I would imagine that you believe a curiosity and creative mindset is, is going to be one of the most important mindsets for the world that we're heading in. Can you, can you share some thoughts on that?

• 26:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, look, we all just lived through.

• 26:28Speaker 00

  Proof, 100% evidence that the world and we ourselves can change in radical transformative ways at local scale, individual scale, organizational scale, global scale. We just saw how much we can change through our own decisions and intentions. Now, these changes were not ones we wanted to make. The shutdowns, the border lockdowns, everybody learns and works from home, like we're gonna cook our own meals, whatever it is. We didn't want to make them, but at least we have just witnessed, every human being on this planet has seen, we can change more faster than we thought possible.

• 27:10Speaker 00

  There is no excuse now for continuing with systems and patterns and habits that don't work, right? We can, we can change. So that element of curiosity and creativity, it's really necessary now to turn this, you know, the arguably the most collective suffering the planet has ever been through. I mean, has there ever been an event in human history where so many shared this experience of, of pain and disruption and grief? Can we use this moment and, and as a springboard for something better, to make it meaningful, what we've had to endure these, these past two years?

• 27:53Speaker 00

  And I think if we have a flexible enough mindset, if we're curious, if we're flipping the facts of today upside down, if we're thinking creatively about how we connect our skills and talents with the challenges that we face, we really can take advantage of the next decade to, to change society faster than we thought possible, to ask for a higher level of transformation, you know, forget incremental stuff, let's just go for the big, the big change. And, and I'm excited about that. And we just have to be careful that we don't. Squander this opportunity, keep reminding ourselves, we did it, we changed everything,

• 28:35Speaker 00

  we can do it again, but from a, now from a standpoint of what do we want to change, not, you know, what do we have to change?

• 28:42Peter Diamandis?

  Yes, let's not, let's not forget, and, and just the, that connection again about, about creativity to, you know, to challenge what we believe to be true, flipping the world upside down. I love, love that lesson. Jane, let's talk about an abundance mindset, a term that you used in your latest book, urgent optimism. How do you define that?

• 29:07Speaker 00

  So, okay, urgent optimism is a term that I coined after seeing a lot of weird stuff happening in the gaming community. So first, just at a neurological level, what game researchers started to observe in people who play games is that they were developing more, essentially grit and resilience in the face of setbacks. They were learning faster from mistakes or negative feedback, failures. They were energized by failure. In fact, when they were, they were wiring gamers up and seeing that they were actually experiencing positive emotions after failure, if they had an opportunity to try again. And so

• 29:52Speaker 00

  there was this-

• 29:53Peter Diamandis?

  To apply what they just learned?

• 29:54Speaker 00

  To apply what they just learned. And there was just this incredible feeling of, I can get better and improve and change my strategy to be more successful through my own efforts, attention, learning from others, asking others for help. And so we would see, just people would work longer and harder on tougher challenges and be energized by it, instead of feeling anxious or, you know, self doubt, lack of confidence, or giving up. And when I started working in the future space, I was hoping that the same mindset would- Be developed in people who were playing future forecasting games, who were participating in these social simulations where we just

• 30:39Speaker 00

  imagined, what would I do, what would I feel, kind of like a tabletop role playing game, except instead of like Dungeons and Dragons and we're imagining these fantastic adventures, we're, we're sitting around the internet with 10,000 people imagining how we would adapt, you know, to a masked, you know, climate migration event or whatever we're, we're simulating. And I was hopeful we could develop that. And in fact, what I started to see is we would invite people to spend six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks, imagining terrible futures, total crises, things that you would have nightmares about. And they were coming out on the other side of these games fired up, like, wow, I feel so optimistic

• 31:23Speaker 00

  now. I feel hopeful. I have purpose. I have clarity. And it was totally bizarre, totally unexpected by others in the field who had this sense like, well, if we ask people to imagine the worst that could happen, it's going to increase their anxiety for the future. It's going to create dread or hopelessness or powerlessness. But if you bring that same kind of gaming experience where you're asking people to use their own skills and their knowledge and their communities in service of a bigger goal, helping others, then people come out of it feeling what I started calling urgent optimism, which is essentially this

• 32:02Speaker 00

  balanced mindset of being clear eyed about risks and possible threats that we face, while also filling your brain with positive ideas, new possible, you know, policy solutions, social movements, technology, scientific breakthroughs, wild ideas that could really help us not only address these threats or mitigate the risk, but actually create a lot of positive change along the way. So this balanced mindset, it, it is amazing how good we can feel by being willing to think about. Events that should be unpleasant to think about.

• 32:43Peter Diamandis?

  Is it because it gives us agency in the sense that this future disaster is one that we can bring resources to solve, that we're not powerless in this regard?

• 32:56Speaker 00

  Exactly. One of my favorite things I ask people to do when we're running these games is to imagine a happy moment. You know, let's say there's this, you know, extreme heat wave, or there's been, the internet's been shut down for a month by the government for cybersecurity, you've been, whatever we're living through. Write a story, like essentially, there's a lot of journaling from the future in these games, and you write about it as if you've already lived through it, so you can create really vivid memories of these futures. And so I was like, write about something good that happened. Like, was there a holiday you were able to celebrate, or a new family ritual or tradition, or a gift you were able to give someone, or where you were? And, and tell a story about, you know, different positive emotions, like happiness,

• 33:41Speaker 00

  or pride, or love. How did you feel love in this future? And what people realize is that, you know, as human beings, whatever world we wake up in, we will find a way to make art, to love each other, to help each other, to be creative. There, there is just, that's the human spirit. And when you actually practice it in a context that's safe, it's a game, it's not real, so you take away all of the things that stop us maybe from doing it in real life, because, because we have real anxiety, we have real things to worry about. When it's in the context of the game, then you can just explore all those positive responses and strengths. And, and it really,

• 34:23Speaker 00

  it really works. You're finding your agency to, to tap into that indomitable human spirit, even in the worst.

• 34:31Peter Diamandis?

  So this word taps in as well to the gratitude mindset, that even in the worst circumstances, we can find things to be grateful for. And that sort of, I guess,

• 34:42Peter Diamandis?

  Flips the mindset from one of of helplessness to one of empowerment.

• 34:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I learned, oh, more than a decade ago, one of the big findings out of positive psychology, when they would run meta-analyses of what habits or interventions really increase well-being in the long run, there was this habit of not, it's not a gratitude journal. That was, people thought early that that that was like, kind of, the big habit to cultivate. What they found was something almost like a gratitude journal, but it's called Three Great Things. And I started practicing it more than a decade ago, and my husband and I practice it every single night. Even if we're apart, if we're traveling, we we call each other or we email each other.

• 35:28Speaker 00

  And the way Three Great Things works is you reflect on three great, three things that went great today, three things that went well, and and and why they went well. So, you know, yesterday was the summer solstice, so we had our little family summer solstice traditions, and our kids wrote poems, and it was great. And we're like, wow, okay, we had the summer solstice tradition, that went well. And why did that go well? Well, we made time for our family, we we made that a priority. And, you know, it's a good day when we live, live with our values, right? What you're doing is you're not just being grateful for random things, you're focusing on the agency of yourself or others, you know?

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Where where it's not just that good things exist or happen, but that you're making them happen, or others are making them happen. And that aspect of agency, combined with being grateful for what's working or going well, is, that's like the sort of magic boost that really makes that a powerful practice.

• 36:30Peter Diamandis?

  I love that. You know, I I practice a very similar thing. When I go to sleep at night, it's what are the things, the three things today that gave me the greatest joy? Right? And it's usually around the kids. But but adding the element of why, I think, adds a real great value to that. The flip of that, I'm curious, is in the morning, sometimes I set out, what are the three most important things that if I do today, today will be a great day?

• 37:04Speaker 00

  I like that. I have, I'm I'm sort of like an epic. To do lister, I have like insanely ambitious, I'm sort of the opposite of that. I find that the more things I set out for myself to conquer, the more that I do. It's like this positive upward spiral. Like every time I get something done, I'm like, yeah, I'm getting some done. What else can I do? But so for me personally, it's like having this huge, you know, I mean, I literally keep a Word doc where I have like a page a day of like one every, you know, of wireless.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  And then I, I feel like, I mean, to me, that feels more like that feeling in a good RPG, you know, where like wherever you turn, there's another class.

• 37:53Peter Diamandis?

  There's another challenge.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:54Peter Diamandis?

  And crossing that thing off the list, right? That checking that box is, you know, it's a good dopamine.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  That's an abundance mindset, actually. So here, can I tell you a funny story?

• 38:06Peter Diamandis?

  Please.

• 38:07Speaker 00

  Sort of funny. I mean, it's interesting how all this ties together. So I think some people know I had a severe concussion back in 2009 when I had an accident. And part of my recovery process was trying to bring a gainful mindset to that recovery. And I was super depressed. I had suicidal thoughts. I didn't know why I was thinking this way, you're feeling this way. I later found out that during recovery from a concussion and, and it seems for many people, long COVID, the same kind of neuroinflammation. While your brain is trying to heal, it doesn't want you going out into the world doing stuff. It wants you basically curled up in a ball, safe, sound, not going to hit your head again,

• 38:52Speaker 00

  not going to get in any trouble. And it intentionally depresses you so that you don't take action because it wants you to conserve all of your energy for healing and stay safe. So, but the problem is it can go too far, which is why one in three people with concussion get suicidal thoughts because literally their brain blocks them from imagining.

• 39:12Speaker 00

  Any, you know, good outcome of action like you basically, you literally can't imagine anything good happening. And so, um, one of the, one of the things that worked for me in my recovery was essentially forcing myself to come up with this abundant list of things I could do, even though I could barely get out of bed. I couldn't read, I couldn't work, couldn't email, couldn't run, couldn't play video games, like anything I would normally do, couldn't do. I'm like, I need a sense, an abundant sense of there are actions I can take that will bring about a benefit to myself or others today so that I could, you know, just force my brain, force those, those neuro circuitries like back into believing

• 39:57Speaker 00

  something good could happen through my own efforts and actions. And I had really, I mean, like the list, you wouldn't think they were so exciting, like, um, you know, uh, smell, smell a new perfume that I've never smelled before, or bake cookies for the people who work in the peats in the apartment building, you know, and not, not from scratch. I mean, like the preformed ones, you just stick them in the oven. But like, maybe I'll, I'll bring cookies to someone today. And just by having a sense that when I woke up, there are all these things I could do, even though they're not the things I would normally want to do or derive meaning or purpose from. That turned out to be the most important thing I did in my recovery. And when I turned, you know, my gameful experiments into super better,

• 40:41Speaker 00

  which is that app that so many people have used and, and clinical trials have been run, and it really does help people recover from concussion faster. Um, that's, that's the thing that seems to work is giving people a sense of their own agency, that there are abundant things I can accomplish, even if my normal abilities are diminished, or my normal opportunities are scarce. I'm going to come up with things I can do, again, driven by my own values and whatever passions and talents I have. Um, I'm going to find a whole list of things that I can do so that we can force our brain to imagine positive outcomes of our own actions, even when it's trying to make us. Curl up in a ball and be safe and still.

• 41:27Peter Diamandis?

  Take one second and tell people about SuperBetter.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  So, SuperBetter is an app that is free. And it takes you on a kind of gameful journey to reframe a health challenge that you have as a kind of heroic quest in which you can collect power ups that really do make you feel stronger and better, in which you get really clear about your bad guys, things that trigger symptoms, or things that prevent you from following through on new habits you're trying to form. And you're collecting allies from your real life, or the SuperBetter community, that can give you power ups when you need them, or help you come up with strategies for fighting bad guys.

• 42:11Speaker 00

  And then, most importantly, you're coming up with these quests for yourself, figuring out things that you can do each and every day that are going to help you live a life that is true to your authentic self and your values, even if you have debilitating migraines, or long COVID, or this kind of crippling anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder. And, you know, I'm so thrilled that it has been tested in randomized control studies at Penn, at OSU, Cincinnati Children's Hospital. It's been evaluated by independent researchers to be powerful for depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and concussion.

• 42:51Speaker 00

  And I'm hoping, you know, as somebody who experienced a year of long COVID myself, when I caught COVID in the very first wave, early adopter, got there first, pre-vaccine, pre-treatments, and I spent a year recovering with a lot of neuroinflammation. And I'm hoping that SuperBetter will be able to help.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  The many millions of people now who are experiencing a changed sense of self. And so, yeah, if anybody could use help with their own recovery, Superbetter is a free resource and it seems to be very helpful for things like neuroinflammation and depression, anxiety and pain.

• 43:39Peter Diamandis?

  Nice. Let's talk about more about an abundance and exponential mindset and I'd love to hear your thoughts here. You know, I tell people, listen, if you're going to watch CNN, the Crisis News Network 24 hours a day, you're going to be in a in fear and scarcity mindset because your neural net's being wired to think in fear and scarcity. And yet, we're living in this world of massively increasing abundance and where technology is enabling, you know, extraordinary breakthroughs every day. How do you, how do you communicate this to folks and how do you frame this?

• 44:17Speaker 00

  So I lead a public community for the Institute for the Future called Urgent Optimists. And we, yeah, we, we are a community to practice building urgent optimism. And one of the activities that has been really successful, I think, in increasing our sense of abundance and hope is something we call Signals of Hope Scavenger Hunt. So, once a month, we pick a theme. I devise essentially a scavenger hunt list where you go out into the real world, into your community or online, looking in the news, looking on social media for signals of change that give you hope for the future.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  So we can look for signals of climate hope. This month, we were looking at local signals of hope. You had to take a photograph of it with your own eyes, find something in your own community. And then we share them and we talk about, you know, what would the world look like if these signals were scaled up? So, yesterday, the community was talking about a very strange signal of change that, on one hand, It's coming from a place of scarcity and urgency, but maybe pointing to a more abundant future. So I don't know if you saw in the news in Sri Lanka, the government has mandated a four-day work week for public sector workers. They are being paid their full salary,

• 45:44Speaker 00

  but on the fifth day, they're being asked to go home and grow food in their own backyards or their own communities because there's a huge food shortage, food scarcity right now. And they're trying to figure out, how do we make food abundant in this, what is a more resource limited environment? So people are being paid now, instead of that fifth day of work, to essentially increase the food security of the community, increase food abundance, and to take a personal role in growing local food. And on one hand, this is sort of a, I mean, it's sort of a scary signal of change, right? Because food insecurity is scary. And yet, on the other hand, in our urgent optimist community, people find a lot of reason for hope

• 46:29Speaker 00

  that such a radical experiment is being tried.

• 46:34Peter Diamandis?

  In Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, for God's sake, that's awesome.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  And so, you know, if we could, what would, you know, the idea that we could spend a fifth day, if we do, as many countries and organizations are experimenting with going to the four-day work week, and spend that fifth day doing something purposeful that builds local resilience or improves the health and wellbeing of our community or family. I just love that. I would love to spend a fifth day doing that.

• 47:03Peter Diamandis?

  I find that absolutely fascinating. And I love this idea of signals of hope. You know, when I run my Abundance 360 Summit every year, and I focus in on abundance, exponential longevity, and moonshot mindsets principally, I put together a PowerPoint deck called "Proof of Abundance," or "Proof of Exponentials," right? And it's like, over the course of the last year, here's all the things that are proving we're moving in this direction. So, you know, one of the examples from this past year was in 2022, there's going to be more new electric power coming from solar than any other source. Right? And it used to be something that was an ignored source of of energy

• 47:48Peter Diamandis?

  production in the United States. And so there's hundreds of these. And yet it's I think about, you know, our brains are neural nets, and we need to be constantly updating our neural net on this is now possible. This is now possible.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  I would say the reasons we look ahead to the future are so that we can be ready for anything. That's the risks, the disruptions, the crises, but also so that we can imagine what could be possible tomorrow that isn't possible today, so that we can, I guess, motivate ourselves to stay with the hard work of making a better world, right? By really imagining that exponential benefit or outcome. And electrification of everything is definitely one of my biggest sources of hope. I'm I'm a fan of all the jobs that could be created, of all the skills that could be created across society as we do a clean energy transition at scale.

• 48:50Peter Diamandis?

  Hey, everybody. I hope you're enjoying this episode. I'll tell you about something I've been doing for years. Every quarter or so, having a phlebotomist come to my home to draw bloods to understand what's going on inside my body. And it was a challenge to get all the right blood draws and all the right tests done. So I ended up co-founding a company that sends a phlebotomist to my home to measure 40 different biomarkers every quarter, put them up on a dashboard so I can see what's in range, what's out of range, and then get the right supplements, medicines, peptides, hormones to optimize my health. It's something that I want for all my friends and family, and I'd love it for you. If you're interested, go to mylifeforest.com backslash Peter to learn more. Let's get back to the episode.

• 49:34Peter Diamandis?

  So, you know, it's it's I know why the brain is wired for fear and scarcity, right? It saved us 100,000 years ago. But it's not serving us today. And I think, you know, creating an abundance mindset that allows you to flip the situation, the analogy I use, instead of slicing a pie into thinner and thinner slices, we're going to bake more pies because we can. Any other tricks that you have for helping people envision an abundance mindset? Because people like hanging out with people with abundance mindset.

• 50:07Speaker 00

  Oh, totally. And by the way, that's my biggest beef with the Web3 community is I think that while they talk about abundance and helping empower people financially and to, you know, own their own assets and their revenue streams, I think there's way too much actual scarcity baked into the products and services right now. So I have a challenge to the Web3 community, which is to actually design systems of abundance and stop relying on artificial scarcity to create wealth. But I will, I have a very practical technique that I, when I work with organizations, to think about the kind of abundance that we encounter in games.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  Because there are very specific type of abundance that, that is designed into some games, and I think some of the most popular games that exist because, specifically because of their abundance. So you think about a game like Fortnite, there are abundant opportunities to play, like you're, you're trying to survive as long as you can, up, you're out. Do you have to wait to play again? No, like right away, you can drop in again, drop off that airship. It's, it's as soon as you're out, you're back in the game. That's really interesting. We have so many games where like you're out, so you sit on the sidelines, you're done, you're out of the tournament, you're out of the realm. But Fortnite really created abundant opportunities to play, the sense of you can just get right back in the game.

• 51:37Speaker 00

  That's a game to look at for abundance. Also, Pokemon Go, I tell organizations, spend some time in Pokemon Go and look how abundant everything is. Pokemon Go could have been designed where that first Snorlax that you encountered in Times Square, only one of them, first player to catch it gets a Snorlax. But instead, they designed it so that anybody who was in Times Square got their own copy of the Snorlax. So instead of competing with strangers, you had people shouting out, anybody who has a phone nearby might be playing. You're like, Snorlax, Snorlax. And you're creating this sense of community and collective, you know, we're sharing our intelligence because we can all benefit. The, the way that they have used

• 52:21Speaker 00

  these PokéStops all over the world where you just walk on up and you can swipe, you can spin this disc, and they give you free assets for the game, free balls, free potions, free powers, whatever. And that you can spend them every five minutes. They could have time limited it. They could have said, once a day, you know, but they didn't. Every five minutes, this incredible sense of, they're giving me what I need to be successful.

• 52:47Peter Diamandis?

  Everyone wins.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  Everyone wins. The economy is powered by abundant assets. And I, so I just challenge, you know, folks, spend some time in this world and think, you know, what if we tried to bring this kind of abundance to learning, or to some of our workplaces, or to other, you know, anything that you design or create, any experience, can you steal a few of these, you know, design techniques from Fortnite or Pokemon Go? Because people feel, feel more, you know, likely to collaborate and share and try again if they get out of that scarcity mindset and realize there's enough opportunity here for everyone, which is how it should be in the real world, for sure.

• 53:31Peter Diamandis?

  And it is going that way, right? We are going to have a squanderable abundance of energy and water and food as we reinvent how we do these things. One of my favorite examples along the lines that you're saying is the educational system versus the gaming systems. In the educational system, you start with 100% at the start of the year. And every time you get something wrong, your grade goes down. In the gaming system, you start with zero and every time you get something right, your score goes up.

• 53:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, perfect example.

• 54:01Peter Diamandis?

  It just, how do we flip that so that when you're winning and everybody's winning, everybody's score is going up together?

• 54:08Speaker 00

  Yes. I mean, and I know college professors who changed their, their syllabus and their grading methods where you, every activity, you earn points, stop whenever you want. You want to pass in grade, you got to see, you're happy, great. You do enough activities till you get 70 points, you're done. You want an A? There's abundant opportunities, you know, just do twice as much, you know, and you can, you can get that A.

• 54:32Peter Diamandis?

  Do that exit report, yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And from what I hear from, from the professors, it really changes, you know, they show up wanting to know what they can do today to earn points, not what do I have to do to get my grade. It's, it's, it can be very simple tweaks.

• 54:49Peter Diamandis?

  Wow, that was, that's interesting. When I was in seventh grade, you know, I was at a, at a, a prep school that was on a 4.0 grading average. And I found out when I got a B on an exam, it dropped me from a four to something else. And I, there was no way to get back to a four.

• 55:07Speaker 00

  Mmm.

• 55:08Peter Diamandis?

  There was no, and so I negotiated with my, my seventh grade biology teacher that if I got 100% on the next test, he'd erase the last score. But, I mean, yeah, it's so, you know, that was the young pre-med in me. But the idea of reinventing education where you can go as high as you want, as your energy and your passion drives, I love that.

• 55:31Speaker 00

  Do you want to go somewhere a little bit slightly dystopic, but it's exactly on this topic? And I'm actually kind of fired up to talk about it?

• 55:38Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 55:39Speaker 00

  So, one of the things that I've studied in my research at the Institute for the Future are the social credit scoring systems that are being piloted in China.

• 55:49Peter Diamandis?

  In China, right?

• 55:50Speaker 00

  And, you know, I think folks who have heard about it, but maybe not been exposed to the details of these programs, they, they have this idea that there's one social credit score program and it's designed by the government. In fact, the government has asked different municipalities and different companies and

• 56:11Speaker 00

  Organizations to create their own versions and they've been prototyping and experimenting with many dozens of different approaches to a social credit score, which, you know, for folks maybe who haven't heard about it, it's the idea that you have a number that reflects actions you may have taken that are beneficial to society or detrimental to society. So if you're caught smoking in a non-smoking area, then you lose points. If you visit your elder parents often and to take them food, you gain points. And they have all these like surveillance technologies to track where you jaywalking, where you donating

• 56:51Speaker 00

  blood. And so on one hand, it's this whole dystopian surveillance state aspect, which is horrible. But still, you know, I think we need to study these things and watch what's happening and see what we can learn from them. Are there ethical versions or better versions and what Or can people opt in? I found, right. And one of the things that seems to make these systems work better in that they do not increase anxiety or a sense of, you know, being watched, but that people actually feel like their communities are getting safer or better is when there are very few ways to lose points. Hardly anything you do can decrease your score,

• 57:36Speaker 00

  but there are abundant ways to earn points. So that instead of feeling like, oh, if I make one mistake, I'm going to be fined or not allowed to, you know, I'll be, I'll be like lower on the list for medical treatment, which some of the systems do this, right? You mess up, now you're really experiencing significant harms. Instead, those systems where it's like 100 ways to earn points for every one where you can lose points, those seem to have less deleterious effects. And, you know, I'm not in favor of authoritarian surveillance state technology. And yet, as I look at these programs and how they, how

• 58:16Speaker 00

  the technology is likely to spread, I'm also a realist and I do think surveillance technology will be scaled up and will be implemented. I want us to at least be able to think about what are the, what are the ways to minimize harms and maybe do something that Could have a positive impact and avoid, you know, the dystopian version.

• 58:41Peter Diamandis?

  Now, I, listen, I, I, I love this aspect of gamifying life and allowing people who want to do good to the world and their community to be recognized in that fashion in ways that are of real value. And, you know, facial recognition, all of that is, is here now. You know, if you, I just traveled back and forth to Greece and, you know, getting on the airplane, it's no longer, you know, showing your passport and ticket. It's like smile at the camera. It's like green light. Yes, you're the right person coming on. So it's here. It's coming fast. And as I like to say to people, you know, do you really think you have privacy? Um, you know, so that's a completely different conversation. All

• 59:22Peter Diamandis?

  right. Let's talk about one of my last but most important mindsets, one that is, I know, true in, in your life and the work that you do, which is a moonshot mindset. The, the sense of, of taking on a challenge that is a little bit scary and bigger than you normally would, going 10x bigger when the rest of the world is going 10%. What are your thoughts around moonshots? Are they, are they good? Are they bad? How do you, how do you talk to people about it?

• 59:53Speaker 00

  Yes. Well, I mean, I famously set a moonshot for the game developer community back in 2008, when I started speaking publicly about the idea that a game company or game designer would be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

• 1:00:10Peter Diamandis?

  Love that. Yes.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  And it wasn't, it's not a prediction. It wasn't a prediction. It was a provocation. I wanted to get developers and designers thinking, seriously, what kind of game would we have to make that this would not be a laughable idea? What, what kinds of benefits could we conceive of for games? How would we measure them? How would we justify or, or really validate a global positive impact? Would it be on mental health? Would it be on? Um, sense of social solidarity, if you like, we have more in common with people that we

• 1:00:51Speaker 00

  used to feel divided from. And how could we imagine the benefits such that even if a game developer never gets even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, let alone win it, that we have shifted the types of games that we believe we have an opportunity to create. And, uh, and so it's funny, somebody, um, just last month was asking me about this prediction. They're like, oh, you predicted that a game developer would get a Nobel Prize by 2023, because it was 15 years ago. I was like, that'll be plenty of time, like, no problem. Now it's next year. And so, you know, it's a reminder, it's not a prediction,

• 1:01:31Speaker 00

  it's a provocation. Let's use the moonshot to expand our, our sense of purpose and what we might try to achieve. And whether or not we actually get there, now we've, we've created a new set of possibilities.

• 1:01:48Peter Diamandis?

  In one sense, the gaming industry, um, you know, puts these moonshots into every game where it's the, you know, the final boss battle, you know, and it's, um, and it's a, it's a journey to get there, but you've got this end goal that's motivating you in, in, you know, I mean, you know this better than everybody, uh, how much energy people invest into a game over the course of weeks, months, years.

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:17Peter Diamandis?

  But we don't necessarily have that in our lives because we don't allow ourselves, or maybe it's not framed properly. Uh, and we don't know how to frame it properly.

• 1:02:27Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, one of the things that always stood out to me about the X Prize is that it's really about lifting up an entire community and increasing our collective capacity, our collective intelligence about a problem that we're, that we're trying to solve or a goal we're trying to achieve. And, you know, whether one team wins. There you hopefully are creating a whole field, the whole movement. And I think with gaming, you know, that's always been so fascinating to me. A new game drops and a whole wiki goes up overnight and you've got thousands of people streaming their play so that we can all like you take

• 1:03:05Peter Diamandis?

  Learn from each other.

• 1:03:06Speaker 00

  Right. You take a problem that literally nobody knows anything about. And you've got hundreds of thousands or millions of people all trying to solve it at the same time. And the collective intelligence about that problem, the incredible surge of intelligence that's created through everybody playing it at the same time. Right? One of my favorite stats was like one in four people who play the Call of Duty series take off work or school the day that a new game drops because they want to stay home and play and be part of that first 24 hours. That's, you know, I think it's trying to, how do we create that sense of incredible, concentrated, collaborative concentration on a problem, whether it's through something

• 1:03:49Speaker 00

  like a game or an X Prize or these social simulations that I run. When you, when you get that creative lift of everybody trying to do it at the same time, that's, that's what gets me really excited.

• 1:04:00Peter Diamandis?

  Is it possible, I mean, the amount of cognitive surplus that goes into gameplay is massive, right? Just around the world. I don't think we'll have any idea of the amount. Is it, is it possible to, and I know you've worked towards this, but you know, moonshot here for me is how do we engage the same game dynamics and gameplay into solving the world's biggest problems? I mean, X Prize is a, is a take on that in some regard. But how do you think about that and in the field, in the, in the frame of, of moonshots and incentivizing people to go for something big?

• 1:04:39Speaker 00

  I mean, my personal moonshot for applying the creativity and collective intelligence of gamers to real world problems is to have Something like a Super Bowl Sunday where once a year, there is a game that drops that is related to a real crisis or challenge that we might face. So you know, the most people I've ever had concurrently participate in a simulation of a future challenge is about 20,000 people. Right. What if we, it's good, it's good. I mean, we definitely see a lot of cool, otherwise hard to predict stuff come out of that. But what if you could have 200,000

• 1:05:22Speaker 00

  or 2 million or 20 million? Think about the amount of

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  just having that 24 hours of creative lift around a problem and gaming out. The internet's got, you know, let's say this, you know, the satellites have been shut down. Internet's down, GPS is down, telecom's down. How do we like survive as we try to

• 1:05:45Speaker 00

  live through this incredible shutdown? Have people game that out for 24 hours? What would you do? What would you need? How would you help? What are your skills? How are you putting them in service to the problem? We could have millions of people do that once a day. I mean, one for one day, once a year.

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  We would, we would have some very interesting ideas generated, but more so the people who participate, what I have found, the biggest lasting impact is that you are forever hailed by that problem, that if things start to happen in the real world that are suggestive, this is a growing threat, the risk is more likely, it jumps out at you because you have essentially created that dopamine response in your brain, the same way we had people playing pandemics for the next 10 years. Anytime there's anything, new virus, what, what? I should listen to that because you have a dopamine response to it. So if we could get

• 1:06:39Peter Diamandis?

  You've pre-prepped your brain.

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:40Peter Diamandis?

  You've pre-prepared that network to pay attention.

• 1:06:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. So even if, you know, 19 out of the 20 million people participating don't have any actually great ideas, like 20 million out of 20 million will have prepared their brains to Pay attention, be less shocked, be able to, you know, act faster, notice the changes faster, hopefully adapt faster, not get into this situation where we're denying reality, right? We want people to feel smart when a disruption happens instead of denying it, which we saw so much of, really in the past decade, especially as compared to, instead of denying what's happening, let's make you feel smart when it happens and you feel like you are one of the people on the planet who is supposed to do something about it.

• 1:07:25Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, you're, you're, again, it's the, the concept of agency that, yes, I know about this problem, I'm familiar with it, I understand what it means and I can take an action to help ameliorate it or move it forward. I, I imagine when you take on a moonshot, it changes the way you think about what's possible, it stretches your mind in, in some, in some way, right? I mean, and I go back to the game world, which is sort of the analogy for life, where I'm starting the game and I'm learning along the way, I'm such a noob at the beginning and there's like this, I've watched on YouTube videos, the, you know, the, the boss battle at the end,

• 1:08:06Peter Diamandis?

  there's no way I'm going to possibly be able to achieve that, but you know, as you play the game, you're gaining the skills to get to that final level.

• 1:08:15Speaker 00

  I mean, I really think that experience of personal growth and noticing, wow, I'm getting better, I'm improving, I mean, that's, that is definitely part of the structural benefits of moonshots, right? Is that because you're, you're all, if you set such an ambitious goal that you're not achieving it tomorrow, you're not achieving it next month, or even next year, you're going to stay on that path and you'll be able to keep reflecting and keep noticing, I'm getting better, learning more, figuring stuff out, taking in that feedback. And I think, you know, I like, like to say, as a futurist, working on the 10-year timeline and imagining

• 1:08:58Speaker 00

  things 10 years out, we have all this time spaciousness as a result. I mean, if you're trying to solve a problem by tomorrow, there's like a limited maybe set of actions you can realistically take. If you have 10 years to solve it. Now you can imagine much more ambitious interventions and transformations. So I think, you know, for me, using time spaciousness, it's kind of like a cathedral or Grand Canyon for our imagination, the same way that we're in these big, beautiful spaces with with high ceilings or open expanses. We think more creatively, we think more optimistically, we just think bigger, right? So Moonshot is like, is like the same thing.

• 1:09:40Peter Diamandis?

  I, I love that, you know, and one of the challenges we have as humans is when we see a problem in the, in the future, climate crisis as an example, we sort of see the disaster that's going to be hitting, you know, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, and we accelerate it to today. And we forget the fact that we do have a decade or two of exponential tech growth that are going to give us brand new tools to solve it. And, and I think that's part of, you know, the exponential thinking that I'm trying to encourage folks. All right, we've come to the end of our conversation here and I know that I'm so excited about all of these topics. Here's my challenge, my question for you.

• 1:10:24Peter Diamandis?

  If tomorrow you could snap your fingers and I would fully fund an X Prize and launch it globally, what is an X Prize, you know, a grand challenge that you'd want the world focused on solving? Do you have an idea of what you'd love?

• 1:10:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. We need a lot, we need a long COVID X Prize, or maybe think more expansively about post-viral chronic illness, post-viral disability, so that we're thinking about all forms of chronic fatigue, autoimmune responses to infections that have historically been so under researched, undertreated, you know, people have been shamed out of, you know, even believing that like that what the symptoms they have are real. We saw that replicated with long COVID, but now the world is waking up and saying, okay, our bodies do this weird thing and it is affecting many hundreds of millions of people

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  by the end of this, you know, pandemic that we'll have lived through. I mean, that is, to me, that That not only solves the problem we have today, but it makes the whole future better. If this is something we can understand and know how to prevent or reverse or correct, then we can face any viral future we face, which we know there's going to be more viruses. This is what we're, if we're, if we live long enough, you know, knock on wood, for decades more, we'll see this again. We'll live through this again. So in a way, it's about making us, I think, braver for the futures that are coming and helping alleviate suffering that is on the ground today.

• 1:12:11Peter Diamandis?

  I love that. All right. An X Prize for addressing long COVID and for the implications of our future pandemics and actually preventing those future pandemics. Because you're right, this is just, this is the early warning system. Hopefully, we humans are smart enough to have paid attention here. Dr. Jane McGonigal, a pleasure, Jane. Thank you for your time and your brilliance, and thank you for the work that you do in the world.

• 1:12:36Speaker 00

  Thank you, Peter. I can't wait to listen to all the other episodes.