>> he has been called the king of the tech world, peter thiel made his name founding paypal and funding facebook, and now is backing rocket ships and starting islands off the coast. he skipped college and started companies instead. i know there will be flying cars along the way, joining me is the bold and controversial venture capitalist and now the author of

peterbook, "zero to one," thiel. >> thank you. one," what does that mean? >> if we are going to take our society to a new level, it will require new things. you argue for the last few decades, we have been in a tech slowdown, have facebook and apple not been innovative enough? >> as a society, i would argue we have not done as much as we could have your it there are not as many innovations in energy and biotechnology, and not as many as we would like, transportation, it is not moving any faster. >> one thing you would learn from entrepreneurs is don't copy mark zuckerberg, why not? >> mark zuckerberg wanted to

,tart a social networking site bill gates wanted to start an operating system, and so in some sense you cannot copy them because they did not copy somebody else. >> you also suggest that they, with one very important truth that very few people iagree with you on. >> i think ray companies have a sense of mission. companies, great they have a sense of mission. they have a sense of where a good investor has a patent and has good technology, and that is the best kind of investor to have. >> you say google is a anomaly? -- a monopoly? >> it is. they tend to focus on all these other areas. ebay has a monopoly in the

auction space. >> is facebook a monopoly? >> i would argue it is not as robust a monopoly as google, because there are other places that pop up in the social networking space every year, you think of google -- think of twitter and snapchat. >> do you think they could ever become to powerful that they would stifle innovation? >> there has always been enough innovation to keep things flowing. >> does that mean that you think someday that google and amazon will not be as common it as they are? >> i think they will be dominant a while, but i don't think they will be dominant forever. >> do you see one or the other becoming dominant? toit is always difficult

judge this, but if i had to pick one, i do tend to think of google as the one that is on an incredible arc at this point. >> why? >> they are trying to extend into other areas. exploringonopoly is so many different things, robotics, go glass, self driving glass, selfle driving cars. what kind of project are you most excited about? >> i think self driving cars is going to change transportation. >> you compare compelling startups, do they should -- should they be like cults? >> they should not be like colts, that is something that is anng, but there is always intense understanding that something is true that very few other people do. must -- in onee

musk believes that he has a unique set of ideas to motivate people there to motivate his workers. a> another thing you say that messed up startup cannot the fixed. white is that? >> -- why is that? if you get the foundation wrong, it is hard to fix. >> can hp be fixed? >> i would argue that hp and yahoo! are not technology companies at all. they were technology companies in the 80's and 90's, and even though they were technology companies in the 80's and 90's, they are not now.

>> even though they are not technology companies, can they compete? >> there are all kinds of things but ito streamline them, would not be good to streamline them. --you mentioned merson myers myers.risa >> i think she should not be evaluated on what she cannot do, she is trying to improve those incrementally and that is fantastic. >> other than what you have written in this, what are some things that you believe that very few people agree with you on? >> certainly an issue that i have been outspoken on is college education, it has become something of a double. a trillion dollars of student debt, not getting what we are

paying for, and he eats to be rethought of in a very fundamental way. you could start education over again, what would you do? >> with there be no school. -- school? >> they are stuck in the 19th century, i think you need to figure out more ways to make them innovative, let students learn at their own pace. >> you do have a scholarship where you give aspiring amount of money to not go to school, and i know some of those entrepreneurs have gone back to school. >> most of them have not. it was designed as a two-year program in which people could take a break from college. i think across the board, they have found it to be an incredible learning experience. toent to stanford, i went law school, i might do that again. >> i was going to ask. beif i did it again, i would

wanting to do it my own way. >> would you invest in the paypal mafia? having gone to stanford and having met a lot of the people there was a valuable. having been to other universities may have discouraged me into going into tech. i would be tempted to be a teacher. >> the guy that wants to get rid of education was to be a teacher? >> i am not against learning, i am against education. who builtsix people paypal, four of them build bombs in high school. >> i was not one of them. [laughter] ♪

>> something that you talk about is the danger of founders the coming captive to their own myths. what is the myth of peter thiel and what is the reality? >> the myth is that it is

somehow singular and that there is somehow divine, omnipotent means. these things that i am doing are not solo efforts. i have friends that i talked to a lot and people i talk to closely. >> i am curious about your background, and what should you along the way. i know that you were worn in germany and moved around a lot, you went to south africa and india. to seven different elementary schools as a kid, and so i felt a little bit like an outsider instead of an insider. so there is kind of a combination of outsider-insider perspective that shape me a lot. >> what were your parents like? >> my dad was an engineer. >> you were raised and evangelical christian and did not believe in anything like evolution? >> i still consider myself a

christian and i think it is important to have a very different respective on things because it pushes you to either defend your ideas really well or to have a much he per understanding. >> on paper you worked in a new york law firm and you worked on downs --eet, it's it sounds pretty standard, where is the renegade in your? i there was a sense that could not see myself that happy -- >> was there any event in life that triggered you to start down a different path? >> it was a bit of an evolution. there were late nights at the law firm where i was asking what i was doing there. >> who do you call? >> there is something about a set of my friends from paypal, there is an intense experience and i think those bonds will never quite be matched in their intensity. >> the first line in chapter 14,

"of the six people who founded paypal, four of them will bonds built bombs in-- high school." >> i was not one of those for. -- four. [laughter] >> who built the bombs. it wasn't you? >> i can't say. -- assuccessful successful as so many members of the paypal mafia has been, you have also had failure. why? the visionot achieve of a completely new currency system in the world. >> what about bitcoins? atif we could not succeed paypal, i would be tempted to come up with reasons why no one could succeed at it. >> do you think the chances of

it succeeding are unlikely? is that it is slightly too cumbersome to work at the end of the day as a new payment system. >> you once invested in facebook. did mark convince you to invest or did you convince mark to invest? >> i knew it was growing very fast, they needed more money for computers, and i convinced them that i would be very hands-off. ? >> do worry that facebook could get distracted? >> it is always a challenge. you have to do is things, because you are not in a static world, and you don't want to do too many. you want to do the right number of things. customers include the cia and the air force, yet there is so much mystery around it. as i understand, it is using data on a acid scale to solve problems from disease to

terrorism. >> it is always an interactive problem. be processed by computers, and the parts of it that are process can be analyzed by humans. it was critical in connecting all the dots in fighting bin laden. >> do you think you could stop the next 9/11, or has it already? are going toink we do it by projecting military forces throughout the world, i think we will do it by sort of very cleverly uncovering these conspiracies before they come together. >> some have expressed concern that your client could actually use it to do evil things? do you worry about that? parts toare always two these technologies, and technologies are never intrinsically good, there is always a question as to how they

could be used or abused. i think there are a lot of checks in place. >> someone described it as plugging into the matrix. >> it gives the government a bunch of data, and we discovered a terrorist plot that the government had not suspected that existed, and they had to reclassify all sorts of data as classified. >> would you say it has helped thwart multiple terrorist plots? >> i suspect that is true. >> what is the craziest sector that you might enter the would not expect? >> one that we started to look at that is wildly out of fashion is nuclear power industry's. is it possible to build safer, cheaper, better reactors with all of these new technologies? and when you look at the technologies, it looks like the answer is definitely yes. i am very worried about the regulatory issues with it. but i think it is worth tackling

that some more. >> i want to talk more about your issue with man versus machine. you are not concerned that machines are going to take our jobs? much, i think technology has freed people up to do other things. yout some point though, said in the 22nd century, computers could am smarter than us. there is always an interesting sort of debate, with when you -- will artificial intelligence that than computers and how will that change thing? i don't think that will happen for a long time, but i think our political and cultural problems, i think it is like having extraterrestrial landing on the lannett. with aliens landing -- on the planet. with aliens landing on the planet, we ask if they are friendly or not friendly. pondered about how humans could potentially survive in the future?

>> we should give nuclear power very serious consideration, it does come -- it does not create greenhouse gases. >> is mars going to be first? >> yes. >> you ponder several other different futures, including human extinction. what are the possibilities about that? >> what are the technologies we need to develop. we need to stay focused on that and i think our prospects are very good. >> you have a startup island off the coast. what is your vision there? >> this is a very small site project. is it possible to create some new community that we could start a new society that would have very different rules and be able to govern itself? this is very far in the future, but it has a lot of people interested. >> so you're talking about another country?

>> it would be another country, and it would cost tens of millions to build, more capital than i have. >> you think that you may live to be 120. >> i certainly hope to, yes. ♪

>> you have been portrayed on the hbo show "silicon valley" and the island has been portrayed on the show. do you dispute? t it would not necessarily be me. gregory!called peter he invested in an island!

>> the character is determined to make things happen, but people are driven in slightly different crazy ways. i think as a whole it is a very positive show. >> do you believe you can grow meat and a lab? isyes, i think the problem if somebody will eat it. >> what you think about failure? iswhen a company fails, it always a tragedy. it is devastating for people to go through it. >> what do you consider your biggest failures? >> there are some things that work better than others there -- others, there are concepts that have worked better than others. a lotnow you have thought about the extension of human life. you think you may live to 120. >> i certainly hope to, yes.

a do you think about taking mortality pill, a super exercise regimen? >> i think on the nutrition side, there are some very basic things that can be done. you should not eat sugar. that is the one nutritional rule. >> you still in sugar? sugaeat sugar? in >> i still do, but not so much. i do the paleo diet. >> new technology, like what? fore need to find cures cancer, cures for alzheimer's, a way to store organs so they do fall apart, and find other ways to stop people's bodies from breaking down. the thing i am doing is on an growth hormone --

study. it helps maintain muscle mass, so you are much is likely to get bone injuries or arthritis, stuff like that as you get older. there is also an increase of cancer risk. >> you're not worried about that? >> i am hopefully we will get cancer cures in the next decade. the other thing that is happening is all of the stuff on the bio level, where you have as many. many bacteria inside of you as stars in the universe. hopefully we can reset your serial egos -- your bacterial ecosystem. , thank you so much for joining us today on "studio 1.0," it was great having you today. ♪

>> welcome to "money clip," where we tie the best stories, interviews together. vladimir putin says there is -- no crises. too soon normalize relations does not mean you can order cigars just yet. today's wildcard and we follow the trail of a global scam in the forex market. then it is the time of the year for prospective college students, but is it worth it? finally, a person wants to live to 120 years old and he has a secret that will get him there. who is to blame for russia's economic crisis?