what is the myth of peter thiel and what is the reality?e myth of all these founders is that they are somehow singular and that they are somehow divine, omnipotent beings. 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. emily: i am curious about your background, and what should you along the way. i know that you were born in germany and moved around a lot, you went to south africa and namibia. peter: i went 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 shaped me a lot. emily: what were your parents like? peter: my dad was an engineer. my mom was a homemaker. they were focused on education. emily: you were raised an evangelical christian and did not believe in anything like evolution? peter: i still consider myself a christian and i think it is important to have a very different perspective on things, because it pushes you to either d

peter thiel talks about this. the point peter makes, and i agree with that, is there never is one.re will never be another microsoft. there will never be another google. there was just the one. it is the same thing -- people look to whatsapp. we have founders come in all the time -- there will not be another whatsapp. there will be new things. what do we know about the new things? they will be viewed as completely crazy. the one thing we know is that nobody will think it's the next best thing. it will be out on the fringe. it will be considered bizarre. it will be software as a service in 1999. everybody is going to be like, there is no way. like, it could never possibly work. 10-years later that is the thing. emily: the marc andreessen, everybody. ♪ ♪ francine: welcome to "leaders." santander is one of the oldest and biggest banks in the world. with a footprint in spain, the u.k., and the united states, it is a truly global bank with more than 100 million customers. now recently, the spanish lender had undergone several big changes, most recently when emilio botin, the executive c

peter thiel talks about this. the point peter makes, and i agree with that, is there never is one.ill never be another microsoft. there will never be another google. there was just the one. it is the same thing -- people look to whatsapp. we have founders come in all the time -- there will not be another whatsapp. there will be new things. what do we know about the new things? they will be viewed as completely crazy. the one thing we know is that nobody will think it's the next best thing. it will be out on the fringe. it will be considered bizarre. it will be software as a service in 1999. everybody is going to be like, there is no way. like, it could never possibly work. 10-years later that is the thing. emily: the marc andreessen, everybody. ♪ i just had a horrible nightmare. my company's entire network went down, and i was home in bed, unaware. but that would never happen. comcast business monitors my company's network 24 hours a day and calls and e-mails me if something, like this scary storm, takes it offline. so i can rest easy. what. you don't have a desk bed? don't be left

. >> so while you are at stanford, you met peter thiel. >> yes. ter and i had both been told about each other by people we knew. i was told he was really right wing, he was told i was really left-wing. we grabbed coffee, i think we argued for eight hours. we said that was fun, let's do that again. >> you went to oxford and studied philosophy, why? >> if i'm an academic, i can write about both of these interesting questions. i'm fascinated about how people think and reason. how we communicate. what i realized was that the course of becoming an academic professor was to be a very narrow scholar. you wanted to be an expert on the thing that only 10 to 20 people in the world knew about. what i wanted to do was how to help millions of people? within six months at oxford, i knew that i wasn't going to be an academic. i was going to come back here. >> that is when you decided to be an entrepreneur. >> that is when i started to work on software. i started thinking of myself as an entrepreneur later. >> you dabbled in the near death spiral at apple. did you

people like paypal co-founder peter thiel and oracle founder larry ellison have already invested millions of dollars into the so-called longevity movement. >> some of this money has gone to aubrey de grey - he's been talking about aging for decades. a lot of poeople in science say that he's more talk than real science but he claims this is no longer fringe thinking. he believes we can actually stay young or return to youthfulness. we're actually going to take him out and see just how young we feel. de grey is a biologist and co-founded the sens research institute in mountain view california which raises money to support anti-aging work by scientists. he says most people are stuck in a pro-aging trance - where we think growing old is inevitable rather than a solvable medical problem. >> we have a completely, biologically invalid and incorrect idea that there is some kind of black and white wall between aging itself - whatever the hell we mean by that. and the diseases of old age--like alzheimer's, or cardiovascular disease or cancer. >> he argues that we must treat aging as the disease its

peter thiel, another venture capitalist, also a huge fan, even though you perhaps may poke fun at himn season one with a guy named peter gregory. i know that some of these people you talk to on a regular basis. so who did you talk to make sure you were getting it right? to make sure you had geek cred? mike: lots of people. early on, i didn't -- before this went to series, i did not have quite the resources, so one of my best friends from high school, his nephew is a top programmer at google. there was a lawyer we had a connection to who works with startups. but once we got going, we went all over the place. went to google, facebook, yelp. emily: larry, sergey, and mark zuckerberg, were they happy to talk to you? mike: we have not met them yet. alec: no. though we did see that larry and sergey were wearing our shirts when they did the ice bucket challenge. emily: ok. mike: they had a houli and a pied piper shirt on. emily: what is your take on the sexism issue in silicon valley? mike: it is kind of surprising to me that it took this long for anything like this to happen. ♪ emily: i won

his name was peter thiel. he was giving a lecture on currency trading.nd it turned out to be a really, really small class. and i just chatted him up afterwards, because i just sort of felt like -- i was definitely not there to learn about currency trading, i was there to sleep and get some air-conditioning. and i ended up listening. he seemed like a really smart guy. he said, "well, what are you doing with yourself, max?" i said, "i'm going to start a company." he said, "oh, great! we should have breakfast." "ok, when?" "how about tomorrow morning?" and we met at hobee's on embarcadero road, and he had the red, white, and blue shake. and we talked about companies and ultimately started paypal. emily: the paypal story is sort of long and legend, as we know. looking back, was selling it the right thing? the right time? max: the team was very tired. probably the right call. but, on the emotional front, it was very difficult. on the business front, probably the right thing. emily: what was difficult about it? max: it's your baby. it was this gangly teenager

peter thiel is one of silicon valley's most audacious and contrarian investors.e founding paypal and funding facebook. he is now is backing rocket ships, dna manipulation, meat grown in labs, and a start-up island off the coast. he has paid kids to skip college and start companies instead, in hopes of building a better future, faster. and building flying cars along the way. joining me is the bold and controversial venture capitalist and now the author of a new