A Billionaire’s Guide To Healing Your Mind And Extending Your Life - Christian Angermayer

But I do personally think it's the best thing I've ever done in my whole life, full stop. And I was like, look, you're clearly insane. Like, I've never done it, and I'm not going to touch an illegal drug. But the biggest interference is death.

It's not my, I don't choose the time, I don't choose, like, and we need to change that. My guest today is a friend. But he's also most definitely the most interesting human being I've ever encountered in my life. He's an entrepreneur.

He's an investor. But he's also just a really nice guy. He's invested and started companies in some of the most fascinating industries, from psychedelics to space tech, to artificial intelligence, to cryptocurrencies, to fintech. You name it, he's in there.

In fact, he's the single biggest investor slash driving force behind the whole psychedelics industry, which is currently trying to cure mental health disorders. This is, undoubtedly, the most interesting person I know. And I think this is the type of podcast where you're going to demand a party. Because we spoke for two hours, and even I was left feeling that I was only scratching the surface, and I wanted to know more.

The man I'm talking about is Christian Angermeyer. I genuinely believe he's going to become, if he isn't already, one of Europe's most important investors and entrepreneurs. In the same way that people praise Elon Musk for all the work he's in the US, I think he's Europe's answer to Elon Musk. Without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is The Barrier of the CEO.

I hope nobody's listening. But if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Christian, I know so much about you and the work you do. I know you're, you know, I've observed your behavior in person over the last, you know, six, six, twelve months.

Deeply, deeply fascinating. But the part of you that I know very, very little about is your early years, your upbringing, your childhood. Cute child. Really?

I've been fascinated by that part of your life. So could you tell me a little bit more about the childhood that made the man? The main point I'm always making, which I'm literally happy about, is that I was a very, very happy child. Meaning I'm still a very happy person, but I think the reason why I'm groundedly happy is because I had a great, like, how do you say, childlike upbringing.

Like, I was growing up in a 90-people village. So, I literally knew everybody. But there were a lot of other children. So, I'm an only child, but, like, I had a lot of children, sort of same age, plus, minus four years to grow up with.

And we were literally, like, in the TV series. We were out all day. Like, in summer and winter, like, it was very much like you would picture, like, what is this American TV series where they, my day on a farm or whatever. Like, it was like that.

Like, sort of. Idealic childhood. Yes. Really idyllic.

Like, yeah, no crime. Like, no risk. Like, it was literally my mom sent me out in the morning. In summer and winter.

And I came back in the evening since I'm, like, five. Like, I was, because there was no risk for anything. Like, yeah, so that was sort of the very, very, this was the night. And then we moved to a town in Kansas City, town with, like, 2,000 people.

So, it's nearby, like, a kilometer apart. So, it was all very, very rural. Very, which I like. So, I'm actually was thinking about if I have children or when I have children, then how to recreate that, which I think won't work.

So, but, like, I think it's great to have nature, which is also, by the way, I mean, already jumping. But, like, yeah, because, you know, that I do a lot in mental health work. Like, one thing which is really healthy, very, very simple for your mental health is nature. Like, there's even in Japan, they prescribe, like, a walk in the forest as a treatment for depression.

So, anyway, so I grew up in this super nice childhood. Like, I always was, finally, very entrepreneurial. Yeah, and nobody else is. Not in my family, not in this village.

Like, so that was always, literally, like, with six. My mom still has the, so the first thing which I did when I learned writing was writing invoices. Like, some tiny bills. Like, oh, give me five cents for salad.

So, I was actually having a very flourishing gardening business. So, since I'm four, like, five. That's okay. Sorry, wrong in terms.

I stopped it later on when I was 12. Like, no, this is how I started my first business. But my mom still remembers that the first thing I did with my writing skills was writing her an invoice for salad and everything. And I was literally liking the movie.

It's very stereotyped. I was selling lemonade to neighbors. Then I was selling lollipops in school. I was selling literally everything.

Like, I made a business out of everything. So, I remember when I went for my first cinema ever. I think I was, like, seven. Then I was so fascinated that people are buying for something, which is apparently also on TV.

And they didn't get the difference. So, then I started charging my parents at home when they wanted to switch on the TV because I was planning I was running a cinema. So, yeah, so, literally everything I was doing I saw through the lens of a business. And when you look at your channel, my parents would be worried.

in a nice way, but they were worried. They always tend to be with kids that are slightly different. Exactly. Yeah, so, I look like them.

So, the discussion, if they're maybe not my parents, was early on the table. Yeah, but, like, sort of, from the way how I see the world, and I'm very different. What were the factors, the sort of macro factors at play that were making you into this entrepreneur at that age, but also the entrepreneur you came to come? This was always there.

Sometimes I think for myself, because my parents were never around, they create this big sort of void of freedom and independence, which I thought made this connection in my mind that if I was going to get something that came from my behavior, I'm thinking about those factors. that, you know, freedom, I've heard you say that your parents were very keen to just be happy. Yeah, exactly. They were always like, I can be whatever I want, but it was not that, I don't know if that automatically leads to entrepreneurship.

It could also have left to be an artist or whatever. I don't think there is a connection between freedom. It's actually the freedom to be whatever you want, and then I think maybe you, maybe it's genetic, maybe it's like, I don't know. I really still have the point, it was always there.

There is not a moment I can think of where I sort of changed, but it was literally, since I can think, since I'm four or five, it's like very, very early, it was always there which I think it was a very nerdy child as well. So I, yeah, I, I love, actually I did love school for an evening now, more talking than later high school for the one reason. And even if I look back now, I've really missed it a bit because it was the only time in life where you do something for the pure reason of learning something with no material sort of. I mean, I turned that and also in the business because I started my, this was my first real business was when I started a tutoring business when I was 14.

And then I, What was the business? Tell me. Tutoring, like giving sort of advocates. Yeah, because I was extremely good in school.

So I was always the best one in my school. That was practically always the best one in like the Bavaria level, like top 10, yeah. And that was always, I like to explain stuff. So, so I think, I think that still helps me now because it's part of fundraising to explain complex sort of things to people.

Anyway, so I liked, I did like to explain stuff and I did like to, and I was good in the matter. So, so I started tutoring and there was this tiny thing, I think a bit that because the teachers very much liked me because I was always like a good child, like everybody who came to me automatically became a little bit better because teachers were treating these children more nicer because they were coming to me. So it became these sort of positive, virtuous circle that more and more parents were like, oh, but we have to send our children to a Christian because it really works. And I think, what are you doing for these kids?

Tutoring, like how are you- Teaching them the same thing the same thing because they work is what the ones who didn't perform well. How are you calling them is tutoring, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're your peers.

They're the same age. The same age or younger. No, they're all younger. Like it was mainly like a little bit younger, like one or two years, but not a lot younger.

So anyway, and then it was like after half a year, I was so like full, like I think I worked like 10, 15 hours a week probably all the time like I was tutoring. And then I was like, how do I really scale it up? And it sounds not very banal, but for me, this was like the first time I really thought about business. Like in an entrepreneurial way, how do you scale it up?

In fact, I realized I have a brand because parents want to send their children to me. So I was employing other pupils my same age, even a little bit older and said, you can teach on my brand and you get half of it and I get half of it. So 50% margin. And I started employing and I continuously until my final grade had like 10 people, like always employed, who were teaching other children.

So it was a very lucrative business. Meaning four and child. That's crazy. That's crazy.

And then you get to 16, you get to 18. And that period of your life, I hear that in Bavaria they have this like public service you've got to do for a year. I just was thinking how compliant do I have to be? Because then it's all, I think, what is it called when it's out of times back?

Like nobody can, nobody can claw it back. Because what happened is like, I was always extremely libertarian and we had back then, it changed to Germany, but we had back then, like the Israelis have still, you had to go to the military for a year. And I think in general, this is wrong. Not because I'm in the military, but I think you can employ people.

It's the job. Like people should want to be a soldier or should want to be something else. But like, I think as a government, I mean, in general, I think the less government the better. So I was thinking, hopefully this comes out of course from me, but because I was thinking all the time how to avoid it.

Unfortunately, I was not daring enough back then. There were tricks to do it. Like you could have had that, you know, sort of mentally, or whatever. Like I was not brave enough to go on with that.

So I decided to do, you can also opt to do civil service, like go to a hospital or whatever. So, and I tried to be really nice. So I picked the job, which I knew is, it didn't really require me. It was more like, okay, you had to put these children who didn't want to go to the military.

You could say you're a pacifist. You had to put them somewhere. It was not that somebody was dependent on me. So I was sitting in a hospital and my only job was to bring stuff from A to B, like whatever.

So then I made an, I remember that I made a, how do you say, a proposal that if we reorganize everything in the hospital, I could do my job in an hour and then go home. So this was like, I was 18 and then they were like, okay, this is crazy. Like it's not really, really popular. So, and then I made the decision that I'm not really going to show up anymore.

And the only way to do that was to get always like doctors if I would have gone, and I think this is sometimes how crazy stuff happens and then it changes sort of the whole course of your life, practically. So I think if I would have gone from high school to university, I would have just been in that sort of mode like of learning being extremely good. So I guess I would have just went on with what I was doing, like meaning producing great academic outcomes. So then came this one year which I was completely bored.

So I got these doctors writing letters that didn't need to show up. But in return, I started managing money for them because I was already speculating on the stock market since I was like 15, 16 and I was not bad in it. So I became friends with all of these doctors, even in the hospital I was working. And they were like, well, we help you if you help us because this was the early days of the, you know, this was 1998, 1999.

Like this was the stock market boom, So everybody wanted to be in it. So this was sort of my trade-off for these letters. And so, and I can't be, I'm easily bored. So I always want to do something.

So practically because, so I was not the type of person who like, okay, I have a free year now and I'm going to spottying. Like I was like, okay, I have a free year now. I'm going to do more tutoring. Yeah, I'm going to do managing money for these doctors.

Yeah. And sort of that completely switched my, I say, course. Like, so I wasn't, I actually wrote a book. Yeah.

I tried to sell that. This didn't work out. But I did a lot of entrepreneurial stuff just because I had time. Yeah.

And then when I practically went to uni that year later, I was sort of mentally not anymore in that sort of learning world. I wasn't like, okay, I want to be an entrepreneur world. And then I was, this sort of when I met, re-met actually two guys who finally were my tutors in a scholarship I had had during high school already, like for, sounds awkward, but for highly different children. Yeah.

So I was sort of in summer school, I was in university. This is where I knew them from. We re-met kind of, and they were telling me about this idea and it just sounded great. And they were like my tutors in terms of, I was like, okay, these guys are the pinnacle of biotech.

And then I was the one let's do a company together and we did and this worked out really well and then I dropped out of uni. So I think this house was sort of, I think without this one year in hospital or sort of one year in hospital, not in hospital, yeah, I would have stayed in a completely different past. I hear you talk a lot about you believe in like the serendipity of moments and spirituality, which almost seems surprising because you're such a scientific led person. Whereas you do believe that things happen at the right time.

Totally, totally. Actually, I'm actually very extreme with that. So I, everything which has happening, literally everything. Disconversation today.

Well, this conversation happens because we planned it. Yeah. But like the fact for example that we met originally, yeah, while I'm a mutual friend, whatever. So I'm always, everything which is happening to me, which I didn't actively say, I need to have a meeting, which is not in my usual rhythm.

Yeah. I always think A, it's happening for a reason and also it's happening for a good reason. Even that stuff. I believe in this power of positive thinking, but like more like people always say, ah, this means like if you wake up in the morning, you're, if you feel great, your intention is in that direction.

So look, I'm very pragmatic. First of all, I dare to talk about this stuff because I'm very also scientific. So I'm like, look, nobody will think I'm crazy. But the other thing is like, there are multiple explanations and I don't really care about the explanation.

You can have a very spiritual explanation. Yeah. It's the force of the universe. And then you have a very pragmatic explanation.

If you continuously expect positive stuff, then you look out for that stuff and then it's more like a numbers game or like a, yeah, but I don't care. Like it works tremendously well for me since I'm 16. Yeah. And I had these, I had some very crazy things which go borderline, which you could explain like sort of with statistics or whatever.

Yeah. So maybe too crazy. But like, but there were some, there were some things where I tend to believe in the spiritual explanation. Yeah.

Because they were, yeah, I think harder to explain or you can always explain it. You know what I mean? Like, but I don't care. Like it does work tremendously well for me.

Okay. So going back to this company you founded with these two, your two sort of like university mentors, this company went on to be really successful. I think you said it's worth probably about 15 billion at last check market cap. Today, but I sold very early, but I sold when we went probably for a billion.

So it was actually fun. Do you regret something? Well, there's a short and long answer. No, because like the short answer is no because like A, that money was the basis for the rest.

Yeah. B, also people always mix up market cap and share price. So I sold the lower share price that is today, but the share price is not 15 next because they did capital increases. There was that little stuff.

so, so anyway, long story, it was an amazing start. Yeah. So, yeah, it was actually the quickest biotech IPO, I think in Germany ever. We IPO three years, three and a half years later after the foundation and for a billion.

So it was everything. And it was sort of, I dropped out of university before, but it like was the sort of catalyst, I would say. So I don't regret that. And since then, sort of I'm investing and being on the program somewhere in between, I would say.

I actually, so I'm chomping, I had this one story again, by the way, which is completely, you can, and like even a bit more. So I remember exactly, I was 14 years old and I was with my best friends back then in Munich, which is far away. For me, this was like going, going to the big story. And we spent the weekend with family members.

I remember every single day of the weekend, like what we did and like where, and we went to a bookstore, which is for Germans to listen. Back then it was like, sort of like, I don't know, a comic bookstore, 100 years old in Munich. I think it's still even there, although books are dying out. Smaller.

So it's in the prime location of Munich. And so I remember it. So I go into the bookstore and there was this whole, I was a promotion wall, which is one book, which is. the american think and grow rich from napoleon hill and you know like when movies like the 14 year old boy goes in and then the light is coming sort of that there was no music there was no like i was like that's it think i need to have the book so i bought the book and it was practically my first kind of napoleon hill is not as spiritual as some others but like that was my journey into that world of let's say spiritual infused success how do you define spiritual well there's like napoleon hill is sort of and i love it because they're all so old like they're all out of the 1920s so they don't have the zeitgeist which i think in terms of success is rather negative like so it's sort of like raw american only principles yes exactly like uh and napoleon hill has this why it was a great entry into that thing because his view was if you read the book starts that he says he got commissioned by um andrew carneady who was the steel magnate to find out into interviews which i think by what you are doing in a certain way yeah with successful people um and find out if they are common traits uh these traits are common denominators which make them successful and he did that with all the famous people of his time from andrew carneady himself to a lot of other famous people and then he made that into the book and he's actually saying that the question he doesn't answer the question why these uh rules sort of say work he's more a neutral observer and then the next one is actually there's a guy called joseph murphy who wrote similar books but more like with the spiritual undertone why these rules were same rules sort of more explanation why they work which went more into the religious world and then you have all the other law of attraction is nothing else which is sort of the modern version and the key which is a sort of a simplified version of an anyway simplified version yeah but at the end it's always the same rules some which think they are god-given some which say look again this is statistics whatever but they do work i deeply believe and these things do work yeah um visualization is that the main thing i think is two things is visualization so i meditate in the morning but it's not really meditation it's more like visualization so i i always have a plan for the week for the month for the year for my life yeah and everything kind of did come true so far so i'm always thinking what could i add like a wish list yeah and now again you can say if you add something and then you focus on it it might come true because you focus on it could be a very banal explanation that it's relentless execution and nothing magic and i don't care it's like i'm like well like yeah it does work so and i think it's two things visualization and it's also these that you have for example i'm not it's not very great but i'm trying to not have negative thoughts so and there is a number of negative thoughts you're gonna have anyway because you have to deal with stuff in front of business but for example i've never watched a horror movie since 20 years at least because it gives me negativity so i and i go the extra mile so i told for example friends when they are too much complaining and the first one friend can call for a problem but then i'm like let's go to the problem that's the solution that's what you're gonna do but if they will repeat it because some people want to not solve the problem they want to repeat the problem then like you can't call me on that topic because no negativity yeah so i really have a rule yeah so no negative movies i never watch a movie with a happy ending so i have people check or i check yeah before does it have a happy ending no bad endings nothing which makes me sad nothing which makes me negative because i'm not i'm not allowed in my own religious philosophy to have negative thoughts and feelings feelings are more important than thoughts because i think they are the underlying driver so and it sounds now maybe cheesy and simplified but i think if this is what i'm doing since i'm 14 and if you train yourself not and you will always have an sort of amount because sometimes hard things happen yeah i don't want to pretend as if my life was easy because i did have very hard times in business but even in those times i was lying in my bed literally and was like okay this is not fun what's happening right now but it must happen for a very very positive reason because this is how your world works and finally it always the worst things in my life turned into the best ones yeah so because i again and you can say that maybe somebody would say well because he was persistent and he didn't fall okay then this is the explanation maybe there's a deeper one i don't care i can always come back so but i would tell everybody a few things emotionally is like don't have negative thoughts just focus on positive sort of thoughts visualize these are the key things be happy so many things that you need to be happy because most people are again don't allow themselves to be happy and even think it's a little bit negative so this whole thing happened on instagram i want to come back to this point about this movies and because i think it's very much linked to your whole thing about alcohol and stuff this happiness equilibrium you talk about but just quickly on that point of being really positive and unapologetically positive and saying don't call me with the same problem twice don't interrupt my positivity there's this whole movement happening on instagram at the moment where there's such a thing as being toxic positive it's called bullshit like no no because that's one thing i think i mean again maybe so maybe i'm sitting there i'm already so old that there's another generation i'm thinking about the other generation and because i'm reading a lot like very old stuff and you find so crotest complaining about the youth so maybe that's a recurring thing yeah but i really think part part of the millennial culture of this victimization and always like this is this is so wrong this is so wrong yeah so to pre-take the question because they normally say well you're saying that because you're rich you're white yeah so i was like okay this is maybe a point let's go back because i didn't talk a lot about it but i'm happy sorry like i grew up in this 90 people village yeah i'm gay but i know i'm gay since i'm 11-ish roundabout so i was looking at sort of the world i was growing up in and i was like that's not gonna resonate here yeah so seriously like and that's very very uh very uh positive phrase yeah so in my school people were saying let's beat up gay people i was like that's not going well but i didn't think that there's anything bad by the way i didn't think these people were so obviously they were wrong but i was like they don't know better i'm not like these are bad people i was just like be pragmatic sometimes life is not fair sometimes life is not nice but you can decide if you react on it that's one of the other points i really believe in that you have these tiny millisecond in life on everything if somebody is sort of rude to you if somebody says something very bad and you can decide if you're hurt or not it's your decision by the way nothing's gonna hurt you if you decide you're not gonna be hurt yeah so i was like they don't know better and i can't by the way gay is not what defines me so i was like well then i'm not gay for a while till i'm out of here yeah i can kind of because there are other things which define me like friends like you know like you know what i mean it's not that i reduced myself to this one thing and was like and now i need to shout it out to the world and in return would have beaten up like i was like just don't do it like but don't blame the others yeah and then move away somewhere also i mean so like don't try to change everybody else work on yourself and like and your environment what you can change like i could have started like oh my god my life is miserable and growing up in this village and blah blah blah and actually talking about serendipity i'm honestly i'm but again i'm trained to see the positive stuff because if i look back if i would have been straight i wouldn't sit here for a very simple reason because i would have dated every single three minute i would have had yeah i would have enjoyed that yeah so but i couldn't so so what did i do i was working my ass off and learning all the time so in fact if i hadn't had the grades i had i would have ended the first money i had i would have never met these guys with whom i started a biology company yeah nothing would have happened i would have been an ordinary straight boy most likely smart yeah but not uber smart because sometimes it's smart and hard work to get grades yeah it's not all false and false so so so practically if you say like adversely or the negative thing being gained a very hostile environment and not talking about it and focusing on other stuff completely made my life yeah in a very positive way i wouldn't i mean yeah i i'm so happy that this was the case yeah and again and everybody should look everybody has um uh limitations and negative stuff but you should look at it and say they are there for a very positive reason and something amazing will come out of it i just need to have this continuous sort of expectation optimism yeah and you have a real sense of like personal responsibility that comes across like you'll take responsibility for yourself in your actions but who else it's like who else you're like the government or you know someone else the vaccine give the government a little bit of uh responsibility and it was totally wrong you don't want anybody to be responsible for you than yourself so going to this point about horror films which i thought was somewhat connected to what i've heard about your rule with alcohol and cigarettes i hear you've never drunk before ever you've never had a drink exactly so there were two reasons for it they were connected the one again by the way the one reason was because i was actually thinking like if i'm going to be drunk 14 15 i'm going to spill out i'm gay and then it's over so so my social life of being dying of the smoke yeah uh and i was also like i was very nerdy so teachers love me but i was also obviously school speaker of the school whatever so socially had a great life so i was like no let's not risk that no alcohol you could play the wrong stuff yeah so that was the one thing and the other thing was that always sort of because you do that as a child in general i think it's a good thing like if you have one weakness in my case the weakness for the time was being gay the others you build on your strengths which was like okay i think i'm kind of smart and also like smart in terms of learning smart i learned very easy i always had the best grades yeah so i was sort of focusing on that so i was also like alcohol could take that away from me uh because i thought it makes me dumb which by the way does yeah in a lot of amount so i still wouldn't drink but so these are my childish reasons not to drink and then i just decided okay i think i have the perfect equilibrium like uh being always happy having very good grades everything was perfect so i was like i'm not gonna touch any drug ever you still haven't touched alcohol cigarettes no i haven't drank alcohol i haven't smoked a cigarette ever i haven't smoked a joint ever i haven't smoked a joint ever i haven't anything like no comment i did i did actually drink alcohol the first time when i was like coffee uh first time when i was 28 so you wanted coffee as well i was even avoiding coffee and tea yeah because it was a rock it was almost like the very religious people so i would have been a good mormon um so um but then coffee i started drinking when i was 28.

there's something crazy here where you think okay so the guy that doesn't want to upset his equilibrium goes on to be the biggest psychedelic investor in the world i think there was a very good ground because what happened is so i had a discussion or dinner it was like a dinner discussion where somebody sat us next to each other uh with funny the joke and said oh you the guy was very or is a very famous um drug researcher like he's the baby of germany like a drug uh yeah uh advisor to the government yeah neuroscientist and somebody said oh you should sit next to each other because maybe you can loosen christian up a bit and you can drink a little bit of that alcohol so so this is how i met rhino's name um no but like it's exactly like everybody else would have said i remember that i was like oh my god that's awesome like and everybody else would have said well every single thing happening i see it's good for me yeah so um so anyway so we had this discussion and the short version is he was like everything you think is bad is bad like don't touch it exactly he actually showed me these and whoever's watching and maybe i don't know if you can put it into the the like this is very famous so um to the point david not in the uk wrote a whole book about the misperception of drugs but this one like he had this one chart which david not made and rhino pulled it off where you can see sort of the harm um so how much harm there was this harm scale you know number one is alcohol because in a holistic approach alcohol is the worst and then closely followed by heroin which by the way the media used a little bit against it which was highly unfair because the headline i think the sun or whatever was like oh guy says heroin is better than alcohol no the other thing is like they're both very very bad like but alcohol is as well we have these and this is the chart that says the harm to you and harms others so yeah a chart that shows harm that these different drugs have on you and others and alcohol is the worst exactly the worst but closely followed by heroin yeah and closely followed by um crystal meth or whatever like everything is bad and every like if there is one positive outcome of people watching it don't do it but don't do alcohol don't do heroin don't do crystal meth nothing no there is no by the way and i'm the most again pragmatic person because what i was talking with him was like is there a drug there could be a drug where you say oh it has a little bit of downside but it has enormous upside and then you can think for yourself and you're responsible i don't think the government should be responsible to think for myself is there any upside of me taking the risk because if i go in a car i came to you in a car so i took a risk of dying i mean very low but there was a risk but i was it's worth to sit with steven and do a podcast like no but everything we do in life by the way people should look at it is like risk return yeah so maybe somebody says oh if i smoke a joint once in a while it makes me so relaxed but you should be aware of the risks and i think people aren't especially not with alcohol yeah and if you then still decide actively i'm going to enjoy my glass of wine i think it's great but you should know it anyway so by the end of the scale it said um um at the very end it's mushrooms mushrooms and before the very end it's the second sort of easiest the second lowest risk is the psychedelic group of drug and he was like christian like i can't tell you what my host told me to tell you that you should try alcohol don't mean i can also tell you you're not gonna die but like don't do it yeah uh but you should do actually matching mushrooms and i was like look you're clearly insane like i'm i've never drank alcohol and i'm not gonna touch an alien drug yeah and he was very very uh persuasive because he was like look first of all you do biotech you started you could be in biotech like i send you um i send you all the research i did or i do but also which was very cool hindsight i didn't even value it back then he was like i did my phd with famous hoffman who invented lsd so so ryan was really plugged into like the old guard of psychedelic luminaries and he was like i sent you all what he did like read it because there were all these studies it's not like a crazy idea meaning again actually magic mushrooms or the ingredient psorocybin was used as an approved medical drug in the 50s by sandals actually very uh he's in germany famous um um brand um for uh for depression he was like look it was medical it has no risk as you can see i tell you at least read it and again i'm very curious i was like well sent me i'm so there was actually again serendipity and so and now comes the biggest serendipity because like so for one year i was just like not meaning it's not that i had it on my mind every day i was it was there like i read a little bit here and by the way again i know there's even a book about that which says what some people believe is destiny is just like if you're aware of a theme yeah it's a little bit like when i tell you don't think of the blue elephant or whatever you think of it like so there is this one book i can't remember the name which again would be fine for me like because again it was like if you're aware of a thing of theme then it pops up everywhere so over a year there were not a lot because it was completely not in the public domain but like there were once here and there i was like okay read something again whatever and then more or less exactly one year later i was with my best friends who actually have a second time so they have me with my best friends in the caribbean uh so disclaimer it was a place uh where where it's legal um and they had mushrooms and they had it like it looked like mushrooms like this was good because i'm so hypochondriac and frightened of everything so i would never have taken anything which didn't look like mushrooms so these were dry mushrooms like so i was like okay that looks real like and they were like and i trust them they're my best friends yeah so big shout out to land and julian yeah so i trust them anyway we grew it ourselves so like safe we know what we're doing yeah um and i was like actually calling right now and oh you've met in germany yes so i'm not mentioning his last name because i don't know if he works still with a very famous job uh he was actually saying the sentence look as your doctor or friend do it it's the best place best people you know it's real everything is perfect do it so so i took all my courage ahead um i was really like it sounds now i can't say how nervous i was and sort of both anxious and positive i was like really not that maybe people say oh he's talking about magic mushrooms all the time it was an easy decision it was not so yeah for days and i was like okay let's do it i still know exactly the point on the beach yeah uh because we're going to every easter and somewhere i'm going to put a big magic mushroom statue here uh i really will i really will i know the guys we're on the island so i yeah they already know actually the guy who owns the island is now everybody is literally everybody so um so i did it and it was the single most meaningful thing but i confirm everything i just said so because what a lot of people report is that um that um you It's a very spiritual experience. And in that case, it was not just a spiritual experience, but it really confirmed 100% of my fear in life, which is by the way interesting because if we look now at people, because a lot of people ask me, especially successful people, they're like, oh, I've read, somebody takes it and then he's going to be farming Brazil. By the way, which was my biggest fear. My biggest fear was like, I'm going to come out of that and I'm going to change my whole life because I realize that, I don't know, I want to do something else.

Hindsight, I tell everybody that look at me and look at others. We have both. We have people like me who come out are even more happy, but for me, it was a very big confirmation of what I'm doing. Because, yeah, I don't know, because it was a confirmation like, okay, you see the world in the right way.

Everything, what you do, how you do, you can work on it. So I got a lot of ideas how to make it better, but like sort of the message was you're on the right path. So some other people come out and the message is, look, you have to do something. Why is it different?

It's actually the same. What it does, I think one sort of, how you say, one description of psychedelics is in general, you realize or you recognize yourself and all your sort of positive, all your dreams, all your trauma, and some people, and there was always hindsight, I can say now I was right, like I was good in it. I was always living a very honest life to myself. Again, it doesn't mean that I say, I decided, for example, not to tell anybody I'm gay, but that's not from my point of view, it was not a lie, because it's my decision.

It was not a lie to myself. It was an active decision to just make my life a decision. It was depressing. It was just like dramatically.

By the way, it was very simple. There was nobody today. I was very simple. no, there was no upside.

There was nobody who would have appreciated that. And if there would have been a hot guy and I was like, he's gay, I'm gay. I was like, immediately. But there was no upside, but a lot of downside.

Anyway, what I'm saying is I always lived a very honest life to myself. Again, it doesn't mean you have to shout everything out. And this was confirmed. So other people who don't live an honest life to themselves and lie to themselves and maybe tell themselves that they are happy with X, Y, Z, they might realize on a magic motion trip that they're not.

And this is how the people change. But so it's very dependent on, but it was just one aspect of so many positive aspects. And then immediately after the trip had the idea, okay, this should be actually legal. I was actually, not only the first impetus was not that I should make a company because I was very sure people must work on that stuff because it's so powerful.

And when I then found out actually for me two years, I was looking around like that there was none, then we did ourselves. Just to go back to that point, you categorize that moment, your first trip as the single most meaningful experience of your life. Yeah, full stop. Nothing comes close.

And maybe I would add plus the follow on trips over the last year. So it's not just this one trip I would say as well, but I would summarize my psychedelic experience and I still like try to do a trip once or twice a year in a country where it's legal. So yeah, I would summarize as the most meaningful sort of holistic experience I've had in my life. Yeah, for sure.

You do this trip on the beach with your friends. You think to yourself, yeah, this must be legal. Fast forward, you get a call from when your friends call Mike. No, it's way crazy.

It's way crazy. Again, super serendipity. So fast forward for two years, I was very, very carefully looking around and actually not telling a lot of people about it, which was wrong. And if I would have gone on like that, I wouldn't sit here again.

I mean, at least not now. I would sit here maybe, but not talking about mushrooms or psychedelics. So for two years, I was kind of extremely holding back. So I told my closest friends, actually the ones who knew me very well saw that or positive like my parents were like, hey, you became an even nicer child.

We have an amazing relationship, but it became even better. So my mom was very quickly saying something happened on your holiday. So the ones who knew me well, but I didn't shout it out and I was actually very, very careful and shy because it's like technically. Yeah, back then, by the way, let's not forget, I'm talking about it also now so easily because all the books came out and we have the success like compasses listed.

Like now is completely different then. So anyway, so for two years, I was very like low key. And then I had, and again, this is like maybe the biggest financial serendipity or like message of the universe if you want to see like that because for two years, I was sort of like just telling friends, very close friends. And then I had one other trip within a holiday trip.

The main message on the trip was, Christian, this makes you so happy. You have to talk to other people about it. Don't be shy. Just good things will come out.

Things will come out if you talk about it. So I had a real mission. So I got this real mission on the trip to sort of be open about it. And then actually from that holiday, I was flying, literally the week after, I met a very close friend and business partner of mine, Mike Norbertz, who's being financed.

He's not, what I want to say, he's not a guy who would talk about mushrooms normally. And I wouldn't have had, but he was my test case because I had the mission. The mission was, don't be afraid to go to a measurement because it's going to be good for you. Anyway, so I met Mike and he literally, Mike, he's always like, what's up?

Because I think I do cool stuff like from a lot of stuff. So a lot of friends are always like, hey, what's new? What's up? What's your best thing?

I was like, Mike, you won't believe it. I just had a mushroom trip and this was amazing and I want to tell you about it. And he was like, whoa, mushroom. I remember Mike said, he hasn't talked about it hadn't back then for like 20 years because especially in the US a lot of people, it's like a college thing.

And he was like, 20 years, never heard about it. Again, since college. So I told him all of my experience on that trip and in general, so he was very interested. And so the next day, literally the next day, my phone rings.

Mike is on. Actually, he said it. He said, look, Christian, this is the weirdest coincidence. So since 20 years, I haven't talked about psychedelics for 20 years.

Yesterday, you were in my office talking about nothing else in psychedelics. And this morning, my sister called me and she's on Bali with this crazy couple from London who told her they want to start a company which is working on bringing magic mushrooms back in the middle room and they need somebody who's financing them and nobody wants to touch it. And I was like, this is such a coincidence. You're in London, they're in London.

And these are George and Katia, the founders of OfCompass. And I was like, connect me immediately. And I remember this was January and then we met when I was back and they were back from Bali in February 2017. And they tell me, if we talk about it, it was in the meeting.

I was like, okay, we're going to do that together. That's what I've waited for since two years. And again, if I hadn't taken the decision to openly talk about it, I wouldn't have told Mike, I wouldn't have met George and Katia who would have been sitting here at least not sitting here talking about this one. And the magic mushrooms were the thing that told you to talk about it.

And you ended up being the single biggest investor in the space, which is now really becoming more mainstream at a learning rate and sort of a category that's exploded from a financial perspective. And you co-founded and invested in the two biggest sort of companies in this area, and I was more the seed investor because it was George's and Katia's idea and I added actually a very close friend of mine as the third co-founder and I was the seed investor. So I was there before the company existed. We were sitting in my living room and planning it.

And then when I realized how positive, or it was actually easier as the wrong world, but it was sort of I had expected more hurdles. And it's maybe sadly, actually, the time which is helping us because there are so many people suffering and it becomes sort of also financially. Sometimes life is great. The world functions very pragmatic.

Like in a moment, something becomes a big crisis also financially. Whatever it was, it was the right time. So Compass quickly actually got the FDA fast-track designation, which was a big thing, stuff like that. So then I actually realized there are more psychedelics out there.

I mean, everybody's always almost using magic mushrooms and psychedelics as the same, but we have the headline psychedelics, a group of drugs, and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms is one of them. So there are more of them from MDMA, LSD, ketamine, ibogaine, whatever. And Compass wanted always to focus on psilocybin. So I was like, okay, then I'm starting a tie as sort of a platform where we actually bring on more of these compounds to explore them for mental health issues.

Of all compounds in a tie, and I know there's a lot of them, right? I think you've got over 13 compounds, different psychedelic compounds within a tie. We've talked a lot about magic mushrooms and that the active compound impact. That's really hard to say every minute because all compounds we work on have a sort of reason to exist or have a place in treating mental health issues hopefully.

Tell me about ibogaine then. So the question is what does somebody see as the biggest problems or name me the problem you think is the worst and then I tell you which drug is the best that kind of... So I think ibogaine is interesting because ibogaine goes against addiction and there's actually almost nothing else which works for addiction. So addiction, we talk about severe addiction, especially to opiates and heroin.

It's sort of, I don't know if I can say it on English, but it's really fucked up. That's one of the really severe mental stuff where most people have a relapse. And then it's also one of these sort of things if you look at families and friends where somebody's addicted it's a cancer in a social environment but I wouldn't say any mental health it's always affecting others but I think addiction sort of stands out in a certain way and ibogaine is the only drug we know which potentially I always have to say with all these drugs potentially because we are about to prove it once and for all with scientific terms or scientific framework FDA is compliant but ibogaine has the potential to really cure addiction with one trip and there will be a massive game changer for the whole opioid crisis but even alcohol addiction it's not just opiates. You're trying to make people's lives better you're trying to get them it almost seems like because you've been gifted enough to be happy your whole life you're doing a lot to make sure people be happy on one end but the other thing that you're doing which also kind of blew my mind when I met you is trying to extend life you know you've got Elon who's trying to save life but also take us to a new one and it seems like a pirate on your investment company is trying to make the life we live more joyous and fulfilled but also trying to extend it and the work you're doing with life longevity I actually find maybe even more bonkers when I first heard about psychedelics I was like really and then I spent six months nine months learning I was like oh my god like I get it but life longevity for me is like really we can really extend our lives and you've got companies which are working on that challenge so tell me about life longevity is it possible?

well okay so let's phrase it correctly like because even I if I want to sort of say something very pokey I'm like oh we're going to live forever yeah that's not going to happen for an excellent reason meaning yes you can say maybe we'll live forever if we really upload our brain to our computer but then not that I think that's completely impossible but I think then we're not human anymore that's a different discussion like so but I would say as long as we stay fairly human meaning having a body having sort of the human side that we have yeah there will always be an let's start there because the worst case if you live hundreds of years you're going to have an accident someone somebody blows you up by the way side note I think it's going to change once we get older and older it's going to change the way how we look at risk because I already started avoiding crazy stuff because I'm like it's not worth it I get risk return like I have this one colleague I always try to convince he's 50 and he drives an motorbike and I'm like you should do it like the sort of statistic the risk is so big of driving a motorbike and his answer is well because he's still thinking he's life expectancy he's 70 he's like well that I'm exchanging 20 years if it happens against my biggest passion and this is a trade of worth it and I was like well A I thought it was stupid but it's okay if this is your opinion 20 years against the risk of losing it but I tell you it's not 20 you already if you're 50 I'm going to get you up or we're going to get you up from longevity science to maybe 90 or 100 by the way in a good way so would you exchange 50 and then suddenly you see okay then he starts thinking because and now thinking a little bit further like if you say hey our natural life experience someone will be 200 maybe we stop doing stuff we do now because it could sort of yeah so back to your question like longevity never means immortality because again as long as we say kind of human because there's an accident risk by the way I also believe spiritually again that we don't want to live forever I think part of being human again as long as we say that and we can talk about that because another thing I'm thinking maybe we don't say human in our current form so I think too part of being human is having an end because that makes everything we do so I just don't want it now I want to have more of it but I think that there is a time limit on being human is actually which makes us thrive which makes us everything special so I don't think I want to take that away I just want to extend the joy doesn't it just become relative so if you live to 150 so what I really believe what we get in the next maybe like 30, 20 I think it's going to come way quicker than people think is that we're going to get life expectancy up to a time to a size to a magnitude where we want to die and I think it's even like this will be arranged and some people might already say I had it all I had enough birthdays enough Christmases some people want to live to 300 but I think we're going to give people that optionality sooner than we think and then I think dying will be like this is my vision like it's a celebration I would tell them and say look guys I had it all I love you love life but I really think I'm ready for whatever comes I don't know I have an expectation but whatever it is I'm going to finish it now throw a big party say goodbye to everybody and then go out on my own terms on my own time I think that's going to be sooner than we think you said I have an expectation well I think there's another life I think it's a continuous cycle but that's not a spiritual question I very much believe we have an eternal soul I don't even think there's a number but first of all I come back which gives me a lot of things I don't believe in the Christian thing that we have anything to prove there's already starts because it means you're not worthy and you have to prove yourself I think everybody should be deeply happy and do exactly what he or she feels is the right thing to do now I think what people realize on the psychedelics I always like to say which is maybe a good way to describe a psychedelic trip since we're young and again maybe my parents were better than other parents in avoiding that but since we're a baby people start telling us what we should do what we should not do how we should be how we should think and I always say there is your soul somewhere but there is somewhere the level of you and again the problem is when we have this discussion what I want to avoid why I'm sometimes so blurry is that if you start using religious terms then some people might be set off or pushed away because if I use the word soul or God then a Christian person might have a different reaction than a Muslim person than a Hindu person interestingly a lot of people who went through psychedelics have sort of the same description so anyways it's like trying to use as neutral as possible so let's call it soul or inner you or whatever and then you have all this sort of external sort of garbage almost what other people put on you and I think some people literally lose sight what they really are and want and I think it was always very good so what I realized on my trip so what happens on the trip sort of all this garbage is taken away so you really look at you but you in your real naked sort of form like for me I mean like you recognize yourself all your fears all your wishes all your whatever and interestingly for me it was still a great experience but was not so different so which told me okay i did a good job before psychedelics to sort of be again true to myself and i don't believe in what some face uh say that that oh you have to be worthy because you are worthy yeah and you are great you just should live the life as sort of it is fit for you and it's probably different but you need to know it yeah so so so there is no okay it's not like a computer game where you have to reach a level and do certain things and then come to the next one i just think it's like an endless positive sort of cycle of experiences yeah so and i definitely know that somewhere and i'm going to want to go to the next level to the next experience yeah um but for now i want to actually extend this one a lot of people don't get to live this is what i was thinking is like this idea that people will get to a point in your life where they say you know i've had enough this has been great i would you genuinely believe you'll get to a point where maybe 150 whatever you think i think something's gonna happen like maybe it's very late me i hope like i think this is the ultimate me i'm already pissed about the government interfering in my stuff in any way but the biggest interference is death is not my i don't choose the time i don't choose like and we need to change that so i think the biggest sort of liberty everybody has will be choosing his or her own but you'll always be curious the world will always be changing like a long time i i'm trying to understand if i don't really believe that because you're such a curious but it's great if that is the case i really don't know like i'm just saying i believe like again i think there is a moment everybody will come to that maybe it's very very great like i'm working on it like you don't think that is a is a such a natural thing i hear you're talking about as a as a bug or as a disease but i would say definitely aging is a disease something is wrong so something is i know how the 20 year old christian looked and was and felt and by the way my dna is the same like it was when i was born like it was when i was 20 like it's now but something of the same dna it's like we know how the house with the construction plan of the house is the same and some why the sort of millions who who translate the construction plan into the building yeah change it and not to the better from age 20 on like gray hair whatever like so but we know still it is there like the original source of information is there our dna so we just need to find out it's super simplified what changes the translation of our dna into mistakes and what we call aging yeah that's basically it shows that it's not so natural yeah because it's not that your dna is if it would be natural maybe your dna would change which we can't change that yeah but it's not like your dna is the same until you die like so we just need to make sure that the translation happens like when you're 20 so by the way i deeply believe not just if we can slow down and stop aging we can reverse it because again i know how steven you are still obviously at the prime yeah but i know how christian and his primes look like maybe we are there at the moment to escape the evolutionary velocity maybe that's the pinnacle where we sort of start becoming i know because i don't mean it like in a blasphemic way i think we're meant to be like gods in our own way yeah and we start now to go to the sort of source and construction of life ourselves and i think that's an enormously clear thing and like yeah maybe that's what we're meant to be i'm rather on positive side this is not blasphemy or whatever but this is like what god set us up for so to say by the way every single religion it's very fun nobody ever i don't care i love by the way uh and you know we can't say today that there's a big thing coming out about religion and science of religion but i always love that i'm always was finally drawn to the muslim side and the religious side and aside of what we discussed on that where i go spiritual side it was always always very interested in the history of religions um and interestingly a one sad actually happy inside observation is that in the very core religions are the same they all preach the same good stuff be nice be nice to others and then once they become an organization the shit starts yeah so and and also what most religions have so but no yeah literally most religions have the big ones is that they at the very beginning say that we are a part and a mirror that we are an image of god and we don't talk about that because now everybody's like oh if you if you want to live forever a lot of people again if you want to defy aging a lot of people oh you want to play god yeah this is a lot of people and i was like but maybe that's what we're meant to be because if i go to the bible it says we are the image of god so maybe we are meant to play god because that's what we are in a philosophical way so i don't think it's not ethical at all i think it's the ultimate actually challenge we have to solve yeah um the other but i would i thought the first time i heard about the possibility of extending life was that you would have a really aging population where it'll be so it's about reversing aging but we'll be 117 and slightly like you know it doesn't make medically sense it won't be 150 and suppose it doesn't make sense you can't extend life's plan that much without rejuvenation it comes at this thank god and nobody wants to be like because that's what most people fear though why they it's interesting how many people reject the idea of living very long living very long but one of the very banal reasons is that they automatically think okay if christian would succeed in making 150 they take okay i know a 90 year old granny from mine and she's not in good shape and now they add another 60 years and they're like no that's not what i want but that's not what's gonna happen in the moment we can push life expectancy way further than 90 it goes hand in hand with rejuvenation and then more people want it and what time frame do you expect i think we're gonna see really really tangible steps for the next 20 years yeah and then let's say 20 to 40 later by the way which is not that far yeah and um and also um the um it's gonna change society everything and interestingly every politician i talk to thinks like well it's far away i was like no it's not it's not so far away than you think and like it's gonna affect us sooner we need to talk about about social systems or anything yeah it's gonna be one of the massive like but i think it's quite good but like i'm an optimist like um but you know it will be a massive change for the world well let me drink this delicious drink what's it called i put it like in a commercial and it's like hopefully it's like who will yeah okay it's a very good name yeah who came up with that name um switching because in fact the topic the topics we discussed are super interesting but personally the things that i find most fascinating about you are you're just like ridiculous ridiculous work ethic and i've talked to some of your friends i spoke to aaron i spoke to people around you just to confirm what i thought and the intensity and the amount you work i think is just like staggering i think i'm really hard working i've seen you in action around the clock over the weekend the fact that we're doing this on a saturday it's like it's like having fun it's not like work but i know it my point is about you know in culture you talk about the time of life balance i think you kind of responded to there very easy there shouldn't be a work life balance there should just be one continuous hobby people should love what they do in a way obviously you do different things and i love more things so but like i always said since i'm 16 or actually 14 since i have my tutoring if i would call it work life balance then i have a shitty life because it's just work but my work is my life and i love it and it's integrated and most of my friends i work with and like even like friends who didn't this how i came to the movie business because just like i had friends who were actors and we're in a movie business and then i was like maybe we should work together we should find a movie like it's like yeah i don't want to see it as a separation separation let's talk on personal things so relationships how does someone who works as hard as you find any i'm presuming you value what relationships can bring you well complicated topic it's work in progress oh no uh now it's like uh no that's work in progress so that's like uh because obviously like i'm so much in love with my work that um that it's always it's hard i think for another person although i think i can try to be uplifting because i would try to say the same what i told you is like i would tell every partner like you have to find you can't expect from me to get give you meaning you need to give yourself meaning then we can be happy together yeah but this is unfortunately how a lot of people work like so it's very easy that's sort of i have a quote on instagram that says um if we're dating i want to be your second priority i want your first priority to be you your passion to your future if we're happy alone we'll be happier together yeah that's what i mean so yeah and i'm happy alone by the way yeah i'm also like an introvert extrovert so people think i'm very extrovert and i can be and i want to be like i like to host parties and dinners and do things like that but then i want to be alone actually a lot so do you value and tell me the value of the relationship in your view like a really good relationship do you value that's a complicated question so um because because if i say no it sounds brutal and i don't mean it like i think it's more the answer is more complicated so i build myself that i that i'm sort of very like independently so so i value relationships a lot so that's the real answer but i i'm not in the concept that one should stand out so i rather have groups so i i believe that or believe like i do have like 10 but not one like 10 very very close friends who most of them have since very long time i actually extremely value relations but i'm not saying okay there's this one relation in my life which will completely stand out from the rest which is maybe a complicated information i do think though this will change once you get children yeah so which i want so that's sort of the yeah and by the way i also think people change like i don't think the core of you changes i like the core but like you can make adjustments so i know for example that when i want children or once i have children that i have to make adjustments because i just want children if they have the same happy childhood that i had so i want to be either know that or correct that yeah so and i know i need to make adjustments so but then it's worth it and then it's my active decision to take it how is it you are the busiest person i know just thinking now is this the busiest person i know you're probably the busiest person i know i'd say have you struggled to have romantic relationships because of that busyness um i feel like you know like a interrogation of kurt what do you think is going to happen here this is what this is these are things no one talks about right i try to sit here single struggling so i'm like i'll ask christian because he's way busier and i'm struggling so is there any hope for Steve yeah i totally like it so for all of us it's funny this feels like a bit more of an uncomfortable topic for you for some reason no it's just very private it's not uncomfortable i'm going to tell you my fuse in private um no it is definitely right yeah and then you always say like okay you do that the issue is like what i'm thinking a lot how do you know when to adjust like in terms of because you would say romantically would say you're just when the right one comes how do you know that the right one comes if you don't have time to figure out and i haven't figured it for you out you're someone looking at the past 40 years of your life that does whatever he wants to do and isn't actually very good at adjusting willingly you've never been getting your life through doing something unwillingly you go the way christian wants to go and i just i wonder like when what will be the catalyst that makes christian adjust but then it's a romantic thing you really like love at first side i mean again the good thing is that i deeply believe that makes me very common that coming back to what we had there is i i deeply believe it's gonna come at the right time and i know that i'm sort of enough open for it because it's the same like with business ideas or the same with other stuff in my life again if you're open open heart open mind you're gonna see it when it comes so it's not it's a little bit like with anything else like you don't have negative thoughts don't think oh i need it now like yeah so it comes when it comes like because everything in my life came at the right time why not this one so i'm very that's how i see it i guess in the moment things came i can just say no business stuff but like again business like when psychedelics came and then business meaning that's sort of very a big part of my time location over the last like four or five years was into the business i made space for it and so i'm always like it's not again when things comes you realize that you realize the message and then you make space for it but there's a chance you said that you might be obstructing it from coming and happening because you're so preoccupied with no i'm thinking about that but then my conclusion is then usually that because again like because romance is maybe but it's not maybe it's maybe not like finding a good company i mean it sounds not very um very non-romantic but i don't mean it's romantic because i also think finding companies are very very uh emotional yeah uh if i look for psychedelic business i think that but i do actively again it's not that i'm ignoring so i said before my philosophy of not having negative thoughts doesn't mean that you cannot analyze sort of stuff and sort of look on the risky side so i do think about it is my life how i lead it maybe preventing to have sort of the one and only romantic um experience yeah my conclusion is then mostly that i'm like okay no because like it will come at the right time then you're gonna realize it then you're gonna make space like you make like i make space for everything else it's because you're such an optimist i almost can't get you to that's how it works bad things happen to me as well bad things are there but my mind twisted around but it's like this is what i'm really training since i'm 14 so it's right to me a negative thing and i'm i may be a little bit puzzled for a second or for example yeah this is how it works like things even if things in our portfolio don't go well i'm like a little bit like shaking for a moment and i'm like where's the good thing and how can i turn that in my mind how can i see the upside yeah it's fascinating because i'm trying to get you to you know the reason why i start this podcast is because i sometimes i want to highlight that for all the great things people see that people watch you think i want to have all these companies and manage two billion of assets and all these things but there's always there's always some kind of down not downside but sacrifice we could say that's happening i'm trying to get out where that sacrifice is and the problem is you are happy so and you're pursuing yourself so it's hard to identify sacrifice i know what you mean i just try also as a message not to see it like i think people should see it because that's the negative story about success the negative story of success is that people see people and say oh i want to be like them yeah i would like to have the wells i would like to have xyz then they can't immediately have it because by the way it's a long process and you need to work hard right and then they tell you oh they must have gone through a lot of sacrifice yeah and then this is a little bit what calms them down oh they have a lot of bad stuff like coming with it i think it's the wrong way to look for both sides like i think the right way to like do i really want that is this really what makes me happy yeah and then it's by the way not that easy just meaning everybody would say like oh yeah i think it's like 55 money makes me happy but then again do you make it happy what comes with it but i don't want to call it a sacrifice because i wouldn't do it if i would have to sacrifice stuff in order to get money money from a certain moment on is not really there's great research somebody it's like that from practically zero to x money gives you happiness because it makes your life easier so but then someone you're not going to spend it because someone becomes a figure yeah and then it's about do you love what you do yeah so latest then yeah but like so people should see not you can't see i don't know wealth or anything separated from the the process of how you got there yeah and then it's not about saying the process was hard it's like is the whole process what i love doing then you should throw you or is it something else what i love and then you should not though envy other people because that makes you miserable as well you should always embrace what the problem is people often don't know what they really want yeah delicate with you like but like in the moment you embrace what you really want and maybe like like a housewife maybe really loves it it's not something where she should say oh i'm just a housewife and somebody else is a big entrepreneur maybe that's what she really wants in this life she maybe wants her children take care of them and take care of them exactly but it's about knowing that actively not letting other people put you in that position or let circumstances put you in that position but like actively know yourself this idea that like um but obviously a huge force in our lives at the moment which twists this area that we want to be something else is like social media and social society it's like you've got to be a doctor you might say or instagram will say you've got to be a billionaire and really you just want to be an artist that dances in croatia you know exactly embrace it but you need to know it like by the way i think as much as i love tech it's one of the other topics which really like sort of how you say keep me away keep me away at night is something in the world we live in or actually something in the world we are building because we're reconstructing the world in any form people i think have no no real glimpse yet how crazy this will be yeah we're going now people think we're wearing like a 20 year of tech boom which is true on the one side but if you're really honest there's this famous quote which i love to use from peter who said we wanted flying cars and we got 140 characters on twitter yeah which says practically if you look at the last 20 years yes we had a tech boom but more or less i'm simplifying yeah what changed is the distribution of goods amazon now we're not shopping anymore we're getting delivered but it's still the same goods yeah um and um social media changed communication change but we didn't go to the fabric of society industry and ourselves so now we're starting going to reformulate and rechange the fabric of ourselves longevity we're going to really make not just five years again maybe we change everything change and this is all independent and the moment we change the fabric of our body or then we change the fabric of society because society is very much linked to an 80 life expectancy yeah flying cars are now really coming literally we have yeah we have flying cars now we're gonna go to mars somewhere and it's gonna happen maybe 20 maybe it's gonna happen so the world is gonna change like we've never seen it before so and i love it yeah and you love it and maybe even the people who watch that love it because otherwise they would watch it but like the majority of people doesn't yeah so and i think that's one of the underlying reasons which makes the society more and more depressive or mental health because like i think there is this enormous fear um and people often have like i think another word for gut feeling like you have you can't really explain what makes you nervous but it makes you nervous and i think that's what happening so i think the world as a whole except for some internal optimists and some techies yeah are like yeah maybe i like a single piece i like my iphone i like that but as an entirety that makes me feel comfortable it makes a change around exactly yeah so and even if they don't know it the bus driver maybe can't fully explain how a self-driving bus will work but somewhere he feels in 10 years he's not anymore yeah and i think that creates a lot of risk because the last time that happened that was when we changed from the agricultural society to the um to the industrial society yeah and you can say now we changed from the industrial society to let's call it data society we need a word for it so we're changing and changing in a massive way so and then so there are a lot of parallels of the time between 1875 and 1920 the people were there was this elite technically who said everything is possible you had um it was i think it was 1870 i don't know somewhere when the eiffel tower was built there was this uh it was called world exhibition and people were like oh my god i mean it was but it was also around the time and hopefully i spent writing english like he wrote all these books yeah like sci-fi books yeah so the world was already there once unfortunately we had then two world wars yeah you can look at a lot of reasons why what we wanted to happen there's a lot of different layers of um of reasons but i believe that the main reason is this sort of disenfranchisement of the agricultural society who were deeply panicky like what's happening to the world because the world the farmer yeah in the 19th century knew was disappearing in front of his eyes yeah and it's exactly happening the same again so could there be another reason linked to that why people are becoming depressed in the technological revolution because you know at the start of this podcast you said about the importance of nature and i've read studies about you know prisoners who face who face nature versus a brick wall they're 30 percent less likely to be depressed and the sort of very human prehistoric origin of a human being is one that's in nature it's one that's in a tribe it has meaningful connections and the technological revolution is really i now live between four white walls alone in a big gray city can that also not be part of the reason why people are we're getting less human ever and in fact what i like you know i read about some of the social reasons why people are getting more depressed is because we're getting further and further away from being human this is maybe a little bit philosophical but like if you look at like the things that help with mental health it's meaningful connection it's nature it's good diet no more junk and these are all things that humans did 10,000 years ago we have to go back to find ourselves again or we have to find our human place in a world which is changing so yes i do i do think a lot how can we stay human in a world which is changing that crazily as it does it's like this world now would appreciate if i was a robot more productive no i think we can adjust and by the way and i know what it's like and i'm saying that with all the disclaimers it's not legal right now i'm always coming back to that but i do think someone psychedelics will be will be the meditation for that because it keeps us in a certain way very human but at the same time makes us very adaptive in our environment um so that's a it's more or less the same what you said so i see what do humans need to be happy i think it's three things it's some form of faith and i explain it a second so it's faith it's purpose and it's love it's super cheesy these are the three things which i think make us as a as a the combination of these three things make us happy then i think let's go to the faith means any form of um higher meaning or the other way around i think being atheist or believing literally in a materialistic world where if you die dead and then you rot yeah makes people very unhappy this is not again i mean i think the case that i believe in in more but like it's not the case it's just like saying like factually i think people need that we need this right every society ever developed a religion like i think we need it why because we terrorize dying we don't admit it i admit it i don't want to age aging sucks dying sucks and even worse by the way dying of people i love sucks so and we don't talk about it we completely push it away from us yeah and i believe religion always gave people that sort of calmness or a little bit of a calmness that as death is not the end you want to see people again people you love whatever so i think it's important because otherwise you have this permanent terror of death in your head and you might not have a business but you have second point is purpose what i said with a bus driver people need a purpose yeah and they need to know why they wake up in the morning and um and um what they're doing so having said that uh in front of our eyes at the moment like these things are dissolving but the purposes so we need to find new ones and the most important is we love and in a cheesy way it must not be a one-on-one relationship but could be could be one-on-one relationship could be a family could be a close friends could be a community yeah so love on various levels so actually the bad thing is if you look at where the world is going at the moment all these three things are dissolved so faces on a super decline yeah um then purpose is only time because we're changing the world and most people don't find their purpose and then unfortunately communities are only time traditional family structures but also communities and if i remember i grew up i had like what do you call it in english when you go to like a theater group and i had 10 groups like it was like it was it was so it's the pinnacle of a community we were so and it was great yeah i don't think you have that anymore in that way yeah or at least it's sort of vanishing yeah there's a study in the u.s which says um 15 years ago people would respond to the question how many people can you turn to in time crisis the medium answer was three it sounds zero crazy like i had 10 when i was young and psychedelics are giving that all of that they're giving you faith spirituality they're giving you purpose because you you realize that the purpose lies within you and you can reinvent yourself and they're giving you love because you realize the value of connections so i um first of all i think everything we take we eat is an active position so i like so remember like before the the podcast i was looking at it you want to know what is in it like there seems to be a lot of vitamins or any form of added stuff is bad because i'm like everything i eat is something external going in my body yeah so and then my view on aging at the moment is at the moment there is unfortunately working on it hard yeah but there is nothing which really slows down aging dramatically yeah dramatically and or even versus it however there are things which give you a little bit of an edge yeah and the edge is not big yeah but unfortunately i'm not 20 anymore if i would be 20 which uh then i would say hey no then the optionality would be super easy if i would be 20 now and i tell that my god should i don't believe it at 10 i'm like you're gonna live for hundreds of years yeah so i'm unfortunately fortunately because i still have the opportunity and again my decision was like i want to work on it because i think i do better than others you know i'm like okay but i'm at the borderline like because i need to hurry up so so even if i do something now at the moment which gives me statistically two more years that's two more years like yeah in a race yeah so i think yes so i think there are some easy things to do like um the uh for example sleep is super important yeah then um why why sleep important you should do like you should do a podcast just about sleep yeah oh yeah it's perfect there's so many reasons but sleep is one of the core things we don't really understand it yet but like who has practically if you i don't know the exact number but read why you sleep from matthie walker like i think if you sleep two three hours less than you should for some days your immune system is collapsing if you're losing collapsing that your probability of cancer goes up but i mean sleep has so many good sleep is so good for you and negative sleep has so many negative consequences so sleep is super important so i try to sleep enough for example i try this one of the luxury things uh which i can do because i work for myself that i don't have early morning meetings so and i have always something to do like email but i try that i can wake up naturally so i never wake up with an alarm clock unless i need to fly or whatever yeah so um so that's one thing then obviously no alcohol alcohol is toxic like full stop cigarettes all drugs except yeah so don't do that yeah very bad for aging yeah you see that by the way when people like yeah um i don't want to say now that i aged well but like if i go to a class reunion or whatever like some people who drink a lot of alcohol and eat shit yeah they look older like yeah it's like so so they say it's their food like it's like you'll be healthy don't carbs like sugar is super bad like i think so so i don't want to go yes i do 42 pills or whatever it is yeah and i mean the list will be long maybe again maybe i put it somewhere but i think the message is because if people jump from zero to 42 pills they won't do it anyway so whoever listens now i would say if you do the three four five things which sort of it's 80 20 euros i'm trying to carve out the last 20 but go for the sort of easy hard and easy first sleep healthy food exercise is super important must not be super hard exercise but like every day like 20 30 minutes of mild to medium exercise as i said no drugs no alcohol whatever um these are the main ones you're gonna be significantly healthier yeah so i try not to eat for 16 18 hours a day every day and once you start doing it you you sort of why why do you do that why do you instantly fast i've always been curious about i've never done it uh because it's very healthy a lot of health benefits your your blood sugar level sort of normalizes which has then sort of a lot of um follow-on effects yeah it's also you do weight with a very simple like yeah um i am i actually have one other thing i wanted to ask you about i mean i don't i have a million things but the interest of time it was about bitcoin yep you've been a big investor in bitcoin and the future bitcoin you're bullish super bullish because what i think is like all politicians from left and right from from any part of spectrum by the way i think about a lot i think maybe it's not you know a stupid decision but like all politicians decided that money printing is the thing to go yeah so we're gonna see this massive devaluation of fiat money and never before again i really love history and normally this happened to one currency or one country or whatever at the moment happens it's happening to all the major currencies in the world euro uh revenue like us dollar everything is sort of devaluated at the same time so because everything is relative to each other obviously by the way assets go up this is why i'm on a 10 year horizon i'm extremely bullish on in general quality assets stocks bitcoin anything which is not cash i think the most dangerous asset class for 10 years is cash doesn't mean by the way there can't be stock market crash or whatever in between but you want to have cash to buy yeah so you should have like how you say technically cash but not like strategic cash yeah um so but bitcoin so and bitcoin is one of these assets first and then second the world always needs a store of value so for thousands of years gold was the store value of choice i mean you think about how many currencies were there i mean thousands because by the way always politicians mess up always like politicians can't be entrusted with currencies full stop it's always a better year always 100 and so people always have gold yeah so but gold is also people that say oh bitcoin has no value gold has no value it's actually one of these things like it's maybe nice to look at but like it's just a convention it's just an agreement humanity has and i would go further it's embedded in our cultural system there are so many fairy tales and things about gold but if you ask a 10 year old for him it's bitcoin bitcoin is his pop culture sort of value and that's exactly i think the shift has happened or is about to happen that bitcoin is at least additional to gold and someone will completely make gold redundant yeah is the new store value and it's just you can argue now what's the value of it because it's a it's a convention it's a deal society made to be accepted that's the value yeah there's no nothing more when you can add and say oh maybe bitcoin is disrupting the financial but it's all secondary the main thing is is it a store value not and for me it is a store value yeah that's sort of the main driver of uh bitcoin is the new gold that's enough by the way to make it still go up dramatically compared to gold you can talk about this forever but um my last question this is definitely my last question is as you think you know in your future you said about this podcast about visualizing every morning you visualize you think about the things that you want your future to hold i know if i said to you like what's the end there is no end i get that kind of central thinking this is a continuous pursuit of your own hobbies and interests but when you visualize what you want christian's future to look like say you know a couple decades from now what are the like the principles of that future what are the characteristics of it you want to look like today you want to look super sexy and young you want to look 20 years old yeah we can do that on photoshop not on photoshop because of that new connection photoshop doesn't work because you want to be cyborgs anyway so well i think we're going to be cyborgs i think that's one of the drivers but it's the whole point there is no end game because that would be kind of sad it's the same like with work-life balance to say if i would just work because then you're back at this famous sort of what was it a novel from who was it like this old tale where the fisher is on the guys on the beach and meets the guy oh yeah you know which one i mean yeah so whether it comes out oh he works his ass off just to lie on the beach and then the poor guy's saying why you could lie on the beach now that's the whole point it's about the journey it's not about an end point so i don't have an end point i never had i just like try to keep my again it's all about keeping my life exciting because if it wouldn't then i wouldn't want to die so keep my life cool and this by the way it can change but maybe 40 years it's not i'm not a robot like this is not gonna i'm not gonna be i'm maturing like i'm maturing like i'm changing in a positive way like uh maybe in 40 years i decide that i don't think so i don't know like the good thing is that i'm open for maybe 40 years i had now everything i had on a you know in entrepreneurship maybe i want to you feel yourself changing maturing yeah but maturing is already yet changing but in a good way that again i'm trying to continuously analyze what now back at the word soul or whatever you would call it your inner voice is telling you what is good for me now and it might be that this is changing over time so for example i decided decided what like i feel that it's getting time somewhere not urgently to get children like if you would have asked me 20 years ago i said no i know children like yeah so but it's like open being open for that and maybe in 40 years i'm just making up now as an example not that i feel like maybe i want to be a singer and i'll beware and the world is like no no no but like maybe i have some new ideas which really like are different what i do now but like it's important to stay open for that inner voice because it might change just because again so far continuously i love doing what i do and exploring that but like you know i mean like i can get you know so don't put an end point there's not just one thing just don't be sad like if it's depressive there ever isn't it exactly like that you don't mean yeah well listen thank you so much for agreeing to do this you are honestly one of the most fascinating people like i've ever met i'm sure you did no no i want to be doing something creative like i artistic yeah so i've gone through the same thing since giving social channels like i'm good dj i've done a big i thought it was very cool when you told me that i was like that's a cool thing i've directed a theatrical show with the associate director of hamilton's it's theater it's called the guy of the sea alive it's the theatrical version of life there's a 50 person choir sold out already and i said to myself that i didn't want to be a label so i don't want to be a social media CEO i'm a guy that has a bunch of perspective and that perspective can be applied to art to my book which i wrote myself the show creating music i've got my first dj performance at festival this year and i just thought what if you detach yourself from your labels what kind of person would you become you become artistic you become health centric you'd start businesses but then i always think i should write a script because i can't actually make a code like what i'm not like also you should be always self-aware but like oh yeah maybe you should write a script i was like because i love movies i produce movies so so i was like maybe yeah but again it's always listening to yourself what you're so in the words however you want to call it not society exactly not outside world is telling you you are the probably the most interesting person i know in a really compelling way sometimes i know people and they're like successful and i think oh god i hate you that person you are in like a really compelling unique way because of your work you do because of your philosophy for life because of this sort of this i guess like almost i don't know what they refer to it but it's like how your how your scientific view can merge with a spiritual one and a religious one i find super fascinating i think it's those sort of intersections that create really interesting ideas um you're also the most hard-working person i know um but you're also a really nice guy oh thank you really like nice guy behind the scenes as well and so thank you for coming on the podcast i think you know i think your future is going to be staggering i talk about you all the time to my team all the time i'm like you know because you are very very compelling in a number of really positive ways i think i think the work you're doing with a tie compass all of your other companies is staggering i think you're actually going to be one of the most important entrepreneurs creators creators of our time i think the world is like i was like i know christian kong on my podcast now i know 10 years time this is probably going to be one of my most new podcasts ever because of the trajectory you're on and the way you think it's my prediction i'm very rarely wrong but you don't have to be like oh you're so right you're very likely you're not making me I do mean it um i don't know what to say it's been inspiring to me um thank you for doing this today i hope you've enjoyed it yeah i did very much thank you thank you