In 2018, an AI ran for mayor of a province in Japan. It didn’t win, but the race was a lot closer than anyone expected. - Peter Diamandis

During the early sixteen hundreds in England, two-thirds of all children died before the age of four, and the resulting life expectancy was only thirty-five years. It was the industrial revolution that started us on our trend toward longevity. A more robust food supply coupled with simple public health measures such as building sewers, collecting garbage, providing clean water, and draining mosquito-infested swamps made a huge difference.

And this is one of the first things one learns from Musk’s example — he is relentless in his pursuit of the bold and, the bigger point, totally unfazed by scale. When he couldn’t get a job, he started a company. When Internet commerce stalled, he reinvented banking. When he couldn’t find decent launch services for his Martian greenhouse, he went into the rocket business. And as a kicker, because he never lost interest in the problem of energy, he started both an electric car and a solar energy company. It is also worth pointing out that Tesla is the first successful car company started in America in five decades and that SolarCity has become one of the nation’s largest residential solar providers.9 All told, in slightly less than a dozen years, Musk’s appetite for bold has created an empire worth about $30 billion.10 So what’s his secret? Musk has a few, but none are more important to him than passion and purpose. “I didn’t go into the rocket business, the car business, or the solar business thinking this is a great opportunity. I just thought, in order to make a difference, something needed to be done. I wanted to have an impact. I wanted to create something substantially better than what came before.

Loss of Proteostasis: Inside a cell, proteins run the show. They transport materials, send signals, switch processes on and off, and provide structural support. But proteins become less effective over time, so the body recycles them. Unfortunately, as we age, we can lose this ability. The trash collector goes on strike and we suffer a toxic buildup of proteins that can, for example, lead to diseases such as Alzheimer’s.