Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon and blue
origin this is his first time doing a
conversation of this kind and of this
length and as he told me it felt like we
could have easily talked for many more
hours and I'm sure we will this is the
Le stre podcast and now dear friends
here's Jeff
Bezos you spent a lot of your childhood
with your grandfather on a ranch here in
Texas mhm and I heard you had a a lot of
work to do around the ranch so what's
the coolest job you remember doing there
wow coolest um most interesting most
memorable most memorable it was a it was
real it's a real working Ranch um my and
I I spent all my Summers on that ranch
from Age 4 to 16 and my grandfather was
really taking me those in the summers in
the in the early Summers he was letting
me pretend to help on the ranch cuz of
course a four-year-old is a burden not a
help in real life he really just
watching me and taking care of me um and
he was doing that because my mom was so
young she had me when she was 17 and so
he was sort of giving her a break and my
grandmother and my grandfather would
take me for these Summers but as I got a
little older I actually was helpful on
the ranch and I loved it I was out there
like my grandfather had a huge influence
on me huge factor in my life I did all
the jobs you would do on a ranch I've
fixed when Mills and laid fences and
pipelines and you know done all the
things that any Rancher would do
vaccinated the animals everything um uh
but we had a you know my grandfather
after my grandmother died um I was about
12 and I kept coming to the ranch so it
was then it was just him and me just the
two of us and he was completely addicted
to the soap opera the days of our lives
and we would go back to the ranch house
every day around 1 p.m. or so to watch
Days of Our Lives uh like Sands through
an hourglass so are the days of our
lives just the image of that the two
sitting there watching slow popper had
big crazy dogs it was really a very
formative experience me but the key
thing about it for me the the great gift
I got from it was that my grandfather
was so resourceful you know he did
everything himself he made his own
Veterinary tools he would make needles
to suit the cattle up with like he would
find a little piece of wire and heat it
up and pound it thin and drill a hole in
it and sharpen it so you know you learn
different things um on a ranch than you
would learn you know growing up in a
city so self-reliance yeah like figuring
out that you can solve problems with
enough persistence and Ingenuity and my
grandfather bought a D6 bulldozzer which
is a big bulldozer and you got it for
like $5,000 cuz it was completely broken
broken down it was like a
1955 caterpillar D6 bulldozer knew it
would have cost I don't know more than
$100,000 and we spent an entire summer
fixing like repairing that bulldozzer
we'd you know use mail order to to buy
big gears for the transmission and
they'd show up they'd be too heavy to
move so we'd have to build a crane you
know just that kind of kind of that
problem solving mentality um he had it
so powerfully you know he
he did all of his own uh he just he
didn't pick up the phone and call
somebody he would figure it out on his
own he doing his own Veterinary work you
know but just the image of the two you
fixing a D6 bulldozzer and then going in
for a little break at 1 p.m. to watch so
laying on the floor that's how he
watched TV he was a really really
remarkable guy that's how I imagine
Clint Eastwood
also in all those westerns when he's
when he's not doing what he's doing he's
just just watching soap poers all right
uh I read that you fell in love with the
idea of space and space exploration when
you were five watching Neil Armstrong
walking on the moon so let me uh ask you
to look back at the historical context
and impact of that so the space race
from 1957 to
1969 between the Soviet Union and the US
was in many ways epic it was um a rapid
sequence of dramatic events for
satellite to space first human to space
first space walk first un crude landing
on the moon then some failures
explosions deaths on both sides actually
and then the first human walking on the
moon uh what are some of the more
inspiring moments or insights you take
away from that time those few years that
just uh 12 years well I mean there's so
much inspiring there um you know one of
the great things to take away from that
one of the great Von Brown quotes is I
have have uh I have come to use the word
impossible with great
caution yeah yeah and so that's kind of
the big story of Apollo is that things
you know the uh going to the moon was
literally an analogy that people used
for something that's impossible you know
oh yeah you'll do that when when you
know men walk on the Moon Yeah and of
course it finally happened um so you
know I think it was pulled forward in
time because of the Space Race I think
you know with the geopolitical
implications and you know how much
resource was put into it you know at the
peak that program was spending you know
two or 3% of
GDP uh on the Apollo program so much
resource I think it was pulled forward
in time you know we kind of did it ahead
of when we quote unquote should have
done it yeah um and so in that way it's
also a technical Marvel I mean it's
truly incredible it's uh you know it's
the 20th century version of building the
pyramids or something it's you know it's
an achievement that um because it was
pulled forward in time and because it
did something that had previously been
thought impossible it rightly deserves
its place as you know in the pantheon of
great human achievements and of course
you named uh the projects the rockets
that blue origin is working on after
some of the folks involved I don't
understand why I didn't say new gagaran
I is that there an American bias in the
naming I ologe very
strange just asking for a friend clarify
I'm a big fan of garens though and fact
I um I think his his first words in
space um I think are incredible he you
know he purportedly said my God it's
blue and that really drives home no one
had seen the Earth from space no one
knew that we were on this blue planet
yeah no one knew what it looked like
from out there and gagaran was the first
person to see it one of the things I
think about is how
dangerous those early days were for
gagaran for for Glenn for everybody
involved like how how big of a risk they
were all taking they were taking huge
risks I'm not sure what the uh Soviets
thought about gagarin's flight but I
think that the Americans thought that
the Allen Shepard flight the flight that
you know new Shephard is named after the
first American in space he went on his
suborbital flight they thought he had
about a 75% chance of
success um so you know that's a pretty
big risk a 25% risk it's it's kind of
interesting that Alan Shepard is not
quite as famous as John Glenn so for
people don't know Alan Shepard is the
first uh astronaut the first American in
space American in suborbital Flight
correct and and then the first orbital
flight is then John Glenn is the first
American to orbit the Earth by the way I
have the most Charming sweet incredible
letter from John Glenn which I have
framed and hanging on my office wall
what he say where he tells me how uh
grateful he is that we have named new
Glenn after him and they sent me that
letter about a week before he died um
and it's really an incredible it's also
a very funny letter he's he's writing
and he says you know this is a letter
about new Glenn from the original Glenn
and he's just he's got a great sense of
humor and he's very he's very um happy
about it and grateful it's very sweet
does he say PS don't mess this up or is
that no he doesn't make me look good he
doesn't do that but wa but John wherever
you are we got you covered good uh so so
back to maybe the big picture of space
when you look up at the
stars uh and think big what do you hope
is the future of humanity hundreds
thousands of years from now out in
space I would love to see you know a you
know a trillion humans living in the
solar system if we had a trillion humans
we would have at any given time a
thousand mozarts and a thousand
Einstein um that would you know our
solar system would be full of life and
intelligence and energy um and we can
easily support a civilization that large
with all of the resources um in the
solar system so what do you think that
looks like giant space stations yeah the
only way to get to that vision is with
giant space stations you know the
planetary surfaces are just way too
small um so you can I mean unless you
turn them into giant space stations or
something but but yeah we will take
materials from the Moon and from near
Earth objects and from the asteroid belt
and so on and we'll build uh giant
O'Neal style colonies um and people will
live in those and they have a lot of
advantages over planetary surfaces you
can spin them to get normal Earth
gravity you can put them where you want
them I think most people are going to
want to live uh near Earth not
necessarily in Earth orbit but in you
know uh Earth but near Earth vicinity uh
orbits and so they can move Qui you know
relatively quickly uh back and forth
between their station and Earth so I
don't I think a lot of people especially
in the early stages are not going to
want to give up Earth altogether they go
to Earth for vacation yeah same way that
you know you might go to to Yellowstone
National Park for vacation people will
uh and the ad and no one and people will
get to choose whether they live on earth
or whether they live in space but
they'll be able to use much more energy
and much more material resource in space
than they would be able to use on Earth
one of the interesting ideas you had is
to move the heavy industry away from
Earth so people sometimes have this idea
that somehow space
exploration is in conflict with the
celebration of the planet Earth that we
should focus on preserving Earth and and
basically your idea is that space travel
and space exploration is a way to
preserve Earth exactly this planet we've
sent robotic probes to all the planets
we know that this is the good
one yeah not the play favorites or
anything but but Earth really is the
good Planet it's an amaz it's it's
amazing the ecosystem we have here all
of the life and the Lush uh the plant
life and you know the water resources
everything this planet is really
extraordinary and of course we evolved
on this planet so of course it's perfect
for us but it's also perfect for all the
advanced life forms on this planet all
the animals and so on and so this is a
gym we do need to take care of it and as
we enter the anthropos as we get as we
humans have gotten so uh sophisticated
and large and impactful as we stride
across this planet you know it's
that that is going to as we continue we
want to use a lot of energy we want to
use a lot of energy per capita we've
gotten amazing things we we don't want
to go backwards you know if you think
about
um the good old days they're mostly an
illusion like in almost every way life
is better for almost everyone today than
it was say 50 years ago or 100 years we
all we live better lives by and large
than our grandparents did and then their
grandparents did and so on and you can
see that in global illiteracy rates
Global poverty rates Global infant
mortality rates like almost any metric
you choose we're better off than we used
to be and we get you know antibiotics
and all kinds of life-saving medical
care and so on and so on and there's one
thing that is moving backwards and it's
the natural world so it is a fact that
500 years ago pre-industrial age
the natural world was
pristine um it was incredible and we
have traded some of that pristine Beauty
for all of these other gifts that we
have as an advanced society and we can
have both but to do that we have to go
to space and all of this really the most
fundamental measure is energy usage per
capita and when you look at you know you
do want to continue to use more and more
energy it is going to make your life
better in so many ways but that's not
compatible ultimately with living on a
finite planet and so we have to go out
into the solar system uh and and really
you can argue about when you have to do
that but you can't credibly argue about
whether you have to do that eventually
we have to do that exactly well you
don't often talk about it but let me ask
you on that topic about the blue ring
and the orbital Reef uh space
infrastructure projects what's your
vision for these so blue ring is a very
interesting spacecraft that is uh
designed to take up to 3,000 kilograms
of payload up to geosynchronous orbit or
in lunar vicinity uh it has two
different kinds of
propulsion it has chemical propulsion
and it has electric propulsion and so it
can you can be you can use blue ring in
a couple different ways you can slowly
move let's say up to geosynchronous
orbit using electric propulsion that
might take you know 100 days or 150 days
depending on how much mass you're
carrying uh and then and reserve your
chemical propulsion so that you can
change orbits quickly in geosynchronous
orbit or you can use the chemical
propulsion first to quickly get up to
geosynchronous and then use your
electrical propulsion to slowly change
your ju synchronous orbit blue ring has
um a couple of interesting features it's
a uh it provides a lot of services to
these payloads so the payLo could be one
large payload or it can be a number of
small payloads and it provides thermal
management it provides electric power it
provides uh compute um provides
Communications and so when you design a
payload for blue ring you don't have
it's you don't have to figure out all of
those things on your own so kind of radi
tolerant compute is a complicated thing
to do and so we have a an unusually
large amount of radiation tolerant
compute on board blue ring and you can
your payload can just use that when it
needs to so it's a uh uh it's sort of
all these Services it's you know it's
it's like a set of apis it's a little
bit like Amazon web services but for
face payloads that need to move about in
Earth vicinity or lunar vicinity uh a
WSS space okay so uh so Compu in space
so you get you get a giant chemical
rocket to get a payload out to and then
you have these admins that show up this
blue ring uh thing that manages various
things like compute exactly and it can
it can also provide transportation and
move you around to different orbits
including humans you think no but blue
ring is not designed to move humans
around um it's designed to move payloads
around so we're also building a lunar
Lander uh which is of course designed to
to land humans on the surface of the
Moon I'm going to ask you about that
well let me let me actually just uh step
back to the old days you were at
Princeton uh with aspirations to be a
theoretical physicist yeah um What
attracted you to physics and why did you
change your mind and not become why why
you're not Jeff bezos's the famous
theoretical physicist so I loved physics
and I studied physics and computer
science and I was proceeding along uh
along the physics path I was planning to
major in physics and I wanted to be a
theoretical physicist and I and the
computer science was sort of something I
was doing for fun I really loved
it um and I and I was very good at the
the programming and doing those things
and I enjoyed all my computer science
classes
immensely but I really was determined to
be a theoretical physicist I it's why I
went to Princeton in the first place it
was definitely and then I realized I was
going to be a mediocre theoretical
physicist and there were um uh there
were a few people in my classes like in
quantum mechanics and so on who they
could effortlessly do things that were
so difficult for me and I realized like
you know there are a thousand ways to be
smart and to be a really you know
theoretical physics is not one of those
fields where the uh you know only the
top few percent actually move the State
ofthe art forward it's one of those
things where you you have to be really
uh just your brain has to be wired in a
certain way and there was a guy named um
one of these people who was uh convinced
me he didn't mean to convince me but
just by observing him he convinced me
that I should not try to be a
theoretical physicist his name was Yos
Santa and Yos
Santa um was from Sri Lanka and he's he
was one of the most brilliant people I'd
ever met my uh friend Joe and I were
working on a very difficult partial
differential equations problem set one
night and there was one problem that we
worked on for three hours MH and we made
no Headway what soever and we looked up
at each other at the same time and we
said Yos Santa so we went to Yos Santa's
dorm room yeah and he was there he was
almost always there and we said y Santo
we're having trouble solving this
uh partial differential equation would
you mind taking a look and he said of
course by the way he was the most humble
most kind person and so he took our he
looked at our problem and he stared at
it for just a few seconds maybe 10
seconds and he said coine and I said
what do you mean yant what do you mean
cosine he said that's the answer and I
said no no no come on and he said let me
show you and he took out some paper and
he wrote down three pages of equations
everything came cancelled out M and the
answer was cosine and I said y Santa did
you do that in your head and he said oh
no that would be impossible a few years
ago I solved a similar problem and I
could map this problem onto that problem
and then it was immediately obvious that
the answer was cosine I had a few you
know you have an experience like that
you realize maybe being a theoretical
physicist isn't your isn't what your
your your what the universe wants you to
be and so I switched to computer science
and um and you know that worked out
really well for me I enjoy I still enjoy
it today yeah there's a particular kind
of intuition you need to be a great
physicist in applied to physics I think
the mathematical skill required today is
so high you have to be a worldclass
mathematician to be a successful
theoretical physicist today and it's not
you know it uh probably need other
skills too intuition lateral thinking
and so on but without the without just
topnotch math skills you're unlikely to
be successful and visualization skill
you have to be able to really kind of do
these kinds of thought experiments and
if you wanted truly great creativity
actually Walter Ison writes about you uh
it puts you on the same level as
Einstein well he's that's very kind I
have I'm an inventor if you if you want
to boil down what I am I'm really an
inventor and I look at things and I can
come up with atypical Solutions and you
know and then I can create a hundred
such atypical solutions for something 99
of them may not survive you know
scrutiny but one of those 100 is like hm
maybe there is maybe that might work and
then you can keep going from there so
that kind of lateral thinking that kind
of uh inventiveness in a high
dimensionality space where the search
space is very large that's where my
inventive skills come that's the thing
I'm if if I I self-identify as an
inventor more than anything else yeah
and he describes in all kinds of
different ways Walter Ison does that uh
creativity combined with childlike uh
Wander that you've maintained still to
this day all of that combined together
is there like if if you were to study
your own brain introspect how do you
think what's your thinking process like
we'll talk about the writing process of
putting it down on paper uh which is
quite rigorous and
famous at uh Amazon but how do you when
you sit down maybe alone maybe with
others and thinking through this High
dimensional space and looking for
Creative Solutions a creative paths
forward is there something you can say
about that process it's such a good
question and and I honestly don't know
how it works if I did I would try to
explain it I know it involves lots of
wandering yeah so I you know when I sit
down to work on a problem I know I don't
know where I'm going so to to go in a
straight line to be efficient efficiency
and invention are sort of at odds
because invention real invention not
incremental Improvement incremental
Improvement is so important in in every
endeavor everything you do you have to
work hard on also just making things a
little bit better but I'm talking about
real invention real lateral thinking
that requires wandering and you have to
give yourself permission to wander I
think a lot of
people
um they feel like wandering is
inefficient and should you know like
when when I sit down at a meeting I
don't know how long the meeting is going
to take if we're trying to solve a
problem because if I did then I'd
already I i' know there's some kind of
straight line that we're drawing to the
solution the reality is we may have to
wander for a long time and I do like
group invention I think there's really
nothing more fun than sitting at a
whiteboard with a a n you know a group
of smart people and spitballing and
coming up with new ideas and objections
to those ideas and then solution to the
objections and going back and forth so
like um you know sometimes you wake up
with an idea and the middle of the night
and sometimes you sit down with a group
of people and go back and forth and both
things are really pleasurable and when
you wander I think one key thing is to
notice a good idea and to to to maybe to
notice the kernel of a good idea maybe
pull at that string cuz I don't think uh
good ideas come fully
formed 100% right in fact when I come up
with what I think is a good idea and it
survives kind of the first level of
scrutiny you know that I do in my own
head and I'm ready to tell somebody else
about the idea I will often say look it
is going to be really easy for you to
find objections to this idea but work
with me there's something there there's
something there and that is intuition
yeah you because it's really easy to
kill new
ideas in the beginning because they do
have so many so many easy objections to
them so you need to uh you need to kind
of forwarn people and say look I know
it's going to take a lot of work to get
this to a fully formed idea let's get
started on that it'll be fun so you got
that ability to say cosign in you
somewhere after
all maybe not on math in a different
domain yeah there are a thousand ways to
be smart by the way and that is a really
like when I go around you know and I
meet people I'm always looking for the
way that they're smart and you find it
is that's one of the things that makes
the world so interesting and fun is that
it is not it's not like IQ is a single y
Dimension there are people who are smart
and so such unique ways yeah you just
gave me a good response when somebody
calls me an idiot on the internet you
know there's a thousand ways to be smart
sir well they might tell you yeah but
there a million to be ways to be done
yeah right I feel like that's a Mark
Twain quote okay all right you gave me
an amazing tour of blue origin rocket
Factory and launch complex in the
historic Cape
Canaveral uh that's where new Glenn the
the big rocket we talked about is uh
being built and will launch can you
explain what the new Glenn rocket is and
uh tell me some interesting technical
aspects of how it works sure um uh new
Glenn is a uh a very large a heavy lift
launch vehicle it'll take about 45
metric tons to Leo very uh very large
class um it's about half the thrust a
little more than half the thrust of the
Saturn 5 uh Rockets so it's about 3.9
million pounds of thrust on
liftoff the booster has seven be four
engines the each engine generates a
little more than 550,000 lbs of
thrust the engines are fueled by liquid
natural gas liquefied natural gas LG as
the fuel and locks as the
oxidizer the cycle is an oxr stage
combustion cycle it's a cycle that was
really pioneered by the Russians it's a
very good cycle um uh and that engine is
also going to power the first stage of
the Vulcan rocket which is the United
launch Alliance rocket um then the
second stage of new Glenn uh is powered
by two b3u engines which is a upper
stage variant of our new Shephard liquid
hydrogen engine so the b3u has 160,000
lounds of thrust so two of those 320,000
lounds of thrust and hydrogen is a very
good propellant for upper stages because
it has has very high ISP it's not a
great propellent in my view for booster
stages because the stages then get
physically so large hydrogen has very
high ISP but liquid hydrogen is uh very
is not dense at all so to store liquid
hydrogen you know if you need to store
many thousands of pounds of liquid
hydrogen your tanks your liquid hydrogen
tank it's very large so uh you really
you get more benefit from the higher
isps specific impulse you get more
benefit from the higher specific impulse
on the second
stage and that stage carries less
propellant so you don't get such
geometrically gigantic tanks the Delta 4
is an example of a vehicle that is all
hydrogen the booster stage is also
hydrogen and I think that it's a very
effective vehicle but it never was very
cost effective um so it's operationally
very capable but not very cost effective
so size is also costly size is costly so
it's interesting Rockets love to be big
everything works better what do you mean
by that you've told me that before it
sounds epic but was
it I mean when you look at the kind of
the physics of Rocket
engines uh and also when you look at
parasitic Mass it doesn't if you have
let's say you have an avionic system so
you have a guidance and control system
that is going to be about the same mass
and size for a giant rocket as it is
going to be for a tiny rocket and so
that's just pardic mass that is very
consequential if you're building a very
small rocket but is Trivial if you're
building a very large rocket so you have
the parasitic Mass thing and then if you
look at for example rocket engines have
turbo pumps they have to pressurize the
fuel and the oxidizer up to a very high
pressure level in order to inject it
into to the thrust chamber where it
burns and those pumps all rotating
machines in fact get more efficient as
they get larger so really tiny turbo
pumps are very challenging to
manufacturer and any kind of gaps you
know uh are like between the housing for
example and the rotating impeller that
pressurizes the fuel there has to be
some Gap there you can't have those
parts scraping against one another and
those gaps drive
inefficiencies and so you know if you
have a very large turbo pump those gaps
and percentage terms end up being very
small and so there's a bunch of things
that that you end up loving about having
a large rocket and that you end up
hating for a small rocket but there's a
giant exception to this Rule and it is
manufacturing so manufacturing large
structures is very very challenging it's
a pain in the butt and so you know it's
just you know if you have if you're
making a small rocket engine you can
move all the pieces by hand you can
assemble it on a table one person can do
it um you know you don't need cranes and
heavy lift operations and tooling and so
on and so on when you start building big
objects infrastructure civil
infrastructure just like the launch pad
and the you know all this we we went and
visited I took you to the launch pad and
you can see it's so Monument mental yeah
it um and so just these things become
major uh undertakings both from an
engineering point of view but also from
a construction and cost point of view
and even the uh the foundation of the
Launchpad I mean this is Florida like
isn't it like swamp land like how deep
go you have at Cape Canaveral yeah um in
fact most ocean you know most launchpads
are on beaches somewhere on the oceans
side because you want to launch over
water for safety reasons um the uh yes
you have to drive pilings you know
dozens and dozens and dozens of pilings
you know 50 100 150 ft deep to get
enough structural Integrity for these
very large you know it's it's uh yes
these turned into major civil
engineering projects I just have to say
everything about that factory is pretty
badass you said tooling the bigger it
gets the more the more epic it is it
does make it epic it's fun to look at
it's extraordinary it's humbling also
cuz your humans are so small compared to
it we are building these enormous
machines that are harnessing enormous
amounts of uh chemical uh Power um you
know in very very compact packages it's
truly extraordinary but then there's all
the different components uh and you you
know the materials involved is there
something interesting that's you can
describe about the
materials uh that comprise the rocket so
it has to be as light as possible I
guess whilst withstanding the Heat and
the harsh conditions yeah I play a
little kind of game sometimes with other
rocket people that I run into where say
what are the things that would Amaze the
1960s Engineers like what what's changed
cuz surprisingly some of Rocket tre's
Greatest Hits have not changed they are
still they would recognize immediately a
lot of what we do today and it's exactly
what they pioneered back in the 60s but
a few things have changed um uh you know
the use of carbon composits is is very
different today um you know we can build
very sophisticated you saw our carbon
tape laying machine that builds the
giant fairings and we can build these
incredibly light very stiff fairing
structures out of carbon composite
material that they could not have
dreamed of I mean the the efficiency the
structural efficiency of that material
is so high compared to any you know
metallic material you might use or
anything else so that's one um uh
aluminum lithium and the ability to
friction stir weld aluminum lithium do
you remember the friction stir welding
that I showed you this this this is a a
remarkable technology it was invented
decades ago but has become very
practical over the just the last couple
of decades and instead of using heat to
weld two pieces of metal together it
literally stirs the two pieces there's a
a pin that rotates at a certain rate and
you put that pin between the two plates
of metal that you want to weld together
and then you move it at a at a very
precise speed um and instead of heating
the material it Heats it a little bit
because of friction but not very much
you can literally immediately after
after welding with stir friction welding
you can touch the material and it's just
barely warm um it's it literally stir
the molecules together it's quite
extraordinary relatively low temperature
and I guess high temperature is what
makes them the the that's the we that
makes it a weak point exactly so in with
traditional with traditional welding
techniques you may have whatever the
underlying strength characteristics of
the material are you end up with weak
regions where you weld and with Fric and
stir welding the weld are just as strong
as the bulk material so it really allows
you and so because when you're you know
let's say you're building a tank that
you're going to pressurize you know a
large you know liquid natural gas tank
for our for our booster stage for
example you know if you are welding that
with traditional methods you have to
size those weld lands the thickness of
those pieces with that knockdown for
whatever damage you're doing with the
Weld and that's going to add a lot of
weight to that tank I mean even just uh
looking at the fairings the result of
that the the complex shape that it takes
and yeah and like what it's supposed to
do is is kind of incredible CU so people
don't know it's on top of the rocket
it's going to fall apart that's its task
but it has to stay strong sometimes yes
and then uh disappear when it needs to
that's right which is a very difficult
task yes when you need something that
needs to have 100% integrity and tell it
needs to have 0% Integrity it needs to
stay attached until it's ready to go
away and then when it goes away it has
to go away completely you use explosive
charges for that and so it's a very
robust way of separating
structure uh when you need to exploding
yeah a little tiny bits of explosive
material um and uh it just it'll sever
the whole connection so if you want to
go from 100% structural Integrity To
Zero as fast as possible possible is
explosives use
explosives the entirety of this thing is
so badass okay so we're back to the two
stages so the the first stage is
reusable yeah second stage is Expendable
second stage is liquid hydrogen liquid
oxygen so we get take advantage of the
higher specific impulse um the uh the
first stage uh lands downrange on a
landing platform in the ocean um comes
back for maintenance and get ready to do
the next mission um I mean there's a
million questions but also is there a a
path towards reusability for the second
stage there is and we know how to do
that um right now I we're going to work
on manufacturing that second stage to
make it as inexpensive as possible sort
of two paths for a second stage make it
reusable um uh or work really hard to
make it inexpensive so you can afford to
expend it and th that trade is
actually not obvious which one is better
even in terms of cost even like time
even in terms of I'm talking about cost
is you know space flight getting into
orbit is a solved problem we solved it
back in you know the 50s and 60s you're
making it Sol easy the only thing that
the only interesting problem is
dramatically reducing the cost of access
to
orbit which is if you can do that you
open up a bunch of
new uh you know Endeavors that lots of
startup companies everybody else can do
so that's we really that's our one of
our missions is to you know be part of
this industry and lower the cost to
orbit so that there can be you know a
kind of a Renaissance uh a golden age of
people doing all kinds of interesting
things in space I like how you said uh
getting to orbit is a solved problem
it's just the only interesting thing is
reducing the C you know you can describe
every single problem facing human
civilization that way way the physicist
would say everything is a solved problem
we've solved everything the rest is just
uh what the ruford said that it's just
stamp collecting it's just the detail
some of the greatest Innovations and
inventions and you know Brilliance is uh
in that cost reduction stage right and
you you've had a long career of cost
reduction for sure and if you know when
you what does cost reduction really mean
it means inventing a better way yeah
exactly right and when you invent a
better way you make the whole world
richer so you know whatever it was I
don't know how many thousands of years
ago somebody invented the plow and when
they invented the plow they made the
whole world richer because they made
farming less
expensive um and so it it is a big deal
to to invent better ways that's how the
world gets
richer so uh what are some of the the
biggest challenges on the manufacturing
side on the engineering side that you're
facing in uh working to get uh to the
first launch of new Glenn the first
launch is one thing we and we'll do that
in 20124 coming up in this coming year
the real thing that's the bigger
challenge is making sure that our
Factory is efficiently uh uh
manufacturing at rate so rate production
so consider if you want to launch new
Glenn you know 24 times a year you need
to
manufacture a upper stage since they're
Expendable uh every you know twice a
month you need to do one every two weeks
so you need to be you need to have all
of your manufacturing facilities and
processes and inspection techniques and
acceptance tests and everything
operating at rate and rate manufacturing
is at least as difficult
as designing the vehicle in the first
place and the same thing so every every
uh uh upper stage has two b3u engines so
those engines you know you need if
you're going to launch this the vehicle
twice a month you need four engines a
month so you need an engine every week
so you need to be that engine needs to
be being produced at rate and and that's
a um and there's all the things that you
need to do that all the right Machine
Tools all the right fixtures uh the
right people process Etc
so it's one thing to build a first
article right so that's you know we to
launch new Glenn for the first time you
need to produce a first article but
that's not the hard part the hard part
is everything that's going on behind the
scenes to build a factory that can
produce new glends at rate so the first
one is produced in a way that's enables
the production of the second third and
the fourth and the fifth and sixth you
could think of the first article as kind
of pushing it it pushes all of the rate
manufacturing uh technology along you
know in other words it's kind of the uh
you know it's the test article in a way
that's testing out your your
Manufacturing Technologies the
manufacturing is the Big Challenge yes I
mean I don't want to make it sound like
any of it is easy I mean the people who
are designning the engines and all this
so all of it is hard um for sure but the
but the challenge right now is driving
really hard to get to uh is to get to
rate manufacturing and to do that in an
efficient way again kind of back to our
cost point if you get to rate
Manufacturing in an inefficient way you
haven't really solved the cost problem
and maybe you're haven't really moved
the state-ofthe-art forward all this has
to be about moving the state-ofthe-art
forward there are easier easier
businesses to do I always tell people
look if you are trying to make money you
know like start a salty snack food
company or or something you know you you
write that idea
down like make the Lex Friedman potato
chips you know this don't don't say it
the people going to steal
it but yeah it's hard you see what I'm
saying it's like there's nothing easy
about this business and um but but it's
its own reward it's it's it's uh it's
fascinating it's worthwhile it's
meaningful and so you know I you know
not I don't want to pick on salty snack
food companies but I think it's it's
less meaningful you know at the end of
the day you're not going to you're not
going to have accomplished something
amazing yeah there's even if you do make
a lot of money out it yeah there's
something fundamentally different about
the quote unquote business of space
exploration yeah it's for sure it's a
grand project of humanity yes it's one
of Humanity's Grand challenges and
especially as you look at going to the
moon and going to Mars and building
giant O'Neal colonies and unlocking all
the things I you know I won't live long
enough to see the fruits of this but the
fruits of this come from building a road
to space getting the
infrastructure I give you an analogy
when I started Amazon I didn't have to
develop a payment system it already
existed it was called the credit card I
didn't have to develop a transportation
system to deliver the packages it
already existed it was called the postal
service and Royal May and Deutsche Post
and so on so all this heavy lifting
infrastructure was already in place and
I could stand on its
shoulders and that's why when you look
at the internet um you know by the way
another giant piece of infrastructure
that was around in the early I'm taking
you back to like
1994 people were using dialup modems and
it was piggybacking on top of the
long-distance phone network that's how
the internet that's you know how people
were accessing servers and so on and
that again if if that hadn't existed it
would have been hundreds of billions of
capex to put that out there no startup
company could have done that and so the
problem you know you see in if you look
at the dynamism in the Internet space
over the last 20 years it's because you
know you see like two kids in a dorm
room could start an Internet company
that could be successful and do amazing
things because they didn't have to build
heavy infrastructure it was already
there and that's what I want to do I
take you know my Amazon winnings and use
that to build heavy infrastructure so
the Next
Generation you know my the generation
that's my children and their children
these you know th those Generations can
then use that heavy infrastructure then
there'll be space entrepreneurs Who
start in their dorm room yeah like that
that will be a marker of success
when you can have a really valuable
space company started in a dorm room
then we know that we've built enough
infrastructure so the Ingenuity and
Imagination can really be Unleashed I
find that very exciting as they will of
course as kids do uh take all of this
hard infrastructure ability for granted
of course which is the entrepreneurial
Spirit that's a um an inventor's
greatest dream is that their inventions
are so successful that they are one day
taken for granted you know nobody thinks
of Amazon as an invention anymore nobody
thinks of customer reviews as an we
pioneered customer views but now they're
so commonplace same thing with oneclick
shopping and so on but that's a
compliment that's how you know you you
you invent something that's so used so
beneficially used by so many people that
they take it for granted I don't know
about nobody I every time I use Amazon
I'm still amazed how does this work the
logistics that proves you're a very
curious Explorer all right all right
back to Rockets
timeline you said
2024 uh as it stands now are both the
first test launch and the launch of
Escapade explorers Tom Mars still
possible in 2024 yeah I think so um for
sure the first launch and then we'll see
if if Escapade goes on that or not I
think that the first launch for sure and
I hope Escapade too hope well I just
don't know which Miss it's it's actually
going to be slated on so we also have
other things that might go on that first
mission oh I got it but you're
optimistic that uh the launches will
still oh the first launch I'm very
optimistic that the first launch of new
Glenn will be in 2024 and I'm just not
100% certain what payload will be on
that first launch are you nervous about
it are you kidding I'm extremely nervous
about
it oh man 100% I've you know every uh
every launch I go to you know for new
Shepard for other vehicles too I'm
always nervous for these launches but
yes for sure a first launch to have no
nervousness about that would be you know
some sign of derangement I think so well
I got to visit the launch but it's
pretty um I mean it's epic you know we
have done a tremendous amount of ground
testing a tremendous amount of uh
simulation so uh you know a lot of the
problems that we might find in Flight
have been resolved but there are some
problems you can only find in flight so
you know cross your fingers uh I
guarantee you you'll uh you'll have fun
watching it no matter what happens 100%
when the thing is fully assembled and
comes up yeah the the transporter
erector just the transporter erector for
a rocket of this scale is extraordinary
that's an incredible machine vehicle uh
travels out horizontally and then kind
of yeah you know comes up over a few
hours yeah it's a beautiful thing to
watch uh speaking of which if that makes
you nervous I don't know if you
remember but you uh were aboard a new
Shepherd on this first crude
flight uh how was that experience were
you were you terrified then you know
Strangely I wasn't you know I you ride
the
rocket okay watched other people ride in
the rocket and I'm more nervous than
when I was inside the rocket
myself um it was a difficult
conversation to have with my mother uh
when I told her I was going to go on the
first one and Not only was I going to go
but I was going to bring my brother too
this is a tough conversation to have
with a mom and there's a long pause told
her she like both of you um
H it was an incredible experience and we
were we were were laughing in inside the
capsule and you know were not
nervous um the people on the ground were
very nervous for us um U it was actually
one of the most emotionally powerful
parts of the experience was not happened
even before the flight at 4:30 in the
morning brother and I are getting ready
to go to the launch site and Lauren is
going to take us there in her helicopter
and we're getting ready to leave and we
go outside outside the ranch house there
in West Texas where the launch facility
is and all of our family my kids and my
brother's kids and our you know our
our parents and uh close friends are
assembled there and they're saying
goodbye to us but they're kind of saying
maybe they think they're saying goodbye
to us
forever and you know we might not have
felt that way but it was obvious from
their faces how nervous they were that
they felt that way and it was sort of
powerful because it allowed us to see it
was almost like attending your own
memorial service or something like you
could feel how loved you were in that
moment um and it was uh it was really
amazing yeah and I mean there's just a
epic nature to it too the asent the
floating of zero gravity I'll tell you
something very interesting zero gravity
feels very natural I don't know if it's
because we you know it's like return to
the womb it just confirmed You're an
Alien but
that's I think that's what I think
that's what you just said feels so
natural to be in Zurg it was really
interesting and then what people talk
about the overview effect and seeing
Earth from space I had that feeling very
powerfully I think everyone did um you
see how fragile the Earth is if you're
not an environmentalist it will make you
one uh the the great Jim level quote you
know he looked back at the Earth from
space and he said he realized you don't
go to heaven when you die you go to
heaven when you're born and it's just
you know that's the feeling that people
get when they're in space you see all
this Blackness all this nothingness and
there's one Gem of life and it's Earth
it is a gem uh what you know you're
you've talked a lot about decision-
making throughout your time with Amazon
what was that decision like to uh to
ride to be the first to ride your
Shepherd like what just be before you
talk to your mom yeah what what like the
pros and cons like actually as one human
being as a as a leader of a
company um on all fronts like what was
that decision make you like I decided
that first of all I knew the vehicle
extremely well I know the team who built
it I know the
vehicle um the uh I'm very comfortable
with the like the Escape system we put
as much effort into the Escape system on
that vehicle as we put into all the rest
of the vehicle combined it's one of the
hardest pieces of Engineering in the
entire new Shepard architecture can you
actually describe what do you mean by
Escape system what's involved we have a
solid rocket motor in the base of the
crew capsule so that if anything goes
wrong on
asent you know while the main rocket
engine is fired
Ing we can ignite this solid rocket
motor in the base of the crew capsule
and escape from the booster it's a very
challenging system to build design
validate test all of these things it is
the reason that I am comfortable letting
anyone go on new Shephard so the the the
booster is as safe and reliable as we
can make it but um we are harnessing
whenever you're talking about rocket
engines I don't care what rocket engine
you're talking about you are harnessing
such vast power in such a small compact
geometric space the power density is so
enormous that it is impossible to ever
be sure that nothing will go wrong and
so the only way to um improve safety is
to have an escape system and you know
and
historically Rockets human rated Rockets
have had Escape systems only the space
shuttle did not and um but Apollo had
one um the you know um all of the
previous you know Gemini Etc they all
had Escape
systems and uh we have on new Shephard
unusual escapes most Escape systems are
Towers we have a pusher Escape system so
the solid rocket motor is actually
embedded in the base of the crew capsule
and it pushes and it's reusable in the
sense that if we don't use it so if we
have a nominal Mission we land with it
the tower systems have to be ejected at
a certain point in the mission and so
they get wasted even in a nominal
Mission and so again you know costs
really matters on these things so we
figured out how to have the Escape
system be a reusable uh in the event
that it's not used you can reuse it um
and have it be a pusher system it's a
very sophisticated thing so I knew these
things you asked me about my decision to
go and so I know the vehicle very well I
know the people who uh designed it I
have great trust in them um and in the
engineering that we did uh and I thought
to myself look if I am not ready to go
then I wouldn't want anyone to go a
tourism vehicle has to be designed in my
view to have very to be a safe as one
can make it you can't make it perfectly
safe it's
impossible but you know you know you
have to you people will do things people
take risk you know they climb mountains
they you know they Skydive they you know
do deep underwater scuba diving and so
on people are okay taking risk you can't
eliminate the risk but it is something
because it's a tourism vehicle you have
to do your utmost to eliminate those
risks and I felt very good about the
system I think it's one of the reasons I
was so
calm inside and maybe others were just
calm they didn't know as much about it
as I did who was in charge of engaging
the Escape system did you have it's
automated okay the Escape system is
visualizing is completely automated
automated is better because it can react
so much faster so yeah for for tourism
Rockets safety is a huge huge huge
priority for space exploration also but
a a tin you know a Delta less yes I mean
I think for you know if you're doing you
know there are human activities where we
tolerate more risk if you're saving
somebody's life you know it um if you
are you know engaging in real
exploration um these are things where
you know I personally think you we would
accept more risk in part because you
have to is there a part of you that's
frustrated by the rate of progress in
blue origin blue origin needs to be much
faster and it's one of the reasons that
I left my role as the CEO of Amazon uh a
couple of years ago
I needed I wanted to come in and um You
Blue origin needs me right now and so I
had always when I was the CEO of Amazon
my point of view on this is if I'm the
CEO of a publicly traded company it's
going to get my full attention and I
really it's just how I think about
things I it was very important to me I
felt I had an obligation to all the
stakeholders at Amazon uh to do that um
and so having you know turned the CE I'm
still the executive chair there but I
turned the CEO role over and the
reason the primary reason I did that is
so that I could spend time on Blue
origin adding some you know energy some
sense of urgency we need to move much
faster and we're going
to uh what are the ways to speed it up
so I mean there's
uh you've talked a lot of different ways
to sort of uh at at
Amazon um you removing uh
barriers for for Progress sort of
Distributing making everybody autonomous
and self-reliant in terms all the all
those kinds of things is that apply at
Blue origin or is it does apply I know
I'm leading this directly we are going
to become the world's most decisive
company across any
industry and so you know at Amazon for
you know for ever since the beginning I
said we're going to become the world's
most customer obsessed
company and no matter the industry like
people one day people are going to come
to Amazon from the healthc care industry
and want to know how did you guys how do
you how are you so customer obsessed how
do you act not just pay lip service that
but actually do that um and from you
know all different Industries should
come on to study us to see how we
accomplish that and the analogous thing
at Blue origin and what will help us
move faster is we are going to become
the world's most decisive company we're
going to get really good at taking
appropriate technology risk making those
decisions quickly um you know being bold
on those things that's what and having
the right culture that supports that you
need people to be ambitious technically
ambitious you know if there are five
ways to do something we'll study them
but let's study them very quickly and
make a decision we can always change our
mind uh it doesn't you know changing
your mind this I talk about oneway doors
and two-way doors most
decisions are two-way doors can you
explain that cuz I I love that uh
metaphor if you make the wrong decision
if it's a two-way door decision you walk
out the door you pick a door you walk
out you spend a little time there it
turns out to be the wrong decision you
can come back in and pick another door
some decisions are so consequential and
so important and so hard to reverse that
they really are one-way door decisions
you go in that door you're not coming
back MH and those decisions have to be
made very deliberately very carefully um
if you can think of yet another way to
analyze the decision you should slow
down and do that so you know uh when I
was CEO of Amazon I often found myself
in the position of being the chief
slowdown officer because somebody would
be bringing me a one-way door decision
and I it's say okay I can think of three
more ways to analyze that so let's go do
that because we have we are not going to
be able to reverse this one easily maybe
you can reverse if it's going to be very
costly and very timec consuming we
really have to get this one right from
the
beginning and
uh what happens
unfortunately in companies what can
happen is that you have a one siiz
fits-all decisionmaking process where
you end up using the heavyweight
process on all decisions yeah including
the lightweight ones the two-way door
decisions two-way door decisions should
mostly be made by single individuals or
by very small teams deep in the
organization and oneway door decisions
are the ones that that are the
irreversible ones those are the ones
that should be elevated up to you know
the senior most Executives who should
slow them down and make sure that the
right thing is being done
yeah I mean part of the skill here is to
to know the difference between one way
and two way I think you me yeah I mean I
think you mentioned Amazon
Prime uh the decision to sort of create
Amazon Prime as a one-way door and I
mean it's not it's unclear if it is or
not but it probably is and it's a really
big risk to go there there are a bunch
of decisions like that that are you
know changing the decision is going to
be very very complicated some of them
are technical decisions too the because
some technical decisions are like quick
drying cement you know if you're going
to once you make them it gets really
hard I mean you know choosing which
propellants to use in a vehicle you know
selecting LG for the booster stage and
selecting hydrogen for the upper
stage that has turned out to be a very
good decision but if you changed your
mind that would be a very that would be
a very big setback do you see what I'm
saying so that's the kind of decision
you scrutinize very very carefully other
things just aren't like that most
decisions are not that way most
decisions should be made by single
individuals but they need and and and
done quickly in the full understanding
that you can always change your mind
yeah one of the things I really liked
perhaps this not two-way door decisions
is uh I disagree and commit phrase so
don't so somebody brings up an idea to
you if it's a two-way or you state that
you don't understand enough to agree but
you still back them I I'd love to
explain that yeah disagree and commit is
a really important principle that saves
a lot of arguing yeah so you know I want
to use that in my personal life I
disagree but commit like it's very
common in any Endeavor in life in
business and any you know anybody where
you have teammates you have a teammate
and the two of you disagree yeah
at some point you have to make a
decision and you know in companies we
tend to organize hierarchically so
there's this you know whoever is the
more senior person ultimately gets to
make the decision so ultimately the CEO
gets to make that
decision and the CEO may not always make
the decision that they agree with so
like you know I would I would often I
would be the one who would disagree and
commit some one of my direct reports
would very much want to do it do
something in a particular way I would
think it was a bad idea I would explain
my point of view they would say I Jeff I
think you're wrong and here's why and we
would go back and forth and I would
often say you know what I don't think
you're right um but I'm going to gamble
with you and um you're closer to the
ground truth than I am I've known you
for 20 years you have great
judgment I don't know that I'm right
either not really not for sure all these
decisions are complicated let's do it
your way but at least then you've made a
decision and and I'm agreeing to commit
to that decision so I'm not going to be
second guessing it I'm not going to be
sniping at it I'm not going to be saying
I told you so I'm going to try actively
to help make sure it works that's a
really important teammate Behavior
there's so many ways that dispute
resolution is a really interesting thing
in on teams and there are so many ways
when two people disagree about something
even I'm assuming on the case where
everybody's well intentioned they just
have a very different opinion about what
the right decision is and we have in our
society and inside companies we have a
bunch of um mechanisms that we use to
resolve these kinds of disputes a lot of
them are I think really bad so an
example of a really bad way of coming to
agreement is
compromise so compromise you know look I
here's we're in a room here and I could
say Lex how tall do you think this
ceiling is and you'd be like I don't
know Jeff maybe 12 feet tall and I would
say I I think it's 11 feet tall and then
um we'd say you know what let's just
call it 11 and A2
feet that's compromised instead of the
right thing to do is you know to get a
tape measure or figure out some way of
measuring but think getting that tape
measure and figure how to get it to the
top of the ceiling and all these things
that requires energy compromise the
advantage of compromise as a resolution
mechanism is that it's low
energy um but it doesn't lead to truth
and so uh in things like the height of
the ceiling where truth is a knowable
thing you shouldn't allow compromise to
be used when you can know the truth MH
um another really bad resolution
mechanism happens all the time is just
who's more
stubborn yeah this is also let's say two
Executives who disagree and they just
have a war of attrition in which
everyone gets exhausted first
capitulates to the other one again you
haven't arrived at truth and this is
very
demoralizing so you know this is where
escalation I I try to ask people who you
know on my team and say never get to a
point where you are resolving something
by you know who gets exhausted
first escalate that I'll help you make
the decision like let's because that's
so de-energizing and such a terrible
lousy way to make a decision so you want
to get to the resolution as quickly as
possible because that ultimately leads
to high velocity of the yes and you want
to try to get as close to truth as
possible so you want like you know
exhausting the other person is not truth
seeking yes and compromise is not truth
seeking so you know it doesn't mean now
and there are a lot of cases where no
one knows the real truth and that's
where disagree and commit can come in um
but it's it's um escalation is better
than War of Attrition escalate to you
know to your boss and say hey we can't
agree on this we like each other we're
respectful of each other but we strongly
disagree with each other we need you to
you know make a decision here so we can
move forward but decisiveness
moving forward quickly on on decisions
as quickly as as you responsibly can is
how you increase velocity most of what
slows things down is in is taking too
long to make decisions at all skill
levels you know so it has to be part of
the
culture to get high velocity you know
Amazon has a million and a half people
and the company is still fast we're
still decisive we're still quick and
that's because the culture supports that
at every scale in a in a distributed way
try to maximize the velocity of
decisions exactly you've mentioned the
lunar program let me ask you about that
yeah um there's a a lot going on there
and you haven't really talked about it
much so in addition to the Artemis
program with NASA uh blue is doing its
own Lander program can you describe it
the there's a there's a sexy picture on
Instagram with with one of them is it
the MK1 I guess yeah the mark one the
picture is me with Bill Nelson the NASA
administrator just to clarify the Lander
is the sexy thing about
the really want to clarify I me I know
it was either Lander or Bill okay
um I love B clarifying okay um the uh
yes the Maran Lander um is designed to
take 3,000 kilograms to the surface of
the Moon cargo Expendable cargo it's an
Expendable Lander lands on the moon
stays there take 3,000 kg to the surface
it can be launched on a single new Glenn
flight which is very important so it's a
relatively simple architecture just like
the human Landing system Lander they
called the mark 2 Mark 1 is also uh
fueled with liquid
hydrogen and uh which is for for high
energy missions like landing on the
surface of the Moon the high specific
impulse of hydrogen is a very big advant
AG the disadvantage of hydrogen has
always been that it's since it's such a
deep cryogen it's not storable so it's
constantly boiling off and you're losing
propellant um because it's boiling off
and so what we're doing as part of the L
of our lunar program is developing solar
powerered
cryocoolers that can actually make
hydrogen a storable propellant for deep
space and that's a real game Cher uh
it's a game changer for any high energy
Mission so to the moon but to the outer
planets to Mars everywhere so the idea
with Mark one both Mark 1 and Mark I is
the new Glenn
can uh carry it from the surface of
Earth to the surface
of the Moon exactly so the mark one is
Expendable the lunar the lunar lander
we're developing for NASA the mark 2
Lander that's part of uh the prr they
call it the sustaining Lander program so
that Lander is designed to be
reusable it can land on the surface of
the Moon in in a a single stage
configuration and then take off so the
whole the you know the if you look at
the Apollo
program the lunar lander and Apollo was
really two stages it would land on the
surface and then it would leave The
Descent stage on the surface of the Moon
and only the ascent stage would go back
up into lunar or orbit where it would
Rendevous with the Command Module here
what we're doing is we have a single
stage lunar lander that carries down
enough propellant so it can bring the
whole thing back up so that it can be
reused over and over and the point of
doing that of course is to reduce cost
so that you can make Lunar missions more
affordable over time which is that's one
of NASA's big objectives because this
time the the whole point of Artemis is
go back to the moon but is time to stay
MH so you know back in the Apollo
program we went to the moon six times
and then ended the program and it really
was too expensive to to continue and so
there's a few questions there but one is
how do you stay in the moon what what
ideas do you have
about uh yeah like a sustain sustaining
life where a few folks can stay there
for prol long periods of time well um
one of the things things we're working
on is um using lunar resources like
lunar regolith to
manufacture Commodities and even solar
cells on the surface of the Moon we've
already built a solar cell that is
completely made from lunar regolith
simulant and this solar cell is only
about 7% uh power efficient so it's very
inefficient compared to you know the
more advanced solar cells that we make
here on Earth but if you can figure out
how to make a practical solar cell
Factory that you can land on the surface
of the Moon and then the raw material
for those solar cells is simply lunar
regolith then you can just uh you know
continue to churn out solar cells on the
surface of the Moon have lots of power
on the surface of the Moon that will
make it easier for people to live on the
moon uh similarly we're working on
extracting oxygen from lunar regolith so
lunar regolith by weight is has a lot of
oxygen in it it's bound very tightly you
know in as oxides with other elements
and so it you have to separate the
oxygen which is very energy intensive so
that also could work together with the
uh solar cells but if you can uh and
then
ultimately we may be able to find
practical quantities
of Ice uh in the permanently shadowed
craters on the poles of the
Moon and we know there is ice water um
in in those uh or water ice in those
craters and we know that we can break
that down with electrolysis into
hydrogen and oxygen and then youd not
only have oxygen but you'd also have a
very good high efficiency propellent uh
fuel in in hydrogen so there's a lot the
there's a lot we can do to make the moon
more sustainable over time but the very
first step the thing the kind of gate
that all of that has to go through is we
need to be able to
land uh cargo and humans on the surface
of the Moon at an acceptable cost to
fast forward a little bit is there any
chance Jeff basil steps foot on the moon
and on
Mars one or the other or both it's very
unlikely I think it's probably something
that gets done by Future Generations by
the time it gets to me I think in my
lifetime that's probably going to be
done by professional astronauts sadly I
would love to sign up for that mission
um so don't count me out yet Lex you
know give me give me a fighting shot
here maybe but I think if we're if we
are uh placing
uh reasonable bets on such a thing in my
lifetime that will continue to be done
by professional astronauts yeah so these
are risky difficult missions and
probably missions that require a lot of
training you know you are going there
for a very specific purpose to do
something we're going to be able to do a
lot on the Moon too with automation so
you know in terms of setting up these
factories and doing all that we we're
sophisticated enough now with automation
that we probably don't need humans to
tend those factories and machines
um so it's there's a lot that's going to
be done in both modes so I have to ask
the bigger picture question about the
two companies
pushing Humanity forward out towards the
Stars blue origin and SpaceX are you
competitors collaborators which and to
what degree well I would say you know
just like the internet is big and they
lots of winners at all scale levels I
mean there are half a dozen giant
companies the you know the internet has
made but they're a bunch of medium-sized
companies and a bunch of small companies
all successful all with profit streams
all driving great customer
experiences um that's what we want to
see in space that kind of dynamism and
space is Big there's room for a bunch of
winners and it's going to happen at all
skill levels and so you know SpaceX is
going to be successful for sure I want
blue origin to be successful and I hope
there are another you know five
companies is right behind
us but you know I spoke to Elon a few
times recently about you about blue
origin and he was very positive about
you as a person and very supportive of
all the efforts you've been leading at
Blue what's your thoughts you worked
with a lot of leaders at Amazon at Blue
what's your thoughts about Elon as a
human being and a
leader well I don't really know Elon
very well um you know I know his public
persona but I also know you can't know
anyone by their public Persona um it's
impossible I mean you may think you do
but I guarantee you don't so I don't
really know you know Elon way better
than I do Lex but um in in terms of his
judging by the results he must be a very
capable leader um there's no way you
could have you know Tesla and SpaceX
without being a capable leader it's
impossible yeah I just I I hope you guys
hang out sometimes shake hands and and
sort of um have a kind of friendship
that would Inspire just the entirety of
humanity because you what you're doing
is like one of the big
Grand challenges ahead for Humanity well
I agree with you and I think in a lot of
these um Endeavors we're very
like-minded yeah so I think you I think
you I'm not saying we're identical but I
think we're very likeminded and so I you
know know I I I love that idea all right
going back to uh sexy pictures on your
Instagram uh there's a video of you from
the early days of Amazon um giving a
tour of your quote sort of offices I
think your dad is holding the camera he
is yeah I know yes this is what the
Giant Orange extension cord and yeah and
you're like explaining the The Genius of
the extension cord how this a this a
desk and the CRT Monitor and sort of
that's where the that's where all the
magic Captain I forget what your dad
said but this is like the the the center
of it all so um what was it like what
was going through your mind at that time
you left a good job in New York and took
this leap were you excited were you
scared so excited and scared anxious you
know thought the odds of success were
low told all of our early investors that
I thought there was a 30% chance of
success by which I just been getting
your money back not like turn not what
actually happened happened because
that's the truth every startup company
is unlikely to work it's helpful to be
in reality about that um but that
doesn't mean you can't be optimistic so
you kind of have to have this duality in
your head like you on the one hand
you're you know what the Baseline
statistics say about startup companies
and the other hand you have to ignore
all of that and just be 100% sure it's
going to work and you're doing both
things at the same time you're holding
that contra Addiction in your head but
it was so so exciting I love you know
every from 1994 when uh the company was
founded 1995 when we opened our
doors all the way until today it's I
find Amazon so exciting and that doesn't
mean it's like full of pain full of
problems you know it's like there so
many things that need to be resolved and
worked and made better and and Etc but
but on balance it's so fun it's such a
privilege it's been such a joy I feel so
grateful that I've been part of that
Journey um it's just been incredible so
in some sense you don't want a a single
day of comfort you've written about this
many times we'll talk about your writing
which uh I I would highly recommend
people read in just the letters to
shareholders uh so you wrote up uh
explaining the idea of day one thinking
I think you first wrote bought in 97
letters to shareholders then you also in
a way wrote it
about sad to say is your last letter to
shareholders Co um and you said that day
two is stasis followed by
irrelevance followed by excruciating
painful decline followed by death and
that is why it's always day
one um can you explain this day one
thing this is a really powerful way to
describe the beginning and the journey
of Amazon it's it's really a very simple
and I think age-old idea about renewal
and rebirth and like every day is day
one every day you're deciding what
you're going to do and you are not
trapped by what you were or who you were
or any self-consistency self-consistency
even can be trap and so day one thinking
is kind of we start fresh every day and
we get to make new decisions every day
about invention about customers about uh
how we're going to operate what even
even even as deeply as what our
principles are we can go back to that
turns out we don't change those very
often but we change them
occasionally and um when we work on
programs that
Amazon we often uh make a list of
tenants and this the tenants are kind of
they're not principles they're a little
more tactical than principles but it's
kind of the the main ideas that we want
this program to embody whatever those
are and one of the things that we do is
we put these are the tenants for this
program and in parentheses we always put
unless you know a better
way and that idea unless you know a
better way is so important because you
never want to get trapped by Dogma you
never want to get trapped by history it
doesn't mean you discard history or
ignore it there's so much value in what
has worked in the past and but you can't
be blindly following what you've done
and that's the heart of day one is
you're always starting fresh and uh to
the question of of how to fend off day
two you said such a question can't have
a simple answer as you're saying there
will be many elements multiple paths and
many traps I don't know the whole answer
but I may know bits of it here's a
starter pack of Essentials maybe others
come to mind for day one
defense customer Obsession uh a
skeptical view of proxies the eager
adoption of external trends and high
velocity decision making so we talked
about High Velocity decision making
that's more difficult than it
sounds so maybe you can pick one that
stands out to you as you can comment on
uh eager adoption of external trends
High Velocity decision-making skeptical
view of proxies how do you fight off day
two well you know I'll talk about
because I think it's the one that is
maybe in some ways the hardest to
understand um is the skeptical view of
proxies um one of the things that
happens in business probably anything
that you're where you're you know you
have an ongoing program and something is
is underway for a number of years is you
develop certain things that you're
managing to like let's say the typical
case would be a
metric and that metric isn't the real
underlying
thing and so uh you know maybe the
metric is um efficiency metric around
customer contacts per unit sold or
something like if you sell a million
units how many customer contacts do you
get or how many returns do you get and
so on and so on and so what happens is a
little bit of a kind of inertia sets
in where somebody a long time ago
invented that metric and they invented
that metric they decided we need to
watch for you know customer returns per
unit sold as an important metric but
they had a reason why they chose that
that metric the person who invented that
metric and decided it was worth watching
and then fast forward five years that
metric is the proxy MH the proxy for
truth I guess the proxy for truth the
proxy for customer let's say in this
case it's a proxy for customer
happiness and but that metric is not
actually customer happiness it's a proxy
for customer happiness the person who
invented the metric understood that
connection five years later
it a kind of inertia can set in and you
forget the truth behind why you were
watching that metric in the first place
and the world shifts a little yeah and
now that proxy isn't as valuable as it
used to be or it's missing something and
you have to be on alert for that you
have to know okay this is I don't really
care about this metric I care about
customer
happiness and this metric is worth
putting energy into and following and
improving and scrutinizing only in so
much as it actually affects customer
happiness and so you got to constantly
be on guard and it's very very common
this is a nuanced problem it's very
common especially in large companies
that they are managing to metrics that
they don't really understand they don't
really know why they exist and the world
may have shifted out from under them a
little and the metrics are no longer as
relevant as they were when somebody 10
years earlier invented the metric that
is a Nuance but uh that's a big problem
right there's something so compelling to
have a nice metric to try to optimize
yes and by the way you do need metrics
yes you do you know you can't ignore
them um you want them but you just have
to be constantly on guard this is you
know a a way to slip into day two
thinking would be to manage your
business to metrics that you don't
really understand and you're not really
sure why they were invented in the first
place and you're not sure they're still
as relevant as they used to be uh what
does it take to be the guy or gal who
who uh who brings up the point that this
proxy might be outdated I guess what
does it take to have a culture that
enables that in the meeting because
that's a very uncomfortable thing to
bring up at a meeting we all showed up
here Friday this is such you have just
asked a million-dollar question so th
this is this is what you're if I
generalize what you're asking you were
talking in general about
truthtellah you can survive you can
procreate if you're the village truth
teller you might get clubbed to death in
the middle of the night truths are often
they don't want to be heard because
important truths can be um uncomfortable
they can be awkward they can be
exhausting impolite all that kind of
stuff challenging uh they can make
people defensive even if that's not the
intent but any High performing
organization or whether it's a sports
team a business you know a political
organization an activist group I don't
care what it is any High performing
organization has to have mechanisms and
a culture that supports
truthtellah tell people it's not what
we're designed to do as humans it's not
really it's kind of a side effect you
know we can do that but it's not how we
survive we mostly Survive by being
social animals um and being cordial and
cooperative and um that's really
important and so there's a you know
science is all about truth telling it's
actually a very formal mechanism for
trying to tell the truth and even in
science you find that it's hard to tell
the truth right H even you know you're
supposed to have a hypothesis and test
it and find data and reject the
hypothesis and so on it's not easy but
even in science there's like the senior
scientists and the junior scientist and
then there's a hierarchy of humans where
the seniority somehow seniority matters
in the scientific process which is and
that's true inside companies too so you
want to set up your culture so that the
most Junior
person can overrule the most senior
person if they have data um and and and
that really is about trying to you know
there are little things you can do so
for example in every meeting that I
attend I always speak
last and I know from
experience that you know
if I speak first even
very strong
willed um highly intelligent High
judgment participants in that meeting
will wonder well if Jeff thinks that I
came in this meeting thinking one thing
but maybe I'm not right and so you can
do little things like if you're the most
senior person in the
room go last let everybody else go first
in fact ideally try to have the most
Junior person go first and the second
then try to go in order of
seniority um so that you can hear
everyone's opinion in a kind of
unfiltered way because we really do we
actually literally change our opinions
if somebody who you really respect says
something makes you change your mind a
little so you're saying implicitly or
explicitly give per
for people to have a strong opinion that
as long as it's backed by data yes and
sometimes it can even by the way a lot
of our most powerful truths turn out to
be hunches they turn out to be based on
anecdotes their intuition based and
sometimes you don't even have strong
data but you may know you may know the
person well enough to trust their
judgment you may feel yourself leaning
in it may resonate with a set of
anecdotes you have and then you may be a
to say you know something about that
feels right let's go collect some data
on that let's try to see if we can
actually know whether it's right but for
now let's not disregard it because it
feels right you can also fight inherent
bias there's an optimism bias like if
there are two interpretations of a new
set of data and one of them is happy and
one of them is
unhappy it's a little dangerous to jump
to the conclusion that the happy
interpretation is right you may want to
sort of compensate for that human bias
of of looking for you know trying to
find the silver lining and said look
this that might be good but I'm going to
go with it's bad for now until we're
sure So speaking of Happiness bias data
collection and anecdotes you have to
how's that for a
transition you have to you have to tell
uh me the story of the the call you made
the customer service call you made to
demonstrate a point um about weight
times yeah this is very early in the
history of Amazon and uh we were going
over a weekly Business review and a set
of documents and I have I have a saying
which is when the data and the anecdotes
disagree the anecdotes are usually right
and and it doesn't mean you just
slavishly go follow the anecdotes then
it means you go examine the data because
the dat and it's usually not that the
data is being um misc collected it's
usually that you're not measuring the
right thing and so you know if you have
a bunch of customers complaining about
something and at the same time you know
your metrics look like why they
shouldn't be complaining um you should
doubt the metrics and an early uh
example of this was we had metrics that
showed that our customers were waiting I
think less than I don't know 60 seconds
when they called a 1 1800 number to get
am you know phone customer service the
waight time was supposed to be less than
60 seconds and but we had a lot of
complaints that it was longer than that
and anecdotally it seemed longer than
that like you know I would call customer
service myself and so one day we're in a
meeting we're going to the wbr and the
weekly Business review and we get to
this metric in the deck and the guy who
leads customer service is to fit in the
metric and I said okay let's
call picked up the phone and I dialed
the 1800 number and called customer
service and we just waited in
silence what did it turn out to be like
oh was really long more than 10 minutes
I think oh wow I mean it was it was many
minutes and so you know it dramatically
made the point that something was wrong
with the data collection we weren't
measuring the right thing and and that
you know set off a whole chain of events
where we start measuring it right and
that's an example by the way of of Truth
telling is like that's an uncomfortable
thing to do yeah but it's but you have
to seek truth even when it's
uncomfortable and you have to get
people's attention and they have to buy
into it and they have to get energized
around really fixing things so that that
speaks to the the obsession with the
customer experience so one of the
defining aspects
of your approach to Amazon is just being
obsessed with making customers happy I
think uh companies sometimes say that
but Amazon is really obsessed with that
I think there's something really
profound to that which is seeing the
World Through The Eyes of the customer
like the customer experience the human
being that's using the product that's uh
enjoying the product like what they're
like the subtle little
things um that make up up their
experience like how do you optimize
those this is another um really good and
kind of deep question because there are
big things that are really important to
manage and then there are small things
in internally to Amazon we call them
paper
cuts so we have we're always working on
the big things like if you ask me and
and most of the energy goes into the big
things as it should so um and you can
identify the big things and I would
encourage anybody if any you knowbody
listening to this is a
entrepreneur as a small business
whatever um you know think about the
things that are not going to change over
10 years and those are probably the big
things so like I know at in our retail
business at Amazon 10 years from now
customers are still going to want low
prices I know they're still going to
want fast delivery and I just know
they're still going to want big
selection so it's impossible to imagine
a scenario where 10 years from now I say
where customer say I love Amazon I just
wish the prices were a little higher or
I love Amazon I just wish you delivered
a little more slowly so when you
identify the big things you can tell
they're worth putting energy into
because they're stable in time okay but
you're asking about something a little
different which is in every customer
experience there are those big things
and by the way it's astonishly hard to
focus even on just the big things so
even though they're obvious they're
really hard to focus on but in addition
to that there are all these little tiny
customer experience
deficiencies and we call those paper
cuts and we make long lists of them and
then we have dedicated
teams that go fix paper cuts because the
teams working on the big issues never
get to the paper
cuts they never work their way down the
list to get to they're working on big
things as they should and as you want
them to um and so you need special teams
who are charged with fixing paper cuts
where would you put on the on the paper
cut Spectrum the buy now with one click
button which is I think pretty genius so
to me like
okay my interaction with things I love
on the internet there's things I do a
lot I maybe presenting regular human uh
I would love for those things to be
frictionless for example uh booking
airline
tickets just saying but you know
it's buying a a thing with one click
making that experience frictionless
intuitive all aspects of that like that
that just fundamentally makes my life
better not just in terms of efficiency
in terms of some kind of cognitive load
yeah cognitive load and peace inner
peace and happiness first of all buying
stuff uh isn't a pleasant experience
have having enough money to buy a thing
and then buying it is a pleasant
experience and like having pain around
that is somehow just you're ruining a be
a beautiful experience and I guess all
I'm saying as a as a person who loves
good ideas is that a paper cut a
solution to a paper cut yes so it's
probably that particular thing is
probably a solution to a number of paper
cuts so if you go back and look at our
order Pipeline and how people shopped on
Amazon before we invented one click
shopping there were a whole Ser there
was more friction there was a whole
series of paper cuts and that uh
invention eliminated a bunch of paper
cuts and I think you're absolutely right
by the way that there when you come up
with something like oneclick shopping
again this is like so ingrained people
now I'm impressed that you even notice
it I mean most people every time I click
the button most people surge of
Happiness this there is in in the
perfect invention for the perfect moment
in the perfect context there is real
Beauty yeah it is actual Beauty and it
feels good it's emotional it's emotional
for the inventor it's emotional for the
team that builds it it's emotional for
the customer it's a big deal
and you can feel those things but to
keep coming up with that idea with those
kinds of ideas I guess is the the day
one thinking effort yeah and you need
you need a big group of people who feel
that kind of uh satisfaction with
creating that kind of
beauty there's a lot of uh books written
about you there's a there's a book
invent and wander where uh Walter
Isaacson does an intro and it's mostly
Collective writings of yours um I've
read that I also recommend people check
out out the founders
podcast uh that covers you a lot and it
does different analysis of different
business advice you've given over the
years um I bring all that up because uh
I saw that
there uh a mentioned that you said that
books are an antidote for short
attention
spans and I forget how it was phrased
but that when you were thinking about
the Kindle that you're thinking
about how
technology changes
yeah we co-evolve yeah with our
tools so you know we invent new tools
and then our tools change us which is
fascinating to think about goes in a
circle and there's some aspect you know
even just inside business where you
don't just make the customer happy but
you also have to think about like where
is this going to take Humanity if you
zoom out a bit 100% And you know you you
can feel feel you your brain brains are
plastic and you can feel your brain
getting reprogrammed I remember the
first time this happened to me was when
Tetris who first came on the scene I'm
sure you've had anybody who's been a
game player has this experience where
you close your eyes to lay down to go to
sleep and you see all the little blocks
moving and you can you're kind of
rotating them in your mind and you can
just tell as you walk around the world
that you have rewired your BL brain to
play
Tetris and but that happens with
everything and so you know one of the I
think we still have yet to see the full
repercussions of this I fear but I think
one of the things that we've done online
you know and largely because of social
media is we have trained our brains to
be really good at processing super short
form content
and you know your podcast flies in the
face of this you know you you you do
these long format things and uh reading
reading books is a long format thing and
we all do more of if if you if something
is convenient we do more of it and so
when you make tools you know that we
carry
around um a little we carry around in
our pocket a phone and one of the things
that phone does for the most part is it
is an attention shortening device
because most of the things we do on our
phone shorten our attention spans and
I'm not even going to say we know for
sure that that's bad but I do think it's
happening it's one of the ways we're
co-evolving with that tool but I think I
think it's important to spend some of
your time and some of your life doing
long attention span things yeah I think
uh you've spoken about the value in your
own life of
focus of singular focus on a thing for
prolonged periods of time and that's
certainly what books do and that's
certainly what that piece of technology
does but I bring all that up to to ask
you about another piece of technology
AI that has the potential to have a um
various
trajectories uh to have an impact on
human civilization H how do you think AI
will change
us we if you're talking about you know
generative AI large language models
things like chat GPT and it's soon
successors and um these are incredibly
powerful
Technologies to believe otherwise is to
bury your head in the sand soon to be
even more
powerful
um it's interesting to me that that
large language models in their current
form are not inventions they're
discoveries
you know the telescope was an
invention but looking through it at
Jupiter knowing that it had moons was a
discovery like my God it has
moons and that's what Galileo did and so
this is closer on that spectrum of
invention you know we know exactly what
happens with a 787 it's an engineered
object we designed it we know how it
behaves we don't want any
surprises um large language models are
much more like discoveries we're
constantly getting surprised by their
capabilities they're not really
engineered
objects um then you know you have
this debate about whether they're going
to be good for Humanity or bad for
Humanity um you know even specialized AI
can be very bad for human ity I mean
just you know just regular machine
learning models that can can make you
know certain weapons of war that could
be incredibly destructive and very
powerful and they're not General AIS
they're just they could just be very
smart
weapons
um and so we have to think about all of
those
things ju I'm very optimistic about this
so so even in the face of all this
uncertainty my own view is that that
these powerful tools are much more
likely to help us and save us even than
they are to on balance hurt us and
destroy us I think you know we humans
have a lot of ways of um we can make
ourselves go extinct you know these
things may help us not do that you know
so we may actually they actually save us
so the people who are you know overly
concerned I in my view overly concerned
it's a valid debate um I I think that I
I think that they may be missing part of
the equation which is how helpful they
could be in making sure we don't destroy
ourselves um I don't know if you saw the
movie
Oppenheimer but to me I first of all I
loved the movie and I thought the best
part of the movie is this bureaucrat
played by Robert Downey Jr who you know
some of people have talked to think
that's the most boring part of the movie
I thought it was the most fascinating
because what's going on here is you
realize we have invented these awesome
destructive powerful Technologies called
nuclear
weapons and they are managed and you
know we we we humans are we're not
really capable of wielding building
those weapons yeah where you know that's
what he represented in that movie is
here's this guy who is uh just he
wrongly thinks he's like being so petty
he thinks that he said something that
Oppenheimer said something bad to
Einstein about him they didn't talk
about him at all as you find out in the
final scene of the movie and yet he
spent his career trying to be vengeful
and uh and Petty and that's that's the
problem we as a
species are not
really sophisticated enough and mature
enough to handle these Technologies and
so and and by the way before you get to
General Ai and the possibility of AI
having agency and there's a lot of
things would have to happen but um
there's so much benefit that's going to
come from these Technologies in the
meantime even before their you know
General AI in terms of better medicines
and uh better tools to develop more
Technologies and so on so I think it's
an
incredible moment to be alive and to
witness the Transformations that are
going to happen how quickly will happen
no one knows but over the next 10 years
and 20 years I think we're going to see
really remarkable advances and I
personally am very excited about it
first of all really interesting to say
that it's discoveries that it's true
that we don't know the limits of what's
possible with the current language
models we don't and like it could be a
few tricks and hacks here and there that
that uh open doors to hold entire new
possibilities we do know that humans are
doing something
different um from these models in part
because you know we're so power
efficient you know the human brain does
remarkable things and it does it on
about 20 watts of power and you know uh
the the AI techniques we use today use
many kilowatts of power to do equivalent
tasks so there's something interesting
about the way the human brain does this
and also we don't need as much data so
you know like self-driving cars are they
have to drive billions and billions of
miles to try and to learn how to drive
and you know your average 16-year-old uh
figures it
out with many fewer miles so there are
still some tricks I think that we have
yet to learn I don't think we've learned
the last trick I don't think it's just a
question of scaling things up um but
what's interesting is that just scaling
things up and I put just in quotes
because it's actually hard to scale
things up but just scaling things up
also appears to pay huge dividends yeah
and and it's there's some more nuanced
aspect about human beings that's
interesting if it's able to accomplish
like being truly original and novel to
you know lot large language models being
able to come up with some truly new
ideas uh that's one and the other one is
uh
truth it seems that large language
models are very good at
sounding like they're saying a true
thing but they don't uh require or often
have a grounding in sort of a
mathematical truth it can just basically
is a very good bullshitter so if if
there's not enough dat if there's not
enough sort of data uh in the in the
training data about a particular topic
is just going to
concoct um accurate sounding narratives
which is a very fascinating problem to
try to solve how do you get uh language
models to infer what is true and not to
sort of introspect yeah they need to be
taught to say I don't know more often
yeah and uh I know several humans who
could be taught that as well
sure and then the other stuff because
you're still a bit involved in the
Amazon side with the AI things the other
open question is what kind of products
are created from this oh so many yeah I
mean you know just to you know we have
um Alexa and Eko and Alexa has you know
hundreds of millions of installed base
you know inputs and so there's this
there's you know there's Alexa
everywhere and guess what Alexa is about
to a lot smarter yeah and so that's
really you know from a product point of
view that's super exciting there's so
many opportunities there so many
opportunities shopping assistant you
know like all that stuff is amazing in
AWS you know we're building Titan which
is our foundational model we're also
building um Bedrock which our corporate
clients at
AWS our Enterprise clients they want to
be able to use these powerful models
with their own corporate data yes
without accidentally contributing their
corporate data to that model yes and so
those are the tools we're building for
them with bedrock so there's tremendous
opportunity here yeah the security the
Privacy all those things are fascinating
of how to cuz so much value can be
gained by training on private data but
you want to keep this secure that's a
it's a fascinating technical problem
this is a very challenging technical
problem and it's one that we're you know
making progress on and dedicated to
solving for our
customers uh do you think there will be
a day when humans and robots maybe Alexa
have a romantic relationship like can be
her well I mean think if you look at
brainstorming products here if you look
at the Spectrum of human variety and
what people like you know sexual variety
yes you know they're people who like
everything so the answer to your
question has to be yes I don't know I
don't know how widespread that will be
all right but it will happen I was just
asking asking one for a friend but it's
all
right I just moving
on next question uh what's a perfectly
productive day in the life of Jeff Bezos
you're one of the most productive humans
in the world well I first of all I get
up in the morning and I putter I like I
like have a coffee you find putter just
like I slowly move around I'm not as
productive as you might think I am I
mean I because I do believe in wandering
and sort of I I you know I read my phone
for a while I read newspapers for a
while I chat with Lauren I drink my
first coffee um so I kind of I move
pretty slowly in the first couple of
hours I get up early just naturally uh
and uh and then you know I exercise most
days and most days it's not the hard for
me sometimes it's really hard and I do
it anyway I don't want to you know and
it's painful and I'm like why am I here
and I don't want to do why am I here at
the gym why am I here at the gym why
don't I do something else you know this
it's not always easy uh what's your
source of motivation in those moments I
know that I'll feel better later if I do
it and so like the the real source of
motivation I can tell the days when I
skip it I'm I'm not quite as alert I
don't feel as good um and then there's
harder motivations it's longer term you
want to be healthy as you age you know
you want Health span you want ideally
you know you want to be healthy and
moving around when you're 80 years old
you know and so there's a lot of but
that kind of motivation is so far in the
future it can be very hard to work in
the second so thinking about the fact
I'll feel better in about four hours if
I do it now I have more energy for the
rest of my day and so on and so on
what's your exercise routine just to
linger on that what do you how much do
you curl I mean what are we talking
about
here that's all I do at the gym so I
just I I I my my routine um you know on
a good day I do about half an hour of
cardio and I do about 45 minutes of
weightlifting resistance training of
some kind mostly weights I have a
trainer who you know I love um who
pushes me um which is really helpful you
know I'll be like uh he'll
say uh Jeff do you you could can we go
up on that weight a little bit and I'll
think about it and I'll be like no I
don't think so and he'll be he'll look
at me and say yeah I think you
can and of course he's right so it's
awful to have somebody push you a little
bit but almost every day you do that I I
do almost every day I do a little bit of
cardio and a little bit of weightlifting
and um i' rotate I do a pulling day and
a pushing day and a leg day it's all
pretty standard stuff so puttering
coffee gym uttering coffee gym and then
work work so what's work look like what
what what do the
productive uh hours look like for you I
you know so I a couple years ago I left
as the CEO of Amazon and I have never
worked harder in my
life I am I am working so hard and I'm
mostly enjoying it but there are also
some very painful days uh most of my
time is spent on um blue origin and I've
been I'm so deeply involved here now for
the last couple of years and in the big
I love it in the small there's all the
frustrations that come along with
everything you know we're trying to get
to rate manufacturing as we talked about
that's super important we'll get there
we just hire a new CEO guy I've known
for close to 15 years now a guy named
Dave limp who I love he's amazing you
know um so we're super lucky to have
Dave and you know we're going to you're
going to see us move faster there but so
my day of work you know reading
documents having meetings um sometimes
in person sometimes over Zoom depends on
where I am it's all about you know the
technology it's about the organization
it's about you know I'm very um I I
have architecture and Technology
meetings almost every day on various
subsystems inside the vehicle inside the
engines it's super fun for me my
favorite part of it is the technology um
um my least favorite part of it is you
know building organizations and so on
that's important but it's also my least
favorite part so you know that's why
they call it work you don't always get
to do what you want to do how do you
achieve time where you can focus and
truly think through problems I do little
thinking Retreats so for this is not the
only I I can do that all day long I'm
very good at focusing I'm very good at
um you know I'm I don't keep to a stct
schedule like my meetings often go
longer than I plan for them to because I
believe in wandering a lot my perfect
meeting starts with a crisp document so
the document should be written with such
Clarity that it's like angels singing
from on high I like a crisp document and
a messy meeting and so the meeting is
about like asking questions that nobody
knows the answer to and and and and
trying to like wander your way to a solu
ution and um uh cuz
like and that is if when that happens
just right it makes all the other
meetings worthwhile it feels good it has
has a kind of beauty to it it has an
aesthetic Beauty to it and and you get
real breakthroughs and meetings like
that can you actually describe the the
crisp document like this is one of the
legendary aspects of Amazon uh of the
way you approach meetings this the
six-page memo maybe first describe the
process process of running a meeting
with memos and meetings at Amazon and
blue origin are unusual when we when we
get new when new people come in like a
new executive joins they're a little
taken aback sometimes because the
typical meeting will start with a six
page narratively structured memo and we
do study hall for 30 minutes we sit
there silently together in the meeting
and read take notes in the margins and
then we then we discuss and the Reason
by the way we do stud you could say I
would like everybody to read these memos
in advance but the problem is people
don't have time to do that and they end
up coming to the meeting having only
skim the memo or maybe not read it at
all and they're trying to catch up and
they're also bluffing like they were in
college having pretended to do the
reading yeah exactly it's better just to
carve out the time for people so now
we're all the same page we've all read
the memo and now we can have a really
elevated discussion and this is so much
better from having a slideshow
presentation you know a PowerPoint
presentation of some kind where there
that has so many difficulties but one of
the problems is Powerpoint is really
designed to persuade it's kind of a
sales tool and internally the last thing
you want to do is sell you want to again
you're truth seeking you're trying to
find truth and the other problem with
PowerPoint is it's easy for the author
and hard for the audience and a memo is
the opposite it's hard to write a
six-page memo a good six- page memo
might take two weeks to write you have
to write it you have to rewrite it you
have to edit it you have to talk to
people about it they have to poke holes
in it for you you write it again it may
take two weeks so the author it's really
a very difficult job but for the
audience it's much better so you can
read a half hour and you know there are
little problems with PowerPoint
presentations too you know senior
Executives interrupt with questions
halfway through the presentation that
question's going to be answered on the
next slide but you never got there where
if you read the whole memo in advance
you you know I often write lots of
questions that I have in the margins of
these memos and then I go cross them all
out because by the time I get to the end
of the memo they've been answered that's
why I save all that time you also get
you know the person who's preparing the
memo we talked earlier
about um you know group think and you
know the fact that I go last in meetings
and that you don't want you know to your
ideas to kind of pollute the meeting
prematurely um you know the author of
the
memo is has has kind of got to be very
vulnerable they got to put all their
thoughts out there and they've got to go
first but that's great because it makes
them really good and so and you get to
see their real ideas and you're not
trumpling on them accidentally in a big
you know power Point presentation what's
that feel like when you've authored a
thing and then you're sitting there and
everybody's reading your thing you're
like I think it's mostly terrifying
yeah like maybe in a good way I think
it's a purifying I think it's terrifying
in a in a productive way yeah um but I
think it's emotionally a very
nerve-wracking experience is there uh
art science to the writing of the
six-page memo or just writing and
General to you the I mean it's really
got to be a real memo so it means you
know paragraphs have topic sentences
it's verbs and nouns you can't that's
the other problem with PowerPoint ver
they're often just bullet points and you
can you can hide a lot of sloppy
thinking behind bullet points when you
have to write in complete sentences with
narrative structure it's really hard to
hide sloppy thinking so it does it it
forces the author to be at their best
and so you're getting somebody's they're
getting somebody's really their best
thinking and then you don't have to
spend a lot of time trying to tease that
thinking out of the person you've got it
from the very beginning so it really
saves you time in the long run uh so
that part is crisp and then the rest is
messy crisp docum yes and you don't want
you don't want to pretend that the
discussion should be crisp yeah there's
you know most meetings you're trying to
solve a really hard problem there's a
different kind of meeting which we call
weekly business reviews or business
reviews they may be weekly or monthly or
daily whatever they are but these
business review meetings that's usually
for incremental Improvement and you're
look looking at a series of metrics
every time it's the same metrics those
meetings can be very efficient they can
start on time and end on time so we're
about to run out of time which is a good
time to ask about the 10,000 year
[Laughter]
clock that's what I'm known for is the
humor okay uh can you explain what the
10,000 year clock is 10,000 year clock
is a physical clock of monumental scale
it's about 500 ft tall it's inside a
mountain in West Texas in a chamber
that's about 12 feet in diameter and 500
feet tall 10,000 year clock is a idea
conceived by a brilliant guy named Danny
Hillis way back in the
80s um the idea is to build a clock as a
symbol for long-term thinking and you
can kind of just very conceptually think
of the 10,000 year clock as it it it you
know it ticks once a year um it Chimes
once you know every hundred years and
the cuckoo comes out once every thousand
years so it just sort of slows
everything down and um it's a completely
mechanical clock it is designed to last
10,000 years with no human intervention
so the material choices and everything
else um it's in a remote location both
to protect it but also so that visitors
have to kind of make a a
pilgrimage the idea is that over time
this will take hundreds of years but
over time it will take on the patina of
age and then it will become a symbol for
long-term thinking that will actually
hopefully get humans to extend their uh
thinking Horizons and
my view that's really important as we
have become as a species as a
civilization more powerful you know
we're really affecting the planet now
we're really affecting each other we
have weapons of mass destruction we have
all kinds of things where we can really
hurt ourselves and the problems we
create can be so large you know the the
unintended consequences of some of our
actions like climate change putting
carbon in the atmosphere as a perfect
example that's an unintended consequence
quence of the Industrial
Revolution got a lot of benefits from it
but we've also got this side effect that
is very detrimental we need to be we
need to start training ourselves to
think longer term long-term thinking is
a giant lever you can literally solve
problems if you think longterm that are
impossible to solve if you think
shortterm and we aren't really good at
thinking long term as you know it's not
really we're kind of you know five years
is a tough time frame for most
uh institutions to think
past um and we probably need to stretch
that to 10 years and 15 years and 20
years and 25 years and we'd do a better
job for our children or our
grandchildren if we could stretch those
thinking Horizons and so the clock is in
a way it's an art project um it's a
symbol um and it if it ever has any
power to influence people to think
longer term that won't happen for
hundreds of years but we have to you
know we're going to build it now and let
it acre the patina of age do you think
humans will be here when the clock runs
out here on Earth I think
so but you know the United States won't
exist like whole civilization rise and F
10,000 years is so
long like no nation state has ever
survived for anywhere close to 10,000
years and the increasing rate of
progress makes that even even less
likely so do I think humans will be here
yes what you know
how will we have changed ourselves and
what will we be and so on so on I I
don't know but I think we'll be here on
that grand scale a human life feels tiny
do you Ponder your own mortality Are You
Afraid Of Death no I'm you know I I used
to be afraid of death um I did I like my
like I remember as a young person being
kind of like very scared of mortality
like didn't want to think about it and
so on and always had a big and as I've
gotten older I'm 59 now as I've gotten
older somehow that fear has sort of gone
away I don't um you know I I would like
to stay alive for as long as possible
but I'd like to be it's I'm really more
focused on health span I want to be
healthy I want that square wave I want
to you know I want to be healthy healthy
healthy and then gone I don't want the
long
Decay um but and I'm curious I want to
see how things turn out you know I'd
like to be here I love my my family and
my close friends and I want to I'm
curious about them and I want to see so
I have a lot of reasons to stay around
but
it's mortality doesn't doesn't have that
effect on me that it did you know maybe
when I was in my
20s well Jeff thank you for creating
Amazon one of the most incredible
companies in history and thank you for
trying your best to make humans and
multiplanetary species expand Bing out
into our solar system maybe Beyond to
meet the aliens out there and uh thank
you for talking today Al Lex thank you
for uh doing your part to lengthen our
attention
spans appreciate that very
much thanks for listening to this
conversation with Jeff Bezos to support
this podcast please check out our
sponsors in the description and now let
me leave you with some words from Jeff
Bezos himself be stubborn on Vision but
flexible on the
details thank you for listening and hope
to see you next
time