Have you ever dreamt of a flying car . Well, the ceo of a company aptly called kitty hawk tells me it may be possible and sooner than we think. Why dont we just fly . The sky is empty. The sky is so ample. Its so big. Do you have what it takes to be the next steve jobs . Ill talk to Walter Isaacson, the buy agra fer of Albert Einstein, steve jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and now Leonardo Da Vinci about what makes a genius. Curiosity. A just absolutely random, absolutely playful and passionate curiosity is something that connects ben franklin, steve jobs, lee nonar da vinci, and the cool thing about it is you and i can do that. The world wastes onethird of all its food. Blue hill chef dan barber will talk to me about ideas to solve this global tragedy. Its about the utilization of every part of the plant, every part of the farm. Plus as Artificial Intelligence gets more advanced, many people worry that robots and automation will displace their jobs. Ill sit down with two m. I. T. Scholars who discuss using a. I. , Artificial Intelligence, to enhance human work. We can bring minds and machines together intelligently, they can cancel out each others mista mistakes. Finally a neuroscientist talks to me about a threat many of us will face. Well hear what we can all do to stave off alzheimers. Theres been a lot of research to show there are Lifestyle Changes that we can make that help actually prevent the biological advancement of the disease. All this coming up in this special hour of gps, the next big idea. Lets get started. Roads . Where were going we dont need roads. From the delorean to the jetsons, from Chitty Chitty bang bang to harry potter, flying cars have made appearances on big and Small Screens for decades. Purely the stuff of cinematic magic, the reality of personal flying vehicles has always seemed light years away. Well, not if my next guest has anything to say about it. As an adjunct professor at stanford university, specializes in robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and education among many other things. He founded google x as well as a company dedicated to bringing Tech Education online. He led googles selfdriving car team, and he has been called the father of the selfdriving car. Now he has set his sights on the skies. Hes the ceo of kitty hawk, a Company Working toward revolutionizing transportation by making the dream of personal flying vehicles a reality. Welcome, sebastian. Very good seeing you. Why are you doing this . Is there an origin story here . I have always wondered if we can make transportation safer, and selfdriving cars has this tragic story of a good friend of mine who died in a traffic accident. But at some point it dawned on me if we stay on the ground, if we keep using roads and bridges and tunnels, we wont get rid of congestion. Were going to have an increasing number of wait times and traffic. And then i asked myself why dont we just fly . The sky is empty. The sky is so ample. Its so big. Why cant we inevent something that flies us . Peter thiel has famously said we thought this Technology Revolution would get us flying cars and instead, all we got was 140 characters. Hes wrong. Hes wrong. Were working on flying cars. You have a video you havent shared with the public yet. It looks like a helicopter. It takes off vertically, transitions to a horizontal plane, then lands vertically. And you feel like youve achieved a test flight with this vehicle, right . How far along are you . Yes. Weve been working with this, with nasa, for about six to seven years. And in around 2013, we started flying our First Electric aircraft. And the video that we show is where we flew vertically and transitioned to about 60 Miles Per Hour horizontally and then safely landed again. Since weve made a lot of progress. When i think about this, im also thinking, my god, theres going to be chaos up there. Youre going to have these drones, you know, with humans in them, and theyre going to bump into each other. There will be traffic in the sky just like there is here, except its dangerous because if somebody bumps into the other, theyre going to crash and die. Agreed theres an issue about how to deconflict flying vehicles if all of us use them every day to and from work. But theres much more space in the sky than on the ground, and having worked on selfdriving cars, i can tell you theres lots of stuff you can do on the ground that doesnt exist in the air. On the ground, say you have two rounds and theyre at a right angle, and people drive this way and drive this way. To deconflict cars, we put in things like stop signs and traffic lights to make sure we dont bump into them. In the air, you let these guys go 100 feet higher than these guys. All of a sudden, they can just fly both at the direction they wish. By having the altitude, you get so much more space that the deconflicting issue becomes much easier in the air than on the ground. So you use this for short trips. Youre able to do it, but again im thinking that means lots of people are Grocery Shopping at the same time. But you look at a city like new york, a city like chicago, a city like beijing, and you still think everyone can go Grocery Shopping in the sky . If i talk to my friends in new york that cross the lincoln tunnel every day, i think theres a real pain point here. If you were to Cross Lincoln tunnel in the sky, it would take two or three minutes, okay . But it is a vision. In new york in particular, in 1900 where all transportation was horse based, and in 1930, where it was car based, it took 30 years. That doesnt mean were wrong. Its going to take some time. We have to work out the r regulations and airspace management. But i think we will transition from a society that is ground based to one that transportation will eventually be in the sky. Whats the cost . We havent set a price point for our vehicle yet, but if you work it out, a flying car shouldnt cost more than a regular car. Wow. And are there any kind of implications here, you know, crime, terrorism . This is a pretty powerful vehicle in some sense in that it can go anywhere. The way i look at this is almost anything you can buy can be used in a bad way. Even a kitchen knife can be used in a bad way. Were working hard on making this a safe technology. We believe very firmly that a flight vehicle should and must be safer than a ground vehicle. You have another vehicle called the flyer. Whats that . Its the smallest vehicle weve built, and its there as a personal fun vehicle. We fly over water and so on. It everyonables people to learn to fly in five minutes and take to the skies. Its like a sports car for water, but it gives the experience of flight to everybody. I mean flying is everybody boys and every girls dream. Now we get this infinite freedom to take to the skies. Its easier to learn how to fly our vehicle, our flyer, than it is to learn to ride a bicycle. Why is that . Because we use computers. We use computers to do all the hard stuff that you dont want to care about as a human pilot, and we give you a joystick. And its really fun. Its the funnest thing ive ever done. Flying is every boys and every girls dream. You good et th its a transfo experience. Pleasure to have you on. Next on gps, what does playing the violin have to do with theoretical physics . I sit down with Walter Isaacson to discuss the birth of innovation and what makes a genius. Us lives here. Where we can find common ground. Big enough to dance on. For a better us, donate to your local y today. Nice man cave man. Oh nacho . [ train whistle blows ] what . stop it mmhmm. 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Tell your doctor before all planned medical or dental procedures and before starting xarelto® about any conditions, such as kidney, liver, or bleeding problems. Youve got to learn all you can. To help protect yourself from dvt and pe blood clots. Talk to your doctor about xarelto®. Theres more to know. Thomas edison said genius is 1 inspiration and 99 perspiration. Is that really the case . This is how you turn it on. His hard work steve jobs transformed our world with the iphone. What was it exactly about Leonardo Da Vinci that motivated him to dissect human bodies, invent a flying machine and paint a knowing smile on the mona lisa . What makes a genius . At the aspen institute, i sat down with Walter Isaacson, biographer of all these men and more, to answer that question. Walter, pleasure to have you on. This show is one of my favorites too every year, so thanks for having me. Youve studied da vinci now, before that ben franklin, Albert Einstein, steve jobs. Some people would regard Henry Kissinger also as a highly innovative person. Is there a common feature . If somebody says to you, what makes somebody innovative at this world historical level . Especially with steve jobs, ben franklin, and even einstein, you look around, and they love to cross disciplines. They love the humanities and the sciences. And Leonardo Da Vinci is sort of the ult maimate in that, somebo who wasnt just smart, but had a playful curiosity about everything there was to know. And just like steve jobs loved design and loved, you know, calligraphy, but he also loved electronics, i think innovation comes from crossing disciplines. You know, theres a story that einstein tells that when he would get stuck on a physics problem sometimes, hed stop. Hed go and play the violin. Yeah. And hed come back and there are now people who said youre actually exercising different parts of the brain when you do that, and that produces precisely the literal cross fertilization. When he was trying to get general relativity, all the years in 1912, 1913, hes living in berlin, and he gets stumped. Hed play mozart on his violin and hed say, that reconnects me to the harmony of the universe. And it was that ability to feel the aharmonies of music and harmonies of natures laws that is the exemplar of what weve been talking about. Is there a difference between the kind of genius that an Albert Einstein has and the inventiveness of a ben franklin . I think a lot of people will say to themselves, look, im never going to be einstein, but i wonder what is it that made ben franklin be able to invent bifocals or look at the lightning and say, i wonder if theres some way to conduct that. Its a great question because einstein had a mental Processing Power that we will never come close to. We cannot aspire to be einstein. But Benjamin Franklin, like Leonardo Da Vinci and like steve jobs werent necessarily the, you know, smartest in terms of just pure mental Processing Power. But they had a playful curiosity. And franklin would just travel around. Hed see a whirlwind and have to chase it along and come up with the notion of the gulfstream and northeastern storms. So curiosity, a just absolutely random, absolutely playful and passionate curiosity is something that connects ben franklin, steve jobs, Leonardo Da Vinci. And the cool thing about it is you and i can do that. How much does hard work play a role in this . Edison famously said genius is 99 perspiration, 1 inspiration. Is that true . I think you have to work hard, but, you know, as i look at people, it wasnt hard work that got Benjamin Franklin or steve jobs or Leonardo Da Vinci where he was. It was just sort of a continuous curiosity about nature, a passion, a willingness to observe things. So, yes, i think for some people, over and over again, and that makes you a very deep in one field type of genius. But what im talking about is a genius that can cross many disciplines, and thats got to come from almost having attention deficit disorder, not from just hard persistence. What about failure . One of the most famous elements of steve jobs life is that stanford commencement address he gives, and he talks about how he basically had to deal with these extraordinary setbacks in his life. He founds a company, and he gets fired from it. The company starts doing terribly. Then he gets a diagnosis of cancer. When you look at these characters, do you think their ability to deal with failure, with setback, is crucial . Yeah, i think resilience is part of just being a driven, optimistic personality. If you want to talk about it with einstein, when hes doing general relativity in berlin at that time, youre talking about a huge rise in antisemitism. Kiz hes got to leave. So this ability to continue to continue to bounce back, that along with curiosity, imagination, and a willingness to cross disciplines all brings together a sense of genius to me. I want to know about your creative process. How do you work . I tend to write storytelling narratives. If its going to be Henry Kissinger or steve jobs or da vinci, its going to start when theyre born and take them through life. I think people accumulate wisdom as they move on, and something that happens in 1922 affects whats going to happen and what youre going to do in 1923. So when i write, i try to start with a chronology and then step back and say, patterns, themes, and all great innovators, they say patterns and themes. They cross the disciplines. They say, i get it, that swirl and air and that curl of hair, they have a certain type of pattern. And i think when you look at a narrative, whats important if youre trying to talk about innovation is say what patterns are emerging. Do you think theres a particular is that an innate skill that people have . Because pattern recognition, i think, is the hardest thing. We have so much noise, that finding that signal is very hard. I dont know. Its one of the cool things about it is we were just talking about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning. Thats a thing that machines have the most problems with. So if you can train yourself as a human to be good at pattern recognition, then maybe youll outrun the Artificial Intelligence machines gunning for your job. On that hopeful note, pleasure to have you on. Its always great. Thank you. Up next, waste not, want not. Why one world renowned chef is turning garbage into gourmet cuisine. T ranked mattress in Customer Satisfaction by jd power, its easy to love. Find your exclusive retailer at tempurpedic. Com would you ever throw out a third of the pizza you just ordered . Probably not. How about a third of that hamburger your friend just grilled up . Unlikely. A third of your Ice Cream Cone . Probably never. But believe it or not, about onethird of all the food produced in the world each year for humans is thrown out. More than 1. 4 billion tons according to the u. N. That is the weight about 3. 5 million fully loaded 747s. And americans are the worst offenders, throwing away almost as much food as they consume according to the guardian. So what to do . My next guest has some ideas and the influence to implement them. Dan barber is the chef and owner of the highly acclaimed blue hill restaurants in the new york area. One of the obamas first date nights as president and first lady as at blue hill in manhattan, and blue hill at stone barns as been called the best restaurant in america and one of the best in the world by those who rank these things. Pleasure to have you on. Why are we throwing out so much food. The American Food culture or lack thereof allows us to eat what i call high on the hog, which is to say the middle of the animal, the cuts that we have become not just accustomed to but that we expect twice a day, seven days a week, and thats an american invention actually. And unfortunately, were exporting that to the rest of the world. You say its actually bad from the point of view of gourmet cuisine because were missing out on taste. Yeah. You say all great cuisine begins with rejects. I dont think our style of cooking this sixounce piece of protein centered on the plate with a smattering of vegetables and