Missions to Mars, age reversal. understanding the big bang, teleportation , Artificial Intelligence and Synthetic Biology are this weeks topics. “In the past, only governments had this kind of money, money ofa truly altering scale,” says Epstein in a chipper and smoothed-out Brooklynese. “In fact, it used to be that the rich, reaching a certain point of philanthropy, merely hoped to help make the world a better place, now they want to question some basic assumptions and try change the world. Rockefeller and Carnegie were, as examples of social-engineering philanthropy, unique for their time . They alone had such resources and will. Now you have legions of people who must at some point ( hopefully before death, but eventually non the less ) transfer vastly larger fortunes than Rockefeller or Carnegie had at their disposal, or might even have imagined. “Except that it turns out it is actually hard to give away this kind of wealth, without unintended negative consequences that may cause as many problems as you’re solving.” Epstein’s long-time business thesis is that the hyper rich know very little about the essence of money. They may know about their own businesses, but the great sums that are realized asa result are ultimately an afterthought and demand an entirely different sort of intellectual discipline. The Forbes 400, says Epstein, not immune to an amount of wonder, increased their wealth by $500 billion last year, meaning, in effect, that on average every Forbes-list billionaire makes more than another billion every year. And, points out the 63-year- old Epstein, they will almost all be dead in 50 years, most well before that, meaning $4.2 trillion, compounding everyday, will eventually willhave to be transferred to new hands . “So, to understand the future, what you have to begin to do is follow the money, not in Watergate- like terms backwards, as in who has gotten it, but forwards to where it will go and who will get it.” Epstein can find himself echoing aspe