In 2009, a Goldman Sachs programmer was arrested at Newark Airport.

His crime? Stealing computer code.

But this wasn't just any code – Goldman called it "the most substantial theft the bank can remember ever happening to it."

Here's what they didn't want exposed: 🧵 Meet Sergey Aleynikov: a Russian programmer who earned $400K at Goldman Sachs working on their high-frequency trading system.

In 2009, he accepted a new job at Teza Technologies for $1.2M.

On his last day, he uploaded code to a server in Germany.

Then all hell broke loose.

Jay Forrester, an MIT Professor, created a game that messes with the minds of even the brightest people:

The Beer Game.

It revealed a shocking truth: 95% of players make the same predictable mistakes.

Here's how this simple simulation exposes fatal flaws in how we think: 🧵 The Beer Game is a supply chain simulation created by Jay Forrester at MIT in 1960.

Players manage 4 tiers: retailer, wholesaler, distributor, and brewer with one goal: minimize costs while meeting demand.

The shocking part? Almost everyone fails in the exact same way.

This is Pope Francis.

The Pope who:
• Carried his own luggage
• Paid his hotel bill after election
• Lived in a simple guesthouse

His humility was a revolutionary leadership that challenged 2,000 years of Church hierarchy.

Here's his story:🧵 Before becoming pope, Jorge Bergoglio worked as a nightclub bouncer in Buenos Aires.

This unlikely background shaped a leader who never forgot his ordinary roots.

When he became Pope in 2013, he was the first to choose the name Francis:

The saint of poverty and simplicity.

In 1982, 3 economists created a simple experiment that shattered economic theory.

The Ultimatum Game revealed a dark truth about human nature.

Here's what it exposed: 🧵 The rules of the Ultimatum Game are simple:

• Player 1 gets money and proposes how to split it with Player 2
• Player 2 can accept (both get their share) or reject (both get nothing)

Traditional economics predicted exactly how people would behave...

The Guinness Book of World Records once listed this woman as having the "Highest IQ".

Despite this, many PhDs ridiculed her for her answer to what seemed a simple math problem.

But guess what? They were all wrong.

Here's her story: 🧵 Marilyn Vos Savant wasn't your usual kid.

By age 10 she:

• Memorized entire books
• Read all 24 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica
• Had the highest IQ ever recorded (228)

She was destined to be a genius.

But the reality was different.

This is Billy McFarland.

At 25, he orchestrated one of the biggest scams in festival history, in which thousands paid up to $100K for a luxury experience that never existed.

Now, after jail time, he's planning "Fyre Festival II" for 2025.

Here's his crazy story:🧵 Before Fyre, McFarland founded Magnises, a card-based membership club.

He met Ja Rule through events he hosted for this venture.

During a trip to the Bahamas, their private plane touched on Norman's Cay island in the Exumas.

And this is where it all starts...

In 1979, two psychologists published a theory that reshaped economics.

After proving humans are hardwired to make irrational financial decisions...

They created a theory that destroyed years of economic thinking.

Here's the full story of this Nobel Prize-winning theory: 🧵
It begins in Jerusalem, 1969.

Daniel Kahneman, a young psychology professor, invited Amos Tversky to give a guest lecture at Hebrew University.

The topic? How humans assess probabilities and make decisions.

What happened next would transform economics forever.

In 2000, Yahoo was worth $125B making it the MOST valuable company in the world.

By 2017, they sold for $4.5B.

But their biggest mistake wasn't losing 96% of their value...

It was turning down a $1M offer from 2 college students.

Here's how Yahoo destroyed themselves:🧵 In January 1994, two friends had a simple idea:
Make a directory of their favorite websites.

Jerry Yang and David Filo called it "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web."

Little did they know this would change the internet forever.

This college dropout is the youngest billionaire you've never heard of.

At 19, he started an AI company in someone else's basement.

Now OpenAI, Microsoft, and the US government can't survive without his services.

Here's how he built his $14 Billion empire:🧵 Alexandr Wang grew up in the shadow of America's most secretive lab - Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Both his parents were top physicists there.

The place that developed the atomic bomb in WWII.

Little did anyone know he would follow a similar path of national security.

This is Jesse Livermore.

The legendary trader who:
• Made $33,000,000 in a single day
• Was worth $1,500,000,000 at his peak
• People called The Great Bear of Wall Street

Sadly, all this success ended in tragedy. Here's his story:🧵 Born into poverty in 1877, Jesse Livermore showed extraordinary talent early:
• Read financial pages by age 5.
• Mastered mathematics 3x faster than his peers by age 14.

His father demanded he quit school to work on the farm.

But young Jesse had other plans.

This man was the luckiest fool who ever lived.

Everyone laughed at his business decisions.

But each "terrible" investment made him a fortune.

Here's the crazy story of Lord Timothy Dexter 🧵: Born in 1747 to Irish immigrants, Dexter's early life was rough.

At age 8, he dropped out of school to work at a farm due to his family's financial situation.

When he was 16, he became a leather tanner in Boston.

Things started to change with one marriage...

This is Charlie Javice.

At 28, she sold her company to JP Morgan for $175M.

The problem: her company was a big fat lie.

Here's the crazy story of how she tried to scam Wall Street biggest bank: 🧵 Charlie was born into privilege in New York.

She attended an elite French-American private school.

Her first "venture" came after a volunteer experience in Thailand.

A great start for young Charlie.

Everyone thinks Santa doesn't exist.

But this isn’t just a fairy tale - it’s a story that started more than 1700 years ago.

Here's how our good old Santa Claus came to be (read this before he visits you tonight): 🧵 It all began in the ancient city of Patara in 270 AD.

Nicholas was born to wealthy Christian parents after years of prayer.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck early when an epidemic killed his parents.

But this incident helped create the man we all adore.

McDonald's is THE most successful fast-food chain in the world.

But dive into it and you realize it is NOT a burger company.

Their real business lies elsewhere.

Here's what's behind its $200B+ empire: 🧵 In 1974, McDonald's Ray Kroc asked some MBA students:

"What business do you think I'm in?"

Their answer: "The hamburger business."

Kroc said: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not in the hamburger business. I'm in the real estate business."

But it didn't start as such...

This woman has the Highest IQ ever recorded (228).

Miles away from Einstein (160-190), Hawking (160) or Musk (155).

Despite this, she was ridiculed for her answer to what seemed a simple problem.

Yet she saw what no one else could.

Here's her story: 🧵 Marilyn Vos Savant wasn't your usual kid.

By age 10 she:

• Memorized entire books
• Read all 24 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica
• Had the highest IQ ever recorded (228)

She was destined to be a genius.

But the reality was different.

This tech founder spent $2M on a radical experiment.

He turned his biological age from 42 to 21 in 5 months.

Now he spends $2M/year to make death optional.

Here is Bryan Johnson, the world's most monitored human 🧵 The results from his Blueprint are mind-blowing:

• Slowed pace of aging by the equivalent of 31 years
• Reduced biological age by 21 years in 5 months
• Accumulating aging damage slower than 88% of 18-year-olds

But why did Bryan start all this?

This man created the greatest money-printing machine in history.

His fund achieved 66%/yr (outperformed Warren Buffett's by 46%) for 30 YEARS.

Here's the story of the man who cracked Wall Street and built a $100B+ empire: 🧵 Jim Simons was a math prodigy from a young age.

He earned his PhD in mathematics from UC Berkeley at 23.

His first big challenge was cracking soviet codes during the Cold War for the NSA.

He was just getting started.