Tech's tumultuous past week has brought the grand visions and moonshot dreams of many of its celebrity leaders back down to earth, Axios managing editor Scott Rosenberg writes from the Bay Area.

1. The implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange FTX brought an overnight end to its young founder's "maximize wealth, give it all away" life plan based on "effective altruism."
2. Elon Musk's roadmap for renovating Twitter's "global town square" on a free-speech foundation — with the eventual aim of turning it into an "everything app" that's "the most accurate source of information about the world" — has taken the billionaire over a cliff.
3. Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse dream faces new reality checks after Meta laid off 13% of its workforce, as Facebook's finances stagnate and the public has yet to embrace the social network's virtual-reality future.

The bottom line: "Moonshot" projects are big, long-term bets with inspiringly audacious goals.

• They're understood to be risky, and they're most at peril at moments — like right now — when the financial tide goes out.

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President Trump repeatedly told John Kelly, his second White House chief of staff, that he wanted the IRS to investigate his political enemies, the N.Y. Times' Michael Schmidt reports (subscription).

• Kelly said in response to questions from The Times that Trump — who's expected to announce his 2024 presidential campaign tomorrow night — said "we ought to investigate" and "get the IRS on" former FBI director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe.

Kelly told The Times that "he believes that he led Mr. Trump during his tenure as chief of staff to forgo trying to have such investigations conducted."

• The Times reported in July that Comey and McCabe were both selected for a rare, highly intrusive IRS audit after Kelly left.

🥊 Reality check: N.Y. Times Upshot later calculated that the chances both men would be randomly selected for the audit were 1 in 82 million.

The average human is older than ever:

• Earthlings' median age in 2022 is 30.2 years old compared to 20.6 in 1974 — 48 years ago — according to Our World in Data.

Why it matters: An aging population can be positive — people living longer, more productive lives. But aging populations can lead to stunted economic growth if elderly, non-working generations end up outnumbering workers, Axios' Stef Kight and Tory Lysik report.

Age varies drastically by country: Japan has a median age of 49. For Nigerians, the median age is just 17.

• Women typically give birth to 2.4 children in their lifetime today, compared to 4.3 in 1974.
• A fertility rate of 2.1 is generally considered "replacement level" — meaning there are enough births for the new generation to exactly replace the last generation. 60% of the population lives in countries that are at or below that fertility rate, according to U.N.

What's happening: Many high-income countries have watched birth rates plummet — leading to population decline in more than 40 nations, including Singapore, Japan, Italy and Russia.

• Nearly 3 out of every 10 births worldwide last year took place in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Pew Research Center.
• The birth rate in sub-Saharan Africa is double the global average, at 4.6 births per woman. Such high birthrates are often a sign of troubling social and economic circumstances.

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President Biden met with Chinese President Xi today on the sidelines of the G20 summit meeting in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia.

• It's the first in-person meeting between the two since Biden took office, Axios China author Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian writes from Bali.

Democratic celebrations about holding the Senate may be short-lived, lobbyist Bruce Mehlman of Mehlman Castagnetti points out in a new deck about midterm fallout.

• Check out the 2024 Senate map: Dems will be on defense in a swath of red states (Ohio, West Virginia, Montana) and swing states (Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Virginia).

Go deeper: Bruce Mehlman's full deck, "Candidates matter."

Mike Pence — out tomorrow with an autobiography, "So Help Me God" — hits former President Trump in an interview with ABC “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir.

• "It angered me,” the former V.P. says about the president's tweeting during the attack on the Capitol, in Pence's first broadcast-network interview since then.
• "The president’s words were reckless. It's clear he decided to be part of the problem."

Between the lines: Pence's book is coming out on the same day Trump is expected to announce he's running for president again.

• Pence himself shows every sign of running for the 2024 Republican nomination.

👂 What we're hearing: Pence knows he's a longshot, but sees himself as a loyal, sensible conservative.

• Video.

Michael Lewis — "the most talented and successful non-fiction writer working today" — embedded with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried for the past six months, and is making the collapsing cryptocurrency exchange the centerpiece of his next book, The Ankler scoops.

• The Hollywood publication reported on an email from CAA agent Matthew Snyder, sent to potential right buyers on Friday.
• The author likens SBF and his rival, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ), to "the Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader of crypto."

Lewis has been traveling with SBF and interviewing him, according to the email, which says that not a word of the book has been written yet.

Richard Stengel — the collaborator on Nelson Mandela's autobiography, "Long Walk to Freedom" — spent 70 hours interviewing the South African freedom fighter in 1993, after Mandela's 27 years in prison.

• The conversations existed on Sony cassettes and microcassettes.
• Now, all that rickety tape is coming to life as a 10-part podcast from Audible, "Mandela: The Lost Tapes," coming Dec. 1.

Why it matters: We’ll hear directly from one of history's great global figures, at length and at ease.

Stengel tells me Mandela is vulnerable — and at times funny, as he imitates voices, including the British teachers of his youth, and even prison guards.

• The podcast is about half Mandela’s voice, and half Stengel’s narration. The tapes capture the ambient sound of the intimate chats — asides, and people coming in and out.
• "You feel like you’re in the room,” Stengel told me. “You are in the room.”

Stengel was my boss when he was the top editor of TIME. He later was Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy for President Obama.

• The 60+ conversations were recorded at Mandela’s office — African National Congress headquarters in Johannesburg — and two of his homes.

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