The Peter Attia Drive - July 02, 2019


The one-year anniversary episode with Olivia Attiaļ¼š Reflecting on the past year and looking forward to exciting times ahead


Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

200.01993

Word count

3,345

Sentence count

223

Harmful content

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of The Peter Atiyah Drive, we celebrate the one year anniversary of the podcast with a look back at the past 12 months and a look forward to what's to come in the next 12 months.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atiyah drive. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. The drive
00:00:10.880 is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along
00:00:15.940 with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working
00:00:19.660 with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world. And this podcast
00:00:23.620 is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality,
00:00:28.360 more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode
00:00:33.000 and other topics at peteratiyahmd.com.
00:00:41.320 Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of the drive. I guess today is sort of me. As you may
00:00:47.460 recall, we launched this podcast with three episodes on July 2nd, 2018. And a few weeks prior to that,
00:00:54.360 we launched a special little sneak peek episode where I was interviewed by my daughter, Olivia.
00:00:59.600 So we figured there would be no better way to celebrate the one year birthday of the drive
00:01:06.020 than with another interview by Olivia, as we talk about the past year and some exciting things to
00:01:11.400 come over the next 12 months. So I hope you enjoy this little look back and look forward.
00:01:16.440 I'm going to start by asking the first question I asked a year ago. Does the world really need
00:01:24.100 another podcast? Um, I mean, probably not. Someone told me that there are, and I could be wrong,
00:01:31.220 but like 500 new podcasts appear in the podcast store every week. That's a lot. Yeah. So I'm not
00:01:39.380 going to put you on the spot and make you calculate how many podcasts that is in the last year. And by the
00:01:45.000 it's probably more than 500, but anyway, no, the world does not need another podcast. But I think
00:01:50.720 that what we started out doing last year was a three month experiment. And at the end of that 12
00:01:55.580 weeks or whatever it was, I was surprised by how much fun I had doing this. I was surprised by the
00:02:01.760 feedback we got from folks that said that they kind of dug it. And so even if the world doesn't need
00:02:06.960 another podcast, we're just going to keep doing this. I remember you telling me from when I interviewed
00:02:11.380 you for the preview that if it worked out well, you would start making more, right? Yep. That's what we've
00:02:16.780 done. So is there something you've learned in the past year making these podcasts? Well, like, do you
00:02:22.040 mean specific new pieces of knowledge or just more generally? More generally. Uh, yeah. I mean, I've
00:02:28.780 learned that it's way harder to do a good interview than I could have imagined at the outset. I think,
00:02:36.440 for example, now when I listen to other podcasts, I find I'm not listening to them from a pure
00:02:43.960 enjoyment standpoint. I'm listening to them and trying to learn from them. So for example,
00:02:49.300 like I think Tim Ferriss, who, you know, of course, very well, I think he just does an awesome job. I
00:02:54.320 think Sam Harris does an awesome job. I mean, I think, you know, Steven Dubner, I think there's a lot
00:02:58.760 of people out there that do really good jobs interviewing people. And so now I listen to these people and I
00:03:06.000 take notes on what could I do better? How can I be a better interviewer? And I think right now I'm a
00:03:13.260 two out of 10. I was a one out of 10 a year ago. So I've got a long way to go. And that's, I didn't,
00:03:19.020 I wouldn't have expected that a year ago that it would be this difficult.
00:03:21.500 So every podcast you're kind of writing something down and then the next one you try and make it even
00:03:25.760 better. I mean, it's not always that linear because as, well, I don't know if you know,
00:03:29.520 have you listened to any of them? Yes. Which ones have you listened to? I've listened to
00:03:32.840 Jocko, Tim Ferriss. I listened to the one where I interviewed you and a couple other
00:03:37.480 ones too. Okay. So, but you probably haven't listened to some of the really nerdy technical
00:03:41.180 ones. I don't think so. So I think the podcast fit into different categories. Sometimes the
00:03:46.500 technical ones, my criticisms of myself are different. They're, Hey, in listening to this,
00:03:53.160 I can see how someone who's not well-versed in this topic could get lost. You could have done
00:03:57.880 a better job structuring the discussion or pausing to set context. And then in other ones where it's
00:04:05.200 less technical, like the Jocko one, you know, I think, Oh gosh, like you, you didn't ask that
00:04:11.260 question that in retrospect, when you listen back, you realize like that was such an obvious question
00:04:16.720 to ask. And that could have gone down a totally new rabbit hole that everybody would have, you know,
00:04:21.200 potentially benefited from. So yeah, it's a work in progress.
00:04:23.980 Yeah, I can tell. So how many more podcasts are you going to plan on making?
00:04:28.920 I hope it's a very big number. We're putting out at least one a week, sometimes more. And the good
00:04:35.260 news is we are recording them faster than we can release them. So we're just accumulating. We
00:04:41.460 probably have a reserve of three months and we're the, I have a spreadsheet of all the people I want to
00:04:47.140 interview. And it's, it's freaking huge. It's, I think I have three years worth of people on it.
00:04:52.920 Like there's 150 people on that list. So, and it's just, it just keeps growing because I get a
00:04:57.520 lot of feedback from listeners who say, Hey, I know you talked about such and such, but you really
00:05:01.420 need to interview this person to which, and a lot of times I've never even heard of who that person
00:05:04.900 is. So I have to look them up and go, Oh yeah, that would be cool.
00:05:06.680 So speaking of comments, how do you deal with negative comments from people that disagree with
00:05:11.500 what you're saying?
00:05:12.800 Oh, well that, so people, negative comments where people disagree, doesn't phase me. That's, that's to me,
00:05:17.780 that's like a healthy part of existing. And frankly, a lot of times people disagree with me and I read
00:05:22.780 what they say. And I'm like, you know, they have a really good point. So I, I, I mean, just as me
00:05:28.000 being dad for a moment, don't view people disagreeing with you as negative. The negative is when people
00:05:32.980 just say really nasty things about you or to you or whatever. And I mean, I think there's a very
00:05:38.440 simple heuristic that you can operate by when you see that kind of stuff, which is, and I'm
00:05:43.720 plagiarizing this from somebody. There's a, there's a, there's a woman who wrote a book that I'm blanking on
00:05:48.060 her name and the name of the book, but I think it's sort of her heuristic. And it's basically you
00:05:52.660 ask yourself the following question. Is this true? Is what this person is stating true? And if the
00:05:59.180 answer is no, it's not true, then you, you are much easier to sort of dismiss what they're saying. 1.00
00:06:06.020 So if somebody says, Peter, you're a freaking idiot. I mean, okay, sometimes I am, but for the 1.00
00:06:12.740 most part, I'm not an idiot. So sometimes you are. So it's not about me. So I can, I'm better at 1.00
00:06:18.920 dismissing those. But another trick is don't spend too much time reading social media. Yeah. So if I
00:06:24.600 or somebody else wanted to start our own podcast, what kind of advice would you give us to make it
00:06:29.700 successful? Well, I think you, you know, you have to have sort of a topic that you think is so
00:06:34.960 interesting to you that you can do the type of work that's necessary to prepare for it and,
00:06:41.620 you know, do the heavy lifting that is involved in sort of figuring out people you want to interview,
00:06:46.180 assuming that's the type of podcast you want to do. There are lots of podcasts out there where
00:06:49.040 people are just talking about things that are really interesting. Like, you know, Jocko,
00:06:52.720 most of his podcasts, he's actually talking about something that's really interesting,
00:06:55.760 which I actually think is even harder than what I do, which is interviewing.
00:06:59.840 And in the end, I think if you really want to be a purist, you want to put out a podcast that is
00:07:05.500 something you would want to listen to and then hopefully find an audience that agrees with that.
00:07:11.420 As opposed to saying, you know, like if you wanted to make a podcast and you want it to be about
00:07:16.580 drumming because you're an amazing drummer and you love the drums and you've played them your whole
00:07:21.440 life, then you should, you could start a podcast about kids who'd rock. And you might say, well,
00:07:27.060 oh, I don't know if that would be popular and I don't know if people would like it, but in the end,
00:07:31.140 because you're so passionate about drumming, that passion will come through. And even if you don't
00:07:36.000 have the biggest audience, you'll have a very passionate audience that's supportive.
00:07:39.800 Yeah. So dad, you are kind of a knucklehead, like no offense, but sometimes you can't even
00:07:46.260 turn on the TV. So how did you manage making a podcast? 0.82
00:07:50.580 Okay. First of all, I've never not been able to turn on the TV.
00:07:54.080 Oh, sure.
00:07:55.200 Sometimes I struggle with Apple TV, but that's a totally separate system. And sometimes Apple TV
00:07:59.420 just sucks. So I'm not going to, okay, but you're right. I'm not, I'm a bit of a technical 0.67
00:08:03.060 phobe. So I just have a kick-ass team. So all I do is the interview. So on the front end,
00:08:10.440 Bob Kaplan and Nick Stenson do a ton of research. So once I like, you know, meet somebody and connect
00:08:19.140 with somebody and say, Hey, I'd love to interview you, blah, blah, blah. Then Bob and Nick help me
00:08:24.640 by doing a ton of research so that I have a thought, like a list of things I want to think about.
00:08:31.720 So then after the interview, which I use this equipment that you can see sitting on the table,
00:08:36.820 you can, you know, it's pretty easy to take the files and get them back to the team who then do
00:08:43.560 two things with them. One, they give them to a guy named Matthew Passy, P-A-S-S-Y, who's our
00:08:49.040 production guy. And Matthew, he does all the sound editing. So for example, like half the time during a
00:08:55.100 podcast, somebody has to get up and go to the bathroom or I forget something I want to say,
00:08:59.960 or the guest says something and they want to do it over again. You know, all those things have to be
00:09:03.200 edited, although we lightly edit. And then on the other side, we have a guy named Travis Denson,
00:09:07.760 who's awesome. And he is solely in charge of making the show notes. So he then has to listen
00:09:14.780 to every podcast and create these huge show notes. And there's a whole bunch of other things that are
00:09:18.800 involved, but the long and short of it is basically there are like five other people that make the
00:09:23.060 podcast work. And I have the easy job, which is just recording it. And that's like the job that
00:09:27.920 doesn't require that you know how to work Apple TV. Okay. So is there anybody that you've wanted
00:09:33.100 to interview, but you haven't done that yet? Yes. A ton of people that I've wanted to interview
00:09:38.200 and have not yet. And in some of those cases, it's just because we have not been able to,
00:09:45.320 like we haven't made it work in the schedule, but you know, I've spoken with the person,
00:09:49.140 their game to be interviewed. And it's just a question of making the interview happen. So there's
00:09:54.300 lots of people that are coming up on the podcast that, you know, once we get our schedules aligned,
00:10:00.160 we'll sit down and do that. But there is a subset of people who I've reached out to
00:10:05.280 and either they just haven't responded or they've responded and said no.
00:10:10.180 And that's kind of a bummer. But my hope is that if the podcast gets bigger and better,
00:10:15.980 they'll see more value in potentially making the time to do it. And I get that I've declined
00:10:20.200 being on many podcasts myself because there's only so many hours in the day. So my feelings
00:10:24.700 aren't hurt when people say no, but I'll probably still keep bugging a few of them.
00:10:28.920 Okay. So is there anything new you're going to plan on doing this year for upcoming podcasts?
00:10:34.240 Yes. I had an idea a couple of weeks ago. And I don't know if you, you might've heard me
00:10:39.620 talking about it with Nick the other day, but I want to launch something called Qualies.
00:10:45.100 Oh.
00:10:45.640 So you know what the name of the podcast is, by the way?
00:10:47.720 The Drive.
00:10:48.180 Oh, you remember.
00:10:49.340 I remember. I was in it.
00:10:51.960 Remember what you wanted to call it?
00:10:53.420 The Ice Cream. 0.95
00:10:54.600 The silliest name ever. 0.98
00:10:56.060 The best name ever. 0.98
00:10:57.680 So.
00:10:58.280 Comment if you agree that that's like a better name than The Drive. Come on, people.
00:11:01.900 The Ice Cream.
00:11:03.940 So, anyway.
00:11:05.500 I don't think those people would have declined to you.
00:11:11.800 Hey, I really wonder if you could be on my podcast, The Ice Cream. Oh, of course.
00:11:16.040 Gosh. Happily.
00:11:18.180 So, the drive, of course, is like there's a little undertone of racing in the theme, right?
00:11:25.600 Yeah.
00:11:26.000 And so, a quali is a qualifying lap.
00:11:28.980 So, remember how we watch races on Sunday mornings?
00:11:31.960 Yes, I do.
00:11:32.280 Every other Sunday, we watch Formula One races.
00:11:34.580 Yeah.
00:11:34.760 Well, what's happening on Saturday is the quali.
00:11:37.800 The quali is how you determine your position on the grid.
00:11:40.880 And the qualifying lap is the fastest lap.
00:11:43.680 The drivers go way faster in the qualis than they do.
00:11:47.040 Even the, you remember at the end of the race, every race, you see who had the fastest lap and they get extra points.
00:11:51.700 That fastest lap time is way slower than probably the slowest quali lap the day before.
00:11:57.340 Usually goes to Lewis Hamilton.
00:11:58.900 Yes.
00:11:59.420 This season, it's pretty safe to say Lewis Hamilton should win every race or pretty close to it.
00:12:05.280 So, anyway, what I was thinking about is, you know, we have so much old content that's already like a year old, but it's really rich.
00:12:12.920 And for people who are new to the podcast, there's no way for them to sort of catch up on all of our old content.
00:12:19.220 So, what I want to do, and luckily the team thinks this is a good idea or else we wouldn't be doing it, is every day, Tuesday through Friday, we're going to put out a short sprint of a podcast, which is going to be taking highlights from previous podcasts and putting them out.
00:12:34.000 So, Monday will still be the big podcast, you know, it's two, three hours long, but then Tuesday through Friday will be these little quali sprints.
00:12:42.200 So, for example, you know, you listened to the Tim Ferriss podcast a year ago, but there were highlights of that podcast that we want to replay, you know, really pointed stuff.
00:12:51.300 So, then Tuesday, you'll get like an RSS feed that'll zip to your podcast player.
00:12:56.100 This is for the subscribers only, by the way, which we'll come back to in a second because I want to also thank the subscribers.
00:13:00.900 And so, I guess everybody will probably get one and then maybe we'll make the rest of them available just to the subscribers.
00:13:06.940 But it'll be like a real punchy, short, kind of easy to digest thing that allows people to kind of get caught up on previous content.
00:13:14.340 Because I also realize our podcasts are pretty dense.
00:13:17.640 We put out a lot of stuff and I think there's a high demand for people to be able to digest this in an easier manner.
00:13:24.260 And I think there's no better way to digest complicated stuff than to sort of revisit it in a more concise way.
00:13:29.100 So, I think that's the quality is hopefully going to be out.
00:13:33.300 I think we're going to try to do it this summer.
00:13:34.820 So, get back to thanking the subscribers.
00:13:37.140 Yeah.
00:13:37.660 So, I don't know if you know this, but we don't take ads.
00:13:41.220 Yes.
00:13:41.840 How do you know that?
00:13:42.640 Well, you explained that you want your subscribers to know that you're telling the truth to them and not just saying that because you're paid to say that.
00:13:50.720 That's a very nice way of explaining it.
00:13:52.680 Yes.
00:13:52.880 I, which isn't, by the way, to say that people who take ads are not telling the truth, but yes, I just feel strongly about being able to talk about stuff that I love without being paid to say that.
00:14:03.180 So, we created a subscriber system this year and it's going well and we're totally honored by these people who have supported us.
00:14:11.760 And our goal is just to continue to come up with ways to create more and more value for those subscribers.
00:14:18.380 The qualities will be a big part of that, but we have two or three other ideas in the hopper.
00:14:23.260 And as time goes on, our goal is to make that an even better and better offering for everyone.
00:14:27.860 Okay.
00:14:28.260 You have any other questions for me or am I allowed to ask you any questions now?
00:14:32.260 You can ask me any questions.
00:14:33.820 Okay.
00:14:34.620 Are you going to play a Zeppelin song for your next talent show?
00:14:39.340 Well, that depends if the song is actually good.
00:14:43.460 Have you ever heard a Zeppelin song that is not good?
00:14:46.060 Well, I've heard one that's like boring.
00:14:48.720 Okay.
00:14:49.060 Stairway to Heaven, maybe not a good solo, drum solo song for the talent show, but I think,
00:14:55.660 do you remember who the drummer was for Led Zeppelin?
00:14:58.600 Like John Bonham or something?
00:15:00.500 Or something.
00:15:01.560 Yeah.
00:15:02.060 Yeah.
00:15:02.420 Bonzo, honey.
00:15:03.160 Or something.
00:15:04.080 Yeah.
00:15:04.440 Oh God.
00:15:04.980 The people, there's people listening to this right now that are just rolling or something.
00:15:10.660 All right.
00:15:11.220 Well, Olivia, it's been great.
00:15:13.360 Can we do this again in a year?
00:15:14.580 Yes, we can.
00:15:15.580 All right.
00:15:16.480 See ya.
00:15:16.740 Okay.
00:15:16.900 I'll talk to you people in a year.
00:15:20.400 You can find all of this information and more at peteratiamd.com forward slash podcast.
00:15:25.660 There you'll find the show notes, readings, and links related to this episode.
00:15:29.800 You can also find my blog at peteratiamd.com.
00:15:33.420 Maybe the simplest thing to do is to sign up for my subjectively non-lame once a week email
00:15:37.700 where I'll update you on what I've been up to, the most interesting papers I've read,
00:15:41.380 and all things related to longevity, science, performance, sleep, et cetera.
00:15:46.160 On social, you can find me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, all with the ID peteratiamd.
00:15:51.580 But usually Twitter is the best way to reach me to share your questions and comments.
00:15:54.820 Now for the obligatory disclaimer.
00:15:56.860 This podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the
00:16:00.660 practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of
00:16:05.900 medical advice.
00:16:07.140 And note, no doctor-patient relationship is formed.
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00:16:25.640 have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.
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