Staying Out of the Grey Zone.
1) The Keep Going Podcast (TB12) w/ Colin O’Brady (1hr:18min)
2) Peter Attia - The Drive #154: Steve Levitt, Ph.D - A rogue economists view on climate change, mental health, the ethics of experiments, and more (2hr)
3) Peter Attia - The Drive: #158: Brian Deer - A tale of scientific fraud - Exposing Andrew Wakefield and the origin of the belief that vaccines cause autism (1hr:49min)
4) The Run Smarter Podcast: The 3 Essential Types of Running w/ Duane Scotti (53min)
5) Human Performance Outliers #244: Zach’s Strategy For the USATF 100mi Road Championships (47min)
6) Peter Attia - The Drive: #160: Paul Offit, M.D. - The latest on COVID-19 vaccines and their safety, heard immunity, and viral variants. (1hr:25min)
7) Peter Attia IG Video April 14 - J&J Vaccine (10min)
1) If you haven’t heard of Colin O’Brady and are a fan of adventure he is a must follow. His interview on TB12 was a great synopsis of his life story leading up to present day with a recap on many of his expedition-type accomplishments. His book, “The Impossible First”, is a better synopsis but for only an hour of time this is a great exploration of his biggest accomplishments.
Some of them include:
The speed record for the Explorers Grand Slam (climbing the tallest mountain on each continent and reaching the North and South Pole)
Walking unassisted across Antartica
4 person row unassisted across the Drake Passage
More recently he tried to summit K2 in the winter (2020), which is hardly suggested or accomplished. He was unsuccessful in his attempt largely due to unfavourable weather conditions. I followed this expedition on IG and it ended tragically for 5 other men trying to do the same.
Colin is already onto his next goal which is to summit Everest and neighbouring Lhotse (the 4th tallest mountain in the world) in one go with NO supplemental 02.
After his K2 experience I was shocked to see he was going to tackle another mountain so soon. I imagine it was already in the planning stages well before he announced it but it seemed rushed. As I’m writing this Everest just claimed 2 more lives and Colin is currently at one of the lower camps on the mountain.
Nonetheless, he is a wildly inspiring dude, the podcast is definitely worth a listen, and if you like the pod his book is even better.
Wishing him the best of luck and safe travels!
This expedition is for anyone who has ever been told their dreams are impossible. - Colin O’Brady
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2) To be perfectly honest I had no idea what I was getting into when I turned this one on. I was heading out for a long run and couldn’t find anything I was dying to listen to so I defaulted back to Peter Attia. He normally has great guests with engaging discussions so perhaps the economist in me (Econ minor in undergrad haha) picked this out from his recent episodes. It ended up being a good listen. I had heard of the book “Freakonomics” but didn’t know anything about it or its author Steve. If you’ve read the book (or its sequels) this conversation may be quite repetitive or perhaps give some additional incite on many of the books “controversial” topics.
The discussion focuses heavily on climate change for the first portion as Steve and Peter bounce ideas back and forth leading to Steve suggesting a Manhattan Project of sorts to gather the worlds best to put forth solutions to the problem. While both agree the solutions probably exist, they question whether governments and policy makers would have the necessary incentives to put them into action.
To that point I do agree. As humans we have done a poor job of responding to future events in a preventative way. Case and point our current pandemic. We had SARS(1) and MERS both within the last 20 years and for various reasons those viruses didn’t create the situation we are currently in today. Numerous virology experts spoke to the point that another was inevitable and being prepared was of great importance.
The nature of our political system is one that you must address the biggest issues currently at hand with the budget available to keep the voters happy. Seemingly a “future'“ virus was not high on anyones budget. Hindsight being 20/20, the costs of adequate testing equipment, PPE, and all the other equipment would have been exponentially less than the billions pumped into the economy by the government in the form of bailouts, personal and business subsidies, rent reduction, etc, etc.
One would hope that our response to the next one is better…but back to climate change. We can aim to address it before we hit a critical tipping point OR we can keep our vision nearsighted, as we have done before, and leave the problem for the next group.
The best ideas will remain as ideas if no one is willing to foot the bill to put them into action.
Time will tell.
They go on to discuss a few other topics of interest including golf and horse racing through the analytical mind of an economist.
This pod had some thought provoking discussion, which I love.
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3) Last review it was stacked with JRE, this one is Peter Attia. He had a bunch of really interesting and relevant topics come up in short order, so I rode the wave.
Everyone has heard the tale that vaccines, specifically the MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccine, can cause autism. Further to that, many have heard that tale has been debunked and proven to be wholly untrue. However, the damage it did to society can still be seen today.
In this pod Peter speaks to the journalist, Brian Deer, who put in the work to expose this fraudulent claim.
I was not familiar with the actual story and frankly it was shocking to hear how it went down. It should be a story that we all know and I would highly recommend a listen.
Andrew Wakefield built a wild story on the back of a nonsense correlation, fudged numbers, altered details, and then teamed up with a lawyer where the 2 of them convinced themselves and others that there was money to be made here.
I’ll let Brian tell you the whole story. One could argue that the anti-vax movement of today stemmed from this “study”. The current resurgence of measles in the US, a virus that was declared eliminated, is due to parents not allowing their children to get the MMR vaccine.
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4) The Run Smarter Pod was one I came across on IG and picked one of their more recent episodes on the different types of running. I thought it was really good!
This particular episode broke down running into 3 types: Convo-pace easy runs, tempo/threshold runs, and intervals. They discussed where to start if you are new to running or coming off an injury and ways to progress your training with the addition of the various types. If you fall into either of those categories or are looking to push towards a new goal and want to limit injury risk this a worthwhile listen.
The importance of knowing the different categories lies with maximizing the gains of each of your training efforts. So often we fall into a grey zone of training that is something between a easy run and a tempo run but not really maximizing the qualities of either. Each type of run will address different physiological targets and create different adaptations. Depending on your experience and upcoming goals you can come up with a strategy to maximize your time spent training.
They outline easily applicable ways to implement these concepts and in essence “run smarter”.
I will be tuning in again!
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5) Another new one for me this week was the Human Performance Outliers Podcast, hosted by Zach Bitter. Zach is a wild dude, big in the ultra world, and former record holder of a few 100mi world records… more to come on that.
I originally heard Zach speak on JRE a while back and found his podcast through one of his social media accounts.
The episode I chose was a breakdown of his own most recent race, where he captured 1st in the USATF 100mi Road Championships. I thought it would be cool to listen to him speak to his training and nutrition leading up to the race and then comment on his in race strategies.
It was a good listen. I personally don’t run ultras so a lot of the details don’t personally apply but anyone at the top of their field is always worth listening too.
Over the last 2 weeks, a number of his world records have been beat, and he spoke to one of them on this podcast. He was very humble and congratulatory to Sania Sorokin who broke his 100mi road time of 11:19:13, with a time of 11:14:56. Sania then went on to capture the 12hr distance record of 105.825mi passing Bitter’s mark of 104.88mi.
Since the podcast, Zach had his 100mi treadmill record broken by Taggart VanEtten with a time of 11:32:05. Zach’s previous record was 12:09:15.
While winning the US 100mi road championship is sweet, I’m sure the month has been spent figuring out a strategy to ultimately try and regain some of those records!
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6) This discussion between Paul and Peter was extremely informative and even more relevant than his previous one with Brian Deer. The two of them did a great job explaining the various types of vaccines, along with the history behind vaccine production, including the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna. They also aim to dispel common myths around the mRNA vaccines including that discussion around “changing DNA.”
They talk a lot about our immune response to the vaccine vs. the natural virus, relative vs absolute risk reduction related to the vaccines, how we might go about reaching herd immunity (or why we may have challenges…), and the blood clotting risk associated with the J&J vaccine.
It was an extremely educational and useful listen to help combat all the noise surrounding the vaccine rollout.
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7) Expanding on the above topic, Peter does a quick 10 min video around relative and absolute risk reduction using the data from the various vaccine trials to talk about the negative side effect of blood clots that has been noted in a few people who received the J&J vaccine.
We haven’t seen this vaccine in Canada but AZ has had similar reports of blood clotting and he sheds some light on how we should be analyzing the data to make the most informed decisions.
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Thanks for reading!
