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Show: Shake Up The World

Source: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/shake-up-the-world/episodes/Future-of-Ageing—Mehdi-Yacoubi-ekid6k

Description

Mehdi Yacoub is an engineer and entrepreneur from Paris, passionate about optimizing health, longevity and well being. Through Lifetizr, he is building a solution to help people optimize their metabolic health, prevent chronic diseases, and live healthier and longer.

Mehdi also writes a weekly newsletter (The Long Game), were he shares the best stuff he comes across each week.  He covers a broad range of topics, always including health, wellness, and tech. In a given episode, you can read about the Horvath clock, the art of doing nothing, pricing strategies, risk management, the VIP world, behavioral biology, Bruce Lee, and Michael Jordan.

Podcast Notes:

• Lifetizr and their work through Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM)
• Personal experiences monitoring glucose levels and benefits of tracking
• Moating and how startups understand their strengths and positioning
• Tips on fasting, 72 hour fasts, cold showers
• Could immortality be achieved?
• David Sinclair's Information Theory of ageing
• Need for utopian science fictions (White Mirrors)
• Twitter as the true social network
• Increased polarisation of societies and rise in social media wokeness
• Andy Matuschak's mnemonic writing

Transcript

Welcome to the Shake Up The World Podcast. We have with us Mehdi Yakubi. So, Mehdi is an engineer and entrepreneur from Paris.

He is passionate about optimizing health, longevity and well-being and is currently building a solution to help people optimize their metabolic health, prevent chronic diseases and live healthier and longer lifestyle. More on that later. So, Mehdi, I just want to start with this one thing which you have mentioned in the website.

So, you had mentioned this code which really got me intrigued. So, it was something along the lines of the way you do anything is the way you do everything. So, that’s a very good question because actually it was really life-changing code in my life.

The idea behind the code, I think the idea is pretty clear, but I’m going to maybe tell you how it impacted me. So, when you start doing certain things, some things that you’re doing can appear as not very important or something might be in your mind more important than what you’re currently doing. But I think that when you really give all of your energy to what you’re currently doing, even if it’s something super simple like going for groceries or just going for a walk or giving a present to your friend.

So, if you do this little thing in a very good way, you’re always going to have amazing experiences in your life and it’s going to lead you to a very, very great place. This is the idea of even the small things, even the things that you don’t want to do. If you do them in a great way, it’s going to bring you so much more than if you just want to rush them.

So, if you want to be a person that does great things, you have to do these great things even in the small things. So, the way you do anything is the way you do everything. I think that kind of summarizes as well the way your approach is because I see that you are interested in wide variety of topics right from longevity research to fitness and psychology and that’s kind of shown in the newsletter which you have as well.

So, maybe it would be nice to just go a team by team in the teams which you interest you and maybe we can just go into a deep dive into those topics. Yeah. So, for sure.

I was just maybe it could be nice to introduce the audience in terms of your startup or first and foremost and what is the vision which you have and then we can start from there and develop further. Yeah. So, actually, I’m currently working on on life tizer which is the product that I’m building.

It’s a solution to help people optimize their blog glucose levels for everyone, not only for people with diabetes. So, right now that’s what we’re building and we’re developing the solution with our first early users. They’re loving it and we’re taking it from here.

The idea that led me to this project was basically that the way we handle health right now is completely in the reverse way like everyone goes to the doctor when there is a problem but there is nothing to improve what you already have or to make sure that it stays good. So, it’s this idea of bringing health in your lifestyle and making it part of your everyday life. So, health is not only when there is a problem, health is a way of life.

And so, we want to bring this new way of life and this new prevention, preventive medicine mindset. With this first solution with the blog glucose levels and from there, the goal is to add many other verticals on the solution to basically help people optimize their whole health with our products. So, in terms of your approach, a couple of questions just come in my mind while going through your work.

So, one is in terms of the approach itself, right? So, normally we come to our doctors or physicians when we have like broken our back or fractured our leg or have some ailment, right? And we come to kind of cure the disease but as far as I’ve seen, it’s this is more in terms of preventing what’s going to happen in the future and making sure that your health and you use data in a sense to make sure that these things are avoided in the future, right?

If I’m not wrong. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, basically it’s shifting the efforts from a mindset where you’re fixing a problem to a mindset where you use this energy and those efforts but before, before it’s too late, before you have the problem and you just make it part of your everyday life.

So, like instead of going to the doctor when you already have a disease, maybe you’re going to maybe you’re going to focus in improving your lifestyle, improving your habits and that will lead to better outcomes. I also had seen your tweet about this that you mentioned that it’s quite unfortunate that just it’s just the diabetic who are kind of getting used to to explore blood glucose, glucose monitoring, right? So any thoughts on this regard as to how blood glucose monitoring could actually help us to up again and to gain more insights as to how our body functions.

So any thoughts on that? Yeah. This is, this is exactly the problem that we’re going through is that we have a lot of tools but the problem is that we kept the old mindset.

So right now, the people that are monitoring their blood glucose levels are people with diabetes. But what we have to understand is that type 2 diabetes is a disease that you develop through your life. It’s not black and white.

You develop it through years, through years of bad habits and bad nutrition. Of course, there are some genetic factors. Some people will develop it much easier than others, but it’s it’s not something that you’re born with.

It’s something that you develop through life. So the idea is to take the problem before it becomes a big problem. And you can see like years before developing the diabetes that you’re going on the wrong direction, you can change this direction and you can have a massive impact on your future health.

And you can obviously prevent these diabetes. So if you want a clear example, I started monitoring my blood glucose levels around the year ago. And I was extremely shocked to see that actually, I’m almost prediabetic.

My blood glucose levels are really not optimal. And I’m someone that really pay attention to what I eat. And I try to exercise a lot.

So it shows you that it’s not only the big bad habits like fast foods and these kind of stuff. You can really develop bad metabolism without without having necessarily bad lifestyle. So for example, me and my co-founder, we are actually both of us almost prediabetic.

And we are, you know, we’re like really healthy people. You would never guess that we are going to be prediabetic people. So this is this is the idea.

You know, and when people around me started to track their blood glucose levels, a lot of people found out that their levels are really not optimal. So, you know, if you don’t pay attention to it, it will not be, it will not, you won’t be very good. The blood, you won’t have very good blood glucose levels.

So it’s a sensor that you can put on, on your arm. And basically the sensor gives you your blood glucose levels in real time. And the idea is to understand how certain things in your life impact your blood glucose levels.

Mainly things like nutrition, activity, sleep. This is basically what you want to understand, you want to understand the correlations between these things and your blood glucose levels. So the first thing is to understand where you are, you know, like do you have already very good blood glucose levels or are you in a place where you can progress or you might discover that you’re in a place where you really have to pay attention.

So after understanding where you stand, then you can start understanding the impacts of what you eat and your exercise on your metabolism. So on my side, I discovered that the my breakfast, basically the meal that I was eating every day, the first meal that I was eating every day was very bad for my blood glucose levels. So to give you an example, in my case, it was an extreme example, but basically I was also mentioned about oats not being good for you, although it is yeah, so yeah, so again, again, what I want to say is is not that something is bad for everyone, but it’s just that people need to try for themselves.

The the the era of one size fits all needs to stop because one size fits one. It doesn’t fits everyone. And we need to understand that people are different and metabolism are different.

So for me, I was having a rather big big bowl of oats as a as a first meal. So it’s something that most people would consider healthy, but it was spiking my blood glucose levels from around 100 to 200. So it’s a massive massive massive spike.

And I was having that on the daily basis. So you can imagine that eating that for a few years, it’s going to really have deleterious effects on your metabolism. So, you know, for me, I changed a lot in the way that I eat and people around me as well understood that certain foods are bad for them and some others are really good.

The idea again is not to say precise food like oats are bad. This is not the point. The point is just for people to understand what works for them, which is not going to be the same as what works from for another for another person.

So the diet in a sense has to be personalized to exactly how your body is because each one is different in their own way. Exactly. Basically, it’s not a new idea.

You know, like people always knew that we need to personalize things. But before it was not possible to personalize because we did not have the technology to do so. Right now we have we have biosensors that can give us real real time accurate feedback to understand what’s happening within our body.

And this understanding can bring the new era of personalization. And right now is the time to start it. You know, now is the time to change the way we do and do it with a more personalized mindset.

So I could also see a lot of these startups coming up with using data in a sense to make the person more aware. So I have a question a bit more on the broadest sense of measurement of these vital parameters in general. I’ll just play a bit more of this intellectual sparring partner just being on the opposite side and asking a very fundamental question that is, of course, we do measure this.

Let’s say we get this. And this is how it is. If we are sleeping for seven hours or eight hours and we are going to track that and we come to know about this insight.

Isn’t it still the agency is still on the individual to make an action, right? That is, say, we come to know about this insight and it has to be implemented. For instance, what I’m trying to say is say, if we have a measuring scale or a weighing machine, you measure your weight, but you still have, it doesn’t really make you say, what is the most important question in the field?

The that is that is still a very good addition to what we could have before. But in the end, as you said, it remains on the on the person to do it. However, there is something powerful in in those in those solution is that the fact of tracking is a behavioral tool.

What do I mean by that? I mean that on top of the information, the fact of knowing that you will have the information pushes you to want to get a good information. So for example, if you track your sleep, it will not fix your sleep, but it will make you aware of the problem.

Like, okay, last night I had five hours of sleep. I see that the ring, my rings of sleep are red. I had only one hour of deep sleep.

So during the day, I will have this information and maybe when it’s going to be eight the day after, I’m going to say, okay, maybe now it’s time for me to go to bed early because I have the information and I know that it was good. So it gives you this quick feedback that something was not good and it can help you as a behavioral tool to do the right thing for CGMs and blog glucose levels as well. What I discovered and what many different people discovered is that, you know, you know that many different foods are bad for you.

But when you really see the damage that you’re doing to your body, like you see a massive spike or you see, you know, that you’re basically damaging your body. You don’t want to do it. You know, it’s a very, very potent behavioral tool.

Like people keep telling me the same thing. Like, you know, when I wear a CGM, I don’t want to do, you know, I don’t want to do like this, this random thing that I know is bad for me. Like, I think two times before doing it.

So it can help a lot of people like that because as you said in your question, you know, like, there is the information and then there is the behavior. So we have to act on both sides to have really, really a good impact on people. And with this information, we also have this behavioral tool and that that was make this this new era very powerful.

Very interesting, Mehdi. Just along the same lines, touching upon this aspect of what you mentioned, where you’re talking about the blood glucose levels, right? So you do have some variants of the levels say there could be some spikes as well, right?

And there is also an optimal range where the blood glucose has to be made in which is good for us. So, there is, I mean, like, even if there is a spike, does it really mean anything? I’m just being a very completely not well researched on this topic, but just want to know your perspective on this front that wouldn’t it be okay to have some spikes here and there or just is it like really required to have this range?

Like, I think Nazim Talay puts it in, he calls it the pro-crustin bed. I don’t know if you have read the the story of the pro-crustin bed. No, I did not.

So wait, I mean, just just an example, but maybe if you could connect with. Yeah. So he talks about this in where people come and give a visit and that is in keeper who makes sure that the person who’s sleeping in the bed fits exactly to the size of the bed.

So for instance, if the person is too big, he he cuts his legs to make sure that he fits to this bed and if he’s too short, he stretches the body to fit onto the bed. So I’m just wondering if it’s another pro-crustin bed where you are maintaining the levels in the range, but volatility is not kind of exercise. So let’s say these spikes wouldn’t really affect the person.

I’m just being a completely not an expert in this field, but just want to know your view. For sure. Well, it’s actually a very good question.

You know, like, and the way I the way I look at this question is actually by asking what’s what’s the goal? You know, what’s the goal of what we’re doing? There are multiple goals.

You know, there’s the goal of right now. I want to feel better. I want to sleep better.

I want to have more energy. And this is a goal that you can feel. You can see.

You can see if you’re okay with a certain amount of spikes. You can see where you want to put your limits. So this is this is these are the levels that I have.

When I feel good and then you can target those and then you have the additional goal, which is longevity. This goal, you do not feel it because it’s something that will happen in a few decades. So metabolic health is one of the biggest pillar of longevity and and basically right now in the current situation before we develop a therapy for radical life extension that I hope are going to come soon.

Right now. What topic which I would I mean, that’s something which got me interested to have this conversation with you. For sure.

That would be an interesting thing. We after this. So right now.

The the situation is that, you know, living a long and healthy life is equivalent to delaying the onset of chronic diseases and to do so. Researchers and doctors understood that to delay the onset of these chronic diseases, the biggest diseases that that kill the most the most of us, you need to have a perfectly optimized metabolism. So it’s it’s still relatively new feel to understand what’s a perfectly optimized metabolism.

But we have to start somewhere. We already have pretty good ideas of what are the optimal levels to target. And these these science is going to continue evolving.

To help us target the rights values for each one of us. Yeah, tell me. I’ve been like right now.

We’ve been having this question. I’ve been asking like why, why, why and it slowly leads to this grand a vision of say life extension, longevity and immortality or what not. Right.

So I. Yeah, this vision which you have. Exactly.

So kind of it on those lines. So yeah. So let’s be clear here.

Like so optimizing metabolism is is basically what’s going to enable a person to be in great health and prevent the onset of chronic diseases in the best way. You know, so it’s it’s the thing that if you want to remain disease free for as long as possible, you want to pay very, very good attention to it because most of the diseases that kill people are related to a metabolic problem. Then like on on on another side, which is not necessarily related to that.

But this this thing got me really interested in in longevity. I really have a passion for a for longevity and for for this thinking of life. Exactly.

That’s why I called the news letter the long game. Yeah. Sorry.

You were seeing something. Yeah. And so you know, this this got me really interested in in the field of longevity.

And you know, I really do think that people are not most people are are not aware that a lot of scientists are actually working on on this question of of life extension. And they’re currently working on reversing aging. It’s not about slowing down aging right now.

It’s about reversing aging. So it’s really it’s really something crazy when you think about it is like these are the first questions which come to anyone’s mind who says wondering if this is even like is it this sounds really crazy or then reality in a sense, right? It does.

It does sound crazy. And actually the the first the first really pillar to understand this thing is that scientists and researchers understood that aging itself is the big disease. So by by switching our understanding from aging as a normal part of life to aging as a disease that we could fight it changes everything.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the the dragon tyrant with the with the fable of of the dragon the dragon tyrant which is this story where you know for throughout history. You know in in in this old village people were delivering people to this to this gigantic dragon. Up until the moment in which they understood that maybe they could fight the dragon and and this is a metaphor to talk about aging.

And this is actually a very I love this story because it it really gives you the problem right now with longevity is that we have to find the culprit. We have to find the thing that we need to fight. And this thing is aging itself.

It is a disease and researchers are now trying to reverse aging and actually aging is a loss of information. Not anymore than that. So would you expand a bit on those lines like how how is it loss of information and why is aging another disease.

I mean it seems so obvious that everything ages everything becomes dead every living organism in a sense becomes dead after some time right and that’s an essence of life when there is death. But this is very contrary to that whole perspective. So could you touch up for sure.

Well, you know we were we’re not talking yet about immortality. or anything right now you know we need to we need to remain like when you look at what yeah when you look at what’s happening so with the latest science they manage to reverse the biological age of masses. Yeah of the mice. So you know it’s just to show that by triggering the right thing in these living organisms they manage to do something as crazy as reversing aging.

So there is something that can be done there and actually David Sankler explains that in in lifespan is that if you manage to fix the loss of information you can actually reverse aging. And right now the approach as a operator gray explained it in a in a very good interview is that many different teams are working on reversing aging in different parts of of the body. So some people for example are working on on stem cells for the muscles.

Some people are working on you know how to create new organs if if there is a problem with an organ. And so right now this is a little bit where the the the the science is there is of course a lot to be done because this is this is a like a tremendous project. And there is not a lot the problem right now is that there is not a lot of funding in the in the in the fields.

So you know if you compare it to a field like cancer or or or not a field of medicine really the funding is ridiculous. And to get more funding and to really get great results it has to go with with the minds and shift you know people understanding that this this gigantic thing that is aging and that we accepted for centuries. Millennials is actually something that we can do something to fight we can do something.

I think biology also mentions in the North Star podcast that I think the final battle which technology could eventually overcome is in terms of. Exactly. And that’s probably like the most important battle which we should fight.

Exactly because the purpose of technology is to reduce scarcity and the ultimate scarcity is time. So the ultimate thing that we can do is increase the amount of time that we have. And that’s why we should really put a great focus on it.

I think it’s also quite obvious. Also it’s read one of your newsletters where you mentioned how this whole trend towards shifting towards health as to say even Apple is looking at it in terms of how can you extend the life of the person so that you could extract in terms of maximum value out of a person in terms of the service they’re providing. So life extension could be the next big thing in terms of where everyone is getting towards.

Unfortunately that there’s not much research funding going into life extension which is I would say yeah I mean it’s still difficult to really say for sure right? You need to look at it in the decades span to really know if this really works or not. So I’m really curious to know how this would eventually progress in terms of research.

So you know like this is a good question and right now there is quite a good consensus in the aging field that we could do much better than the current maximum of lifespan that we have which is around 120 years old. So these scientists know that we could do much better. So if you really zoom out and look at the big picture you know that in let’s say a few thousand years it’s going to be radically different.

So we’re going to do much better than that. So the point is just are we going to be the first generation to really have a massive improvement of the situation or are we going to be one of the last generation to only have the current situation that there is you know to only have a life of around 80 to 100 years. The thing is that we are the main protagonist of this story you know like with our efforts, with our research, with defending with our efforts, with our communication we can change the whole situation you know.

Like for example if you imagine like these big projects that we had in the 20th century like the Manhattan Project for example or the Apollo program. These were massive massive efforts directed toward one goal you know go to the moon, develop the atomic bomb and these programs manage to do such incredible innovations that’s a little bit sad for the atomic bomb that that everything was put to the power of of destruction. But it’s just to show how we can be so innovative.

So we can be so fast on on specific issues if we put the right resources and the right focus. So you know if we manage to to to really progress on these topics we might we might do it you know we might do it soon. Actually I was reading about this a couple of weeks back pretty fascinating that from the time we discover the neutron and to the time we had implemented the Manhattan Project and made the first drop the first atom bomb right versus the period of I think 13 to 15 years if I’m not wrong which is quite small in terms of overall implementation right from the discovery to the execution right and that too for something as massive as atomic bomb.

Exactly. Imagine if let’s say the Manhattan Project for aging comes to maybe this age reversing of mice is the first step towards making this reality possible. I was just thinking about those lines.

Refined Podcast Transcript: Technology, Longevity, and the Future

The Geopolitical Context of Major Programs

I was thinking about this a lot, and you know what I wrote in the newsletter. The problem is that we still have a geopolitical context. At the same time that we want to improve technology and improve life, there’s a geopolitical reality where countries need to be aware of threats. The best way not to have any war is to prepare for war—you need to always remain ready.

So the problem is translating these gigantic programs like Apollo or Manhattan Project to something like aging research. It’s hard because it’s not obvious that it’s going to be a gigantic strategic win for the country. But if you really think about it, you might find out that it’s actually a very big strategic win if you manage to really improve the health span of a country.

That’s the difference I see: when it’s for military use or cultural purposes like going to the moon, it gives the project more energy. There’s something more there. I think it needs the right incentive structures to actually fast-track the whole process.

The Future Roadmap of Longevity

I’m really curious about how the future roadmap looks. For now, I see fitness, then nutrition, then reduced aging itself, then age reversal, and then immortality. If you go completely optimistic and think of a futuristic scenario, how do you think all these things fall into place? We were mentioning the other day about longevity escape velocity—how do all these things connect and come together?

There’s a lot of uncertainty about the future, but if you want to be optimistic—like a magic mirror—here’s how it might look:

First, it’s going to be the era of health optimization. From 2020 to maybe 10 or 15 years out, we’re really going to get better at optimizing health with what we have. Correlations between nutrition, sleep, exercise, mindfulness—all of these things we’re going to get a much better understanding of and much better optimization of our bodies.

On top of that, once you start optimizing the body, then are going to come things like biomarkers—aging biomarkers. People might and already do track aging biomarkers and try to optimize them. There’s also the biological clock that gives you your real age, not your chronological age, that you can work to optimize. Maybe you’re 50 years old, but your biological age might be 45.

These are going to be tools that are instrumental in improving and optimizing health. All of that is going to be very good to improve health span and hopefully stay in great health for as long as possible. But this will not create a revolution in what we can do. It might improve results for people doing all of that, but this is not what’s going to give a completely different result.

What could give a completely different result are life extension therapies. The way I like to think about it is that you have to put time on your side. You basically have to make sure that you remain in good health because maybe in 2050 or 2060, those therapies are going to exist.

Imagine if at that time you’re in poor health or already with chronic diseases and you cannot use those therapies. It would be really unfortunate—you would really be mad at yourself. You always have to keep in mind that as time passes, technology will also progress a lot. If you imagine 10 years from now, you have to imagine that researchers have worked 10 more years. If you think 20 years, well, 20 years of research on top of what we currently have.

Personal Experience with Fasting

Let’s zoom in on the present. In your newsletters, you mention a lot about fasting and the benefits of cold showers. I’ve started using the Zero app, which is quite nice for fasting. I’m getting interested in it because I’ve personally tried implementing fasting in my lifestyle but failed miserably—I couldn’t control myself not to eat for certain times. What’s your experience with fasting and what changes have you seen?

I really love fasting. I got into fasting maybe four or five years ago, and I really enjoy it. I’ve always been a person who enjoys moments where I eat and I’m completely fine with not snacking and not eating for a long time.

Maybe two years ago, I started with intermittent fasting and then increased it to 20 hours of fasting per day. It was really without any struggle—for me it was easy. For some people I know it’s hard, but for me it’s very easy because I managed to get all my calories rather quickly. I don’t have a problem with big portions, so on this side it’s a little bit easy for me.

I also got into more extended fasts and did multiple three-day fasts—72 hours. It’s really psychological. The first day is really easy when you’re used to 20-hour fasts per day. The first night is very easy. The second day, at the end of the second day, is a little bit hard, but then it gets easier. The third day can sometimes get a little bit challenging, but most of the time it’s fine. It’s really a mental exercise.

What I usually suggest to people who want to get into it—obviously they need to be healthy and without any health conditions—is to try first 16 hours, then 20. Then maybe try 36 hours, which is really good to get used to more extended fasts. Then you can try with a friend. The first 72 hours I did it with my co-founder, and we were together working on LifeSizer. It was hard, but when you’re with someone, it makes the whole process much easier. This social aspect of these practices is really important for accountability.

The Individual Nature of Health Optimization

I would add that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. I love fasting, but it doesn’t work for everyone. For example, in my personal experience, I discovered that when I was fasting, my blood glucose levels were quite high and I had a very bad response after refeeding. When I was eating after fasting, my blood glucose levels stayed high for a long time—really bad response. Even if I reduced to the minimum the amount of carbohydrates I was having to break my fast, it just didn’t work for me.

So I had to find something that works. The idea is for people to try self-experimentation processes in their life. If you want to try something, try it. Try things one at a time—you cannot try everything at the same time so you can isolate what is good and what is bad. It’s a journey.

There are various purposes for fasting as well. There could be people who do fasting for gut health, for increasing lifespan, or for reducing fat. There are various outcomes that could come out of fasting itself. Peter Attia has also done phenomenal work in making fasting mainstream and accessible for people.

Extended Fasting Protocol

With the 72-hour fast, do you not consume anything at all, or are there certain things you can still consume?

There are some people who are quite religious about it, and I’m not. For me, I was just taking some salt, some water to get electrolytes in the body, some magnesium also. People do it the way they want to do it. It might be different if you want to heal your gut or if you just want to have the first experience. Some people are hardcore—you need to drink only water and take nothing else. I think we should be more open to different styles.

Influential Books and Learning Philosophy

Being a polymath, you have a wide variety of interests. I’m really interested to know what has influenced you in terms of the way you think. Are there any books which you think are the most influential—maybe one or two books, maximum three—which you might consider part of you and something you reflect in your real life?

Actually, there are a lot of different things. Maybe what’s important to me is the way that I approach learning and life in general. I just try to optimize for what I find interesting. If I find an article interesting, I’ll read it. If I see a book and find it interesting, I’ll read it. My interest just guides me—I follow the interest and make sure it organically comes out.

I have different phases. In certain moments, I really want to learn about a specific topic, so I’ll learn about that topic. But generally speaking, I just like a lot of things. It’s just my way of life. As you see in the newsletter, it’s really like that in my week. When I have some free time or blocks where I learn new stuff, I just follow my interest.

There are some patterns that come back—general stuff that I’m generally interested in. But I also like to sometimes, when I find something that is really weird or that I don’t necessarily know about or have no idea about, I’ll just get interested in it. I’ll think, “Okay, I have no idea about this thing. I see some people talking about it, or I heard about it in a podcast, or I read something in a book.” I’ll just go and read something about it.

Balancing Breadth and Depth

There is a risk with this approach—just being on the surface of everything. You still have to have some topics where you go wide and go deep. It’s such a paradox that you need to be a jack of all trades but also have to be master of something.

I was listening to Laird Hamilton last time on the Tim Ferriss show. He’s both an athlete and a mental performer—he’s doing big wave surfing. He’s an incredible human being because he’s not on the internet. He just has a website but he’s pretty much not active at all, not on social media. He’s a fascinating person because you really see someone embodying depth versus width.

He’s going deep in certain topics. I don’t think that’s the only way to do it, but I still think there’s something to learn there. You have to maybe find a few things where you want to go deeper, and then maybe be in the top five percent of a few things.

Eric Torrenberg has a very good article about personal moats. He explains how some people manage to create moats. If you want to be a generalist, you can be generalist, but you still need to develop something unique.

Personal Moats and Expertise

Could you elaborate on that—in terms of moats?

Basically, we talk a lot about what’s the moat of a company, and here it’s on a personal level. People have things that are really hard to reproduce—what makes Tyler Cowen Tyler Cowen, what makes Tim Ferriss Tim Ferriss. These people really have something.

Some people are generalists who are also deep in a few things. When you know a person like Tyler Cowen, he knows almost everything, but he’s also an economist. He’s extremely knowledgeable in economics. Joe Rogan is another example—if you’ve done a thousand podcasts, your skill in terms of talking to people on any topic whatsoever is phenomenal.

He knows a lot of things. He’s a specialist in UFC and a few other topics, and he’s maybe an expert in discussion. That’s the way to see it.

I really like Tim Ferriss’s philosophy because you have to put effort in understanding how you’re going to get from point A to point B. It’s not easy to become a master at something, and he knows it. He deconstructs the skill. In jujitsu, he’s going to deconstruct the positions and just practice one thing for a year, and then he’s going to be a master of this thing.

He said, “I do not fear the person that has a hundred different skills. I fear the person that has only one skill and has mastered that skill for years.” I think it’s a quote from Bruce Lee: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

That’s something we all fall into as generalists—we would like to do everything and then we kind of lose track of the core essence of the skill we want to develop. Even if it’s guitar, it could be just practicing those few chords again and again, becoming a master, and then slowly translating to other things.

The Challenge of Focus in the Digital Age

I think it’s very hard in our time to resist the temptation of wanting to learn everything because it’s accessible. You can see, for example on Twitter, many different topics depending on the people you follow. The skill of knowing what to focus on is going to be instrumental in our century. There’s going to be a huge difference between people who know where to spend their time and people who do not.

I have to admit that I’m struggling. It’s something I need to work on. I need to get better at just focusing on a few things for, let’s say, six months to a year and resisting all the other distractions.

Social Media Strategy and Philosophy

Let’s take a segue to social media. Now we’re talking about distraction and having focus. With “The Social Dilemma” creating all these discussions, do you have any social media etiquette? We’re all struggling to use various tools that are at our disposal. Have you found a way or process that helps you guide through this complexity of social media networks like Twitter?

This is actually a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot this week because I watched “The Social Dilemma” two weeks ago and was listening to Tristan Harris on Sam Harris’s podcast yesterday. It’s really a tremendous challenge of our time. We’re talking a lot about existential risks, but this problem of technology that is tearing society apart could really quickly become an existential risk. People cannot hear each other anymore. People cannot accept opposing views, and it’s really concerning.

Sometimes I see things on Twitter that concern me—it’s really shocking. But on the positive side, that’s where we met. That’s where I met one of my co-founders, where I met a lot of people I’m collaborating with. For reading, for new friends, for work, it’s actually much better than LinkedIn for work.

LinkedIn—I just don’t know what it is. I really don’t like it. When I go on LinkedIn because I have to search for something, I find it horrible. I even added an extension so I don’t have any feed on LinkedIn. I deleted the feed and feel perfect now—without the feed, it’s awesome.

I also deleted Instagram. I don’t like Instagram as well. I think it’s only based on appearances and “look at how my life is perfect.” I don’t like that because it doesn’t bring people up—it just makes people feel bad about their life.

I think that’s actually a problem of social media: it over-emphasizes success and under-emphasizes the way to get there. It might take you a few decades to be successful and do great things, and that’s just the way it is. But when you constantly see extreme wealth or extreme success from some people—I mean, I’m extremely happy for people who are successful, I wish everyone to be successful—but there’s something in seeing that constantly.

There’s always someone who is healthier than you, there’s always someone who’s smarter than you, and that’s not a problem. The problem is just being confronted with that on a daily basis. You wake up on a Tuesday, it’s raining, you don’t have a perfect day—that’s completely fine, it’s normal life. But then when you have this tool with edited pictures of a perfect life, the human brain is not made to resist comparison. You’re going to compare.

Every time I delete Instagram, I have this good feeling. My anxiety reduces a lot. I don’t have anxiety anymore—I just have my life, I’m happy about my life, and that’s perfect. I’m happy about what I’m doing.

On the Twitter side, Twitter helps you grow, helps you think better, helps you meet new people and future friends. We met on Twitter and had an amazing first call to talk about the Indian tech scene. That’s the beauty of Twitter—it connects you with people who have the same interests.

There are problems on Twitter because it’s a polarized platform as well. Even right now in the US, the polarization has reached extreme levels. It’s really an unhealthy place, and some accounts on the platform are really toxic.

A Utopian Vision for Social Media

I had a similar thought to what you wrote beautifully in your newsletter. Social media looks at eyeball time as a metric—the more time you spend, the more ads they can get money from. Tristan Harris mentions a utopian view of social media: what if social media could emphasize fulfillment as a metric? If people are striving for fulfillment, wouldn’t that be different? What are your thoughts on this utopian view of social media?

I think we could improve our social media on many different aspects. First of all, you didn’t touch on it in your question, but I still think it’s a good place to start with the question of truth. Right now there’s a huge problem with fake news and the problem of truth.

As much as you can imagine a post-truth era, you also see that when you’re not seeking truth, you can reach tremendous problems. There’s the pandemic—you can say there isn’t one, but there is. You can force yourself to forget it, but it’s still there and still killing hundreds of thousands of people. So there’s a limit to the post-truth era.

By creating good incentives for truth, prediction markets could be an amazing tool for that. What Augur is doing—betting on anything—is a great thing. If people needed to put a monetary amount on what they believe, they will double-check. If retweets equal “I bet $10,” you read articles, you double check, you see who wrote it. You check: is it a Russian-sponsored account? Chinese-sponsored account? Who’s the person writing it?

We can imagine things like that. This is one way of fixing the truth problem. You’re also mentioning the iterative model where truth is not something set in stone—it could evolve organically as you get new information, because you still need more information to be closer to truth.

The iterative model of truth could be a solution. Once we understand that we were wrong, it needs to be pushed to everyone who had the first information. How can we make that happen? Technology will provide solutions, but we have to seek those solutions and understand the emergency of the problem.

If we lose truth—this pandemic is not an existential risk, but a bigger pandemic could come. Bigger problems could come, and we have to have a functioning society where we know what is true, we understand what’s happening, and it works.

On top of that, the question of social media improvement: the question of attention—you cannot wait for companies like Facebook or Google or all the people who literally optimize on attention to stop doing it because it’s just too much money for them.

We need to treat attention as something we will not just give away for free. Another way to do that is if you manage to push people to spend their attention doing something they would benefit from—either earning money or learning something new. You could think of something where if people spend time, they learn something valuable for their career or they earn money by doing something valuable. The thinking has to start with the incentive of the social media system.

Information Retention and Learning

That reminds me of another piece you’ve written about something I’ve been thinking about. We consume a lot of information through books, articles, and so on, but how much is actually retained by us? What could be the scope if we retained it better? There was a piece by Andy Matuschak on quantum computing especially, and how he uses that as a means to say that if we retained better, that would be something interesting. What are your thoughts?

This is something I love thinking about. The question of retention is so important, and so few people pay attention to it. Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen are extremely brilliant minds who have put thinking into it.

The concept is that you read a book, and six months later you forgot everything. Some people will try to fool themselves into thinking, “Oh yeah, but now I have this deep knowledge that is inside of me and I remember without remembering exactly.” I don’t buy into that. I just think you forgot.

A few switches in the way you consume information could get you a much better outcome with what you’re consuming. If you’re using books and content that already exists, what you can do is obviously take notes. Participate in the content—you see something, you relate it to something else. You’re active, not passive.

On top of that, you create an active recall system like spaced repetition. Tools like Readwise are really good because they can resurface the stuff you were reading so you never forget it. You read a book and every day you get a quote from it that comes back. You can create a ritual where you just go through the stuff you had.

For example, writing a newsletter for me is this process because I have to go through all the things I read in my personal knowledge management system. I find the input and output balance—producing helps you consolidate. When you produce something, whether it’s for yourself or for other people, you consolidate the knowledge.

I read a few pieces this week, now I need to put something together. So I go through them, I remember them, I go through also the ones I read in different weeks or last month or even last year, and I remember. I remind myself, “Oh, this one was very good. This quote I really liked.” So I never forget it—it’s always there. You go through it.

This is why I think having this ritual of writing something or really making sure you go back through what you learned is so important. It’s going to help you connect ideas in a way that you cannot do if you don’t do that. If you leave things to be forgotten in a place and never go back to read them again, you won’t have the same level of connections in your mind.

Writing as Thinking

Talking about writing, there was this quote I read somewhere on Twitter that mentioned writing is not a final output of thinking—writing IS thinking, clarified through the way you write.

Exactly. Every person who tried to write an article had those first moments when they realized, “I don’t know what I’m saying. I cannot fool myself.” You can fool yourself—we are professionals in fooling ourselves, as Feynman was saying. But when you write something, you cannot fool yourself because you’re going to read it. You read and see that you wrote something that doesn’t make sense.

So you need to go double-check, you need to do more research, you need to put something that is clean, organized, and makes sense. You need to create thinking. Writing is thinking—there’s no difference. If you cannot write it well, you cannot think it well.

The Creator Economy and Passion-Driven Work

Right now there’s a huge surge in the creator’s economy, the passion economy as they call it. You see people like David Perell and Anne-Laure Le Cunff. I see that you’ve also established a base with your newsletter, and the Long Game podcast is coming soon, plus essays on your website. Why do you see this coming into shape? What are your thoughts on how we could be at the forefront of the passion economy, especially in terms of writing?

This is the era of the passion economy, there’s no doubt about that. The passion economy, if you take it on a personal level, has to start with passion. I think the good way to think about it is to just find something you’re interested in—something you’re genuinely interested in and like doing.

If there are topics you find interesting, just read more about them and write something. Maybe start with summaries, maybe start with whatever you want to start with—just start with something. Through time, through practice, your style is going to evolve. You’re going to see what you enjoy doing, what you don’t like doing, and you’re going to elaborate your personal brand.

You don’t need to start with a personal brand that’s already made. You can develop it through time. You can develop your personal monopoly with time. You don’t need to be “the psychology guy,” for example. You can just follow your interest, and with a little bit of time, you’re going to end up in the right place.

Being a polymath, you might have multiple interests and want to talk about all those things you’re consuming. But as you write more, it slowly prunes and you get focus as well.

You can also never necessarily focus on something. You don’t need to think about the audience or who’s going to listen or who’s going to read—this is not important, this is secondary. Obviously you want to do something good that people might enjoy, but I don’t like to think about it when I’m creating something.

I try to write something that makes me think and that I would like to read. That’s it. If some people like it, it’s perfect. If no one likes it, it’s not a problem—it’s really not a problem.

Personal Mentors and Influences

Do you have mentors in this regard? People you really admire and who have influenced you? It could be people you’ve met on Twitter, or even historical figures—just people who have influenced you professionally and personally.

A lot of people have influenced my life. I really admire a whole lot of people. Obviously you have great thinkers, people who go deep in specific topics. I admire them a lot. When you hear or read someone where you feel there’s deep knowledge in these topics, it’s really beautiful.

On top of that, I also really like people who help the conversation evolve, who help people have more conversations. For example, Lex Fridman of the Lex Fridman podcast—I really admire Lex. He’s an amazing host. I learned so much through his podcast, and he’s a good human being. We need more people like him.

I also love Joe Rogan. Some people don’t like certain of his views, but I think that’s what’s important for conversations. You need to get the conversation going. You need to talk with people. It’s not by not respecting or not accepting that people disagree with you that the conversation is going to improve.

You’re mentioning the importance of accepting people with opposing views and just having conversations. We might have disagreements in terms of people, but I try to learn from a lot of different people and try to stay really open-minded.

Sometimes I try to find something I disagree with and be fine with it, because the first reaction is that you really don’t like what you hear. I think the way we can bring solutions to this complicated time is just by being fine with disagreeing—really being fine, listening, and not being part of the problem by wanting to cancel other people.

It’s fine to disagree, and that’s completely okay. This is how we’re going to continue progressing as a civilization and improve our life on this planet and maybe another planet. This is how we’re going to do it.

Europe is different than the US. Some of these things—not the whole movement in the US, but some aspects of what’s happening in the US—are already here in France, but it’s not exactly the same. We have our own problems—they’re not the same, but they still exist.

That brings us to the end of this conversation. We’ve had a nice time exploring these topics, but I want to circle back to books because our audience might be interested in reading things you find valuable. Could you share some books or articles that are on top of your mind right now—not necessarily the most influential, but ones you’d recommend?

I have to say, it’s good that you added articles because articles can be extremely good sources of content. I consume a lot of articles.

As we mentioned earlier, “Why Books Don’t Work” by Andy Matuschak is extremely good. It’s an essay that explains what we discussed about the problems with books and retention.

There’s a book I always go back to: “Awareness” by Anthony de Mello. It was really a wake-up call for me in terms of life philosophy—what to pay attention to and what not to pay attention to.

If I had to add something, I would say “Studying Studies,” which is a series of articles by Peter Attia on how to read scientific studies. It teaches you to understand and find studies that are reliable versus those that are not, because I believe it’s a huge problem in science right now.

The Challenge of Contradictory Research

I was looking at the field of dietetics and nutrition, and you always find contradictory studies, which is really overwhelming. If you’re coming with an open mind, even the scientists are arguing with each other about what’s the most right way. Maybe the way the research itself is conducted might not be as credible as they imagine.

We as common people—at least those of us who aren’t scientists in that regard—find it really difficult to go through this whole thing and extract useful information.

This is why we should always try to go to the source. Whether it’s science, go to the paper and read the paper. Go to “Origin of Species” and really go to the origin of the information. Don’t read the big title from a magazine or whatever—go to the study and understand it. This series of articles is really good for getting a good understanding.

Recent Discoveries

I would add a podcast I just discovered recently that I really enjoy: “Philosophize This!” I cannot believe I just discovered it. Yesterday I was walking in the streets of Paris and couldn’t believe how good it is. I listened to four episodes in a row.

I think you might have listened to the recent episode on Max Weber about progress and the future of our civilization. You definitely see that there are some drawbacks with progress and efficiency. It’s really good to think about these topics because without reflection, we cannot have a fulfilled life.

Philosophy as a Practical Tool

For me, philosophy has helped a lot by giving me useful metaphors. I think reality is too complex to understand completely, but you still have these abstract notions with metaphors. The way Weber mentions the “iron cage” is a nice way to understand how reality functions and acts as a guiding tool to be more aware.

I see philosophy in that sense, and that has made me more interested in this field. This podcast “Philosophize This!” is amazing because it goes in chronological order. Right from the first episode, it starts with the foundations—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle—and then slowly goes toward the most contemporary philosophers.

I think I’m going to start from the beginning, go to the end of the pile, and listen to them all. Honestly, it’s so good. They give really nice examples and a lot of stories, so philosophy isn’t as boring as people imagine. It’s adapted to our time.

Learning About India

Maybe the last thing I really enjoyed—as I was telling you, I want to learn more about India—is the two-part series on Reliance and Jio. It’s very good. There’s this two-part series: “Reliance: From Oil to Jio.” It’s one of the most impressive companies—like a behemoth in India. How they rose from ashes is like a Phoenix story.

It’s interesting that you’ve been curious about the Indian startup ecosystem. I see in general a very curious mind, open to all possibilities. Good luck with your work with LifeSizer as well.

Closing

I’ll share all the links in the episode description so others can watch and read more about Mehdi’s work. Thanks, Mehdi, for joining me.

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here with you today. It was an amazing conversation. Thanks a lot.

Thank you so much. Bye!