Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #68 Dr. Dan Chao

Episode Date: January 7, 2019

Dr. Daniel Chao is a neuroscientist and entrepreneur who specializes in technology that improves brain performance. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Halo Neuroscience, a venture-backed human performance company based in San Francisco. The company's first product, Halo Sport, is the world's first neurostimulation system built specifically to accelerate the development of muscle memory from training. Prior to founding Halo, Dr. Chao was the head of business development at NeuroPace, where he helped create the world's first closed-loop neurostimulation device for the treatment of epilepsy. He received his M.D. and M.S. in neuroscience from Stanford University. Dan stops by to reminisce about his time at Stanford, where Halo is now, and what new Halo products are in the works. Connect with team Halo: Website | https://www.haloneuro.com/ Blog | https://blog.haloneuro.com/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/haloneuroscience/ Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/halo.neuroscience Twitter | https://twitter.com/haloneuro?lang=en Show Notes: Neuropace | https://bit.ly/2Qmmvxd Radiolab 9 volt nirvana | https://bit.ly/2LVdSJH Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk Get 10% off at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/podcast/ Connect with Onnit on: Twitter | https://twitter.com/Onnit       Instagram | https://bit.ly/2NUE7DW Subscribe to Human Optimization Hour  Itunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY

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needed, most everyone would be thriving. That is part of why recent reports have come out saying that multivitamins don't work. That's also why Total Human was created, to be a rich collection of high-quality nutrients, each purpose-driven, to provide a tide of benefits to support your body, mind, joint health, immune system, energy, mood, and other aspects of your well-being. It's not a multivitamin, but rather a collection of megavitamins, also containing the clinically studied formulas direct from our most popular supplements. Go to onnit.com slash total dash human to learn more and try it today. Welcome to the Human Optimization Hour with me, Kyle Kingsbury. And our guest today is a guy named Dan Chow. Dan is the head honcho over at Halo Neuroscience, and they make one of the fucking coolest devices I've ever

been able to use, a TDCS device that helps prime the brain prior to training, learning, and acquiring new skills, even going as far as priming you for music lessons. So as we dive into in the show, something that would normally take the 10,000 hour rule through repetition can be greatly shortened. And we see people using this from the military to professional sports. Nine Volt Nirvana, which is a Radiolab episode done in 2014, I've referenced two in the past, will be linked in the show notes. So make sure you check that one out. It's very short, but really talks about the promise of what this can do for the brain. We dive into all sorts of cool shit with this. And we're getting a fat discount for our Onnit folks.

So if you use code word Onnit at checkout, when you go to haloneuro.com, you can get a huge discount off their brand new Halo Sport 2, which comes out a day after this podcast release. So you're welcome. Thanks for tuning in, guys. Hope you dig it. Very excited today. Dan Chow. Chow is it? Yeah. All right. Got it. All right. We got Dan Chow in from Halo Neuroscience, which has created one of the coolest products on the planet. And

it's not just cool because it works. It's cool because it looks good, which is, I found out from personal experience, it's quite important. So I was doing this biohack of the week. And I know I've already explained this on other podcasts, but there was one that got really shit on. And it was when I was using TDCS and I had my brain hooked up to all the different electrodes and it looked like something you'd buy at radio shack. And I was like, there's a ton of science on this. It's an amazing thing. Um, but people didn't like it. They're like, I'm not hugging my brain up to this bullshit. You know, and a lot of people are like, I'm never buying an Onnit supplement again. It was all bad. And then of course, you know, you fast forward to what technology has become now and what you

guys are doing with Halo. And it looks like Beats by Dre headphones. It looks absolutely phenomenal. The functionality is there. And still, there's no doubt that it works. So let's dive in here. I like this. I've been looking forward to having you on because of the fact that I love your product, but also for the fact that if there's any doubters out there, we can clear the air that it works. There's no doubt. And again, I mean, we're jumping right into this. I do want to get your background, talk about, you know, the stuff that you did at Stanford and your first company that had to do with neuro priming before you got into Halo. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it.

Let's jump around a little bit and then circle back into where we're at now and new products you guys have coming out. Yeah. I would love to. Where should I start? Start with Stanford. Let's start with the education. And where'd you grow up to? Grew up in Anaheim. Orange County. Okay. California guy all the way through, huh? Pretty much. I actually lived in Houston for about nine months, New York for three years, but pretty much my entire adult life has been in Northern California in the Bay Area. So, okay, let's start with Stanford. So, that was graduate school. I was in this MD-PhD

program where you get both degrees, usually takes seven or eight years to get both degrees, and the PhD was going to be in neuroscience. So, I've been a brain nerd, I mean, for as long as I can remember. I'm just fascinated by the brain studied it in college more in graduate school and I still remember the day in medical school where um I um I so I was really into drugs I was really into uh drugs that um that uh treat the brain for various diseases and I was really excited. Oh, I thought you were going to tell me psychedelics or something like that. I got fucking puckered up right now. I was like, oh God, yes.

Maybe we'll save that for a different podcast because there's a lot to talk about there as well. All right, cool. But yeah, so for now, let's just keep it to legal drugs. Medical drugs, as we know. So yeah, I was really excited for this pharmacology class that we're required to take and this chapter on the brain that we're about to enter. And a week into this chapter on drugs for the brain, you just realize that, shit, drugs don't work that well for the brain. And there's some reasons. Like if you take a step back, there's reasons for this. And I don't think anybody's really deeply thought that maybe the drug approach to the brain is flawed, right?

Okay, so drugs for the brain, take a little pill by mouth, goes into your stomach, absorbed by your gut, into your blood. Once it's in your blood, it goes all over the place. It takes a lap around your kidneys, your liver, all the different vital organs before it cruises past your brain. And to get into your should be it's a very delicate organ and we should govern we should really tightly govern what kind of chemicals can pass into it so this little chemical needs to be able to cross this blood-brain barrier which is very difficult so usually you have to overdose your body so that some of that that chemical can get into your brain and for the small amount of uh chemical that makes it into your brain. And for the small amount of chemical that makes it into your brain, it similarly goes all over the place. It's this chemical soup. It doesn't know any better. It just goes whichever way the wind blows. So then, like all of this is a story about a lot of friendly fire. So this little chemical is just cruising around, not knowing any better, blasting your

entire body, blasting your entire brain, when really it only needs to go to a small part of the brain for a small part of the time. And that's just asking a lot for a drug to do. So if you look at drugs for the brain, they're amongst the worst in all of medicine. I think the only thing that's about as bad as drugs for cancer. All right. But there's other drugs that are amazing, right? Antibiotics are amazing, blood pressure medication, cholesterol medication. Drugs are really the miracle of modern medicine, except when you talk about drugs for the brain, it's like the wheels fall off. So I was thinking, what if there was an entirely new approach? What if we were just to throw away everything and start fresh? What would that

approach be? And I was thinking, maybe electricity is the new medicine for the brain. And with electricity, there's a couple of things that are in our favor. One is the electrode. The electrode is a physical device that we can put in the part of the brain that we want to treat and specifically leave the rest of the body and the brain alone. So there's a certain amount of spatial specificity that we can achieve with a physical device that we can never achieve with a chemical. And another thing with an electrode is that there's a thing called a circuit that it's tied up to, it's connected to, and we can turn it on and off whenever we want. Right? Like, you know, tech companies have been doing this for decades. Like, why can't we as medical technologists do this? So this led to what started as an idea or a point of frustration

in medical school led to a company. My last company was called NeuroPace, where we built, think of a pacemaker-like technology, but for the brain, used to treat a disease called epilepsy, which is a disease of seizures. So this started as an idea. This was a really long, difficult, professional project of mine. It's a group of us. We spent over 10 years together. We raised over $250 million before we generated one penny in sales. But I'm proud to say that we brought this new technology to the world. It's FDA approved. It is out there helping thousands of people with epilepsy in a way that drugs could never touch. Like levels of efficacy and also specifically lack of side effects that could not have been dreamed of in a world prior to us introducing this new technology.

So that was a very heartening experience for me to work with the team and to bring this new life-changing technology to the world. And it was also some sort of personal vindication that, you know, a lot of folks who sort of doubted our mission that, whoa, this is crazy using electricity as medicine. Like that sounds crazy when you first think about it. But, you know, us at the company, we thought this is a far more rational way to go about the brain. So in some ways it was vindicating because it felt like we persevered and won over the doubters. So that was NeuroPace. And you're no longer, you got rid of it, sold it?

No, the company is still a private company. Okay. But after the FDA approval still a private company. Okay. But after the FDA approval, I left to found Halo. And Kyle, the reason why I left, the big reason is that I just felt like there was more to it. That at the end of the day, implantable medical devices will always be fairly niche. Right? compatible medical devices will always be fairly niche, right? Like most people who are willing to accept a medical implant are usually like pretty severely ill. And that's fine. These people need help. And I'm grateful for, you know, our contribution to this part of the world. But I

felt like there was something more that neurostimulation can do. And the only way that we were really truly going to bring it to the masses is to build it in a form factor that did not require surgery. So it's so-called non-invasive neurostimulation. So my co-founder and I, who's a longtime friend and colleague of mine from NeuroPace, we started reading the literature and what we found is probably something very similar to what you found looking at TDCS. So TDCS is transcranial direct current stimulation. And this new era of research started in Germany in about 2003, 2004. And from that time, we've grown from one peer-reviewed publication and now over 4,000. Wow.

Yeah. So we just saw this hockey stick in scientific interest and the quantity and quality of the research has just skyrocketed over the last decade. So this really caught our eye. We've been following the literature for 10 years now. And what we notice is that there's this technology that scientists are using, but regular folks don't have access to it. like buying scientific equipment and putting it on like self-assembling in a way that like, let's, let's face it. It wasn't convenient. It didn't look good. It was difficult to use. Like, you know, what would it look like if a couple of experienced neurostimulation medical device guys got ahold of this technology and built it into a form factor so that it could really just unlock it for the

world. And that was our idea behind Halo. What can we do to bring neurostimulation to the masses? Yeah, you guys have done an exceptional job. I think I first, being in the Bay Area, obviously follow the sports teams and things like that. But I had first heard about the Golden State Warriors working with your equipment right before they went on their tear and they're still on it. So it's not like they're going anywhere soon. They're not fading out. But yeah, just thinking about that, like what kind of difference it can make when it comes to people that are actually involved in things that take a greater deal of control and mindfulness as opposed to, will this make me bench press more or squat more? And I think, I listened to you on Ben Greenfield, I think it'll

work in all those areas, but it's critical when we have to learn and acquire a new skill. Yeah, yeah. So I think you're absolutely right, Kyle. There's a lot of different movement applications for neurostimulation. And I don't want your listeners to think that this is a panacea for all things. There's certain movements where I think neurostimulation works really, really well. And actually, I should qualify that. I think there's certain movement training where neurostimulation works great and other movement training where it doesn't. So the types of movement training that works really well is those movement training protocols or programs that are repetitive.

So like repeat, repeat, repeat. It's like, coach, tell me what I'm doing wrong. Coach tells you elbow in, so on and so forth. Try it again, try it again. And after a while you get it. So like usually that after a while is hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands of reps before you get it, before you commit it to muscle memory and you can use it in competition without thinking about it. That's what mastery is. I mean, 10,000 hour rule, 10,000 hour rule. I mean, you, you've probably felt this in your football days and, and for sure.

Yeah. And you know, there's probably moves that you wanted to try in competition, but maybe you were a little like, ah, I don't know. Right. I don't know if I've got it yet. This is another level. Like I got to practice it more. Maybe my next fight. Yeah.

So yeah, it's, and what you did between fights is you practice that move and you practice, practice, practice, practice. And eventually you got it where you're brave enough. You've got it enough where you can use it in competition. What we want to do is just accelerate that learning curve with

neurostimulation. Like we do a lot for the rest of our body on it has amazing products that, that prepare the body so that you can get the most, like you can get the most out of your training. Like what about, what about the brain? Onnit has amazing products that prepare the brain for a day. Like, what if we could use electricity to further enhance that, right? Like, what if we could use electricity to put the brain in the state of hyperlearning so that your movement training sticks to the brain at an accelerated rate?

So that's, yeah, that's in a nutshell what Halo Sport does. Yeah. And I was blown away even having the comparison. One thing that I really appreciated was that you only wear it for about 20 minutes and it will continue to work for the hour after. So I can prime through warmup and things like that. And then I can actually get into something where I wouldn't want headphones on, you know, specifically Brazilian jujitsu. And I talked to your team about that. You know, I'm going through the warmup with the headphones on. I take them off when the, when the timer runs out and for the next hour learning brand new skills. And I got my black belt two years ago, but there's so much to learn in jujitsu. It's always evolving. And not only

was I more coordinated, but I remembered the moves and the things that I learned, they stuck with me much faster. And there is a certain amount of reps that need to happen before you can use it in training. And then we can use it in the fight. And, you know, if I'm to really think about where I had an accelerated learning, it was when I put in a high volume of reps. Like I got really good at Muay Thai when I spent 17 days in Thailand. And that's what I did three days, three times a day. You know, I just, that's all I did for three times a day. I had private lessons, I had group lessons. And by the end of that trip, I could kick really well. You know, I could throw knees really well.

I could elbow really well. All those things kind of came together because I was putting in the reps, but it blew me away how fast I was able to integrate the new lessons in jujitsu, really just wearing it twice for jujitsu practices. And I tried it in a variety of things, you know, for, from weightlifting to cardio and things of that nature. And one of the things that I also found to be a huge benefit was, you know, I've been squatting and deadlifting and lifting weights since for a long time, since I was 13 or 14. But there's still times when you take something for granted because it's like, well, I know how to fucking squat. I'm not going to really pay attention to this. I'm just going

to squat until I get up to heavier weight. But one thing I noticed is that I was on the entire workout, brain switched on and perfect form, perfect technique. It allowed me to really grease the groove into that motor movement pattern where I'm just going to be in this perfect place in every position. And I could feel the difference, you know, weight felt lighter, you know, so that's a good feeling to have. Awesome. Awesome. That's, it's great to hear. And it's, I, like, I don't want to take too much credit for your improvement. I mean, I'm thankful for playing a small role in your improvement, but a lot of that goes back to you.

And I guess we're thankful for our users in that when they put on Halo Sport and they prime, they do that for 20 minutes. They know they need to be good for the next hour, right? Because you could feed your brain like bad technique. Yeah. If you've got a shitty golf swing and you're not getting coached, then you're just going to grease that groove of the horrible swing. That's going to stick, right? That's going to stick. So we rely on our users to feed the brain proper technique. We want quality, thoughtful, deliberate movement repetitions out of you. And I don't know, it's interesting because this product has turned into kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. So we are the fertilizer. We fertilize the soil,

the soil being your brain, so that you can plant new seeds and grow crops faster. You can grow crops the regular way on dry, unfertilized soil. It just takes longer. You can also grow weeds, right? But if you want to grow the crops that you want, like we rely on you to be that farmer, right? To plant the right seeds and to cultivate these crops in a way that turns you into the athlete that you want.

So again, I'm thankful for your result, but I'm also giving you some kudos for doing quality practice. Because if you don't do that part, then this doesn't work. Yeah, that's the old practice makes perfect. And then you're like, no, perfect practice makes perfect. That's right. You have to practice correctly in order to integrate those skills and make it worthwhile and longstanding. If you're just out there showing up each day and not doing things correctly, then you're

not going to make many improvements. It seems like everyone is using this now. It seems like you guys have worked your way into all sports and really such a massive growing market of people that are now, you know, obviously huge followers of on it and Aubrey Marcus and myself that really just want to be the best version of themselves. Where do you guys, I mean, see this going in terms of what you can do with the brain? Because there's many applications with this technology. Yeah. I guess I'm thankful for the variety of different athletes have taken on to brain stimulation and the variety of people.

So I'll just list off a few. The military is our biggest customer. They use it for shooting. Yeah, again, like lines up perfectly because it's so repetitive, right? It's like, all right, you know, gun at your side, take down the target, do it again, do it again, do it again, get better, get faster, more accurate. So less tremor, so on and so forth. So that's great.

There was a, and we'll link to this in the show notes. I don't want to cut you off, but the nine volt Nirvana that Radiolab did in 2014, that's what first put me onto this. And I was like, holy shit. So we'll link to that. It's a very short podcast, but it dives into a lot of detail on what the capabilities and promise of this is. Yeah. That's a really amazing... I hope your listeners can click over to that because it's really this amazing end of one experience. Like that experience borders on religious. Yeah. It's not always that good, but we've definitely heard different accounts of people achieving this flow state.

And so, yeah, that's like an awesome podcast. So I hope folks can click over to that. But yeah, so Mothers, like a cross pro sport. So Major League Baseball with San Francisco Giants being the one that's really public about the use. But there's also like multiple other baseball teams that are using it. NFL, the NBA, you there's also like multiple other baseball teams that are using it. NFL, the NBA, you talked about the Warriors. Australia, probably our biggest market outside the US, which you wouldn't expect because they're not the most populous country outside the US,

but they're the sports scientists of the world. You've probably noticed this, but a lot of human performance people, the top, they all have Aussie accents. So they've really taken to it. So a lot of rugby union, rugby league have taken to it. It's interesting that they would jump in on that. I've had several of my friends fight in Australia, and they would have every single one of their supplements, including whey protein, confiscated.

They don't allow much to come in. You know, you can buy stuff there, but they're very stringent on rules and things like that. And obviously working here in product development, that's something I'm mindful of is like, can we get it into Canada? Can we get it in Australia? Like there's a lot of things to figure out with that, but that's cool that they're open to this new technology to come in. We should like, maybe, maybe later we should talk about this word neuro doping. And if that's even a thing, like if this is fair and competition but we can get to that power lifters, I don't know how many power lifting world records we have at this point, but many of our power lifting athletes are athletes are really exceeding with this technology.

And then everywhere, like from powerlifters down to musicians, I would say 20% of our sales go to musicians. So again, you think about what is the common denominator across all of these different use cases. It's repetitive practice. It's repetitive movement practice. And then I should mention that there's, as a doctor, I want to see Halo Sport being used as a medical device. And one of those areas is to augment physical therapy. So what if someone who's had a stroke is going through physical therapy because they can't walk. What if we can augment their movement practice to the same extent we could augment an MMA fighter's movement practice? It's like same thing. We're just repeating movements, just begging the brain to remember. What if we could accelerate that? In both use cases, it's the same common denominator, like accelerating repetitive movement practice. Yeah, that makes so much sense

to me. One of the things I was thinking about with your previous company was the potential for use in autism because autism has not a whole lot of neural connectivity and you can accelerate in certain parts of learning. That's why you see many savants that are amazing at certain things and have photographic memory when it comes to details of old books and things of that nature. But then how they piece it all together is a little bit harder. And I geek out on stuff like this too. And I think applications are endless, really. Yeah.

So Halo Sport looks like headphones. And there's some lucky neuroanatomy that allowed us to build it into this form factor. Because the special part of the brain that controls movement in our bodies is called the motor cortex. It looks like a belt across the top of your head, which is perfectly overlapping with the arch of the headphone. So that's how Halo Sport, the design of Halo Sport was born. We're like, whoa, this is perfect. Perfect for headphones. Halo Sport does play music, but the ear cups to us is just to grip your damn head. Yeah. Right? I mean, awesome. Listen to music. It's not part of

the system, but if you like music by all means, go for it. You know, for us, it's just about targeting, you know, these electrodes we call primers over the motor cortex. Now, like to get to, you know, like, you know, your idea that the sky's the limit here. Like, what if we move the electrode to target a different part of the brain? Let's say, for example, more frontal. Could we get at cognition, like cognitive enhancement, or on the disease side, cognitive disorders, treating cognitive disorders with neurostimulation in a way that, you know, like, you know, there's lots of drugs for cognitive disorders, and theyimulation in a way that, you know, like, you know, like there's lots of drugs for cognitive disorders and they all don't work that great. Like, what if we

could use electricity as medicine, far more targeted than a drug could ever be. And also on demand, like use it when you need it, turn it off when you don't, like you can never do that with a drug, right? You can't switch it off. So, you know, not to spill company secrets, but we're, we're really interested in that too. Fuck yeah. That pumps me up, man. I mean, like we're, I'm no stranger to nootropics. I've played around with a lot of different things from modafinil to the racetam family to alpha brain, which is our staple here. And you know, not everyone's neurochemistry is the same. There's plenty of people who say like, well, I tried it and it didn't work for me. And I took even more and it

didn't work for me. Or you play with different things or people love modafinil, but it lasts so damn long, you probably won't sleep well. And there is a sharp cutoff when you decide to jump off of that. The body wants homeostasis and you're going to pay for that later. Like you're paying for that kind of energy on credit and you got to pay it back. Whereas with something like this, the technology that you have here, you really can prime specific for things like, oh, I have a, I got a cram for a college finals, right? So you can prime for that. I got a cram for this big meeting that I'm going to have in a presentation that I'm going to do like the, it in the business world in like brain doping, you know, like we're, that's, that's something that is never going to go away. It's something that will only need to improve because the market to learn faster and speak better, you know, just

to articulate yourself in a way where you can communicate with somebody, they'll understand you. All those things are critical in business, they're critical in life. And I think that's phenomenal. I'm super excited for what you guys have coming in the future. Yes, same here. So maybe I'll see you again when the next one's out. Yeah.

So the team told me that you guys have Halo Sport now, and this is going to air on the 7th before the 8th, which you guys have another product that's coming out. Is that correct? Right, right. So we will announce a refreshed version of this guy. So this is our first and only product. We released this two years ago, and we've been working on an improvement over this guy so we'll call it halo sport 2 and there'll be some uh some differences that just make it a better experience um substantially the neurostimulation is the same but uh the um you know the product itself just lends itself to a better experience. So instead of three electrodes that you have to individually manage,

it'll be one electrode. That's a strip. So you just pop it in once and it takes care of itself. One thing that's really been, thanks a lot, iPhone, for getting rid of the, the cable, the audio cable. But, but yeah, we've had to adapt with the times. And so we're, it's a completely wireless experience now. So right now the neurostimulator is wireless and talks to your phone by Bluetooth. But if you want to listen to music and I don't know if you did. Yeah. You got to plug in the little adapter. Yeah. Yeah. So that's still not the end of the world, but yeah. Having it all in one is a bit more convenient.

Yeah. So that, right. So like, why not? Right. The world is moving towards like completely wireless. Everything's Bluetooth. So we have to, um, so, so that'll be better as well. And also, um, you know, a lot of our folks, um, like, you know, we didn't realize how important the audio quality was to them, you know, for didn't realize how important the audio quality was to them. You know, for us, it was like, wow, it's starting to look like headphones. We might as well throw in audio drivers. Folks can listen to music. But yeah, music is really important.

So we've really upped the ante on our sound quality. Oh, that's awesome. We put them on a spectrum analyzer and we'll put our headphones up against Bose. I was just thinking that because when I first listened to music on it, on the sport, I was like, well, it's not my Bose headphones, but it'll do because I'm not using it for music. Right. It's like, hey, it's a brain stimulator. Give us a break. But now we'll get that too.

Right. That's incredible. Yeah. give us a break but now we'll get that too right that's incredible yeah yeah so we put in proper audio drivers and we had acoustic engineers say hey if you drill the hole right here it'll be transformative for the bass we're like oh shit okay that that we can do so yeah we went through a couple of iterations around that and i'm just like thrilled with the outcome so um so yeah it can be your audio headphone like it could just leave the Beats at home and just use Halo Sport as your headphone when you're not neuro-priming. And of course, it's a neuro-stimulator as well. Yeah. Well, any excuse I have to keep something on that's going to help me perform better, it's like, all right, that's just what I wear when i'm working out you know um and there's going to

be a price drop for the next model is that correct yeah yeah so there's um there's a lot of things that we realized that we were spending money on in terms of the product that didn't matter to our customers um like our box do you remember the box that you got yep we overdid it on the box um so i mean there was money to be saved there. There's money to be saved on, there's, I don't have to like get too deep into the details, but like, you know, this piece of metal right here is crazy expensive for us to make. And, you know, when you ask our customers, like, well, that's a good looking piece, but like, you know, we, like it's not a deal breaker for us. So, you know, there's a lot oflooking piece, but it's not a deal-breaker for us.

So there's a lot of different ways that we could really easily save on our costs and pass that on to our customers. That's awesome. Well, I completely look forward to this new iteration. Halo Sport, the original OG model, is for sure a game-changer. I've definitely seen results firsthand. I'm actually mailing the one you guys sent me out to my buddy who fights in Bellator this week. He's got some big fights coming up and I want him to try it. And there's so many things that I get into now, you know, having this job here at Onnit and learning from,

you know, highly intelligent people like yourself that are really moving the bar in sports and all things performance. And I just, like, the only regret is like, where the fuck was this when I was fighting? You know, like, I want all this shit. I want all the old cool things that I didn't have access to. I'm not giving up on you. No, I get to pay it forward.

I'm definitely not trying to take brain damage again for table scraps, but it is nice to still be able to move my best and be the best version of myself, whether I have a professional fight or not. And I think that's something where we have that, a lot of crossover to people out there that are general population that maybe never played a pro sport, but they want to be the best version of themselves. And this is definitely a piece of equipment that can help that. Like, I'm with you. Like, I've never, I was never, you know, the athlete that you were.

Like, you know, I'd never, I didn't really go beyond competitive sports past high school. But shit, you know, you can see me as a neuroscientist and this kind of thing, but like, you know, my physical wellbeing and my physical form, it still matters to me. So, you know, I'm not, I'm not trying out, I'm not out there to win anything. I'm just out there, you know, for, it's like for very personal reasons, I want to stay in shape and it's not just being in shape. Like I'm already

in good shape. Like I want to, I want to perform at a decent level, like a level that I feel like, you know, shit, like anyone my age, like I've got a chance at taking you down. So my thing is cycling and, um, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm 47. So, you know, I'm past my physical prime, but like, shit, I'm not giving up on myself like i feel like i've got i've got some more life left in me where i could still take down some like personal records that i track on strava and these types of things so uh you know despite my busy life and you know i try to be a family man too and um um you know like the the athletic side of me is still very much alive and well and is still a big piece of who I think I am. Yeah.

And the longer you keep up with that, the better your life quality will be well into your late years. And the data shows it, too. Yeah. And then think about having kids, especially. I had a knee injury in jiu-jitsu, and I was like, if I can't walk or run with my son, that's an issue. I'm not going to be an ex-athlete who tells my son, I can't run with you because daddy's knees messed up. Right. Or play catch or any of that. Yeah. Yeah. You want to be involved with them. And it's one of the reasons why people, there's a pros and cons to having kids younger

versus older. You have them older, you're a little w a pros and cons to having kids younger versus older, right? You have them older, you're a little wiser, probably a little bit better set off financially, things of that nature. But, you know, you also want to be able to play with your kids well into when they start having kids. Yeah. You want to be that dad where when kids grow up and they reminisce about their early days and they tell their friends, it's like, yeah, my dad can pretty much kick my ass. And just about everything, even today. Oh, yeah. Well, is there anything left you want to discuss

or any cool stuff that you guys see coming in the future? I'm just excited for this field. I feel like we're maybe the only player out here now, but, you know, I'm excited for other companies, other scientists to like continue pushing. Because I feel like, you know, where we are, if we just look at the history of where we are and just like taking a step back for perspective, I think where we are with neurostimulation is where we were in the automobile industry with like Henry Ford and the Model T.

Damn. Right. So like what the Ford Motor Company did was they brought this technology that wasn't available to a lot of people. They figured out how to mass produce this thing so that just about anyone could have a car. But let's face it, the Model T wasn't for everybody. It worked. It was amazing for the

time. It got you from point A to point B. But look what's happened over the last 100 years. We have sports cars, SUVs, trucks, everything in between. You've got Teslas. We've got Teslas, right? So we've got different cars to suit different, very specific needs. Neurostimulation will evolve the same way. Like where we are today is we have something that works and now like a company like Halo is trying to democratize that experience where not just scientists have access to it. Anybody can have access to it. But, you know, time will tell. And, you know, we hope to be, you know, one of those companies that really is advancing the frontier of what we know so that

we can build a better product where you can get more out of the technology, where you can have a more consistent experience, where we can provide different waveforms that, you know, like, why should a violinist be using the same waveform as a power lifter? Like there's probably ways that we don't understand where we can optimize the waveform so that different use cases get a more specific solution that augments, you know, their experience with the product in total. So, you know, I'm looking forward to like working with you guys. Cause you know, there's you know, with the community that's, that's been cultivated around on it, you know, there's you know, there's the spirit of experimentation and saying like, fuck it,

we're not waiting for anyone. Like, like we're going to, we're going to do this thing. Those are our people, right? Like, you know, we are experimentals as well. And, you know, I think, you know, together as a community, like, you know, we could help figure this thing out and just really advance the frontier of what we can do as humans, right? It's not like, I think there's been a lot of efforts in augmenting human capabilities with machines around us. That's great. And I'm a customer of those products, but I'm also interested in myself. And I think your community is as well.

I'm not giving up on myself. Machines are great and thank you. Thank you. Like Google and everybody else for, for, for providing these great machines that make us better. But like, you know, like what about human optimization and performance? Like, I think there's a real place for neurostimulation in the future to unlock like another, like another step function in the way we live and the way we perform. Awesome, brother. It's been great having you. Where can people, you know, give us the website, people follow you online, any social media that you have?

Yeah. So, uh, um, halo neuro.com is the website. Um, you can follow us on Instagram at Halo Neuroscience. And same thing on Twitter. And yeah, we'll pass out a special code for your community so that they can get a deal on our pre-sale of the new product, Halo Sport 2.

So yeah, we're just stoked. I'm stoked to be here, meet you in person. I've been a fan you know from a distance out in California of what you guys have been building here and

yeah I hope we grow like our paths cross a lot in the future and we grow old together yeah well I'll definitely

have you back anytime you guys got something new coming out I want to have you on to discuss it I appreciate you brother thank you

I appreciate you thank you Dan thank you guys for tuning in into the Human Optimization Hour podcast. I really hope you guys dug this one. Hit me up with any questions you got on social media at Kingsboo on Twitter and Instagram and hit up our man Dan Chow on his social media as well. And then also make sure you go to haloneuro.com, enter the code word Onnit, and you'll get a nice discount

on their brand new product, Halo Sport 2, which comes out a day after this podcast release. And as always, 10% off all supplements and foods at onnit.com slash podcast.