The Peter Attia Drive - The one-year anniversary episode with Olivia Attia: Reflecting on the past year and looking forward to exciting times ahead

Episode Date: July 2, 2019

In this anniversary episode, Olivia, Peter's daughter who initially kicked off The Drive podcast with her sneak peek episode, returns to ask Peter the tough questions on how the podcast is going, what he has learned along the way (and how he plans to make it better), what exciting things are in store for the future, and plenty more.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Atia. The drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world, and this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics at peteratia-md.com.

Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of The Drive. My guest today is sort of me. As you may recall, we launched this podcast with three episodes on July 2nd, 2018. And the few weeks prior to that, we launched a special little sneak peak episode where I was interviewed by my daughter, Olivia. So we figured there would be no better way to celebrate the one year birthday of the drive than with another interview by Olivia as we talked about the past year and some exciting things to come over the next 12 months.

So I hope you enjoy this little look back and look forward. I'm going to start by asking the first question I asked a year ago. Does the world really need another podcast? Um, I mean, probably not. Someone told me that there are, and I could be wrong, but like 500 new podcasts appear in the podcast store every week. That's a lot. Yeah, so I'm not going to put you in the spot and make you calculate

how many podcasts that is in the last year. And by the way, it's probably more than 500. But anyway, no, the world does not need another podcast. But I think that what we started out doing last year was a three-month experiment. And at the end of that 12 weeks or whatever it was, I was surprised by how much fun I had doing this. I was surprised by the feedback we got from folks that said that they kind of dug it. And so even if the world doesn't need another podcast, we're just going to keep doing this.

I remember you telling me from when I interviewed you for the preview that if it worked out well, you would start making more, right? Yep. That's what we've done. So is there something you've learned in the past? Do you're making these podcasts? Well, like the you mean specific new pieces of knowledge or just more generally? More generally. Yeah, I mean, I've learned that it's way harder to do a good interview than

I could have imagined at the outset. I think, for example, now when I listen to other podcasts, I find I'm not listening to them from a pure enjoyment standpoint. I'm listening to them and trying to learn from them. So for example, I think Tim Ferris, who you know, of course, very well, I think he just does an awesome job. I think Sam Harris does an awesome job. I mean, I think Stephen Dubner, I think there's a lot of people out there that do really good jobs interviewing people.

And so now I listen to these people and I take notes on what could I do better? How can I be a better interviewer? And I think right now I'm a two out of 10. I was a one out of 10 a year ago. So I've got a long way to go. And that's I didn't I wouldn't have expected that a year ago that it would be this difficult. So every podcast you're kind of writing something down and then the next one you try and make it even better. I mean it's not always that linear because as a lot of you know, have you listened to any of them? Yes. Which ones have you listened to? I've listened to Draco Tim Ferris, I listened to the one I interviewed you, and a couple other ones too. Okay, so you probably haven't listened

to some of the really nerdy technical ones. I don't think so. So I think the podcast fit into different categories. Sometimes the technical ones, my criticisms of myself are different there. Hey, in listening to this, I can see how someone who's not well versed in this topic could get lost. You could have done a better job structuring the discussion or pausing to set context.

And then in other ones where it's less technical, like the Jocco one, I think, oh gosh, like you didn't ask that question that in retrospect, when you listen back, you realize, like that was such an obvious question to ask, and that could have gone down on a totally new rabbit hole that everybody would have potentially benefited from. So yeah, it's a work in progress.

Yeah, I can tell. So how many more podcasts are you gonna plan on making? I hope it's a very big number. We're putting out at least one a week, sometimes more. And the good news is we are recording them faster than we can release them. So we're just accumulating. We probably have a reserve of three months

and I have a spreadsheet of three months and we're, I have a spreadsheet of all the people I want to interview and it's freaking huge. I think I have three years worth of people on it because 150 people on that list. It just keeps growing because I get a lot of feedback from listeners who say, hey, I know you talked about such and such, but you really need to interview this person. A lot of times I've never even heard of who that person is, so I have to look them up and go, oh yeah, that would be cool. So speaking of comments, how do you deal with negative comments from people that disagree

with what you're saying? Oh, well, negative comments where people disagree doesn't phase me. That's to me, that's like a healthy part of existing. And frankly, a lot of times people disagree with me, and I read what they say, and I'm like, you know, they have a really good point. So I, I mean, just as me being dad for a moment, don't view people disagreeing with you as negative. The negative is when people just say

really nasty things about you or to you or whatever. And I mean, I think there's a very simple heuristic that you can operate by when you see that kind of stuff, which is, and I'm plagiarizing this from somebody, there's a woman who wrote a book that I'm liking on her name and the name of the book, but I think it's sort of her heuristic, and it's basically you ask yourself the following question, is this true? Is what this person is stating true? And if the answer is no, it's not true, then you are much easier to sort of dismiss what they're saying. So if somebody says,

Peter, you're a freaking idiot. I mean, okay, sometimes I am, but for the most part, I'm not an idiot. Sometimes you are. So it's not about me. So I'm better at dismissing those. But another trick is don't spend too much time reading social media. Yeah. So if I or somebody else wanted to start our own podcast, what kind of advice would you give us to make it successful? Well, I think you have to have sort of a topic that you think is so interesting to you that you can do the type of work that's necessary to prepare for it and do the heavy lifting that is involved in figuring out people you want to interview. Assuming that's the type of podcast you want to do, there are lots of podcasts out there

where people are just talking about things that are really interesting. Like, you know, Jocco, most of his podcast, he's actually talking about something that's really interesting, which I actually think is even harder than what I do, which is interviewing. And in the end, I think if you really want to be a pureist, you want to put out a podcast that is something you would want to listen to, and then hopefully find an audience that agrees with that as opposed to saying, you know, if you want it to make a podcast and you want it to be about drumming because you're an amazing drummer and you love the drums and you've played them your whole life, then you should start a podcast about kids who

rock. And you might say, well, oh, then you should start a podcast about kids who'd rock. You might say, well, I don't know if that would be popular and I don't know if people would like it, but in the end, because you're so passionate about drumming, that passion will come through. Even if you don't have the biggest audience, you'll have a very passionate audience that's supportive. Yeah. So, Dad, you are kind of a knucklehead, like no offense, but sometimes you can't even turn on the TV.

So, how did you manage making a podcast? Okay, first of all, I've never not been able to turn on the TV. Oh, sure. Sometimes I struggle with Apple TV, but that's a totally separate system, and sometimes Apple TV just sucks. So, I'm not going to... Okay, but you're right. I'm a bit of a technical fob. So, I just like kickass team. So, okay, but you're right. I'm not, I'm a bit of a technical fob. So I just like kick-ass team. So all I do is the interview. So on the front-end Bob Kaplan and Nick Stenson do a ton of research.

So once I like, you know, meet somebody and connect with somebody and say, hey, I'd love to interview you blah blah. Then Bob and Nick help me by doing a ton of research so that I have a thought, like a list of things I want to think about. So then after the interview, which I use this equipment that you can see sitting on the table, you can, you know, it's pretty easy to take the files and get them back to the team who then do two things with them. One, they give them to a guy named Matthew, past CPSSY, who's our production guy and Matthew. He does all the sound editing.

So for example, like half the time during a podcast, somebody has to get up and go to the bathroom or I forget something I want to say or the guest says something and they want to do it over again. You know, all those things have to be edited, although we lightly edit. And then on the other side, we have a guy named Travis Denson, who's awesome, and he is solely in charge of making the show notes. So he then has to listen to every podcast and create these huge show notes. And there's a whole bunch of other things that are

involved, but the long and short of it is basically there are like five other people that make the podcast work, and I have the easy job which is just recording it. And that's like the job that doesn't require that you know how to work Apple TV. Okay, so is there any put you that you've wanted to interview but you haven't done that yet? Yes, a ton of people that I've wanted to interview and have not yet.

And in some of those cases, it's just because we have not been able to, like we haven't made it work in the schedule, but, you know, I've spoken with the person, their game to be interviewed, and it's just a question of making the interview happen. So there's lots of people that are coming up on the podcast that, you know, once we get our schedules aligned, we'll sit down and do that. But there is a subset of people who have reached out to, and either they just haven't responded or they've responded and said no, and that's kind of a

bummer, but my hope is that if the podcast gets bigger and better, they'll see more value and potentially making the time to do it. And I get that. I've declined being on many podcasts myself because there's only so many hours in the day. So my feelings aren't hurt when people say no, but I'll probably still keep bugging a few of them. Okay. So is there anything new you're gonna plan on doing this year for upcoming podcasts? Yes, I had an idea a couple of weeks ago. And I don't know if you you might have heard me talking about it with Nick the other day, but I want to launch something called Qualies. So you know what the name of the podcast is by the way?

The drive. You remember. I remember I was in it. Remember what you wanted to call it? The ice cream. The silliest name ever. The best name ever. So comments if you agree that that's like a better name

than the drive, come on people. The ice cream. So, um, I don't think those people would have declined to you. Hey, I really wonder if you could be on my podcast, the ice cream. Oh, of course, guys, happily. So, the, uh, the drive, of course, is like, there's a little undertone of racing in the theme, of course, is like there's a little undertone of racing in the theme, right? And so a quality is a qualifying lap. So remember how we watch races on Sunday mornings?

Every other Sunday we watch Formula One races. Well, what's happening on Saturday is the quality. The quality is how you determine your position on the grid. And the qualifying lap is the fastest lap. The drivers go way faster in the qualities than they do. Even the, you know, at the end of the race, every race, you see who had the fastest lap and the extra points. That fastest lap time is way slower than probably the slowest quality lap the day before.

Usually goes a little with Hamilton. Yes. This season, it's pretty safe to say Lewis Hamilton should win every race or pretty close to it. So anyway, what I was thinking about is, you know, we have so much old content that's already like a year old, but it's really rich. And for people who are new to the podcast, there's no way for them to sort of catch up on all of our old content. So what I want to do, and luckily the team thinks this is a good idea, or else we wouldn't be doing it, is every day, Tuesday through Friday, we're going to put out a short sprint of a podcast, which is going to be taking highlights from previous podcasts and putting them out. So Monday will

still be the big podcast. It's two, three hours long, but then Tuesday through Friday will be these little quality sprints. So for example, you know, you listen to the Tim Ferris podcast a year ago, but there are highlights of that podcast that we want to replay, you know, really pointed stuff. So then Tuesday, you'll get like an RSS feed that'll zip to your podcast player. This is for the subscribers only, by the way, which we'll come back to in a second because I want to also thank the subscribers. And so the, I guess everybody will probably get one and then maybe we'll make the rest of them available just to the subscribers. But it'll be like a real punchy, short,

kind of easy to digest thing that allows people to kind of get caught up on previous content. Because I also realize our podcasts are pretty dense. We put out a lot of stuff and I think there's a high demand for people to be able to digest this in an easier manner. And I think there's no better way to digest complicated stuff than to sort of revisit it in a more concise way.

So I think that's the quality is hopefully going to be out. I think we're going to try to do it this summer. So get back to thinking the subscribers. Yeah. So I don't know if you know this, but we don't take ads. Yes. How do you know that? Well, you explained that you want your subscribers

to know that you're telling the truth to them and not just saying that because you're paid to say that. That's a very nice way of explaining it. Yes, I, which isn't by the way to say that people who take ads are not telling the truth, but yes, I just feel strongly about being able to talk about stuff that I love without being paid to say that. So we created the subscriber system this year, and it's going well, and we're totally honored by these people who have supported us. And our goal is just to continue to come up with ways to create more and more value for those subscribers. The qualities will be a big part of that, but we have two or three other ideas in the hopper.

And as time goes on, our goal is to make that an even better and better offering for everyone. Okay. You have any other questions for me? Are my love to ask you any questions now? You can ask me any questions. Okay. Are you going to play a Zeppelin song for your next talent show? Well, that depends if the song is actually good.

Have you ever heard a Zeppelin's song that is not good? Well, I've heard one that's like boring. Okay, stay away to heaven, maybe not a good solo, drum solo song for the talent show, but I think, do you remember who the drummer was for Zeppelin? Like John Bonham or something? Or something? Yeah, yeah, Bonzo, honey.

Or something. Yeah, oh god, the people, there's people listening to this right now that are just rolling or something. Yeah, yeah, bonzo honey. Or something. Yeah. Oh God. The people, there's people listening to this right now that are just rolling or something. All right. Well, Olivia, it's been great. Can we do this again in a year? Yes, we're here. All right. Okay. I'll talk to you people in a year. You can find all of this information and more at peteratia-md.com forward slash podcast. There you'll find the show notes, readings, and links related to this episode. You can also find my blog at peteratia-md.com. Maybe the simplest thing to do is to sign up for my subjectively non-lame once a week email where I'll update you on what I've been up to, the most interesting papers I've read,

and all things related to longevity, science, performance, sleep, etc. On social you can find me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, all with the ID, Peter, ATF, MD, but usually Twitter is the best way to reach me to share your questions and comments. Now for the obligatory disclaim. This podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical advice. And note, no doctor-patient relationship is formed. The use of this information and the materials linked to the podcast is at the user's own risk.

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