Author David Epstein on Sports Gene, Curiosity, Self-Discovery

David Epstein (0:00)

I think it is our duty to attempt to falsify our own ideas. And I approach all my projects with that and my interactions. I try to use that in my interactions with other people as well, because you bring assumptions and ideas to anyone you meet.

And I think it's on us to attempt to see if those are falsifiable, basically. And I certainly do the same thing with my journalism.

Dr. Michael Gervais (0:32)

Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. And I mean that, like really welcome back and welcome to this journey that we're on together. And for those of you who are new, thank you for being here. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery, to better understand what they are searching for and to see if we can tease out applied practices and ways that they have come to be able to build their craft, to refine their craft. And we want to understand their psychological framework, which is the sturdy way that they move through their life, how they explain events, how they explain what's happening in their craft. And then we also want to dig to understand the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft.

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Okay, now for this week's conversation. It's with David Epstein. So David, as many of you might recognize his name, is an author of the New York Times bestseller, The Sports Gene, and he's a science writer, investigative reporter for ProPublica. And before that, he was a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, where he authored or co-authored a number of the magazine's most high-profile pieces.

Now, despite his success as a writer, David didn't always know that he wanted to do this work. And I love this part of the story, because we get that question all the time. How do I know what my purpose and meaning is? Well, we have to go on a journey of self-discovery to figure that out. So he squarely sits in the center of that. And prior to becoming a sports writer, David was an 800-meter runner and university record holder at Columbia University, where he studied geology and astronomy.