David Epstein: How a range of experience leads to better performance in a highly specialized world

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
I guess this week is David Epstein. David is the author of the bestselling book, The Sports Gene, and more recently, Range, Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, which ironically makes him a specialist of generalists. He was previously a science and investigative reporter at ProPublica and prior to that, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated. I have followed David's work for some time, have enjoyed his articles, his books, and reached out to him several months ago asking to interview him, even though I had already heard him on a couple of other podcasts that frankly I thought did a great job, but I just knew there was more I wanted to explore with him. So of course, if you've heard David on other podcasts, I wouldn't let that discourage you from listening to him here. We go into, in my opinion, sort of a broader, deeper discussion that's sort of enabled by our long format. We talk about a lot of things, but I think at the root of it, it's basically trying to get a better understanding of how we can improve our own performance. And perhaps you can see, we get into a lot of stuff around kids, but as parents, how do we manage the exposure of our kids to various things? I think anyone listening to this who is a parent, obviously feels pretty strongly about giving their kids the best chance at finding something they love and doing well at it. There are so many things we go into in this podcast that are just fascinating beyond belief, including a really good explanation of why the 10,000-hour rule that most people take for granted is essentially an axiom or dogma, i.e. that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is what is required for mastery and greatness. And I think David goes into a great explanation of why that's probably completely nonsense, which is not to say that deliberate practice is not incredibly important, but to break it down to something as simple as 10,000 hours is almost assuredly incorrect. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with David Epstein.
Thank you so much for coming.

**David Epstein** (2:38)
It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

**Peter Attia** (2:40)
Your work has been something I followed for quite a long time now. And even before your most recent book came out, just on the basis of the book you wrote, was it in 2013?

**David Epstein** (2:53)
That's right.

**Peter Attia** (2:53)
Yeah, just on the basis of that book, people had always said, you got an interview and I was always like, yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I know, I know. And then the new book comes out and it's like, well, now there's no excuse, not to. So, and I guess it's tough for you because you have this new book and everybody wants to talk about it, but I kind of want to talk about the old one too, if that's okay.

**David Epstein** (3:08)
Whatever you want. We can talk about something other than my books, if you want, whatever you want.

**Peter Attia** (3:12)
We have a lot to talk about actually, because I learned a number of things about you in getting ready to sit down today, but somehow it escaped me that you were a fan of Ayrton Senna.

**David Epstein** (3:20)
Yeah, I mean, first of all, one of the all time great sports documentaries of people have seen Senna, but I used to follow racing and just, I loved racing in general. Like if you put two paper boats on a pond, I was interested basically.
And then as I learned about him and his start in karting and the different types of racing he did, the fact that he was a good gymnast as a young guy, that he basically tried to retire from racing at one point, and that he was also very quietly charitable. And I think kind of a sensitive soul in a lot of ways, and obviously a very dramatic story, and I think the greatest deaf one driver ever. And so just a lot of, I don't know nearly as much as you, so I'm kind of cautious about saying anything, but yeah.