Earning the gift of life | Ric Elias (#79 rebroadcast)

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. This podcast, my website, and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop, and we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen. If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more in-depth content if you want to take your knowledge of the space to the next level. At the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are, or if you want to learn more now, head over to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe.
Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
Welcome to a special episode of The Drive. For those of you who subscribe to our newsletter, you probably saw this week, we celebrated our fourth anniversary. So for those of you that don't, just want to let you know we're four years old. Today's podcast, we figured it'd be a great time to ensure folks have had a chance to hear my initial conversation with Ric, which was released back in November, 2019 Met Ric in 2013 and I was kind of a fan boy. I had seen his Ted Talk probably a year or so sooner. It immediately became probably my favorite Ted Talk that I'd ever seen. And a mutual friend who knew how much of a fan I was, introduced us. And to this day, it really remains one of the most amazing talks that in such short order puts everything into perspective. Ric is a dear friend. We've become closer over the years and he's a wonderful mentor to me. In our discussion, we talk about the day that would change Ric's life forever. When on January 15th, 2009, Ric was on US Airways flight 1547, which made an emergency landing into the Hudson River. I'm sure many of you remember this. Ric dives really deep into how that day impacted his life and changed his perspective on everything, including his relationships with his family and the broader community. The episode is really an opportunity to allow Ric to share so much of his wisdom.
And it's really one of those episodes that I think everyone needs to hear at least once and probably twice. So I'm going to be going back to listen to it again this week. And I hope you enjoy, or potentially re-enjoy, my conversation with my close friend, Ric Elias.
Ric, thank you so much for making time. I know you're super busy this week, but when your office was able to coordinate us getting together, I was delighted.

**Ric Elias** (2:30)
It is so much fun to be with you today, Peter. I'm a huge fan of your podcast, and we're dear friends, so when you asked me to be on it, I was honored.

**Peter Attia** (2:37)
A lot of people have heard me talk about you. I wrote a blog post, I don't know, probably five years ago about how your TED Talk was at the time, and actually still remains my favorite TED Talk of all time. It's a very short talk, and I'm sure for folks who haven't heard it yet, we'll make sure we link to it. But I can't resist starting with that story. So let's just put the profundity niceties aside and just go straight to it. Thursday, January 15th, 2009, you're in New York City.
Why were you here?

**Ric Elias** (3:08)
I was here because one of our partners, DirectTV at the time, was here, and I was having lunch with the CMO. The night before, I had dinner with a good friend of mine and was having a couple small meetings in the morning, and then I was flying home to coach my son's basketball team when I landed in Charlotte. The flight was going from LaGuardia to Charlotte.

**Peter Attia** (3:25)
How many times did you take that shuttle, that flight? That's probably a common flight.

**Ric Elias** (3:29)
A hundred times.

**Peter Attia** (3:30)
Do you remember having breakfast that morning?

**Ric Elias** (3:33)
I went to play hoops in the Reebok Club on the Upper East Side, and it was a cold morning, and it was snowing big flakes, and I chose to walk because it was so beautiful.

**Peter Attia** (3:46)
How would you describe your life at that point in time? How big was Red Ventures, your company?

**Ric Elias** (3:50)
We had about 700 employees. We'd gone on this really nice growth spurt after really struggling the first four years. We started in 2000
So we were doing really well, but we were at risk of two bad things happening and not having a business. So there was this kind of constant juxtaposition of this is not gonna last. I actually told our employees, enjoy the good old days, they won't last forever. And they were annoyed by me saying that, but it was a reminder that this was very fleeting.