Jeremy Schaap, ESPN journalist: upsets, doping, triumphs, and the importance of sports

**Peter Attia** (0:04)
Hey everyone, welcome to The Peter Attia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Attia.
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 peterattiamd.com.
Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of The Drive. I'd like to take a couple of minutes to talk about why we don't run ads on this podcast, and why instead, we've chosen to rely entirely on listener support. If you're listening to this, you probably already know, but the two things I care most about professionally are how to live longer and how to live better.
I have a complete fascination and obsession with this topic. I practice it professionally, and I've seen firsthand how access to information is basically all people need to make better decisions and improve the quality of their lives. Curating and sharing this knowledge is not easy, and even before starting the podcast, that became clear to me. The sheer volume of material published in this space is overwhelming. I'm fortunate to have a great team that helps me continue learning and sharing this information with you. To take one example, our show notes are in a league of their own. In fact, we now have a full-time person that is dedicated to producing those, and the feedback has mirrored this. So, all of this raises a natural question. How will we continue to fund the work necessary to support this?
As you probably know, the tried and true way to do this is to sell ads, but after a lot of contemplation, that model just doesn't feel right to me for a few reasons. Now, the first and most important of these is trust. I'm not sure how you can trust me if I'm telling you about something when you know I'm being paid by the company that makes it to tell you about it.
Another reason selling ads doesn't feel right to me is because I just know myself. I have a really hard time advocating for something that I'm not absolutely nuts for. So if I don't feel that way about something, I don't know how I can talk about it enthusiastically. So instead of selling ads, I've chosen to do what a handful of others have proved can work over time, and that is to create a subscriber support model for my audience.
This keeps my relationship with you both simple and honest. If you value what I'm doing, you can become a member and support us at whatever level works for you. In exchange, you'll get the benefits above and beyond what's available for free. It's that simple. It's my goal to ensure that no matter what level you choose to support us at, you will get back more than you give.
So for example, members will receive full access to the exclusive show notes, including other things that we plan to build upon, such as the downloadable transcripts for each episode. These are useful beyond just the podcast, especially given the technical nature of many of our shows. Members also get exclusive access to listen to and participate in the regular Ask Me Anything episodes. That means asking questions directly into the AMA portal and also getting to hear these podcasts when they come out. Lastly, and this is something I'm really excited about, I want my supporters to get the best deals possible on the products that I love. And as I said, we're not taking ad dollars from anyone, but instead what I'd like to do is work with companies who make the products that I already love and would already talk about for free and have them pass savings on to you. Again, the podcast will remain free to all, but my hope is that many of you will find enough value in, one, the podcast itself, and two, the additional content exclusive for members to support us at a level that makes sense for you. I want to thank you for taking a moment to listen to this. If you learn from and find value in the content I produce, please consider supporting us directly by signing up for a monthly subscription. My guest this week is Jeremy Schaap, one of the preeminent journalists at ESPN and a wonderful guy. We spend a lot of time in this episode talking about sports, obviously. Jeremy has done a lot of amazing work and he's written the book Cinderella Man, which is an incredible story of James J. Braddock, who many of you probably have not heard of, but I think by the end of this episode, you'll understand why the story is so beautiful. We also talk a lot about his most recent project, which is directing a 30 for 30 special called 42 to 1, which is the story of the Buster Douglas upset of Mike Tyson. We get into a lot of things that go beyond sports or at least are associated with sports, such as why these things matter to us, what they teach us about life, and the challenges that he faced following in his father's enormous footsteps and ultimately coping with his father's early death as a result of a medical error. This episode could have gone on for a really long time, but we kind of had a time limit on it and we had to draw it to a close earlier than either one of us would have liked. But with that said, I think you'll really enjoy my conversation with Jeremy Schaap.