Live EP.01 – Peter Attia, M.D.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:04)
Hello, and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories, and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:24)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:49)
This week's episode was the first one that I've recorded live. It was the second dinner in what I expect to be a long series where I bring together 30 people from a variety of backgrounds to discuss an interesting and emerging topic, whether that be cryptocurrencies, health, cannabis investing, or some other compelling emergent thing.
My guest for the second time on the podcast is Peter Attia, who has led one of the most interesting careers that I've come across and who is focused on understanding longevity, health span, and quality of life. We dive into many dimensions of health, scientific research, what we can and cannot learn from evolution and our ancestors, and the seven primary modalities we should focus on when it comes to our health and well-being. Excuse the lack of clear audio quality on some of the audience questions. The ones that are a little difficult to hear are fairly short and I felt it was better to include them for some context.
As have all of my conversations with Peter, this one has sparked countless subsequent conversations with my wife, my friends, and my colleagues on what is important and how we can change our behavior to improve our quality of life. My partner and sponsor at these events is Peter Tiboris of Strongpoint Wealth Advisors, who with me loves exploring these topics and understanding how they might affect our lives and our portfolios. Thanks to Peter for helping me realize this series in New York City. Now please enjoy my live conversation with Peter Attia.

**Peter Attia** (2:08)
My own journey in this is kind of, in retrospect, I can make it sound reasonable, but the reality of it is just totally accidental.
It starts because I grew up as a boxer and all I wanted to do was be the next marvelous Marvin Hagler. So I don't know if anybody remembers who that is, but greatest middleweight of all time.
Actually, we're coming up on the 30th anniversary of Hagler-Hearns, which if anybody wants an awesome eight minutes, you just go home, Netflix, Hagler-Hearns, you won't be disappointed. Anyway, so I finished high school without any credits to go to college. My parents were super disappointed being immigrants to this country that had a kid that was going to be a professional boxer and get brain damage and not go to college. And then I had a total change of heart. Long story short, ended up deciding I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. So I went and studied mechanical engineering and applied math. And then three weeks before starting my PhD, had another change of heart, decided I wanted to do medicine. So then I did a post-bac year, applied to medical school, got into medical school and then did my residency in surgery and then my fellowship in oncology. And then I had another change of heart, which was actually I don't want to do this anymore. So I left medicine altogether after that 10-year stint.
And what I really wanted to do then was go back to doing something that had to do with mathematical modeling. So I went and joined McKinsey back in San Francisco because I also wanted to go back to the West Coast and did credit risk modeling. So even though I was recruited initially to do healthcare, when I got there it was right when the Basel II Accord was starting to chap the asses of the banks and they just basically kind of outsourced to consulting firms and said, hey, help us understand asset value correlations.
So to make a very long story short, like my path has been non-linear and now I'm back in medicine. But when I think about how I think about longevity, I think about it through the lens of those different pieces of my life. So first as an engineer, I just think like engineers are beautiful because they're not really concerned with how elegant a solution is. They just want to come up with a plug or a solution. And many things before we had advanced computer models, you just had to sort of figure it out empirically. Like you reverse engineer what that bridge has to be able to do. So long before we understood even the mechanics of this stuff, we could sort of figure out how to build something. You know you start here and you want to end here and you bring it back together. So in many ways, the science of longevity and the art of longevity are basically an interdisciplinary engineering and this idea of reverse engineering what you know you want. So when we talk about longevity, we'll talk about what the desired outcome is, but then how do you back away from it?