Sasha Cohen: The price of achievement, and redefining success

**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 wanna 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 Sasha Cohen. For those of you who may not recognize her name, she's an American figure skating legend. In fact, the last female, I believe, to win a medal in figure skating. She was a silver medalist in the 2006 Olympics, and I don't waste any time in this episode going straight to that moment, because on some levels, it is one of the most remarkable parts of her story, frankly, and I don't wanna sort of spoil the story, but needless to say, if you only watch one video from all of the videos or anything we talk about in this talk, that's the one you wanna see. And I actually, frankly, this might be one of those times where I recommend you, before you even listen to the podcast, you go to the video of the final for the long program in the 2006 Olympics, and you watch this six minute video, seven minute video, whatever it is. Obviously, it's linked to in the show notes, but for those of you who aren't subscribers and don't get the show notes, I still want you to be able to go see this video, because that's exactly where I go to at the outset of this discussion. We then work our way a little bit backwards and talk about her life growing up and how she was able to channel and focus all of her insecurity into becoming such a great skater. But much more importantly, we talk about this life post-skating for her. And I think in many ways, Sasha is kind of a remarkable example of how a person can remake themselves from being completely focused on one thing and having their entire identity tied up in one thing and moving past it. And again, I think what comes across here is the just maturity and wisdom of a person who is remarkably adept at understanding the hollowness, the shallowness of achievements. For me, certainly this is something that just really resonated to be able to hear her talk about this. So even though, again, we're talking to a former world champion, Olympian, superstar, there's a lot in this episode for normal people like us who aren't that way. And again, we explore the depths of depression. You know, we talk about the statistics of how many Olympians go on to suffer a depression, and I talk about her involvement in a project that's meant to bring a lot of awareness to this. We talk about a lot of other things as well. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Sasha Cohen. Sasha, thanks so much for coming over.