Scott Harrison: transformation, finding meaning, and taking on the global water crisis

**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. Thanks for watching.
Bye Hi, everyone, welcome to this week's episode of The Drive. My guest this week is a gentleman by the name of Scott Harrison, who I suspect many of you have not heard of, which is not uncommon for this podcast. But my hope is certainly that by the end of this episode, you'll be glad you heard of him and heard him. Scott's the founder and CEO of Charity Water, which we'll talk about in great detail. Charity Water is a pretty unique charity, not just in that the work they're doing is remarkable, but I think the efficiency with which they do it and the transparency with which they do it and the sort of financial model that they've built is really interesting. But truthfully, the real reason I had Scott on was not so much to talk about Charity Water, and we do get to it probably at the end of the podcast, but it's more to actually talk about his personal story.
And even though Scott, as you'll learn in this podcast, is religious, and I don't find myself to be a religious person in any way, shape or form, I'm really moved by not just his conviction, but this sort of incredible sense of purpose he's found in life. And it's really his life's story and transformation that really moved me the very first time we met, which was about four or five years ago. And to this day, whenever I speak with Scott, I come away feeling on some level like kind of a lousy person who's not good enough, which is probably okay, but more importantly, just inspired. And I'm convinced that you will come away also feeling inspired by Scott, who never once is the kind of person that leaves you feeling like, why aren't you doing more? But Scott has really dedicated his life to helping people in a way that I think many of us can only dream of.
I would go so far as to say honestly, that Scott is one of two people that I consider the most remarkable people in the nonprofit space. The other one being a woman by the name of Catherine Hoke, who some of you may have heard of. She's been on Tim Ferriss' podcast, and I'm sure to have her on here at some point as well.
But between Cat Hoke and Scott Harrison, I find them to be two of the most inspiring people who have really chosen to dedicate their lives to the public sector in this way. Part of the stuff we talk about in this episode has been covered in his book. So Scott is now a New York Times bestselling author. That book is called Thirst. I don't know that he'd want me to publicly disclose what the advance was, but it was a very sizable advance. And he gave every single penny of that to his charity. And all of that goes directly to the work that they're doing. He's an amazing speaker and he's just kind of a magnetic personality. So I would invite you to take a chance and listen to this, even if it sounds like at the surface, eh, this isn't what I'm really interested in. But I think you will definitely get something out of this and you'll definitely get a sense, as I did, of how we can get a glimpse of happiness and how Scott on one level, you know, in the first chapter of his adult life, seemed to be living what many of us might think, oh, that sounds pretty cool and interesting. And I can see how that would make you happy, but how he ultimately found something totally different. And now I think Scott's probably one of the happiest people I know. So without any further delay, welcome to this episode with Scott Harrison.
Hey, Scott, good to have you here, man.

**Scott Harrison** (3:46)
Nice to be here.

**Peter Attia** (3:47)
Thanks for slumming on the upper east side with me.

**Scott Harrison** (3:51)
Took the train up. It was pretty quick.

**Peter Attia** (3:53)
It's actually a nice day, so.