Upgrade Yourself, Upgrade Humanity - Biohacking with Dave Asprey

Dave Asprey (0:00)

Given what's happening with AI, given the rate of change of technology, given the last 20 years of research and nonprofit work in the anti-aging field, if we can't do way better than our current best today to reverse aging, I think I'm being conservative at 180, and I have no intent of having 17% of my skin thickness, which is what would happen given the current rate of decline of skin thickness if you don't do something about it. So no, I am going to look as good and be smarter and wiser than I am today when I'm 180 That's the goal.

Dr. Michael Gervais (0:40)

Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade in training a high performance psychologist. And I'm excited to welcome Dave Asprey as our guest for this week's conversation.

Dave is an entrepreneur and tech innovator, four-time New York Times bestselling author, award-winning podcast host, and pioneer of the biohacking movement. For those of you who have listened for a while, you know that I have issues with the term hacking. And at the same time, I'm fascinated by folks that create and disrupt.

Dave has spent decades of his life to elevate human performance. And he's created significant brands like Bulletproof and Upgrade Labs. And I wanted to dig underneath the surface to understand the human. How he's disrupted an industry. He also has a new book coming out, Smarter Not Harder, The Biohacker's Guide to Getting the Body and Mind You Want. And he's fully committed to living to be 180 years old. That's interesting. So with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Dave Asprey.

Dave, I'm stoked to sit down with you. It's been really fun to watch from a distance what you've built, the community that you've built, the influences that you've had over people's lives being better. And it's really difficult to get my arms around what you're trying to do, what you're trying to sort out. And I think it's probably very easy for you, but you've got so many different verticals in a nutshell, what are they pointing toward?

Dave Asprey (2:20)

It's only two words, and it's in the mission statement for my companies, and it's upgrade humanity. And that's what we're doing. And there's different levels that you can use to upgrade our hardware, our software, our firmware, and even the signaling mechanisms between each of the nodes and the great network of humanity.

But the reality is that it's time for an upgrade. And all of my businesses make great sense, because whether you're talking about 40 Years of Zen, which is a high-end neuroscience company that trains executives' brains to work better, something I've done to myself for six months, so I could have eight companies right now that I'm actively running, which is ridiculous, and you shouldn't do that. But to be able to have my brain put on like that, okay, I did that. But to go from there to why would you make a new coffee company that has trace minerals in coffee called Danger Coffee?

The uniting element is I want people who perform better, and I want people who feel better and have more energy, because people who have more energy were wired to naturally be nice to each other. So we build a better world by building better individual humans, and we build a better species by building better individual humans.

Dr. Michael Gervais (3:31)

Okay, so you're working from the inside out. You're working from the individual to be able to do that at scale.

Dave Asprey (3:37)

Sometimes.

From the individual, it always starts with you, but sometimes if you want to install something in society, that is not an individual thing. That is a marketing thing. Or, I mean, you could argue that if enough percentage of a group of things gets an upgrade, at what point is the whole thing upgraded? For instance, wireless networks.

When 80% of them are on 5G, have we completed the upgrade? But what if there's one that isn't there? So what percentage of humans do we have to upgrade to be better at sensing reality, to be harder to program malevolently anyway? I don't know what that percentage is, but it's probably not that big, because as a species, we're pretty good at copying each other. That's good.

Dr. Michael Gervais (4:22)

There's a bit of research that came out for critical mass on shaping culture.

Dave Asprey (4:27)

Oh, this is good. What's the percent?

Dr. Michael Gervais (4:28)

It's one in five.

Dave Asprey (4:29)

One in five. The most common number I've seen is 15%, which is very close. You're looking at 20, and I'm looking at 15 It's somewhere around there, and I've heard 18 for another person.