The Grandmaster of Memory, Nelson Dellis, details why memory is an important skill to hone in on, and how to do just that. More on Nelson: This week’s conversation is with Nelson Dellis, a competitive memory athlete who is widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts in the fields of memory and mental fitness. Nelson is a 5X USA Memory Champion, a Grand Master of Memory, and holds several world records for memorization – including memorizing the most decks of cards in 30 minutes (9.02...
Dec 28, 2022•1 hr 6 min
This week’s conversation is with Dr. Michael Rucker, an organizational psychologist, behavioral scientist, and charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Mike for about two decades and I’m stoked to introduce him and his work to you. A former corporate executive, Michael found himself burnt out, unfulfilled in his career, and as he states “over-optimized in the pursuit of happiness”. So, he decided to make a change. He quit his job and s...
Dec 21, 2022•1 hr 9 min
Here's the final Ask Me Anything (AMA) of 2022 with Dr. Michael Gervais! A couple weeks back, we took questions from our community on how to best support your life ambitions, resolutions, habits, and goals as you move into 2023. Your questions rocked. Dr. Mike was excited to jump into the studio to film this and we hope this supports your new year. Stay tuned as we'll be back in 2023 with more high-performance and wellbeing content. Let us know—what questions would you like Dr. Mike to answer? L...
Dec 19, 2022•48 min
This week’s conversation is with Dr. Sheila Ohlsson Walker, a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. Sheila’s work and research interests lie at the intersection of neuroscience, genetics, psychology and social science, with a focus on how we can create contexts in sport, school and nature settings that unlock the potential of our youth. A former profes...
Dec 14, 2022•1 hr 34 min
This week’s conversation is with Paul Assaiante, one of the most decorated coaches in college sports history. For those unfamiliar, Paul is a legend – he is a two-time Olympic coach of the year, the “winningest coach in college sports history”, an inductee of the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame, and has won 17 NCAA championship titles at Trinity College where he is still the head coach of the Men’s Squash team today. You might also recognize Paul’s name from his first appearance on Finding Mastery back...
Dec 07, 2022•1 hr 4 min
This week’s conversation is with Yogi Roth – Yogi is a dear friend of mine, and I’m really excited to finally introduce him to the Finding Mastery community. At his core, Yogi is a storyteller with a unique focus on seeking and uncovering humanity in sports around the globe. His professional work has ranged from a college football analyst to an Emmy award-winning filmmaker, New York Times bestselling author, media personality, world-traveler, and accomplished coach. Yogi has lived a full life an...
Nov 30, 2022•1 hr 13 min
This week’s conversation is with Elizabeth Pitcairn, a world-renowned classical violin virtuoso. After making her orchestra debut at age 14, Elizabeth has gone on to travel the globe with her violin, performing as a soloist in various highly acclaimed orchestras at some of the most prolific classical music venues on the planet. Elizabeth is also known for performing with one of the world’s most legendary instruments – the Red Mendelssohn Stradivarius violin of 1720 – said to have inspired the Ac...
Nov 23, 2022•53 min
This week’s conversation is with Tony Fadell, an entrepreneur, designer, engineer, and investor with a 30+ year history of founding companies and designing some of the most influential products of the 20th century. Over his remarkable career, Tony has become best known as the inventor of the iPod, the iPhone, and the Nest Thermostat (which eventually sold to Google for $3.2B). Tony has authored more than 300 patents and was named one of Time's "100 Most Influential People in the World". In 2016,...
Nov 16, 2022•1 hr 12 min
We got some really excellent questions from our community last week. I love the deep thought, curiosity, and authenticity you all brought to the table. In our second AMA, I answer questions like: When things go sideways at work—and I still have a business to run and bills to pay—how do I think clearly? How do you put a high performance mindset lens on forgiveness? When something's been wrongfully done to you, how do you let go of it? What are the most interesting or unexpected ways you've seen l...
Nov 14, 2022•55 min
This week’s conversation is with Dr. Jeffrey Bland, an accomplished and highly respected thought leader who has spent more than four decades studying the improvement of human health. Due to his groundbreaking contributions the field, Jeff is known worldwide as “the founder of the Functional Medicine movement”, which represents his vision for a care model that is grounded in systems biology and informed by research. His pioneering work has created the Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute (PL...
Nov 09, 2022•1 hr 8 min
This week’s conversation is with Dr. Colleen Cutcliffe, the CEO and Co-Founder of Pendulum Therapeutics. Colleen’s extensive background includes a doctorate in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Johns Hopkins University, and over 20 years of experience managing and leading teams in biotech, pharma, and academia. In 2013, Colleen left her position as Senior Manager of Biology at Pacific Biosciences to start Pendulum, a company on a mission to improve health through first of its kind research...
Nov 02, 2022•1 hr 11 min
This week’s conversation is with Dr. Marc Brackett , the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor in the Child Study Center at Yale University. Marc’s research focuses on the role of emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, health, and performance. Over his extensive career, Marc has developed a systemic, evidence-based approach to social & emotional learning which has been adopted by over 4,000 schools across the ...
Oct 26, 2022•1 hr 4 min
This week’s conversation is with Sal Khan, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy , a nonprofit organization on a mission to provide free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Since its inception in 2008, Khan Academy has helped teach hundreds of millions of students around the world through their adaptive online learning platform. Sal has three degrees from MIT, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and most recently founded the Khan Lab School , a nonprofit brick-and-mortar private school i...
Oct 19, 2022•1 hr 5 min
In this first Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Dr. Mike Gervais, we took your questions and went into the Mastery Lab Studio to answer them. This first one covers high performance routines, mindfulness, mindset, dealing with the fear of other people's opinions (FOPO), and much more. We're excited to be producing these AMAs more frequently. What questions would you like Dr. Mike to answer? Leave your questions for the next AMA on the YouTube version of this episode. Dr. Mike bio: Dr. Michael Gervais is...
Oct 17, 2022•44 min
This week’s conversation is with Sarah Fay, an award-winning author and mental health advocate working to improve how we think and talk about our mental health. Sarah’s experience of being diagnosed with six different mental health disorders over the course of 30 years and finding no relief led her to write her best-selling journalistic memoir Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses . As part of her continued devotion to changing the conversation around mental health, Sarah also founded...
Oct 12, 2022•1 hr 16 min
This week’s conversation is with Eric Barker, a former Hollywood screen-writer turned author whose dedicated following of over half a million people look to Eric for his (often counter-intuitive) insights and research-backed advice on how to be great at life. In 2017, Eric penned his Wall Street Journal bestseller Barking Up the Wrong Tree , which reveals the extraordinary science behind what actually determines success and most importantly, how anyone can achieve it. However, over the last seve...
Oct 05, 2022•1 hr 12 min
This week’s conversation is with Gabriel Wyner, a polyglot, former opera singer, bestselling author of Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It, and founder of the Fluent Forever app, the most funded app in crowdfunding history. Gabe graduated summa cum laude in 2007 from the University of Southern California with dual degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Vocal Arts Performance, and was awarded the Renaissance Scholar’s prize for excellence in unrelated disciplines. Fo...
Sep 28, 2022•1 hr 9 min
This week’s conversation is with Judith Enck, a former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, the founder of Beyond Plastics , and a visiting professor at Bennington College. In 2009, Judith was appointed by President Barack Obama as the Regional Administrator of the EPA, where she oversaw environmental protections in New York, New Jersey, eight Indian Nations, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands – in addition to managing a staff of 800 and a $700M budget. Judith has also served ...
Sep 21, 2022•58 min
This week’s conversation is with Peter Shapiro, a music industry legend and perhaps the most influential independent concert promoter of his generation. Over his eclectic career, Peter has produced several acclaimed and groundbreaking projects, and was listed on Billboard’s Power 100 List for “Most Influential People in the Music Business”. Peter is the owner of several legendary music venues around the country which have hosted some of the biggest names in modern music – The Rolling Stones, The...
Sep 14, 2022•1 hr 8 min
This week’s conversation is with Jamie Wheal, founder of The Flow Genome Project and author of Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That’s Lost Its Mind . Jamie is one of the most brilliant thinkers I know – he has advised executives at some of the world’s leading companies (Deloitte, Red Bull, Google, Lululemon, Facebook, TD Ameritrade, Nike, and Goldman Sachs), and his work & ideas have been covered in The New York Times, Financial Times, Wired, Entrepreneur, Ha...
Sep 07, 2022•1 hr 42 min
This week’s conversation is with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, a functional medicine physician and the founder of the Institute for Muscle-Centric Medicine. Gabrielle received her doctorate in osteopathic medicine from the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine and is board-certified in family medicine. She earned her undergraduate degree in Human Nutrition where specialized in vitamin and mineral metabolism. Now, in her private medical practice, Gabrielle leverages evidence-based medicine with emerging ...
Aug 31, 2022•1 hr 4 min
This week’s conversation is with Chris Mosier, a hall-of-fame triathlete, All-American duathlete, and a 6-time member of Team USA. But Chris is far more than an elite athlete – he is a trailblazer. In 2015, Chris became the first transgender man to represent the United States in international competition – he is also the first transgender athlete to be sponsored by Nike, featured in the ESPN Body Issue, and to qualify for the Olympic Trials in the gender they identify. He continues to be a leadi...
Aug 24, 2022•1 hr 22 min
This week’s conversation is with Chris Duffin, a world-record holding powerlifter who is commonly known as the “Mad Scientist of Strength”. Chris is arguably one of the strongest pound-for-pound humans in the world – he is the only person to squat and deadlift over 1,000 pounds for reps, has a Guinness World Record for the sumo deadlift, and was ranked the number one powerlifter in the world for eight years straight. However, Chris’ strength extends far beyond the physical domain – in his best-s...
Aug 17, 2022•1 hr 8 min
This week’s conversation is with Dr. Mona Sobhani, a cognitive neuroscientist, researcher, entrepreneur and author. After receiving her doctorate from the University of Southern California, Mona spent the next several years contributing her expertise in neuroscience to fields such as law, business, healthcare tech, venture capital, and research innovation centers. Then, following what she describes as an “existential crisis,” everything changed. Her strict scientific perspective, frameworks of t...
Aug 10, 2022•1 hr 14 min
This week’s conversation is with Chris Waddell, a Paralympian who is widely known as the most decorated mono-skier in U.S. history. Chris began ski racing at the age of six, and went on to ski competitively at Middlebury College - where an accident during a freshman year training session left him paralyzed from the waist down. What happens for most of us when we go through a life-altering event, is that it reveals our internal operating system - one’s world-view, personal philosophy, and psychol...
Aug 03, 2022•1 hr 8 min
This week’s conversation is with Oliver Burkeman, a British author and journalist who I’ve really enjoyed his writings on productivity, mortality, the power of limits, and thoughts on building a meaningful life in an age of distraction. Oliver is the winner of the Foreign Press Association's Young Journalist of the Year award, and for many years wrote a hit weekly column for The Guardian called This Column Will Change Your Life . In this conversation, we dive into Oliver’s newest book, Four Thou...
Jul 27, 2022•1 hr 11 min
This week’s conversation is with Dr. Rachel Zoffness, a medical educator and disruptor who is revolutionizing the way we understand and treat pain. By trade, Rachel is a trained pain psychologist, a Visiting Professor at Stanford, an Assistant Clinical Professor at the UCSF School of Medicine, and a consultant on the development of integrative pain programs around the world. She is also the author of The Pain Management Workbook , which merges pain neuroscience with psychology – brain with body,...
Jul 20, 2022•1 hr 2 min
This week’s conversation is with Dr. Tom House, a former Major League Baseball pitcher turned world-renowned expert in the biomechanics of throwing. Often referred to as the “father of modern pitching mechanics” and a “quarterback whisperer”, Tom has coached some of the world’s most elite throwers like Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Nolan Ryan, Andrew Luck, Dak Prescott… and the list goes on. Tom is one of the preeminent pioneers who brought science into the art of coaching – after eight years as a big ...
Jul 13, 2022•1 hr 11 min
This week’s conversation is with Ty Murray, one of the most accomplished Roughstock athletes of all time. Having earned a record-setting seven All-Around World Championships, Ty has rightfully earned his nickname in the industry as “King of the Cowboys”. Throughout his illustrious career, Ty competed in three of the rodeo’s most risky and dangerous events – bareback, saddle bronc, and bull riding – dominating all three “rough-stock” disciplines with the singular heart of a champion. At the age o...
Jul 06, 2022•1 hr 11 min
This week’s conversation is with Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a Professor of Education, Psychology, Human Development and Neuroscience at the University of Southern California. Mary Helen studies the psychological and neurobiological development of emotion and self-awareness of adolescents in educational settings. Since earning her doctorate from Harvard in 2005, she has received numerous awards for her research and impact on education and society, including an Honor Coin from the U.S. Army, a Com...
Jun 29, 2022•1 hr 22 min
