Book Reviews & Beyond

Book Review: Personal genotyping is a Biohacking gamechanger

It gives you an ocean of actionable data about yourself - what kind of diet is ideal for you, how much coffee you should be drinking, how much Vitamin D you need to supplement, which vices you can flirt with and which you must absolutely avoid, if you should do endurance or power training in the gym, etc. And it lets you know which kind of life-ruining genetic conditions you might need a prevention plan for to enjoy a long life of beauty, joy, and meaning.

Personal genotyping gets complicated fast, so I recently read the book on personal genotyping, Outsmart Your Genes by Dr. Brandon Colby, and I learned some things about the common mistakes health-conscious, prevention-minded people make when it comes to personal genotyping. These are high-stakes mistakes with perhaps the ultimate consequence if you end up misinformed by the genotyping results you get.

The placebo effect is one of the most reliable things in science, so much so that every good human clinical trial accounts for it. Belief has power, clearly. And this book delves into how to yield it without invoking too much pseudospiritual silliness.

You've probably heard all your life that belief and consciousness have power. Power to transform your life, to determine your future, to heal your body, and to change the world around you. This book, better than any other I've read, breaks down why and how that works without delving into a lot of pseudoscientific nonsense.

I had promised something new and innovative in the Biohacking/personal growth space this year that I'd be offering - not another supplement, app, gadget, or AI thing - but a strikingly beautiful and enduring thing. It's a book, but a book unlike any you've ever read, a book specifically for you.

And when I say for you, I mean you in a much grander sense. I mean your legacy; which is the exponential network effect reverberating into the future of the dedication, excellence, loyalty, wisdom, knowledge, presence, and love you bring to your work, family, relationships, and community. And of course, I also mean the beautiful young life you create, raise, and sacrifice for. The genetic essence of you that will outlast your corporeal form by many thousands of years. The everlasting you that echoes for eternity.
I'll describe shortly what kind of book this will be and the unique program from which it will be derived, but first...

This book is a real black pill (a grim truth) for those who are optimistic about medical science delivering cures to disease.

Too often we imagine that scientists and the institutions of medical science are like the benevolent clergy of the church and idealized organized religion - that they are on an uncorrupted, principled mission with the purest of intentions to uplift humanity, empowering us all with the truth we need to live better. Unfortunately, this is pretty far from reality, often scientists and especially the institutions of science, are more like politicians and the institutions of politics. They are motivated a lot more by selfish personal enrichment and self-aggrandizement than an unflappable devotion to the truth. When they learn that they are wrong, they double down on their assumptions, retreat into dogmatic positions, and staunchly ignore evidence of their errors instead of correcting the record - this lack of humility has an astronomical civilizational cost to all of us.

But don't despair! In this book review, I share some guidelines for biohacking in this era of bad science.

I heard a fascinating interview with author Patricia L. Gerbarg on the Smart Drug Smarts podcast, in which she exuberantly praised this Nootropic adaptogen, Rhodiola, which is (literally) mythological.

This herb has a fascinating story intertwined with ancient and recent history, after listening to the Smart Drug Smarts interview twice, I was a little skeptical, yet determined to discover if this is the robust antiaging Biohack that Dr. Gerbarg describes...

The novel starts with this very determined young man, who is on a mission to circumnavigate the world in his sailboat. He ends up a semi-benevolent transhuman dictator.

Book review: A How-NOT-to Marriage Manual

You can learn a lot about marriage from the way at least half of them end and this book, by a practicing New York divorce attorney, should be required reading for committed couples. Given the author's 20-year professional experience, it's a how-NOT-to book; in an engaging storytelling format, it illustrates how once madly-in-love couples royally screw the pooch when it comes to their marriages and then pay the price ($600 an hour to Sexton's law firm for counsel is just the start!)