Steven Kotler on Flow, Human Potential, Empathy, and Saving the Planet The Adventurepreneur Podcast

Alright, I have to say I am so amped for today’s episode. If you have listened to this show for even a nano second, you know I’m enthralled with the topic of flow and peak human performance. Well today, we are taking a deep dive my friends. My guest is literally one of the world’s most prominent thought leaders in the world of flow and decoding the science of optimal performance, he’s a tour de force in this space and I’m thrilled and honored to share my conversation with him. 
 
Steven Kotler is a 4x New York Times bestselling author and journalist, whose books and speaking explore the intersection between radical innovation, peak performance, and disruptive technology. His 2nd latest book, Stealing Fire(which I highly recommend), was co-authored with Jamie Whealand was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He is also is the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective, whose mission to understand the science behind ultimate human performance and use it to level up individuals, organizations, and society at large. 
 
My conversation with Steven is jam packed, and we start off talking about his very latest book, The Last Tango In Cyberspace, which explores topics like cutting edge technology, neuroscience, psychology and psychopharmacology, and empathy which emerges as one of the big themes of the book and what Steven deems as the answer to our environmental crisis. That’s just the beginning. If you hang in there, we hear about the details behind Steven’s classic book The Rise of Superman, where he dissects how household name action sports athletes like Shane McConkey, Dean Potter, Laird Hamilton, and Travis Rice have all risen to the peak of human potential. 
 
Let’s put it this way, if you don’t learn something new and fascinating in this conversation, a) you either don’t have a pulse or b) I’ll give you a full refund 😜🧠
 
Really quick, if you like what you’re hearing please let me know. Seriously, it really does make a difference, not only for my morale to know people give a shit, but also it helps turn other people get a sense if they should listen or not. So please, leave a written review if you’re in iTunes or take a screen shot while you’re listening and share it in an instagram or facebook story telling the world that it’s pretty much the best thing ever or whatever. Seriously it would mean a lot, and helps me not work in such a silo. Thanks in advance guys!
 
Alright amigos, hang on tight and enjoy the ride! Here’s my conversation with Steven Kotler. 
 
Show resources: 
Steven Kotler website
Last Tango in Cyberspace
Rise of Superman
Stealing Fire
Flow Research Collective
Dirk Collins
Rise of Superman Video Series
Ray Curswild (head of AI at Google)
Jamie Wheal
William Gibson
Rainer Maria Rilke
Haptik implants
David Eagleman (Stanford)
Alexander Shulgan
Regetti Computing
Lee Cronan
Glen Flox (USC)
Chris Davenport
Andy Newberg (UPenn)
Shane McConkey
JT Holmes
Dean Potter
Laird Hamilton
Tony Hawk
Dangerous Dan Cowan
Gravity Logic
Connor Murphy
 
 
Show topics/themes:
Fiction as the only way to write about the future
“I read non-fiction for facts, and fiction for perspective”
The process of writing and how it induces flow and keeps us sane (make sense of the world)
“The internet is a shared consensual hallucination"
***“Empathy is our secret weapon” for the environmental crisis
Empathy as a super power
Ecopsychology
"We are unable to perceive the very thing we are trying to save”
Figure out you can learn from someone (which requires empathy)
"Live the questions is just the best advice ever” - our goals are fuzzy, but our curiosities are a lot clearer
Emerging technologies and how they shape our lives
Umwelt - when technology changes our perception, our world changes
Pychopharmacology
An empathy experiment: think about trees, animals, etc as your absolute equal, as your brother,