The Exchanges

Q do well and think about is how they're positioned. They're never trying to maximize the current moment, and they're never trying to precisely predict the future. They're trying to put themselves in a position to take advantage of whatever the situation may arise, rather than being mastered by the circumstances, right? They want to master the circumstances. So no matter what happens, they're always in a position to play offense.

A Yeah. No, I think that's right. And, and, and I, the, the way when I began my hedge fund career and I eventually had to start training people, I was a very enthusiastic poker player during the time when poker wasn't like cool. This is like pre internet poker. This is like pre rounders, you know, cause I played in high school. I played in college. I became obsessed with that. And so one of the things once, once they had internet poker, Um, one of the things that I would show people as a metaphor for this was the most popular game today is what's called Texas, the No Limit Texas Hold'em, where you're dealt two cards, and then they put five cards on the table, and you have to make a combination of your two cards with the cards on the table to make the best five card hand. Um, but what was cool about internet online poker is that you could open up lots of windows at the same time. And if you had the pattern recognition down for what a good starting hand was, which in, in no limit is, is what's called pocket aces, which are two aces, um, or what they call premium pair, which is pocket kings, pocket queens, pocket jacks. You could literally just fold, you know, open up 20 windows on your screen and just literally fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold. And all you had to do was wait for pocket pair. Or pocket premium pocket pair, and those are the ones you played. And each window y…

AI assessment note: “each window you opened was a form of optionality that allowed you to wait”

Q kitchen near you, and you can try any of the HumanCo sort of brands and, and products, and follow Jason as he, he builds this out in real time. The sign behind you has caught my attention because it says success nutrition facts. Do you want to tell us the backstory here? And it says hustle, focus, persistence, discipline, failure, risks, and patience all at a hundred percent per day.

A So I just thought this was really funny. A friend of mine had sent me this picture, um, because this actually means a lot in a lot of different ways to me, especially because I told you what happened to me in the beginning. Um, so this is called the Nutrition Facts Panel, or in my business, they call it the NFP, which in this country is, is, is a legal requirement on all packaged food products, except it usually has not these elements. It has things like fat, protein, carbohydrates, um, and then it has what are called the micronutrients, like how much vitamin C and vitamin A are in it, and sometimes it shows fiber. So you'll see this on every food product here in the US, um, as a, as a style. So I'm in the food business. Um, someone sent me a picture of this because this is kind of how I, I thought of myself over, you know, since college of all the things that I would prioritize. You can also see it says serving size, 24 hours a day. Servings per container, 365 days a year. Um, And then the bottom says percent daily values are based on high levels of ambition. So, um, I just thought that the fact that this thing existed, and it's a combination of kind of how I've lived my life, plus it's a food business centric thing, was just so random that this thing even existed, so I bought it. Um, but it's, it's also a nice reminder, Shane, that, you know, and I know you and I talked about…

AI assessment note: “A friend of mine had sent me this picture... so I bought it.”

Q I want to talk about that in a second. Uh, there, there was another moment there that made a big difference though, because you wanted to quit the squash team and then The coach wouldn't let you, or he challenged you? What, what is that backstory there?

A Yeah, no, that's right. That's right. Um, I'm glad you brought that up. So basically, after, like, two or three tests, when I was clear, like, I, I, I was good at, at, at, uh, business, I talked with my father about it, and I said, like, maybe I should, maybe I should, like, transfer into business and transfer into Wharton, but it required you to basically have a three-nine or higher. And I'd never had a three nine in my life, and so I was like, I don't, I'm, I'm gonna have to give up the squash experiment. This was after about six weeks of preseason, and this was after he'd already accepted me on the team, and I was 20 out of 20. And I went to the coach, and I said, look, I'm gonna transfer into Wharton. My academics are really important to me. I don't think I can do both. And he and his coach, who happened to be there, he was a guy in his nineties, he was no longer alive, or eighties, They both sat me down, and they both said, like, you should not give up squash. You know, the same speech that my three teachers in high school gave me. We see greatness in you. You can do some really good stuff. It's gonna help you with your life and your balance and all this other stuff. You're special. I don't know if they actually believed it or not, but hearing it felt so important to me that he basically said, don't do that. Stick with it. I wanna see what you become. And I did. And I stuc…

AI assessment note: “They both sat me down, and they both said, like, you should not give up squash.”

Q So talk to me about that, that first time, that was in your, your sort of like early twenties, right?

A Yeah. So what happened was, um, and it's a real like Icarus type of fable that actually was true. A lot of what I did in college was, On the one hand was very empowering because I found that I, I learned how to apply myself to such a degree that everything I did, I became very good at, that I put my mind to. Um, so I became a top squash player. I graduated the top student athlete of the entire university. Um, I think I was three in my Wharton class. I had one a minus in four years and all of these Kind of applications of myself. I started to hone like a process of like, Ooh, if I do this, I'll be really good at this. And if I do this and I started to teach myself how to speed read. I started to teach myself how to go on less sleep, because I started viewing things again through this kind of lens of like, it was like that movie Limitless, where I sort of thought like I was this like freak that had these gifts, and that if I didn't use these gifts, it was a, it was like a waste, and I just kept applying myself more and more, and it kept working. So I get out of Penn. I won, you know, All sorts of awards, and like, all this stuff that I thought was gonna make me happy. I got, you know, a really interesting job out of college, and I didn't, by the way, I didn't even know what a hedge fund was. I was hired as a quant, and I had not studied computer science or programming. I had a lo…

AI assessment note: “Yeah. So what happened was, um, and it's a real like Icarus type of fable”

Q Let's go back a second. What's the issue you have with the U.S. wheat industry? Is it just U.S. or is it the wheat in general?

A No, it's predominantly the U.S. So you will notice if you ask a lot of people who don't eat gluten, You will notice that many, many, a thousand, like this is not just like five random people. Many people can tolerate gluten in France and Italy, and cannot tolerate it here in the US. And there's two hypotheses on that. It hasn't been proven, but these are my hypotheses. I've, I've heard them from others too. The first and most important one is that, um, I don't remember the exact number, but it's in the high nineties percent. Might be 99%, might be 97%. Uh, of, of the US wheat crop that's not organic has traces of glyphosate, which is Monsanto's herbicide, um, also called Roundup. They find this on children's cereal traces, but it's still there. They find it on everything that has wheat in this country that's not organic. Glyphosate is banned in many, countless countries. It, it was, there was a gigantic class action lawsuit that, uh, they lost, uh, in the many, many, many billions of dollars, uh, the German company, Bayer, now owns Monsanto, where it was deemed carcinogenic, officially. They've also found that when you feed glyphosate to rats, it destroys their microbiome, and the rats start to develop all these weird autoimmune diseases. Including autism. It's so obvious, like this doesn't require like conspiracy theory. What glyphosate does is it obliterates every microorgani…

AI assessment note: “No, it's predominantly the U.S.”

Q I like that because then you just play the hand where you're playing when you have the advantage. You're not playing when you don't have an advantage, or you're minimizing your losses when you don't. Were there other sort of, like, mental models that you learned through that class, or how to, how to apply them to life?

A Yeah, there was a lot about, um, human relationships. If you take that class to an extreme, or that view of, of, like, everything's an option, um, you start viewing everything in life with a cost-benefit analysis, including people, including pleasure, including You know, things that are less tangible, um, but are, but are the essence of what makes life life. Um, and it's very easy to sort of view everything with this sort of cost benefit expected value lens. And I'd say there was a period when I, I did not assign enough of a weight on things that were less tangible. Um, relationships, your physical health, your sleep, and, and so if you take that to an extreme, you become a expected value optimization machine, uh, and you actually will ruin your life.

AI assessment note: “If you take that class to an extreme, or that view of, of, like”

Q I love how the standards were so fanatical that something as simple as the chocolate chips, you know, we couldn't find a good supplier, so we're going to make our own. Do you, what do you eat today? Do you consume dairy?

A I do. So I, I generally only consume grass-fed organic dairy. Dairy is pretty controversial. Uh, I don't think it should be. Because I've been able to get a lot of my other aspects of life kind of in check, um, I live what I would call sort of a 85, 15 kind of life. 85% of the time, I'm super clean. 15% of the time, I'm having cheeseburgers and fries. I, I'm completely gluten-free. That's both, uh, an issue I have with the wheat, uh, uh, industry here in the U.S., and also something, I, I have a pretty noticeable intolerance to gluten. Uh, I don't have, I don't eat anything that's, that's kind of laboratory produced or made, uh, Fake colors and chemicals and, and chemical preservatives, but I'm not vegan. Uh, you know, I eat plenty of animal products, uh, but when I consume animal products, most of the time, not all the time, but most of the time, they are animals that are raised in an evolutionarily consistent way with how they were supposed to evolve, right? So for example, cows have evolved to be on grass and be pastured, meaning they're supposed to roam around and eat grass. Cows are not supposed to eat corn, uh, which is kind of an American innovation because it fattens them up. Same thing goes with fish. Same thing goes with chicken. Um, I try to eat wild animals when I can, and then with vegetables and fruits, I'm pretty strict on organic. Most of the modern food supply …

AI assessment note: “I do. So I, I generally only consume grass-fed organic dairy.”

Q Are there any that still stick with you today that you, like, use either from childhood or that you, like, remind yourself of?

A Well, I'm going to paraphrase a bunch of them because some of them are sort of in old English. I originally discovered a lot of the Stoics and, and didn't know who any of them were, you know, like Epictetus and, and Aurelius and Seneca. Um, so there was a, there was a, there was a, an old, old quote basically about that, that everybody has something to teach you regardless of who they are. Um, and I remember that having a real impact on me Um, you know, whether it's the custodian, you know, to the grandmaster, you know, interest to some professor, you know, I, I didn't fully understand the human condition when I was, I mean, I still don't, but, but when I was certainly a teenager, I had a very, very kind of naive, myopic view of the world. Um, and I remember, uh, reading a bunch of, these quotes were generally organized by topic. And I remember reading a bunch of quotes on basically how to learn and how to learn from other people. And, and there were actually some quotes in, in this book, or maybe there was a second one. I think there was probably a second book of quotations from the eighties that actually had some Munger quotes in it. Early, early Munger stuff. You know, I, I'd say that, that some of the quotes from Sun Tzu, Art of War, um, in terms of preparation, in terms of battles are won before they begin. And then, and then I also was very focused on quotations from peop…

AI assessment note: “an old, old quote basically about that, that everybody has something to teach you”

Q I want to go back to this. You said one, there's two differences between US wheat and sort of a European, or you specified French and Italian. One was the glycosin. What is the other big difference? Is it the type of wheat that they're growing?

A Yeah. I, it's a much more, um, kind of agent form. So there's, um, there's some, there's some really interesting like rabbit holes in nutrition where there's some people, particularly some farmers, There's a guy, um, named Dan Barber who started a, a very famous restaurant called Blue Hill at Stone Barns. And, um, he, you can Google him, he's quite prominent. He grows a lot of fruits and vegetables that are kind of ancient versions of what, what we have today. And so basically over time, as we got more and more, and this is, by the way, this is without What I'll call, like, genetic modification. This is through regular crossbreeding, which we've been able to do for hundreds of years, and, and how all modern dogs exist is through crossbreeding. Um, you know, without actually going into the DNA and, and, and manipulating. Gluten is a protein that gives wheat part of its robustness, and, and you can actually crossbreed wheat To increase its gluten levels, which makes it more robust. Um, and, uh, I, I have heard, and I haven't seen any, any actual proof on this, but they have found fossilized versions of wheat from biblical days. When literally bread was like the staple for everybody. Cause like one of the pushbacks on gluten intolerance is like, haven't we literally been eating bread every day for like human civilization? And the gluten level in fossilized wheat and the gluten lev…

AI assessment note: “Yeah. I, it's a much more, um, kind of agent form.”

Q journey outside of your normal job. And the fanatical, fanatical, I say, standards that you held for what was going in your body and then creating a company around those standards. And I also want to explore a little bit about how do you eat today? Like, how does the food system poison us? What is your lifestyle like in terms of caffeine, alcohol, sleep? What goes into your body?

A What I have learned, which I didn't know at the time, because now we have modern testing. In simplest terms, I don't detoxify like a regular person. So things build up in me faster than regular people. I'm kind of like a canary in a coal mine. It turns out that everything that affects me affects everyone else, except I just respond fast. And I, and I experimented with lots of different variations of it, but basically the, the, the style that resonated the most with me was what they now call paleo. Um, and the reason that, and paleo stands for paleolithic, which sort of ties back to what we were as hunter gatherers. And a lot of the research I did, Shane, was around evolution and around anthropology, because I was, you know, I was trained as sort of a scientist And I didn't want to do anything that was, like, not provable in terms of my own discovery. And thankfully, there's a lot of populations out there, um, that are still indigenous people, and they live the way that we lived 10,000 years ago, or even a thousand years ago. Um, and they have none. And by the way, many of these indigenous peoples are in every continent. They're in Alaska. They're in South America. They're in Africa. They're in all different climates. They have none of our modern lifestyle diseases. They have no autism. They have no allergies. They have no autoimmune disease. They have no obesity. They have no d…

AI assessment note: “the style that resonated the most with me was what they now call paleo”

Q What's the system? How do I exploit the system? What are the weaknesses? You would have made a good spy.

A That, that's right. And then, and, and I was often kind of bored and alone, uh, at times. And so I would just kind of hang out in the little book section and I would just take the books and Uh, and just pour over them. Occasionally, it would lead me to games of chance, and, and then there was a book of quotes, and I loved quotes because they were just, they had so much knowledge distilled in very, very short passages, and, and for some reason, the quotes spoke to me, and, and many of the quotes were from people I'd never heard of. You know, I didn't want to be introverted. I just had a hard time relating to To a lot of people back then. And so I, I, I found my happy place to be more in the, in the areas where, you know, things were predictable for me. And, and reading and, and kind of self-reflection was one of those places.

AI assessment note: “That, that's right. And then, and, and I was often kind of bored”

Q you get to Wharton, you're basically on this path where you, you don't expect much out of life. I like inflection points because it seems like whatever happened at Wharton or no, sorry, it was Penn and then you transferred into Wharton. Whatever happened at Penn became this massive inflection point because your trajectory going into Penn and your trajectory leaving were two very different paths. What are, what happened?

A You know, I had the good fortune of taking this really interesting class in high school with, uh, it was a philosophy class, but a big part of the class was actually on Joseph Campbell, and so I, I learned of the hero's journey when I was probably 15, and I, I kind of felt like I was on the hero's journey except that I was in the beginning of this, and maybe this was my own way of rationalizing that I could be good or accepted at some point, But at that moment, I wasn't. I had three teachers through high school that had a profound impact on me because they saw something in me that I didn't see, and they said to me, you know, to the effect each time, Jason, you know, I see greatness in you. You don't know how to channel it yet. Let me, let me give you some tools because I think you could be really good at this, and at the time, I thought I was good at nothing. I had just, I had a lot of, of influences that made me both proud and insecure at the same time. My mother's brother is a, is a very famous scientist and mathematician. He's, uh, he's the head of applied math and science at Cornell. His name's Steven Strogatz.

AI assessment note: “I had the good fortune of taking this really interesting class in high school”