The Disruptors

135. AJ Jacobs on Happiness, Helping Tim Ferriss and Answering the Age Old Question of Religion


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AJ Jacobs (@ajjacobs) is an author, journalist, lecturer and human guinea pig and Editor-At-Large at Esquire. He has written four New York Times bestsellers, including Thanks a Thousand--the secret to happiness through gratitude; The Year of Living Biblically--where he followed the Bible word-for-word; Drop Dead Healthy--his overly extreme attempt to become the healthiest human, ever; It's All Relative--the world's most entertaining family tree...among others. He has appeared on Oprah, The Today Show, The Ferriss Show, Good Morning America, CNN, The Dr. Oz Show, Conan and The Colbert Report, given several TED talks and is a periodic commentator on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday.
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In today's episode we discuss:




* How AJ met Tim Ferriss and helped him write a bestseller
* The pros and cons of genetic testing and ancestry
* Is religion net positive or negative on the world
* The secret of happiness
* How to go about fixing media and fake news
* Why AJ's worried about data privacy and surveillance
* How to deal with existential risk
* Why we need clean meat now
* What AJ learned from following conventional health advice
* The state of the publishing industry today
* What to do when good advice backfires
* How to choose projects to work on
* The reason biology is such a scary medium to manipulate
* Unintended consequences of 23andme






















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The DisruptorsBy Matt Ward