HEALTH

It's Been 40+ Years Since We've Gotten a Good Treatment for Depression: Prior to exploration and innovation with psychedelics, mental health treatment has not made significant advancements since the invention of SSRIs in the 1980s. The multitude of side effects (e.g., reduced libido, impaired appetite, etc.) and blunting of ability to express emotion is a significant downside to SSRIs (though there is a strong benefit for many) - Dr. Jonathan Sporn

Why Pharma Won't Buy Psychedelics: Big pharma is not necessarily interested in psychedelics because they don’t know how to fit into the current business model – they can’t make money as is since there’s no inherent innovation or IP. Gilgamesh Pharmaceutical is working to create new molecules and psychedelic-like drugs based on the properties of psychedelics but with greater control over dose, experience, time, etc. If successful, Gilgamesh’s approach could open the door to increased access to psychedelic-like therapies without the need for clinical supervision - Dr. Jonathan Sporn

>50% of Adults Will/Are Obese: “More than half of U.S. adults will be classified as actually having obesity (BMI > 30) at some point in their life (vs. 12% in the 1960's). You see the same thing with type 2 diabetes.” – Dr. Stephan Guyenet

What Could Help With Your Weight: Give the nonconscious brain signals consistent with your goals: (1) control sensory cues in the food environment; (2) be intentional about your eating and stop when you’re full; (3) know how many calories are in your food/meal (protein has the most satiety per gram) - Dr. Stephan Guyenet

Document Your Dreams: Dreams are not random. Dreams are our minds working through our anxieties and worries. Exercise: Writing your problems down before bed can help improve their happenstance in your dreams. And as a result, you may just stumble upon your solution. - Richard Wiseman
 

Tip To Stop Nightmares: During the day, visualize the nightmare with a happy ending. This alone reduces reoccurring nightmares by 90% rate.  - Richard Wiseman

What Exactly is OCD: OCD is characterized by intrusive obsessions, meaning the person doesn’t want to have them – and compulsions that provide brief relief to the obsession but reinforce or strengthen the obsession - Dr. Andrew Huberman

Categories of OCD Fall Into 3 Bins: (1) checking (e.g., checking locks or stove); (2) repetitions (e.g., counting numbers or repetitions); (3) order (e.g., symmetry, alignment, needing completeness, germaphobia) - Dr. Andrew Huberman

Exploratory Treatments for OCD: Cannabis (weak data), ketamine/psilocybin (tbd, jury is still out), Transcranial magnetic stimulation (early days, but promising), Mindfulness Meditation (can help support Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) - Dr. Andrew Huberman

WEALTH

Private Equity IRRs Are Misleading: Private equity generally relies on early success, but that creates an IRR that is unsustainable once success plateaus—making it a pretty misleading metric. Conclusion: “So the challenge for investors is if you look at the IRR, it’s not telling you a whole lot about what the recent returns have been or even what the returns have been relative to the market.” – Ben Felix

How to Actually Value Private Equity: Multiple of money: All cash inflows divided by the sum of all cash outflows. Kaplan Schoar PME (public market equivalent): compares private equity results by investing the same cashflows in a benchmark index – Ben Felix

Value Stocks Time Have Finally Arrived: “Across all industries, value is still very cheap relative to growth. Even though tech has gotten hammered recently, relative to value, growth is still expensive across industries—so it’s more than just a tech story.” – Ben Felix


(Book) An Inconvenient Fact: Private Equity Returns & The Billionaire Factory – looks at historical performance of private equity in aggregate and leveraged buyouts on their own - Ben Felix

• Conclusion #1: “From 1996 to 2005, private equity delivered PMEs well above one when you compare it to the S&P 500, but only slightly above one compared to the S&P small cap 600 index” 
• Conclusion #2: “From 2006 to 2015, private equity and aggregate has trailed small cap public equities and buyout funds have had a very small edge” 
• Conclusion #3: “Private equity as an asset class has not delivered much, if any, value to investors net of fees relative to public equities. Private equity as an industry has minted 19 new billionaires from 2005 through 2020” 

WISDOM

Why Learn From Girard/Mimetics? “Mimetic theory does not give us the power to resist damaging instances of mimesis at the moment but it does give us the foresight to avoid them altogether.”– Johnathan Bi

2 Branches of Motivational Forces of Human Nature: Metaphysical desire (identity) and Physical desire (aims at experience). Girard believes that the way we go about choosing which objects to go after is by imitating those whom we already consider possessing this fullness of being (celebrities, parents, entrepreneurs, etc.) - Johnathan Bi

Being Contrarian is Just the Other Side of Mimesis: This type of behavior is no more authentic or independent than conformity because your choices are still made for what they say about you and not the object itself.  “You’re confusing difference for autonomy you’re confusing distance for independence and your confusing originality for freedom.” – Johnathan Bi

Strengthen The Body, Strengthen the Mind: We treat the body rigorously so that it will not be disobedient to the mind”. Physical challenges are ‘an assertion to show who’s in charge – Ryan Holiday quoting Seneca

Book of the Week: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. The most powerful man in the world, writing notes to himself—it was never intended to be published – Ryan Holiday