Living A Life In Full

I had the pleasure of spending time with two of my favorite people, Dylan Bates and Matt Smith, recently as not only podcast guests, but we christened the first Facebook Live version of the Living a Life in Full show.

Dylan is the CEO of ATI Physical Therapy, the largest, single brand physical therapy/sports medicine/rehabilitation company in the world with clinics coast to coast. Matt is the Senior Vice President of Growth and Development for ATI’s Western Region and they both are embarking on a two-pronged challenge: 1) Summit Mt. Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain on the African continent/one of the “Seven Summits” and 2) They are using this challenge as a fund and awareness raiser for the ATI Foundation, with a $1M donation target!

The ATI Foundation works to make a day-to-day impact on the lives of children with physical impairments and their families. The Foundation works under the leadership of Terry Williams, Vice President and Executive Director, to meet various needs, such as providing financial assistance for medical expenses, purchasing medical equipment not covered by insurance, donating adaptive bicycles for recreation and therapy, funding therapeutic horseback riding lessons, or covering travel and lodging expenses for families requiring out-of-state care.

They coined the term “Klimb4Kids” as the campaign’s call to action. Matt and Dylan came up with this sizable double challenge by way of Matt’s tradition to have especially unique birthdays on the ones that are “5s” and “10s.” No donated funds will be going toward expenses related to participation in the climb.

In this episode, we do a deep dive into their origin stories, why Kilimanjaro, their training, their passions and the very special children and families the ATI Foundation works with. We also discuss healthcare, leadership, teamwork, and their vision for making a difference.

Kilimanjaro is no easy feat. As noted it is one of the “Seven Summits” as well as the tallest mountain on the entirety of the African continent. I climbed it in 1992 and during our expedition, a skilled French expedition team member fell sick with Acute Mountain Sickness and needed to be emergency evacuated 2000 feet below the summit. So we wish Dylan and Matt all the best with their expedition and applaud their humanitarian ethos.

They are two great gentlemen living their lives in full, and to the benefit of others.

It seems to have become a new tradition every January 1st to do an update to prior Epic Living, Living a Life in Full, and The List/Life Resume plans and consider to how to approach the upcoming year.

The idea is to share my N-of-1 trials, be a bit autobiographical in the use and results from this past year, and to share tools and approaches you may want to give a go yourself, depending on your personal goals and in living your life in full. Interested listeners can look at the companion LinkedIn Influencer post which acts as a complete transcript/show notes combo with clickable links to the original sources. I hope you enjoy it and find it of use.

Doing this is a little scary—to put oneself out there in a pretty transparent way. Being mindful that it is hard to give advice. We are all different and in a myriad of ways. There are a lot of intervening variables in our own lives. I don’t always keep doing the same things or in the same way as I age or circumstances change. If you try any of what follows, please do so as an experiment. Lab coat on and clipboard optional. Kick the tires, test drive, and keep in mind your mileage may vary. Please, please do your research of the links and determine what's good for you—test and retest—rinse-and-repeat. My job is to expose you to what I have experienced, perhaps save you some time and hassle by doing so, and provide you with sources so you can decide for yourself.

What if you could create a project to quickly learn the skills to transition to a new role, project, or even profession? What if you could learn a new language, simulate a university degree program, or become good at something that seems impossible to you right now? Well then you’ll enjoy this episode with Scott Young, author of the Wall Street Journal Best Seller, ULTRALEARNING: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career.

Ultralearning isn’t easy, just the opposite, not only is it hard, it’s frustrating and requires stretching outside the limits of where you feel comfortable. However, the things you can accomplish make it worth the effort.

Scott Young is a writer, programmer, traveler, and for more than a decade has run a business focused on productivity. Scott is an avid learner and he has created some fascinating experiments, such as:

• “The MIT Challenge” where he attempted to learn MIT’s 4-year computer science curriculum without taking classes,
• “The Year Without English,” where he attempted to learn four languages in one year,
• “The 30 Day Portrait Drawing Challenge” to see how much improvement he could make in drawing faces, and most recently, and fun,
• “Let’s Learn Quantum Mechanics.”

So in this episode we discuss these challenges and other intellectual feats and what drives Scott, and of course a deep dive into his new book, which has some amazing folks saying some impressive things:

James Clear of Atomic Habits fame, who also wrote the Foreword to your book, said “Ultralearning is a fascinating and inspiring read. Scott has compiled a goldmine of actionable strategies for learning anything faster.”

Chris Guillebeau said: “This book is an invaluable tool to help you master complicated skills in a short period of time. Read Ultralearning and level up your life!”

Cal Newport said “Ultralearning is like a superpower in our competitive economy. Read this book! It will change your life.”

Derek Sivers said “A truly great book about learning. Riveting, useful, practical, and applicable to anyone ready to learn something at their own pace. Ultralearning shows you exactly how to learn better than you thought possible.”

Scott discusses some of the great case studies in the book along with his own personal challenges, including those of Eric Barone, Tristan de Montebello, and Nigel Richards. His last chapter includes the wonderful story of Judit Polgar and Gary Kasparov.

Scott lives his life in full, and helps others to do so as well with his book and his website’s blog and resources, which are linked in our show notes.

Ian Lantz is one of the happiest activists I have ever had the pleasure to call friend. Lots of the other folks I have worked with may have had a grudge, or an ax to grind, or a cross to bear. Not Ian. In spite of a challenging childhood growing up in Los Angeles, he is one of the most giving and caring individuals that I know.

It’s almost like he’s an accidental change-maker, and artist for that matter. In spite of not having formal art school, his works are in demand, even by the Mayor’s Office. He was warned off of going into some Chicago ‘hoods because of being unsafe. But he did anyway, and thankfully so. He brought art and received friendship. He brought curiosity and caring and received the same in return. This is not a story of gentrification and loss of place. It is a story of crossing lines and collaborating to make a neighborhood a better place for those already there, and by becoming part of the fabric of what makes a neighborhood special.

Please listen in to the wonderful story of a life lived in full by an inspirational creative, Ian Lantz.

Listen on iTunes and be sure to subscribe. (Please subscribe, leave a rating, and help us make “New & Noteworthy”): https://tinyurl.com/ALifeInFull or download here: http://livingalifeinfull.libsyn.com. You can also listen in Overcast as well.

Bridget Algee-Hewitt, PhD, does amazing things.

She is a Senior Research Scientist at Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and a Quantitative Researcher in Facebook’s SBG Data Science Research and Development Division. Bridget is a biological anthropologist who studies how skeletal and genetic traits vary among contemporary peoples, across space and through time. She develops new computational methods, using machine learning and artificial intelligence, and geographic mapping algorithms, and hands-on DNA and osteology laboratory approaches to improve estimation of the personal identity parameters essential in forensic identification of unknown human remains and for the paleo-demographic reconstruction of past population histories in bio-archaeology.

As a practicing forensic anthropologist and geneticist, she provides forensic casework consultation to the medico-legal community. She also delivers expert testimony for asylum petitions and advocates for policy change in support of undocumented migrant and refugee rights. Her social justice work focuses on immigration, displacement, poverty, and violence in Latin America, addressing in particular the crisis of migrant deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Bridget received her PhD in Biological Anthropology from the University of Tennessee – Knoxville, an MA in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr, and a BA in Classics and Art History from Mount Allison University. Bridget is an Advisory Board Member for the Certificate in Critical Consciousness and Anti-Oppressive Praxis in the Stanford School of Medicine and she is the Book & Resource Review Editor for the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Listeners may recall past episodes in which we had guests who are experts in forensics, and in AI, and big data, and genetics, and anthropology, and even an artist who used randomly found public DNA to create sculptures of individuals, but Bridget’s work seems to be an integration of all of these areas and more. We begin with what drew her to biological anthropology and what biological anthropology constitutes.

We then discuss her article in Medium with Casey Miller on US/Mexico border camps, COVID-19 and medical care and humanitarian relief efforts. Next we do a deep dive into her talk at the Stanford Institute for Human Artificial Intelligence conference on AI Ethics, Policy and Governance where she spoke on Race, Rights and Facial Recognition, and we discuss the social justice aspects that she spoke on—in particular how geopolitical situations can change our biology by causing trauma that may play-out in our epigenetics which can be passed on intergenerationally. It is truly fascinating, especially in the context of the Grand Ethical Challenge in this area of work.

Related to this, Bridget was part of a panel on Forensic Genomics: New Frontiers and New Considerations, which focused on the difficult questions about whether and how DNA technologies are being used to identify “race” or “ethnicity” and the balance between ethical, legal and social implications and we learn her perspectives on this and what can be done as safeguards.

We also circle back to her Advisory Board work on the nascent Certificate in Critical Consciousness and Anti-Oppressive Praxis in the Stanford School of Medicine and this program’s work, and her perspective on the “compound technology effect” and better ways to integrate and sort multidisciplinary effects on scientific work and its ramifications.

She also has a new book coming out Remodeling Forensic Skeletal Age: Modern Applications and New Research Directions, which “presents a comprehensive understanding of the analytical frameworks and conceptual approaches salient both to the present chapters on forensic age estimation and to those seeking to grasp the current state of the field more broadly. It also includes a series of recommendations of best practice through the chapter-examples, which offer theory and guidance for data acquisition, technique and/or model development...