Unlocking Personal Potential: Dr. Jeremy Koenig on the Power of Genomics in Health and Performance

Di: 0:23

Hey, Bodyholics, welcome back to the cutting edge of well-being, where honesty and science collide to ignite your health revolution. This is Di Katz-Shachar, your host, and I'm pumped to kick off another episode with you. Badass information and truth seekers, Before we dive into today's seriously fascinating conversation, let me just remind you that your body is a temple and bodyholic. fit is your sacred training ground. Build your physique, fuel your mind and conquer your goals with any one of over 1,000 workouts on the site, combined with expert guidance. Remember that you're only one workout away from a better you. And if you're dealing with commitment issues, worry not. You can find plenty of bodyholic workouts on YouTube and when you are ready for us to train together day by day, the body-holic community awaits at bodyholicfit. Now buckle up, because today we're cracking the code on personalized health with the one and the only Dr Jeremy Koenig.

Di: 1:39

Dr Koenig is not your average scientist. He's a trailblazer. He's kind of the trailblazer master of DNA. He's the architect of DNA as a service, DAAS, which is basically like unlocking the secrets of your own personal instruction manual. Plus, he's built the IrisOS, a performance framework used by world-class athletes and ordinary folks just like you and me to unleash our inner champions. Dr Koenig is a powerhouse of knowledge, a business whiz, and he's also a client success champ. You are about to hear some serious information about the future of healthcare, hacking your biology and optimizing your performance for a life that's anything but ordinary. So are you ready to dive into the cutting edge of personalized health with Dr Jeremy Koenig? Hit that subscribe button. Whether you're on YouTube or Spotify or your favorite podcast app, Don't forget to be a pal and share the knowledge as well. Let's dive in so. Dr Jeremy Koenig, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 3:01

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.

Di: 3:04

It really for me, it really is a pleasure because this is one of the only episodes that I've been doing in the last. Right now I'm literally counting the days 52 days because I'm in Israel and it's been very tense where I am and I'm just like, yeah, let's just talk about what I always love to talk about and well-being and health and optimization. We're going to get into all that. So I'm loving the fact that we're just having a conversation about this right now and not about pension and politics and war and all that stuff. So let's get into that good stuff. I want to first of all touch on what motivated you to pursue a career in the field of genomics and human potential optimization, which I'm not sure everybody really actually is familiar with the latter, and so I would love it if you would elaborate.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 4:13

Yeah. So let me just give you the short answer and then I'll give you some definitions. So the short answer to how does somebody go into genomics and sharpening the sphere of human potential is well, I don't know. It just kind of happened, dumb luck.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 4:36

But at the center of that it's doing what you love and that really came about from ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a professional athlete of some kind, and ever since I was a kid, my mom and my neighbors and everybody told me you're going to be a doctor. So certainly the environment had something to do with it, but largely the emotional influences, I would say, that came in around my teens. Particularly my mom got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. So she came home and said, hey, I have this disease and they don't know if it's genetic or not. It might be, it might not be. You might get it, you might not get it. So there's fear for losing your mother, there's fear for your own life, there's fear for you know you're just talking about children there's fear for your children's life, and we don't even know if it's genetic or environmental, as is the case with so many things. And so that's on the call of the urgency around like, well, here's why it's important to learn it, because it can save lives.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 6:04

But then when you you know, in parallel to doing my studies I was also a track athlete. So I did many sports beforehand, I just landed on track in college because it seemed to me it was a one sport that was socially acceptable to spend 20 hours a week on, while I got to pursue my passion in academia. So I got to be this pseudo professional athlete right and I took it really seriously. You know, I was captain of the track team. I was a sprinter there's zero margin for error and I went as far as the Canadian Olympic trials and the sprint events, 100 meters in particular.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 6:45

So you start to see, like I'm studying DNA and I'm working at being an athlete and you know, while we would learn about, you know, conventional studies, for example, like here's how to look at DNA, I was constantly looking at it through this human performance lens. So, to come back and define a couple of things that you were terms that you used off the bat, so that you said genomics, and then I think you said human potential optimization.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 7:16

That's right. Human potential optimization, right. So so, first of all, genomics, like the differentiation between genomics and genetics is a critical differentiation. So you know genetics comes down to like the single gene influences, if you will, or the genotype profile you might have, or you know, if you use these, these direct to consumer products, like your 23andMe or ancestry. They're speaking of single genes and so that's like your genetic profile as it relates to these single nucleotide polymorphisms. And the single nucleotide polymorphism just means there's a high enough frequency of this DNA mutation in different populations such that it is an anomaly, or sorry it is, it is, it is a quantifiable phenomenon. So you know my blue eyed allele, my allele for blue eyes, versus yours for brown I can't tell if you're brown or not. Like you see a glass on her.

Di: 8:15

Green.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 8:18

So those are, those are point mutations, let's call it that can be measured. So it's you know, genetics and there's, you know, billions of markers. This is really more to do with how does the entire genome and not just the human genome, by the way, there's, like every species has a genome how does the entire genome evolve in a really holistic, synergistic way? And so that's when you start to get into, you know, topics like, well, gene expression profiles, right, epigenetics. It's a, it's a vast topic for conversation. That could literally go on for days if we had the time. And you know, effectively that was my, my passion in leading up to grad school. So I did meta genomic. So very meta you can probably guess by the way that I'm speaking is. You know, I was heavily influenced by my philosopher and I who is very much sorry, my supervisor is very much a philosopher, and you know I studied philosophy as well, because you know what I learned is it's it's so important to be asking the right questions when we're looking at something like DNA, which is both our shared heritage and our shared future, and every living thing has this. So. So genomics is a really big, big topic. When I think about human potential, it's really more about. You know, when I think about the work that I did, there's the discrete application of it which came from the work that I did with athletes. But I should probably just say, because you asked, how did you get into this?

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 10:05

Well, I finished my PhD and I did my postdoc, actually at Cornell, studying under Jeffrey Gordon's postdoc, ruth Flai, who pioneered the human microbiome research, and so actually my first project in my postdoc was comparing the human gut microbiome to genetics and actually I did the first infant case study of how the human gut microbiome is colonized. So I was really starting to look mechanistically how the human is, this holistic being and this interface of things that are going on. And so it was literally, like you know, when, like Neo if you've ever watched the Matrix, like Neo kind of like wake up and you can see them in Matrix so it's like I kind of had like an aha moment like that, where it's just everything looked so different and connected and you could really, you know, sense it. And you know, then one day I was there, I was advancing on my academic career and by this point, you know, after my postdoc I was a professor in Nutripo Genomics but I got recruited to do longevity research and actually reproductive longevity research, and I did that for a while and that was my first exposure to industry. All before then, the 20 years or so that it took me to, you know, to realize that first academic career, you know, kind of blinded me to what you might do in industry. And so I had that industry experience looking at fertility and reproduction of. Actually there were these 10 population of mice that were selectively bred for 10 years to enhance reproductive lifespan and it was successful to the extent that it would be analogous to women being able to have babies till they're 120, let's say so.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 11:58

I thought I was a figure at the genetics of that and I did and it was interesting, it was amazing and it blew my mind and I thought, well, wow, that's really, you know, performance at the highest level. You know we were talking at the beginning of the call is making life. But this kind of called me to my two passions, right, like athletics and genetics, and that's what led me to found Athletogen, which was essentially DNA of human performance, and so that's how that kind of came together. It was not what I was aiming at at the beginning, but the truth is, you know, I never stopped being an athlete. I was always, you know, participating in different events and always thinking about, you know, individual physiology and then also like seeing this bigger, interconnected world of nature and nurture. So that's the kind of the long way around of how I got to, you know, dna and performance.

Di: 13:01

About six times throughout listening to you, I was like we needed to do an episode about that. I think we need to do an episode about that and that and that yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a lot and it's all like a world on its own, like each topic. So I want us to touch on two concepts. One is the DNA as a service, which I love. That instead of data as a service, and do you call that Das?

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 13:48

I mean, you could yeah, yeah, yes, I guess for short term. Yes, you would call it Das, Das could All.

Di: 13:55

Right, yeah, yeah, okay. So one is that is DNA as a service and how it can empower individuals to make informed decisions about their health and performance. That's one part to focus on the DNA as a service. And if you could touch on the Iris OS, did I say that right? Yep, yep, because it's specifically designed for performance and coaching for entrepreneurs. So I feel like it's kind of like taking it to the next level.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 14:35

Right, right yeah.

Di: 14:37

so if you, could kind of give me like, just like I gave you a two-part question, like a two-part answer to that.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 14:44

For sure and remind me how much time do we have.

Di: 14:49

How I love how you asked the timing of the question. No, no, no, we're good to go.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 14:55

You feel free, Okay yeah, I want to be respectful to users. Sorry users, you can see where my head's at Listeners, listeners and the other time, of course, yeah, dna as a service. Dna as a service was an idea that came to me as I was working on my first well, it's actually really my second DNA enterprise, if you will. The first one was performance genomics, and that was the longevity and reproductive longevity. Athletogen was the second one, and Athletogen was the project where I looked into the molecules of 10,000 plus athletes, right, and discovered these amazing insights. In particular, these discoveries were made with Olympians, and I found, let's just say, three main insights that I thought would be of service, let's say, to the athletes, and these won't make sense.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 15:59

So, generally speaking, when I looked at athletes who are competing at an Olympic level so these are mostly over the age of 20, 25, they survived the NCAA training. Let's say, right. So it's hard to be an athlete. I mean, to come through on a skate without injury is right. That's like you might say it's a fluke, it's like, no, actually it's not, because, as I looked at the DNA, there's an overrepresentation of athletes with injury protection wheels. So that's really interesting. Number one, right.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 16:30

So number two was well, if you've ever worked out with somebody, you might notice that they get gains faster than you. You know. Say that you lift weights, they put on muscle faster. You go for runs, they get fitter, their robot capacity increases quicker. You do high intensity interval training, you know, maybe you're faster than all of them, but there's a spectrum of response to training, you know, just in the way that there's a spectrum in response to pharmaceuticals. So and we prescribe, we prescribe minimum effective dose. Same thing is true in training. What's the minimum effective dose? The reality is, if you're an athlete, it's like, honestly, train the least amount possible, because every time you go out to train if you're training properly, by the way it's you're employing this overreaching strategy strategic overreaching to the point that you're flirting with injury every time.

Di: 17:18

So the less you can train the better.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 17:20

This whole no pain, no gain thing, while true, it's like even that needs a minimum effective dose.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 17:27

Then the third thing was you know there's a chronic fatigue that burned out the training plateaus and, and that you know a good landed, those insights landed itself to basically your nutritional Mc profile, or suite of genes, you know. So athletes who well, for example, were burdened with soreness more so than you know, controls had over representation of the unfavorable meals associated with vitamin C metabolism, people that suffered burn out of fatigue or decreased move had a decreased ability to absorb vitamin B. So it was, like you know, hundreds of these genes put together in an infinite number of combinations that made up the individual athlete, and so giving coaches that information at the right time, you know, allowed for critical decision that, in the case of the athlete, would mean an Olympic medal. So DNA as a service in this way is a tool that allows. Well, if we look at it through the lens of the athlete, it's to know myself, you know, which is essentially what a lot of the athletic journey is about. If you watch any of these, you know athlete montages that they struggle and they find themselves, they find their way. And well, how do they do that? They do that mostly through trial and error. Their coaches do that mostly through trial and error. So that, look, there's always going to be trial and error, but if we give people DNA insights in some regard, we're saying here's where the quicksand is and you can avoid this. So I can say, hey, you have a, you have a predisposition to rupture your Achilles tendon. You've chosen to be a triple jumper. I'm not telling you to not do that, but here's some exercises that you can do to lengthen and strengthen. Here's some nutrition that you can undertake. Here's the training volume protocols that are going to be unique to you compared to your bulletproof training partner, right?

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 19:33

So so DNA as a service is essentially, it's a, it's a compass that individuals can now use to guide decisions throughout their lives. And I'm not talking just on Olympic performances. I mean, those are great and those are really fun and those are really fun projects to do. But this becomes a tool that you can imagine as being important in terms of identifying. You know risk, that carrier status with parents trying to conceive, right. You know IVF, for example. You know there's there now. You know infant diagnostics, rare diagnostic diseases, where it's like you know 110 and present with some kind of rare disease. And, by the way, rare disease in general is one out of 10 people have one. So it's actually that a billion people on the planet have it. That's, that's a lot.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 20:30

So now the idea of DNA as a service is such that it requires infrastructure, right? So in that that's you know where we see software as a service, like Microsoft, they have to build the whole software infrastructure and a platform to deploy these approaches to software development, like the agile process. But you know, they have to have a following and a base to make it economically viable. I think what we're going to see in the future with genetics is like look for a thousand different DNA companies to start up. It's going to be I mean, I can tell you from experience it's, you know, it's probably going to be done for a lot cheaper now, but when I did it, it was, you know it was about $5 million to start up, right? So how do we prioritize those startup costs?

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 21:20

It's like, well, there are now these companies that are emerging that can offer these DNA insights with these robust bioinformatic platforms that have done a lot of that heavy lifting already, right?

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 21:35

So sequencingcom, as you know, that's a company I work with today have an incredible platform to, you know, essentially Google your genome, so to speak, like they've developed software is genome explorer, where, if you have some kind of a pre or I knowledge about your condition, you can actually search your genome or view your genome ranked based on your risk scores.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 22:00

If you're somebody that is going to be proactive and essentially take that into consideration, I mean it could change your life, right? I mean that's something that you know. I, when I look at through that lens, when I look through that lens now, I'm thinking about what are all the things that I can do to extend my you know my health span, given that I have a daughter, for example, I have major stumbling blocks in terms of, you know, predispositions, like one thing for me is like on the rare disease side, is is a likelihood of hearing loss, noise induced hearing loss. I'd love to hear my daughter sing in 10 or 20 years. So that means like no loud music for me, right? So you know that means being super vigilant if I get an ear infection. And you know there are many, many more issues that are important to me, like that are important for me to know, like drug interactions, for example.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 23:03

But you know, we are now of five or 10 different drugs that I would have adverse reaction to. That I can share that information with my physician and then having this information for my daughter before she has to experience any adverse reaction to something that could have been avoided by that be food medication. So so DNA has a service at its core is making this information available to the masses and affordable, which I mean it's amazing if you think about. First human sequence was I can't remember how much it was, let's call it a billion dollars at least, like at least hundreds of millions, for just one genome. And now you can get you know your whole genome sequence for $399, like it's yeah, that's unbelievable.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 23:58

Yeah. So just get it quickly summarized as DNA as a service is affordable. Dna insights for the world.

Di: 24:09

Yeah, beautiful. And then going to the second part, and the reason I am saying both of them is because I feel like, like I mentioned before, one goes in depth a little bit more than the other in terms of touching on performance and coaching for, specifically, entrepreneurs and and change makers. So, yeah, if you could elaborate on that.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 24:48

Yeah, well, one of the things that I noticed as an entrepreneur and and solopener right so, I was a solo founder is that the journey is I mean it's hard. I mean anything worth doing is hard. I don't complain about hard work, but it's really lonely and and it's not, I don't think it's a, it's what anybody's nobody's trained for it, you know. So you go to, you know you go to school and I mean, as I look back on the curriculum, it's like, well, I'm basically just trained to have a nine to five job with. You know, like 15 minute break after about two hours and my hour break at the four hour mark and then another 15 break and then I, you know, I punch out and I leave my job at work and then I go home on the weekend and then I'm, you know, it's up to me to figure out work, work, life balance. And I don't know if you can ever really get work life balance between a job that you're not passionate about. So you know, first the first, you know, call it assumption here is you know, the entrepreneurs I work with are passionate about their job, so, so then it becomes about, you know, work, life integration. So I don't, I don't. I'm not a big proponent of work life balance per se, but but work and life integration. So you know what.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 26:15

But so what do I mean by that? Is, as an entrepreneur, you can get hyper focused on the prize Right. So what is that? Is that raising capital? Is that your product launch? Is that you know specific metrics or targets that your board is holding you to. You know, are you trying to use three day or you trying to do an M&A, trying to exit? So you know all these. You know really big, hairy, audacious goals that that you're aiming at and you know, even encouraged to pursue at all costs. So encouraged by investors and encouraged by your own staff, like they want to see. That you know you would push through and give it your all for the sake of the vision, because you know it's. It's probably a worthy vision.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 27:12

But you know the reality is, if you win and you're by yourself, that's not a win. So there is the results that are obviously critical and what you promise to do, but then there's the relationships. So are you taking those into consideration as you stumble aggressively and with your best of will towards your outcome of greatness? So the place that I start is the relationship with yourself. So, are you respecting yourself? Do you know yourself? Do you know the basics in biology?

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 27:58

So I think about my training is largely in evolutionary biology, molecular biology, biochemistry. There are just certain first principles that we've got to get in order right away. So I should back up and say the Iris operating system is designed for called change makers, creators, effectively people who want to do good in the world, and I mostly seem to be attracting people working in health technology, but I don't exclusively work with health technology entrepreneurs, just like. That's where I've been, that's what I understand, that's who I seem to attract, and it tends to be founders, let's say ages like late 20s to 50s Seems to be the demographic founders reaching out and having success. So it's a three step system designed to help creators manage their energy and integrate their passion with their relationship. So three step there's the biology, there's the mindset and then there's the performance planning. So the biology leverages, hey, 4.2 billion years of evolution. You're just not gonna get away from it. So let's accept certain things in terms of a hard reality. You're not gonna get away from running away from sleep, for example.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 29:27

So as much as you can tell yourself you can work four hours and be productive, it's like, yeah, I mean, it's not sustainable. But what is sustainable is, if you actually look across how energy is regulated throughout the day, there are very discrete patterns that are wave like and that you can track. And then I have tracked in my big quantified self days in terms of whether you're maximum, low and minimal call it peaks for heart rate variability, which basically correlates well with your ability to be on your feet, creative and productive. So it's really about defining where are the entrepreneurs' peaks there's usually a double peak and then recognizing the troughs and putting the appropriate activities in the appropriate buckets. And when you do that in a day, you start to do that seven days a week. You start to do that four weeks a month, you start to do that 12 weeks a year. All of a sudden, you don't even realize that it's possible to do exponentially more work than you were doing before in a way that honors your biology. So that's really step one is bringing the awareness to that, getting founders recharged right away. So generally when founders come to me, they'll say I feel like I'm not as smart as I was, I'm tired all the time, my body's falling apart. My friends don't like me anymore. I'm having all this conflict with my staff and there's a lot of results that we can get within one to three weeks just in terms of focusing on some first principles in biology. And then, if you want the really sustained energy release, let's say that's where you get it into the mindset and this comes back more to so we've got biology then built on biology, or part of biology, is the psychology, and the fact is that and founders know this already it's that all things are created twice.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 31:31

So founders are generally visionaries, so they have an idea of what it is that they want, and that's the first creation. Is that vision? And then the second creation is well, it's doing it so, and founders often do that well for their business, and but the huge opportunity here is that they can actually do it for their entire life. So what I help them do is spend that time on that first creation. Who will you be in three years? And if you wanted to make it really urgent and maybe a little more of it, it's like what do you want people to say about you at your funeral? Right, because life is not permanent. I know we have a limited amount of time and so, in as much as you're working on this goal, let's ask ourselves who are we becoming?

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 32:23

And when you start to get into that dialogue and it probably sounds really intuitive and obvious, but it's just amazing how rare it is to get the time to actually think those things through, so being able to hold that space for a founder and get them to the crux of what it is that is inducing all this greatness from them and who they want to be and what mark they really want to leave on the world. Once you have that and you assign some anchor points associated with that like non-negotiable throughout your week, it's like, hey, I want to be a good dad. So here's what I know is that every morning, my wife and my daughter we have breakfast together in a certain way and we go for a walk, and that 45 minutes is sacred and is non-negotiable. And right there everything starts to kind of fall around that. So there are things like that that every person has that are non-negotiable. And then we kind of start to pepper those non-negotiable things into the framework of a week, a month, a year and considering that in the context of your vision for yourself three years out.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 33:39

Then we move into the human performance planning, and so what I use in that regard is periodization processes developed by Olympic coaches. So lucky for me, and when I worked with all these athletes, looking into their DNA, I, like I said, I interface with tens of thousands of athletes. I got to speak with hundreds of thousands of coaches, right, and actually understand how it is that these forces are unleashed from human beings. And the truth is actually I've been coaching high performers for well over 20 years, first athletes and now entrepreneurs. So it's really about helping, like the Iris operating system is about helping entrepreneurs discover the answers that are already inside them through this three step framework biology, mindset and performance planning.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 34:36

And, yeah, that has been one of the, that is one of the most, you know, instantly rewarding aspects of what I do. So if the DNA has a service, I mean that's amazing because I know we're already seeing with Cpagingcom, we're impacting hundreds of thousands, millions of people's lives. But the Iris operating system side of things is well, I get to do the one on one every day and help well founders who, again their own initiatives are helping tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people. So, yeah, really helping those people. You know, stay at optimum human potential. You know higher optimum human potential for longer is really what it's all about, right? So think about any superhero role model that you admire and wow, imagine if they had an extra 10 years of lifespan and performance longevity. So that's really what. I'm fired up a bit with Iris operating system.

Di: 35:46

I love it. I love it because the drawing the parallel between the sports athlete and really just the high achiever is. I think that's exactly on point and I think that's also how I specifically approach my workouts and how I train. You know, I have an online fitness community and I think that's actually what drives the way I speak, the way I coach, also in the studio, and I really it speaks to me in volumes.

Di: 36:34

So I love that and I love the parallel and what you're doing. What kind of challenges have you encountered in promoting the adoption of the DNA as a service and, if there are any, and I'm curious to know how you have addressed the challenges- yeah, I think that.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 37:07

I mean I think back to my own personal journey previously with the athletics. There there was a lot of criticism around. You know DNA and human performance and so far as it's too early to use, you know to predict these things. Then there's the challenge of like oh well, are you saying there are good genes and bad genes? Well, that's eugenics, and you know. Then, of course, there's the data privacy and security side of things.

Di: 37:46

Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 37:47

So well, I break those down. So so are we, are we? Let's see them in reverse. So privacy and security you know that is there's, you know there's my way of doing things and and then there's, then there's reality, right? So there are various controls, like, like you know, the HIPAA controls, that and HIPAA compliance, that companies that I had used previously to you know, independently audit to ensure that my security practices were up to snuff. You know, at the level above financial security and banks.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 38:34

So, like health, information and privacy protection is basically what we're talking about. So making sure that you're surrounded with people who know the technical solutions for that, and then also people who know and understand the consequences of not being compliant. So that that is you know, first and foremost, on your mandate. It's like you can't, can't offer a service to you know athletes and you know their DNA analysis and then have that be, you know, hacked by people who are writing their contracts, for example, and you know might choose to use that information against them. So that was a very real concern and the way that I circled and navigated that was as I just described is having people who know that area and their expertise is, you know, far better than mine in that regard is, and, having that critical part of my team, there were.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 39:35

So there are three things that I said that there was right the eugenics aspect of it, good genes and bad genes, that's. I mean, that's been a problem since humanity. You know it's anything that is not ourselves or something that is looks different, is, you know, from an evolutionary perspective, is perceived as the threat and nowadays it's potentially, you know, it's thought of as bad. So you know, if there is that kind of residual mind virus, let's say, but you know, at a deeper level of, are there good genes and are there bad genes? And and it, you know, I don't think anybody would say that Huntington's disease is good, right, like I don't think that anybody would volunteer for that.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 40:26

But I think when we start to get into things like eye color and intelligence and you know all these traits that are, you know that come together in very complex ways and in their utility for, let's say, the good of humanity, I mean it's, it is really hard to say. You know. So say, for example, you wanted a super intelligent Humanity. Let's say, well, how do you, how do you define intelligence? First of all, while we're talking about logic structure. There might be a time when you know we need logic, but there might be other times where you need, you know, highly empathetic people, right? So? So I think the way forward is actually, you know, it's, it's Stephen J Google who has always said it best as far as I can tell is is that he's an evolutionary biologist.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 41:21

He wrote Biology is irreducible. Essence is variation. So variation is biology, irreducible essence. And in our individual power comes from knowing where we fall on the variation, right, and and, by the way, it's like, well, variation in, in, in what respect? Well, some of the things that we talked about before, variation in terms of how I respond to drug, to training I've already talked to this kind of training. Compared to that kind of training, well, my, my music preferences, potentially, but I don't know that those things can be unequivocally defined as good or bad, right. So I think there's a real philosophical conversation that we as a humanity need to have, and so I, you know, I think the solution for that is teaching genomics when you know, as soon as kids can understand it, you know, like, how, how did I come to be? You know, we don't, you don't need to wait for high school to start teaching genetics and genomics. So I think that's that's the solution there is is is education earlier around that idea that the irreducible essence of biology is variation.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 42:38

And then the third thing was well, it's too early. And well, you can say that for just about anything, right? So you might say that about neuroscience, you might say that about exercise, physiology. I mean, I mean, we, we are learning so much, more, more and more every day, and, and I think now, with AI models, you know, compounding our, you know that accelerated rate of discovery, you know I'm I'm excited about what we're going to see between now and, say, 2030.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 43:09

And criticism was well, you know, at least as it relates to human performance, is like, well, we don't know enough for for that to be, to be, you know, essentially sold. And it says well, define enough, right? Because if I know that I have all these vulnerabilities in terms of how I make collagen, like that information can help me with, with being more proactive about recovery. I mean, even even if it, even if it wasn't true, which which it is true, you know just that behavior is not bad. You know more regenerative type of work for athletes.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 43:58

So I think that the criticism that genomics came into in so far as being too early. You know is is one that it will be in for a long time, because, you know, frankly, it's really only been in the last two or three years that people are really starting to get the utility from genomics or for and rule from DNA insights specifically, and I think that probably has a lot to do with just COVID-19 and people prioritizing health and looking at health differently, and and and, and you know more citizen scientists and do it yourself, you know advocates for their own health, but that's that's not necessarily the solution that scales. It's great if you have the luxury to spend time getting to know yourself, but you know what about the single mom, you know who doesn't have that time? Doesn't she stand to benefit from knowing that? Well, her daughter's lactose intolerant? Absolutely, you know so. So those are, those are the things that that are ahead of us. Is it's incomplete information, but I think it's good enough, incomplete information.

Di: 45:13

So right, and why not use information that we do have in order to help and better our own lives and others? Absolutely so. That takes me right into one more question of what role do you see education and public awareness playing in the advancement of DNA as a service and its integration into society, because you started touching on that in the previous question.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 45:59

Yeah, you know, it's almost like he wrote these questions and sent them to me before.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 46:10

But, yeah, no, I think it's a good flow that we've got to and it's a that's an interesting one. So what we're seeing, what I'm seeing now, is that there are, you know, all these initiatives that are happening like basically, there's, there's, you know, I see a lot of like collaborations with pharmaceutical companies independent, you know, biotech companies and you know with with academia in there as well, and this is oftentimes overseen or sponsored by government grants. So you know there, while the example like 23 and me, for example, you you may or you may not know that you know the real business model behind 23 and me is getting enough information about DNA in the context of you know the environment, so you know your phenotype, let's say so, if you're 23 and me user, you fill out your surveys and every time you do that, you're giving 23 and me incredible predictive power around how we might go about developing therapeutics to your Parkinson's disease.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 47:23

It's not a bad thing, you know, I think, where in some instances, I do believe, they've gotten some NIH funding and they've done some peer reviewed journaling and they have had partnerships with Pfizer, I think, in the past. So so that's a great example of 23 media has proven the business model and and in so far as, hey, it's economically viable to do this research because, well, we're going to, we're going to create therapeutics, we're going to cure disease, we're going to take strain off Public health, you know, to X trillion dollar crisis globally, 10 plus, I think, the last check. So it makes good sense to do it. I think that in today's climate around privacy, data security, that what we were speaking around there a few minutes ago Access to information, misinformation, trust, like, do we do we trust our governments, like those are, all you know, real issues to contend with in terms of public perception. As it relates to how your most personal data is being handled, ie your DNA and you know, I kind of I kind of, you know struggle with that. Like my most personal data, my DNA, well, yeah, but your behavioral data is is the indication of how you're expressing that data right. Those two things go hand in hand. So the reality is is that you know, if you're on social media, you're on the internet, you use, you know any of these platforms Google, facebook, whatever there's you've already been profiled, so to speak. So the cat's kind of out of the bag. And and the genomics is just, you know, that's the extra layer to like really understand our biology. As a scientist, I'm like, wow, that's really exciting, you know. But it's kind of like you know physicists who worked on splitting the atom, or like this is really exciting.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 49:30

But you got to think. You got to think about the unintended. So, yes, it's the benefits that are driving us forward, for sure, for sure, we've got to, you know, pursue truth, pursue. You, use the scientific method to pursue truth. But we've also got to, in parallel, have, you know, open discussion around. Well, what are the unintended consequences of doing this? And you know, one of the things that has come up is, well, you know, discrimination based on genetics. You know health insurance consequences, not getting a job. So then get into genetic engineering. Like, like these, these things aren't impossibilities If you start to think 20, 30, 50, 100 years from now. That's, that's really is what do we want our species to look like 100 years from now? 1000 years.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 50:19

Right, I think you know long term is is is it can be dangerous, but it can also be orienting, right, you know. So if you think too far into the future, well, everything so seems so far away as it's a problem not worth the dressing right now. But you know, ultimately we are kind of taking steps towards, towards that future. So what do we want our species to look like 1000 years from now?

Di: 50:50

Absolutely. It's a very relevant question in my opinion yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 50:55

So I mean, we have documentation of our species for that period of time, right? So we've seen. You know certain things, certain cycles of you know human action and consequence. You know as it relates to, you know, social unrest and wars and economic crisis and all these things. We've never had the access to the amount of information we have access to today, nor have we had the ability to act on it in terms of like, literally splicing our genomes. So, like there, there's some pretty crazy things that you can, you can start to think about in terms of the like, genes, genes splicing or gene editing and, by the way, mrna vaccines is that's just a tip of the iceberg, right?

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 51:43

so there's there's in theory, all kinds of you know really interesting things that humans might do to accelerate evolution and adaptation with these, with these molecular tools, so to speak. So so I think open conversation around that is critical. I mean, it's just like, well, you know how we've seen the same kind of you know response from people like Elon Musk in terms of artificial intelligence. It's like well, we need to slow down before we speed up because, like I don't know, is it AI, that thing that's evil, or is it just AI in the hands of you know amateurs that's dangerous or evil or potentially evil, right? So I think there's a lot of discussion that needs to happen sooner rather than later, and particularly the younger generation, and weighing in and, you know, developing you know principles and values around again what what humanity ought to be a thousand years from now.

Di: 52:57

So many things that you have just said hit home for me. On on, it would kind of circling back to how we started, where I said I'm this is so refreshing to like just talk to you about this stuff and in this space that I'm in personally and yeah, I think the way we are educating the younger generation is is very, very important. I think what you're saying about open discussion and absolutely the universities have an obligation to talk about responsibility, ethics, did you, I wanted to ask you, do you? Did you double major in philosophy and in and by biology?

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 53:55

Yeah, well, you know what I? It's funny, when I started my undergrad I was this close to doing a classics degree. So I, I, I minored in philosophy. I double majored in molecular biology and biology and I minored in philosophy, but philosophy is like it's like something you can never turn off right.

Di: 54:17

So it's like that's.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 54:19

That's the stuff that you know I'm constantly reading on now. You know, like ethics and you know what, what is our moral code, moral compass, and you know what is personal responsibility, like those are. Those are, those are profound questions, especially as a father. Like how are you, you know, changing those things for the next generation? So so, yeah, answer your question, yeah, so yeah.

Di: 54:46

So, on that note, I feel like this is we're. We're leaving our listeners with with a question and, hopefully, with a sense of responsibility, and I thank you so much for coming on and talking about all this. You touched on very deep issues. I love the connection between biology and philosophy because it showed up so often in our discussion just now. And, yeah, keep doing what you're doing, and I'm going to ask you to come on to the show like another 500 times so we can keep keep this discussion going.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 55:39

Well, I would, I would love that, and you know, the interesting thing is, you know, to your your point around education and continuing education, actually, something I'm launching next year is a podcast actually around those three pillars of biology, mindset and performance planning, because anything that I'm speaking about is something that I've learned from somebody else, and so one of the things that always bothered me as an academic, for example, is, you know, you get all this government-issued research funding and you get to do your cool science and you know, necessarily, you're not necessarily accountable in terms of, like, how that's paid back to to well for me and Canadian citizens.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 56:27

So, but you know, the interesting thing is, the more academics I talk to is the more they they want to. They do want to talk about it, they do want a chance to talk about their research. So I'm, you know, essentially engaged a you know, a lineup of around 100 or so subject matter experts that I've classified into those buckets biology, mindset, performance just to kind of dialogue around those subjects and bring a lot of these cutting edge insights that might normally take 10 years to get to the mainstream. You know, bring them to the mainstream. Beautiful, yeah, yeah.

Di: 57:06

Love it, love it.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 57:08

Yeah, awesome so.

Di: 57:10

Amazing. So I'm gonna yeah, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a listener, that's for sure. Thank you All right. So, thank you, dr Koenig. Thank you so much, and where you are, it's the middle of the day, right.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 57:28

It is yes Okay.

Di: 57:30

So enjoy the rest of your day. And, oh and before I do, you have Instagram.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 57:37

Do you know what I don't I have? You can find me on LinkedIn, so just Jeremy Koenig.

Di: 57:44

That's yeah, that's fine. It's just that I have a large following on Instagram, so when I post, I post there, but I will also. I will also post on LinkedIn.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 57:56

Cool yeah, and the podcast website will be Dr Jeremy Koenigcom.

Di: 58:03

Oh, that is that already. Is that already live? The website itself.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 58:12

It's not live yet, but it will be in, you know, next six weeks.

Di: 58:16

Oh, okay, so you know what? When it is, please send me the link so I can link it to the show notes.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 58:23

We'll do yeah, for sure.

Di: 58:25

Okay, awesome, awesome.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig: 58:26

Great.

Di: 58:27

All right, thank you. Thank you. All right, thank you.