#540: Harvard Polymath Noah Feldman — Deep Focus for Hyper-Productivity, Learning 10+ Languages, Predicting the Future with History, the Possibilities (and Limitations) of DAOs, Lessons from the Iraq Invasion, Designing the Supreme Court of Facebook, the Virtue of Scholarship, and the Wild Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The Tim Ferriss Show
Tim Ferriss: Bestselling Author, Human Guinea Pig
4.6 • 17.7K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2021
⏱️ 168 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Harvard Polymath Noah Feldman — Deep Focus for Hyper-Productivity, Learning 10+ Languages, Predicting the Future with History, the Possibilities (and Limitations) of DAOs, Lessons from the Iraq Invasion, Designing the Supreme Court of Facebook, the Virtue of Scholarship, and the Wild Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. | Brought to you by Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating, Athletic Greens all-in-one nutritional supplement, and Headspace easy-to-use app with guided meditations. More on all three below.
Noah Feldman (@NoahRFeldman) is a Harvard professor, ethical philosopher and advisor, public intellectual, religious scholar and historian, and author of 10 books, including his latest, The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America.
Noah is the founder of Ethical Compass, which helps clients like Facebook and eBay improve ethical decision-making by creating and implementing new governance solutions. Noah conceived and designed the Facebook Oversight Board and continues to advise Facebook on ethics and governance issues.
Feldman is host of the Deep Background podcast, a policy and public affairs columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, and a former contributing writer for The New York Times. He served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and subsequently advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of Iraq’s interim constitution.
He earned his A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard, finishing first in his class. Selected as a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a DPhil from Oxford University, writing his dissertation on Aristotle’s Ethics. He received his JD from Yale Law School and clerked for Justice David Souter of the US Supreme Court.
He is the author of 10 books, including Divided by God: America’s Church-State Problem — and What We Should Do About It; What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building; Cool War: The United States, China, and the Future of Global Competition; Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices; and The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President.
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This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep! Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Pro Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature.
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This episode is also brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually Athletic Greens, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.
Right now, Athletic Greens is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product.
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This episode is also brought to you by Headspace! Headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy-to-use app. Whatever the situation, Headspace can help you feel better. Overwhelmed? Headspace has a 3-minute SOS meditation for you. Need some help falling asleep? Headspace has wind-down sessions their members swear by. And for parents, Headspace even has morning meditations you can do with your kids. Headspace’s approach to mindfulness can reduce stress, improve sleep, boost focus, and increase your overall sense of well-being.
Go to Headspace.com/Tim for a FREE one-month trial with access to Headspace’s full library of meditations for every situation.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode is brought to you by 8th sleep. My god, am I in love with 8th sleep. |
| 0:04.7 | Good sleep is the ultimate game changer, more than 30% of American struggle sleep. |
| 0:09.9 | And I'm a member of that sad group. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, |
| 0:14.7 | and heat has always been my nemesis. I've suffered for decades, tossing and turning, |
| 0:19.5 | throwing blankets off, putting them back on, and repeating ad nauseam. But now, |
| 0:23.7 | I am falling asleep in record time faster than ever. Why? Because I'm using a simple device |
| 0:29.6 | called the Pod Pro Cover by 8th sleep. It's the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect |
| 0:35.9 | temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced, |
| 0:41.0 | but most user friendly solution on the market. I pulled all of you guys on social media about the |
| 0:47.6 | best tools for sleep enhancing sleep, and 8th sleep was by far and away the crowd favorite. |
| 0:55.5 | I mean, people were just raving fans of this. So I used it and here we are. Add the Pod Pro Cover |
| 1:01.0 | to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Fahrenheit or as hot as 110 |
| 1:06.5 | degrees Fahrenheit. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different |
| 1:11.0 | temperature. My girlfriend runs hot all the time. She doesn't need cooling. She loves the heat. |
| 1:16.4 | And we can have our own bespoke temperatures on either side, which is exactly what we're doing. |
| 1:21.8 | Now for me, and for many people, the result 8th sleep users fall asleep up to 32% faster, |
| 1:28.0 | reduce sleep interruptions by up to 40% and get more restful sleep overall. I can personally |
| 1:33.6 | attest to this because I track it in all sorts of ways. It's the total solution for enhanced |
| 1:37.8 | recovery, so you can take on the next day feeling refreshed. And now my dear listeners, |
| 1:42.6 | that's you guys. You can get $250 off of the Pod Pro Cover. That's a lot. Simply go to 8sleep.com |
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