Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais

A letter landed on Masud Husain’s desk about a man in his thirties who had stopped doing anything at all.
Dr. Masud Husain is a clinical neurologist, neuroscientist, and Professor of Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Brain and author of Our Brains, Our Selves, winner of the 2025 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize.
The letter was about a man named David who had been highly productive, worked in finance, and was charming company. Then he lost his job, stopped showering, and could not be bothered to claim the benefits that would have covered his rent. Asked why he no longer listened to music, he said it would take five minutes to connect the cables.
David was not depressed. He had suffered two tiny strokes in the basal ganglia, structures deep in the brain that help link motivational cues to action. Nothing was worth the effort to him anymore.
After an initial treatment failed, Masud’s team tried another drug that acts on the dopamine system. Three months later David came back with a haircut, a suit, a new job, and a new girlfriend.
Addiction researchers had arrived at that same circuit from the other direction: Masud says it is the circuit hijacked by almost every drug of addiction. He and Mike get into what that overlap means about the science of motivation, why apathy and depression are different conditions, why there are more than 200 causes of dementia and what that means for prevention, and whether there is a self to be found in the brain at all.
This is a conversation for anyone who has decided to do something and then not done it. Masud frames motivation as a calculation of whether the reward is worth the effort, and the lever most of us have is the size of the effort.
After thirty years of seeing patients, the thing Masud says he has learned is that the self is not set in stone. You can change.
Enjoy the conversation.
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Links & Resources:
Dr. Masud Husain’s Website: masudhusain.org
Dr. Masud Husain’s Books: Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist’s Patients Taught Him About the Brain, Oxford Textbook of Cognitive Neurology and Dementia (co-editor)
Dr. Masud Husain’s Journal: Brain, where he is Editor-in-Chief
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What moral code do we need when our tools can reshape intelligence and biology itself?
Jamie Metzl is a technology and healthcare futurist and geopolitical expert, founder and chair of OneShared.World, and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He has served on the U.S. National Security Council and with the United Nations in Cambodia, and he is the author of Hacking Darwin, Superconvergence, and his newest book, The AI Ten Commandments.
The book began as a question Jamie put to a popular AI model, asking what ten principles, drawn from all of recorded human history, would produce the most peace and human flourishing. What came back pulled from traditions he already knew and others he had never encountered.
Jamie and Mike get into what it takes to be a participant in this rather than a bystander, why Jamie thinks the moment belongs to all of us rather than to a handful of technologists and billionaires, and what he would keep from the original Ten Commandments.
Mike’s push is that principles on their own do not necessarily hold. Most of us sign off on them easily. What happens to them in a high stress, consequential environment is the harder question.
Jamie says technology is what gets us to this conversation, and the conversation is about values. The unsexy word for the rest of it, he says, is governance, and it starts with governance of the self.
Enjoy the conversation.

Links & Resources
Jamie Metzl’s Website: jamiemetzl.com
Jamie Metzl’s Books: The AI Ten Commandments: A New Moral Code for Humanity, Superconvergence, Hacking Darwin, Eternal Sonata
OneShared.World, where Jamie is founder and chair
Atlantic Council, where Jamie is a Senior Fellow: atlanticcouncil.org/expert/jamie-metzl
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Tamsen Fadal was 47 and anchoring the evening news when the first hot flash hit.
She got off the set and lay down on the bathroom floor. No one had prepared her well for any of this. The answer, when it finally came, was a short note from her doctor in her patient portal with four words: "In menopause, any questions?"
Tamsen Fadal is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, executive producer of the PBS documentary The M Factor and The M Factor 2, and New York Times bestselling author of How to Menopause. She spent thirty years in television news before turning to the thing nobody had explained to her.
Tamsen and Mike get into what menopause actually is, how its symptoms can resemble anxiety or depression, and what changed after the 2002 hormone study.
This is a conversation for men as much as for women. Every man is a partner, colleague, son, or father to someone moving through this. Tamsen’s line is that men don’t have to go through it, but they do have to understand it.
Tamsen calls what comes after menopause “the next 30.” Her point is to decide what you want those years to look like, and start building toward them now.
Enjoy the conversation.
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Links & Resources:
Tamsen Fadal’s Website: tamsenfadal.com
Tamsen Fadal’s Books: How to Menopause: Take Charge of Your Health, Reclaim Your Life, and Feel Even Better than Before, The New Single, Why Hasn’t He Proposed?, Why Hasn’t He Called?
Tamsen Fadal’s Documentaries: The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause and The (M) Factor 2: Before the Pause, both on PBS
Tamsen Fadal’s Podcast: The Tamsen Show
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What are the things we can do today to help minimize our chances of developing dementia as we age?
Dr. Tommy Wood is a physician and neuroscientist, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience at the University of Washington, and author of The Stimulated Mind.
The book takes on a belief many of us still hold, that the adult brain becomes fixed at an early age and then declines from there. Tommy traces that idea back to 1906 and to the words of a Nobel laureate. Then he unpacks what the latest research and data say, and it’s not what you might think.
This is a conversation about a tough subject, mental decline and dementia. Many of us have been touched by this in our own families, and what Tommy has to say gives all of us hope that we have more agency than we think when it comes to this part of our health.
Tommy and Mike get into the 14 modifiable risk factors named by the Lancet Commission, why midlife is when risk starts to diverge, and the three buckets Tommy sorts everything into: stimulus, supply, and support. Mike talks about his grandfather, who had vascular dementia and covered for it so well that the family did not see it for years.
Tommy tells us that “At 70 years old now, you are less likely to be diagnosed with dementia than any other time in history.” The trajectory is not fixed, but there’s a lot more work to be done.
Enjoy the conversation.
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Links & Resources
Dr. Tommy Wood’s Website: drtommywood.com
Dr. Tommy Wood’s Book: The Stimulated Mind: Future-Proof Your Brain from Dementia and Stay Sharp at Any Age
BetterBrain, where Tommy is Chief Science Officer: betterbrain.com
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Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!
Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/
Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter
Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindset
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This is a conversation about habits, the ones you want to build and the ones you want to get rid of.
Jon Gordon has written more than 30 books on leadership, habits and mindset, including numerous bestsellers.
Jon's most recent book is titled The Power of Positive Habits, and it tackles a critical issue so many of us face: how do I break the habits that no longer serve me, and how do I build ones that will help me flourish?
Jon and Mike discuss the inward reflections that have helped them break the patterns that have held them back. Jon talks about how he needed to heal wounds from his childhood before he could really break his most challenging habits. The path he describes is not easy, but one well worth considering.
This is a conversation about self-awareness, self-challenge, and how to build practical habits, like gratitude, visualization, and something Jon calls the habit before the habit.
"You are your habits," Jon says, and the best part is you can choose new ones.
Enjoy the conversation.
Links & Resources
Learn more about Jon here: https://jongordon.com/
Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery
Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!
Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/
Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter
Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindset
Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X
Jon Gordon’s Books: The Power of Positive Habits, The Energy Bus, The Power of Positive Leadership, The Power of a Positive Team, The One Truth, The Coffee Bean, and The Hard Hat

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