Finding Mastery: Conversations With Michael Gervais

This week’s conversation is with David Epstein.David is author of the New York Times bestseller The Sports Gene. He is a science writer and investigative reporter at ProPublica, and before that was a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, where he authored or co-authored a number of the magazine’s most highprofile pieces.Despite his success as a writer, David didn’t always know that was what he was meant to do.Prior to becoming a science writer, David was an 800-meter runner and University record holder at Columbia University, where he studied geology and astronomy. He lived and worked both on a seismic research vessel in the Pacific Ocean as well as in the Arctic as a science researcher.The trigger for David becoming an investigative reporter was the sudden collapse and death of a friend and teammate during a track competition. David was compelled to get to the bottom of what really happened that day and it led him on a much deeper journey: to understand the relationship between sport and gene.This conversatio