No book is ever really the creation of one author in isolation. The ideas that I’ve put forward have emerged out of a lifetime of conversations with brilliant people as well as musings from every book I’ve ever picked up, radio programs my ears have digested and even half-remembered dreams. Saying that I’ve come up with something new would do a disservice to generations of seekers, biohackers, mystics and scientists who contributed something of their essence to my words. If anything, I’m merely a curator of thoughts, and my work perhaps lends a bit of idiosyncratic organization to a sprawling subject. That said, there are some specific people to whom I owe an immense debt of gratitude for helping see this through to completion.
Without a doubt, the person who invested the most in this book with her enthusiasm and gameness is my wife, Laura Krantz, who took time from her own journalism projects (including a must-listen-to-podcast called Wild Thing, about her year-long search for all things Bigfoot) to travel the world with me, float in tanks, sweat in saunas and try psychedelic substances against her better judgment. I love her so much.
And, of course, Wim Hof, the madman and mystic who, if I had never met him in a training camp in Poland, I would have never found my way down this path. I first saw the Wedge through his techniques, and he still has more to teach me.
More pragmatically, many people helped usher this manuscript from its most nascent stages into the version you hold in your hands today. My agent at Aevitas, Laura Nolan, has been with me for the majority of my career and has helped me manage New York’s bewildering market for words. She sold The Wedge to Mark Weinstein of Rodale, my editor for What Doesn’t Kill Us. Then, when Harmony acquired Rodale, the book came under Diana Baroni’s care. At some point, it was clear that I needed fresh eyes, and I was incredibly lucky to find Brad Wetzler, who edited the manuscript and brought it home.
As part of the journey to get this into print (and perhaps at considerable financial risk), I decided to leave the mainstream publishing world behind and bring the book out under my own small imprint, Foxtopus Ink.
Along the way I’ve been blessed to work with true publishing professionals. Robin Vuchnich designed the book cover. Sarah Pinneo reworked my website and marketing campaign. And Santosh MP produced an amazing book trailer.
Jake Holschuh took the vast majority of the photos in this book—following me down to Peru for an ayahuasca ceremony, throwing kettlebells in parks and mountain peaks around Colorado and diving into flotation tanks in downtown Denver. I’m looking forward to working with him more in the future.
Every chapter in this book relies on other people’s expertise. In no particular order, my thanks go out to everyone who shared their time, knowledge and passion with me as this all came together. Andrew Huberman let me peek into his mind at his VR lab at Stanford, and we very nearly went on a real-life dive with great white sharks together in Mexico. I’m still miffed that those plans got squandered by a hurricane over our dive site. Vaibhav Diwadkar and Otto Muzik, both professors at Wayne State University, helped hone my understanding of neural symbols and helped steer my ideas from an early stage. Brian Mackenzie took me through his new breathing protocols at his house in the Bay Area. Daniel Schmachtenberger met with me early on as the themes of The Wedge were starting to coalesce; we spent several late nights talking about many ideas that are now in this book, even though the chapter about his own work on nutropics did not make it in. Elizabeth “Elee” Lee, a Wim Hof Method instructor in Denver, watched over me as I turned purple in her class.
Kasper van der Meulen has been a friend and confidant since we met several years ago in Holland. I wish I had been able to include the chapter on chanting and sound that came together out of our discussions. Tone Floreal shocked my brain with electrodes while I considered writing about therapeutic electricity, and then introduced me to Michael Castrogiovanni, the creator of Kettlebell Partner Passing. Justin Feinstein at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research helped me understand interoception, and Sahib Khalsa, also at Laureate, walked me through his own innovative research. Paul Clift of the Samana Float Center in Denver gave me almost unlimited access to his tanks so that I could deepen my practice in the salty water.
Maris Zunda brought me to Latvia once my attempt to write about the Lakota sweat lodges hit a roadblock. He arranged the sauna with Ivita Picukane and Vilnis Lejnieks in the remote woods outside of Riga. I very much want to go back. Tim Steele was generous on Skype, taking me through the potato hack. Two anonymous therapists, who may or may not be in the Denver area, watched over Laura and me while we were on MDMA.
One of the most powerful experiences from this past year occurred in the depths of the Amazon jungle. I am grateful to have first dreamed of, and then met, Luz Maria Ampuero, also known as Luzma, who introduced me to her teacher, Tony. They have pure spirits. I highly recommend anyone who wants to explore their own shamanic journeys to look into Luzma’s organization, Nuna Ayni (found on the web at nunaayni.org.pe). I’m saddened to report that one of our guides into the jungle—the indomitable spirit named Celso, who kept the jungle from overtaking Trocha Amazonica—passed on a year after he showed me medicinal plants whose names I will never accurately remember.
Once I had a complete manuscript, my work was still far from done. I’ve been helped along the way by numerous readers, including Jason Lilly, Matthew Markert, Daniel Wright and Chris Walker, who all weighed in on how to make my prose better.
And also. . . Jeff Vahrenwald. Just because.