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Dr. Martin Picard

lines on the record: 185
first: 2026-07-02
most recent: 2026-07-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The best way to think about this, I think, is as a social collective, right? Every cell in this organism cares about the same thing, which is preserving the life and the health of the whole being. So every cell in this body is in a social contract with every other cell. A cancer cell basically gets out of this agreement and says, no, no, I'm going to fare for myself. I'm going to take all the energy I can and I'm going to make more of myself and it goes into bacterial mode. That happens sometimes because of mutations and it seems like there are other causes of this like for example hyperglycemia.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The cancer community used to think that the main driver for cancer was genetic mutations, but there's an emerging perspective that changes in metabolism, changes in the way electrons flow through this energetic circuitry through the mitochondria can actually drive the instance of a new cancer cell. And then when a cell becomes cancerous, ditches its mitochondria, it goes back to this selfish state, and then it makes more of itself.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's the cancer calling for more energy. So energy resistance is the product of two things is how much energy is being demanded, right? Like how much power is being deployed in the tumor, for example, or in the working muscle? And then how much energy can flow through the system? That's like the equivalent of current in an electrical system. So if there's a lot of demand, right, a lot of power is being generated or a lot of activity is happening like in a cancer cell, but there's not enough flow to support that activity, then that increases resistance.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, then the orgasm on the tumor will try to make more blood vessels around it. It's called angiogenesis. So it's like the cancer cell trying to decrease energy resistance. Bring me more oxygen.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Social collective does in the body. What cancer cells do is they say, I'm not going to use my mitochondria, even if there's oxygen, even if my mitochondria can respire. And by doing this, it seems like cancer cells revert back to this ancestral cell, right? That just cares about itself.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's a very good chance if you look at the biology of cancer and what scientists call the hallmarks of cancer, there's like a 10 item flywheel of these are the core features of cancer. All of those features have some relationship, some very direct with increased energy resistance. So if energy can't flow smoothly and a cell is burning too much energy and it doesn't flow energy through the mitochondria, which is what cancer cells do, cancer cells ditch their mitochondria and they revert back to this ancestral cell that didn't have mitochondria. It was anaerobic. It was pitting out lactate. And we don't really know why cells do this. It's called the Warburg effect. And the Warburg effect is when a cell in the presence of oxygen, right? If it wanted, it could use oxygen flow electrons through mitochondria and transform energy and live a nice social life like every cell in this.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Or if the mitochondria are impaired, right? And they can't flow energy, then the energy is kind of stuck. It faces greater constraints. It wants to go in that direction, but then there's a barrier and then another barrier, another barrier. It's like water flowing, right? Nice and smooth. And then there's like a dam, right? And if the dam has zero openings, right, then the water accumulates and then there's high pressure. And then at some point the water accumulates and ends up flooding the landscape and then damaging things. So it's a bit like the same thing. Now you open floodgates on the dam, then you can use that energy to make electricity, for example, you use the movement of the water to transform this into electricity. That's basically what the mitochondria do. And if you move and you're physically active, now the flow of energy through the mitochondria can transform into work.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The clearest is what we call insulin resistance or diabetes. Diabetes affects millions in the world. Fundamentally, diabetes is a disease of energy resistance. So if the resistance is too high, Because you have too much energy pushed onto the system.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here we are, yeah, and that led to bodies with organs. The liver feeds the rest of the body, the heart keeps things flowing, the brain kind of computes and plans. So that's division of labor. And it started with the mitochondria.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Life and they're like, whoo, we could work together. How about you become a cell that gets energy, right? And I become a cell that moves, right? So then you're the gut and I'm going to be the muscle. And then together, those two cells can do a lot more, right?”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the story goes that this basically gave a whole bunch more energy to the big cell. That's one perspective. And then with more energy, what can you do? You can evolve more complexity. The version I favor based on the evidence we have is that when mitochondria came in and then there was this new structure, this symbiotic relationship, mitochondria basically gave the ability of the cell to perceive the environment in a different way and to compute information in a different way. So maybe the coming of mitochondria into this big cell made the big cell social because before this event, most of the evidence says that cells were asocial. They were little bacteria foraging for themselves and kind of operating from a very selfish perspective, just trying to replicate, you know, trying to survive when mitochondria came in, it gave those cells a different view.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the story is about 1.5 billion years ago, that there was two different types of bacteria. One type was able to use oxygen to transform energy, right? So it could fuel a lot oxygen and other food substrates. The other type could not. It was anaerobic. And the anaerobic bacterium was probably a little bigger and it had like a few more genes. And it could only ferment its food and kind of fermenting the food, spitting out like lactate or like yeast does. And what happened is the big one either engulfed the small one or maybe the small one kind of infiltrated, colonized the big one.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a whole collective, and they're talking to each other, kind of monitoring what's happening not only inside the cell, but outside the cell. So on the surface of mitochondria, all along, there are little receptors for all sorts of signals that tells this mitochondria, is there enough energy? Are we running out of energy? Is there a stress hormone here? Should we be getting ready for something dangerous? So mitochondria like a little distributed brain, right? So they're like the intracellular brain.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then flows electrons So, when you get out of breath, it's because of mitochondria or using the oxygen and calling for more oxygen. What we've been discovering is that mitochondria do a lot more than just making ATP. They use their energized state to produce signals, to receive information, and then to produce signals.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mitochondria Un, O N is a singular mitochondria is plural. So this is a mitochondria N and there's about a thousand of these in each of your cells. And there's about 5 trillion cells in your body that have a nucleus and that have these beautiful mitochondria. And what you see here, these little wings, these are called Christi. And the Christi is where the food you eat end up and where the oxygen you breathe end up as well. So this is where the electrons are flowing. There's like little electrical circuits here. And as the electrons are flowing, the mitochondria become charged like little batteries. So effectively a mitochondria like this has all of these sites of oxygen consumption and food consumption and then that gets transformed into a little charge battery. And once the battery is charged, the mitochondria can use that charge to make ATP at anosine triphosphate, which is kind of the cellular energy currency. If a cell wants to contract, right, a muscle cell wants to contract in the gym, it needs ATP. So it calls upon the mitochondria. I need ATP, and then the mitochondria gets to work.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the green leaf basically breaks or stops the photon in its path. So it offers a constraint. It offers resistance. So when light energy faces resistance, now it can be converted. And that's the basis of making food. That's how nature makes food. It crystallizes energy from sunlight into molecules. Life, you know, plants crystallize light energy into carbohydrates. And then those are transformed into the different kinds of food that we eat. We need resistance for energy to transform into something meaningful.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you never faced any challenge, any stress in your life, then you would just remain as is, right? And it would be very boring. And from first principles physics, like we know this to be true at a number of levels, but for example, the sun, this beautiful nuclear reactor in the sky, shoots energy, right, as photons. So light is a form of energy. And as long as light, you know, just goes and photons travels in outer space, photon will remain photon. Light energy will remain light energy until that light energy hits a green leaf.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The third one is life is resistance. In order to be alive, in order to grow, to learn, to transform, right, change your views, you need resistance to go through some resistance. You need energy to go through some resistance. If energy just flows and there's no zero resistance, then there's no possible transformation. So if life was always easy.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cells, those signals we call inflammation cytokines So there's a fixed energy budget that you have to deal with. And over time, the organism does a lot of finessing and adapting to kind of try to preserve this energy budget.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a reframe that's kind of a bigger picture mindset shift that we need to, and scientists struggle with. So number one is you are the energy that flows and transforms through this body. Number two is there's a fixed energy budget, right? All of us have a fairly fixed energy budget to deal with. And for example, if you want to have more energy to do more podcasts, to write more articles, to be more creative, the solution is not eating more because there's this fixed energy budget. And if you overload the system, you feed it too much food, especially too much sugar. It's really hard on the system. And then the system like an electrical system, you jack up the voltage, right? And then the system starts to overheat. So inflammation is this overheating. There's too much energy in the system, or the cells are burning too much energy and they need to kind of tell.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you'd be a dead body. The difference between a dead body, a cadaver, and a living thinking, feeling conscious person who cares is the flow of energy. You get so indoctrinated in this worldview that the only thing that's real is the physical stuff. And the genes that you got from your parents and the body, the physical body, and that's the real stuff. What you can't see with your eyes, not real.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You, Stephen. This expression now that I am getting to experience. Thank you. This expression is an expression of the flow of energy. If there was no energy flowing through your body, through your heart, through your brain, like you wouldn't be, right? You'd be a cadaver. And we'd say, Stephen is gone. Dead buddy.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there are three things that are really foundational to how energy works in the human body. One is that you are the energy that's flowing through this body.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anyone who cares about their energy, right? About having enough energy to do what they really care about. We all care about different things. We're all gifted and talented for different things. Everyone has this unique authentic self that wants to come out. The only way for this to come out and the only way for a person to flourish is through energy. If there's no energy flowing through your body, you're dead, right? And if the energy doesn't flow efficiently, right, and smoothly through you as an organism, then life feels hard. Like you're not at your best, you feel tired, and you feel like maybe it's not worth it. You know, when you're sick and your immune system is like draining all of your energy, it's really hard to be optimistic. And it's hard to be a good person. And it's hard to be a good dad”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's that vital flow of energy, electrons flowing towards oxygen that allows us to be alive. And mitochondria do this. And then as they do this, they transform energy from food, biochemistry, into electricity and into signals and into heat.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then I was starting to understand that mitochondria do more than just transforming energy. What they're known for is they take the food you eat and then they take the oxygen that you breathe in. And then those two things, the food, the oxygen, converge inside the mitochondria. And then something really special happens. The electrons that are stuck on food that were stuck together in a green leaf somewhere, right, photosynthesis, what your mitochondria do is they kind of unpack this and they rip off the electrons one by one and then they flow them like an electrical circuit. And that happens in the 5,000 trillion mitochondria that are in your body. And then when the electrons flow, they need to flow towards something, just like an electrical circuit. Electrons flow from one pole of the battery to the negative, to the other pole of the battery. And that circuit is closed in the mitochondria. So the electrons from the food you eat flow towards oxygen that you breathe, and then it becomes water.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I took this video in England, a Newcastle upon Tyne in the north of England with my Geordie friends, the medical school there. I was a graduate student and went there for kind of an exchange. And this is the first time I saw mitochondria moving. I saw like the inner life of our cells. And when I saw this, something struck me as like, oh my God, I'm able to see this, right? And to see living mitochondria because of the mitochondria inside of me. The energy that's flowing through my mitochondria in my eye, right? That's allowing me to perceive to see this. Mitochondria made multicellular life possible. They made our bodies possible. And we might just be a vehicle for mitochondria to kind of propagate and keep on living. So when I saw this, I was like, this is mitochondria looking at mitochondria.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the experience. So I've led a research group at Columbia University for 10 years and founded an institute to really build the systems and technologies to help people grow, heal, and transform.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm a regular guy who with lived experiences who's gone through some tough things that have taught me lessons and have gone through wonderful things that have made me feel like life is really special and precious. And then I became a scientist. And as I learned the tools of science, I started to see and I discovered mitochondria. I thought this is an approach to start to bridge what's true about the human experience that we know from first experience empirically. And we know to be real, not because some white coat wearing doctor or scientist said, yes, energy is real. It's in your mitochondria. We know it to be real from first experience, right? Because we feel it. And then what science is telling us about how things work in our bodies, right? And about how health and disease and where diseases come from. So I had these questions. So I became a scientist to bridge those domains of existence.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a really tough place to be when you wake up repeatedly and you don't feel like you have the capacity, the energy to be in the world. It's a really tough place to be.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are energy. Literally, are the energy that's flowing through the body And that sounds a little woo if you don't have context. And that's, I think, something that we're just starting to have the right scientific framework to understand, to understand ourselves from first principles as energetic processes.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We think there's increased energy resistance and cancer than Alzheimer's. Like, fundamentally, diabetes is a disease of energy resistance.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, first energy is real, and it's the difference between feeling like you can change the world or feeling completely drained. And a lot of people live on that end of the spectrum. And it's because there's a finite energy budget with a hierarchy of energy needs in the body. For example, we did an experiment because wanted to know how much energy does it cost to worry about the future to ruminate about yesterday. And we found that the stress hormone increased energy expenditure by 60%, right? So it needs to steal energy from some of the things that keep you young. So it's not the stress that burns us down. It's the response to stress. And the third piece is this. Energy is in your mitochondria. And there's about 5,000 trillion mitochondria in your body. And so debate our body is possible and they can change how you feel.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, my research lab had the idea that if we could find what was happening in this person's life when this young hair become old and we could understand the mechanism of the aging process.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This says incontrovertible evidence that graying of hair is reversible and it can be pretty fast. There's more, so we all walk around with our biological history encoded in your hair. Like, for example, if you have marijuana six months ago, it's going to be in your hair.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT