{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Alexander Cortes: broscience, health science and fertility","description":"On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Alexander Cortes. Cortes is a trainer, fitness influencer and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder, along with his wife, of Ferta, a company that aims to \u201coptimize your reproductive health and conceive naturally.\u201d Born and raised in California, Cortes began his career in the fitness industry as a personal trainer in 2010. Over the next few years he expanded his efforts online, writing about fitness and nutrition from a science-informed perspective. Cortes developed a following by offering practical advice on strength training, muscle building, and the psychological aspects of fitness to the interested general public, translating the wisdom-of-the-gym for the person on the street. In the first part of the podcast, Razib and Cortes talk about \u201cbroscience,\u201d and how it differs from \u201cquantified self\u201d and other movements geared toward self-optimization. They discuss how \u201cbros\u201d arrived on the importance and utility of peptides long before the ozempic revolution, and how the iterative and experimental methods of gym-addicted amateurs predated and anticipated what would later become conventional wisdom. Razib also explores how Cortes\u2019 particular style of broscience differs from that of others, with its stronger empirical basis and analytical orientation (and aversion to fads like \u201craw food\u201d). They discuss the \u201cpeptide revolution\u201d and how online fitness and health influencers discovered it earlier, the utility of the macromolecules in health and wellness, and what the online community discovered already that is likely to come down the clinical pipeline. In the second part of the discussion, Cortes introduces his new company, Ferta, and its situates its position in the fertility space. He explains the origin of his firm as he and his wife began to attempt to conceive in their 30s, and how difficult or easy the process was conditional on the optimizations they engaged in. Cortes explains many people struggle because they do things wrong, and don\u2019t maximize their chances by being healthy and fertile. ","author_name":"Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning","author_url":"https:\/\/razib.substack.com","html":"