Greetings, SuperFriends!

Today, we have a special treat for you. We’re going to talk about poop!

Just kidding.

But actually, not really.

That’s because we have Jessica Richman, the Founder and CEO of a company called uBiome, with us, to discuss the rapidly growing field of the “micro biome.”

You might be familiar with the micro biome, otherwise known as the 100 trillion bacteria and microorganisms living in your body, and you might know a little bit about why it’s important. You might not. Fortunately, we’ll get into that in the interview. Plus, we’ll talk about poop. So get excited.

My guest today has quite impressive credentials, from Stanford and Oxford to Clarendon and Fulbright Scholarships. She’s worked at Google, McKinsey, Lehman brothers, the Grameen bank, and more. She’s spoken at TEDMED, and has been featured in Wired, Scientific American, NPR, Fox news, ABC news, just to name a few.

Her company, uBiome, is in the business of making micro biome testing accessible to millions of people. You simply take a swab of your cheek and/or a piece of toilet paper, send in the same, and get detailed results of what bacteria are in your body, how much, and what they do. You’re able to learn how much more effectively your body metabolizes different kinds of nutrients, see how sensitive you are to different things like caffeine, and even learn about steroid biosynthesis in your body. It’s pretty darn cool.

In this episode, we’ll not only learn why all of this is so important, but also what you can do to promote the health of your own micro biome, the power of citizen science, and much, much more.

As always, please take a moment to share your thoughts with me on Twitter (@gosuperhuman), and if you haven’t already, please remember to leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher.

This episode is brought to you by SuperLearner Academy – home of my exclusive masterclasses. Check out a free trial using the link above today!

In this episode, we discuss:

• Jessica Richman's background as a young entrepreneur, computer scientist, and economist
• What exactly is the “micro biome” – and why should you care?
• What is at stake, and what can happen if your micro biome gets screwed up
• How does digestion work, and why are bacteria so important for it?
• What is uBiome, what does they do, and what are they working on next?
• What are the challenges with this technology, and why is it moving slowly?
• How often does your micro biome change, and how often should you get tested?
• Which factors make for a healthy (or unhealthy) micro biome & what can you do?
• What is “pre-biotic fiber” and how do you get more of it?
• Jessica Richman's thoughts on modern hygiene and how it may or may not be making us sick
• How common are gut issues in the population?
• Which health issues are related to the micro biome? (It may surprise you)
• Fecal transplants: what they are, and how they could benefit society
• Citizen science, and why Jessica Richman and I are so excited about it
• How can business accomplish more in science than governments can?
• Comparisons between 23andMe and uBiome as companies
• How big is uBiome, how much money have they raised, etc?
• When will micro biome testing become mainstream?
• What are Jessica Richman's thoughts on probiotics, and does she recommend any?
• Why Angel List is so incredibly powerful for entrepreneurs & investors
• Books and papers Jessica recommends

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• uBiome (Jessica's Company)
• The Hygiene Hypothesis
• Candidiasis
• 23andMe, a genetic testing company
• Probiotic supplements
• The Micro Biome Fund on Angel List
• Limbo: Blue-Color Roots, White-Collar Dreams by Alfred Lubrano

Favorite Quotes from Jessica Richman:

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: This episode is brought to you by my all-new SuperLearner Academy. The home, not only of the all-new, Become a SuperLearner 2.0, but also have my exclusive masterclasses and audiobooks, digital books, and tons of exclusive content only available to members of my masterclasses or my masterclass bundle where you can purchase multiple courses and save a ton on getting all of that great content.

So to check it out and to see all this amazing new content that we've recorded exclusively for SuperLearner Academy, visit becomeasuperlearner.com and use the coupon code podcast to save.

Greeting, SuperFriends, and welcome to this week's episode. Before we get started, I want to read a review from a Mr or Mrs. Gopi who wrote on Stitcher,  “Highly recommended. This show has high-quality content and great speakers changed my life and has improved my memory amongst other aspects of my life.”

Thank you very much, Gopi for your review. You, I can't tell you how much it brightens our day and boosts our rankings, which helps us get the absolute best guests like the guests that we are excited to bring to you today.

That's because today we have a very special treat for you. We're going to talk about poop. Okay, just kidding. But actually not really.

Because today we have the founder and CEO of a company called uBiome with us to discuss the rapidly growing field of something called the microbiome. Now you might be familiar with the microbiome, otherwise known as the 100 trillion, trillion with a T bacteria and microorganisms living inside your body right now.

And you might know a little bit about why that's important. You might also not. Fortunately, we will get into all of that in this interview. And plus we'll talk about poop. So get very excited people.

My guest today has quite impressive credentials by the way, from Stanford and Oxford to Clarendon and Fulbright Scholarships.. She's worked at Google McKinsey, Lehman brothers, Grameen bank, and many other places that would blow your socks off. She's spoken at TedMed and has been featured in Wired magazine, Scientific American, NPR, Fox News, ABC News, just to name a few. 

Her company, by the way, uBiome is in the business of making microbiome testing, accessible to millions if not billions, billions of people. Basically what you do is you take a swab of your cheek and, or a swab of a piece of toilet paper. You send it in and you get detailed results of exactly. What kind of bacteria are you in your body? How much are there, what they're doing, how they're feeling, you're able to learn from this information.

How much more effectively your body metabolizes, different kinds of nutrients and see how sensitive you are to different things like caffeine, learn about steroid, biosynthesis in your body. It's all, to be honest, pretty darn cool. So in this episode, we're not only going to learn why all of this is so important, but we're also going to learn how you can promote the general health of your microbiome.

And we're going to talk about the power of citizen science, which. As you guys know, I'm a big advocate of, and we're going to have a lot of other fun and laughs. So I'm very excited to introduce you all to Jessica Richmond.

Jessica, welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. I am so glad to catch up with you because I am actually a customer of yours and I'm really excited to ask all those nitty-gritty questions.

Jessica Richman: Sounds great. I'm looking for a dance, but I can't anyways. Yeah.

Jonathan Levi: As much as possible, as much as possible. Just get in the intro. I tried to cover just a little bit about you, but I'm sure I missed a lot of it that tends to happen with, you know, any of our guests who have this rich, diverse background and so much interesting stuff to share. I can never recover it in two minutes. So give me a bit of background on yourself, who you are, where you've been, what you've done and what you do.

Jessica Richman: Yeah, absolutely. So, so my background is I was an entrepreneur from a pretty young age to start a company after high school and then sold it and then went back to school. I went to Stanford, I studied Economics and Computer Science. And then got a fellowship to go to Oxford, to study Computational Social Science, which is basically Computer Science and Economics.

And I really felt a lack in the studies that I was doing at the time. Math was interesting. The subject of it was interesting, but I just really felt like I wasn't going to have that big of an impact, even if I found the most amazing methods for discovering, you know, network connections that, you know, overturn this, the entire study of economics that was kind of the future dream that I had at the time.

It really wasn't going to have the kind of immediate impact that I wanted to. It would be much more of a what's your long-term pursuit. So I decided to turn the same sort of skills and experience toward the field of genomics and work in this kind of crazy new field, which was called the microbiome to better understand how the microbiome affects our health.

You know, how we could change the practice of medicine by using information about the microbiome that was analyzed larger data sets, and it was analyzed in a new way.

Jonathan Levi: So fill our audience in when people talk about the microbiome, what does that mean? Exactly.

Jessica Richman: Yeah. So the microbiome is a biome and I think the word is very carefully chosen.

So biome is an environmental niche, right? So biome is a forest or a jungle or a desert. It's a place where different kinds of organisms live in ecology. And yeah. In a microbiome, we have different kinds of environments, tiny environments on our body. So there's a different microbiome and the inside of your mouth and from the outside of your cheek, or I'm different microbiome between your toes, then there isn't the top of your foot or in different spots in your gut.

There's a different microbiome. And I just, I love the way that that word is constructed because I think it's just such a, it's a good description, not just of what's there, but also of sort of how to think about it, which is to think about the microbiome as being a place where lots of organisms live. Because the big discovery in the microbiome is that our bodies are covered with ecological niches, that different kinds of organisms live.

And by understanding what lives in those niches, in these different places and what they do, we can help to better understand human health and also from a therapeutic side, help to address human health by altering the bacteria that live in that region.

Jonathan Levi: That's a fantastic explanation. I can tell you've been an entrepreneur for many, many years because you've got that elevator pitch down pat.

Jessica Richman: Thank you. I don't know. That's more of my just falling in love with the science of it. Like, it's just fascinating, but we are actually, you know, the earth is the body that all of us live on, you know, we're the body that all these bacteria live on. And I think it's just such a beautiful, the term itself, the beautiful metaphor.

Jonathan Levi: It is. It has a beautiful etymology about it. I like also that in your description you go into, or you started to go into. Why this is important. So I want to push on that point a little bit and ask, you know, why is this important? How does this affect our health? I mean, what does it stake? What does it risk? If our biome gets out of balance?

Jessica Richman: That's a really good question. So what we're discovering is that the microbiome relates to just about everything in human health. And when you look at kind of the laundry list of different things, it's really shocking, you know, you sort of everything from cancer to dandruff, and you've been thinking of what could this pod, it sounds like snake, Walt, right?

It sounds like, and what could possibly have an effect in all these different things, but once you understand that a deeper level, it makes sense that, you know, the microbiome are these organisms that live on us. So they're basically biomarkers. They can tell us what's going on in different parts of our body and in some areas.

And in some health conditions that can be indicative, so that can be diagnostic. And then in other areas, it can be therapeutic because we can say, you know, here's what the microbiome is. This is unhealthy, and this is how we can change it. And I must say that all the science is very early and we don't have a cancer diagnostic, or we don't have, I don't want to make that claim, but the evidence is there that there are some relationships between the microbiome and human health.

And that we can use that data to develop these interesting technologies in the future.

Jonathan Levi: Wow. That's really cool. And you know, another thing that I have often thought about, and one of the reasons that I actually did uBiome, I'm testing myself is someone explained to me that actually, your body is not doing most of the digestive work that's going on.

I mean, you're physically breaking down food and you're turning it and combining it with acid, but in terms of actually getting nutrients into your body, that's all non-human cells. Is that right? Kind of correct more or less?

Jessica Richman: I don't know if I'd say it's all on human cells. I would say it's non-human cells in partnership with human cells.

There's a lot of interesting data about handing off nutrients between the microbiome and the gut epithelia. So this is really interesting. So definitely there are certain foods that only bacteria can break down. This is what prebiotic fiber is, right. This is prebiotic fiber. It's called that because you can't digest it, but bacteria can.

So it's basically fish food for your bacteria that live in your gut, right? There are also certain compounds that bacteria can synthesize that humans can't synthesize. And those is really interesting. There's kind of this handoff of those compounds from, you know, the bacteria that live on the lining of the gut to the gut, that you then use in your body, right? So like a sterile human would suffer from not having access to those nutrients because they wouldn't be able to get it from the microbiome.

 So if you think about sort of symbiotic relationships, you learned about it and, you know, third-grade biology or whatever, where there's like the bird that picks the teeth of the alligator.

I don't remember the example very well, but basically, it's very clear that these are commensal bacteria, that there's a symbiosis going on, where they're doing what they need. We're providing them with an environment to live in, and they're providing us with nutrients and breaking down foods and manufacturing other substances that we need.

And it's this whole complex, interesting space.

Jonathan Levi: Right. So I feel like we should probably explain to our audience a little bit about uBiome in the sense that would you guys offer is at-home biome testing, right? You swab a little here, swab a little there, send it in and get a full report of everything that's going on in your body ratios, percentages, you know, how you relate to other people.

So I don't know if we establish that early before, but essentially that's the service. And then if I can kind of project, I imagine that where you guys are going is going to also be around actionable items.

Jessica Richman:  That's exactly right. Yeah. So our existing product is very nerdy. It's for quantified self people who want to see which bacteria are in their gut, how those compared to other people and you know how those compared to the existing literature.

 That's kind of what we've had, what we're building our products that are much more kind of a score around your microbiome, much more user-friendly for people who are not microbiome enthusiasts and quantified selfers and body hackers. And also this may be more useful to them too.

And just much more clear, you know, here are the actions you can take in regard to your microbiome. So that's kind of the first step there. And then the second piece is that we're developing some clinical tests, which will be ordered by a doctor, paid for by insurance, by people who have that in US that will then allow people to get medical information that they can then share with their doctor from their microbiome.

And we haven't announced specifically what those tests are, how they're going to work. That's all still under development, but we will be releasing them. We have a clinical lab set up, and I'm really excited about that because there's a lot of actionable information that it's best to be told in the context of a medical relationship.

Jonathan Levi: Oh, that's exciting.

Jessica Richman: So, yeah, I'm really excited about that too. I think it'll really expand the reach of what we can do. I mean, I think what we're doing is really cool. You know, we get to gather data for the first time about a new organ of the human body. We get to, you know, make comparisons I've never been made before, but we don't have the opportunity to give medical information to people except in the context of a clinical lab.

So I'm excited.

Jonathan Levi: Right. I did get my report and I was like, Oh, that's really interesting. I synthesize this faster than most people. And I do this slower than most people, and I have made this and I was like, okay, okay. Now, what exactly.

Jessica Richman: So that's something we're working hard on. I think a lot of it is that this is really new science, so we have to be very careful of the things we've been very conscientious about.

And one of our advisors, Dr. Jonathan Isen at UC Davis is kind of gives out the microbiome hype award. And that's something we want to be very careful, never to earn. You know, we don't want to come out with things that are kind of half-baked science and say, look, we can tell you, you know, exactly what foods you need to eat tomorrow.

And then your microbiome will be perfect. Like we want to make sure that we do this in a really responsible way. So it just takes longer. And I'm a bit frustrated with the two, but I think that, you know, what we're aiming to do with the next version of our consumer practice, give much more data about what we can tell you that you can do and what we can tell you about how you rank with other people in a way that's simple rather than complex.

 Because right now it's like you said, it's, you know, your cell mitosis happens faster than other people. Well, okay. Like, you know what he's supposed to do with that shit. So when I kind of break that down into language, that's much more simple for people to understand…

Jonathan Levi: Sure. And I imagine, you know, for existing customers, it's almost as if additional value will be added after the fact. I mean, one day people will log in and there will be a ton of..

Jessica Richman:  Yeah. I mean, this is not something you pay more for. Once you have one sample with us, you get the benefit of all future science, about the microbiome that we can bring to bear on it. You can get additional samples that let you compare the present to the past, but you won't have to pay extra.

It'll just be part of us updated, you know, just making our product continuously better over time.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. Although that does beg the question. I mean, how much variation and along what timeframes. Does the microbiome change. I mean, is this something that people need to get done every year, every six months, every quarter?

Jessica Richman: It's a really good question. So a lot of people have monthly subscriptions and the reason for that is that people are trying various experiments on their bodies. So they are saying, let's say, you know, doing a whole 30, which is sort of cutting, basically an elimination diet. We cut out dairy and gluten and processed foods and all sorts of stuff.

People often are taking prebiotics or probiotics and want to see the effect. This is kind of a way of monitoring yourself. We kind of call it like a Fitbit for your gut basically. So that's why people would sort of monitor on a regular basis if there's a sort of a triggering event, like people, someone taking antibiotics or someone you're having a rapid dietary change that you can really see the change immediately. I can see the change within a day for antibiotics, but as a sort of, if you're not changing anything about yourself and you don't have a condition that flares up occasionally that you're trying to track, generally what people do is, you know, they sample when as needed.

Like when there is some event that they know is going to happen or they kind of keep a kit in reserve for an event that happens that they weren't predicting that we'll then let them check the difference before and after.

Jonathan Levi: Very cool.

Jessica Richman:  To sum up, it's mostly driven by before and after something, whether that's self-driven or that's just something that happens naturally.

Jonathan Levi: Sure. On the topic of kind of testing and tweaking and trying to improve the microbiome. I'm sure a lot of people in the audience are wondering what contributes to the health of the microbiome and you know, what kind of things are you guys going to be able to recommend? So I guess the broader question is.

What is the difference in practical behaviors and lifestyle between a person who has a quote-unquote, healthy microbiome, and someone who has a less healthy one?

Jessica Richman: That's a really good question. I mean, we all start at different places. And one thing to make very clear is that there isn't a single healthy gut microbiome.

It's a really complex system on, can't say you weren't a healthy one and yours is unhealthy. You know, there are many different kinds of healthy, but one of the things that we've learned, that's really interesting is about the importance of prebiotic fiber. So, and it kind of makes sense once you know that and you kind of backtrack it and think it through it makes.

So have a sense that, you know, taking probiotics means that you're taking an organism and you're hoping that it will survive, your mouth, your stomach get to the right place in the gut, take root in the community there, grow and spread and not grow and spread in a bad way. Right? Like you're hoping that this plant, that your transplant.

Entering into the rainforest is going to take over part of the rainforest. Right. And you're kind of dropping it from a helicopter at 10,000 feet. right?

Jonathan Levi: Right. Great analogy.

Jessica Richman: Bite that. Right. But pre-bagged fiber makes a lot of sense in that you're basically dropping food on the jungle and the rainforest and seeing if it will grow.

Right. So being able to, you know, drop food means that the organisms that can benefit from that food will eat it and then we'll grow and you don't have to be as precise and it's not alive. So you don't have to keep it alive as you're dropping it. And, and, you know, it's sort of its food. So it's used to going through your stomach.

There's like a lot of really good reasons why that works better. And so there's a lot of really interesting combinations of prebiotic fiber that we're looking into as beneficial for our users because there are different kinds of food for different bacteria and figuring out, you know, what people can eat that will make them more healthy as good in sort of the short term.

Though there are a lot of foods that are known to have prebiotic fiber, everything from artichokes to bananas, chicory fiber, there's a, you can sort of find them at your local health food store. And at this point, we're still doing research into which ones are the best ones and for who and all that sort of stuff.

But there's a lot of, sort of our, what we know indicates that there's a lot of value in prebiotic fiber.

Jonathan Levi: And just to reiterate from what you said earlier, prebiotic fiber means that it's something that our body doesn't actually break down. So it makes it intact into the intestines and therefore into the microbiome.

Jessica Richman: Yeah, well, that's one we were looking at and also we don't bring it down in the intestines ourselves, right? So it's food for the right bacteria so that they have the food that they need to make the nutrients that we need so that they have the food that they need not to compete with our human cells, for resources.

They have the food they need so that they grow. And there's no niche available for pathogens to come in and grow. There are a lot of reasons why you want to feed them so that they will then, you know, do good things for you and stay in the way of that organism that might do harm.

Jonathan Levi: Keep the team happy as it is.

Jessica Richman: Yes, exactly.

Jonathan Levi: Love it. Let me ask, what are your thoughts on kind of over sanitation. I mean, the moms walking around with Purell and sanitizing hands and washing everything. So thoroughly, I mean, do you have any thoughts on that? Is there any research on that?

Jessica Richman: Oh, that's a really good question. So there is research on that.

I mean, there's this whole idea of the hygiene hypothesis, which is that the reason we have so many autoimmune disorders that we have now is because we're too clean and we don't have the diversity of microbiomes that we used to have. I actually think that this is just my own theory about this after the reading that I've done, and I haven't done the research to support this, but my thought on this is that I doubt it's just pure cleanliness.

Right, because it seems like because there's such a diverse microbiome on so many different objects, you know, you pick up a cup and you have a drink and that cup has a microbiome all over it. I found it's like, I don't think we're actually as clean as we think we are. I think it's chemicals they're specifically designed to kill bacteria that are doing the job of effectively killing bacteria and reducing the diversity that we encounter on a  daily basis.

So I think it's less, you know, not having dirt in your house and much more having taking antibiotics frequently. You know, like you said, Purell on your hands every day, where you're sort of killing off all the bacteria that are vulnerable to Purell and, you know, five seconds later, your hand is covered in bacteria, but it may be a different bacteria than you had before you've used the Purell.

This is kind of sometimes, the hygiene hypothesis is we are too clean in the sense that we baked too often, for example, but there's a microbiome in the water that you're bathing in it. So it's not that I think it's that we're using a lot of chemicals that were specifically designed to kill bacteria and they do that indiscriminately.

And I think it's kind of the future. Write large as this knowledge becomes much more clear. And as new products are developed is not developing better ways to kill bacteria, but better ways to, now that we understand the much better, we can use DNA sequencing to see exactly what's there make better products that will then selectively kill certain bacteria rather than others selectively grow certain bacteria.

So you can have a prebiotic hand cream. For example, selectively, encourage certain things and not others on a more personalized basis. So I think there's a lot of room to go between where to clean too, you know, how actually too much more scientific and targeted way grow the diversity that we have.

Jonathan Levi: Right. I'm specifically going to avoid a discussion of, uh, antibiotics. Cause I feel like you probably could talk about that for hours and hours and you have very strong opinion on it.

Jessica Richman: I mean, let me just say one thing about, which is the antibiotics for one of the greatest inventions of the time, right? Like antibiotics have saved millions of lives.

You and I would probably not be here if antibiotics didn't exist,. However, either nothing is without trade-offs and, you know, we're kind of seeing the impact of much more indiscriminate use, you know, too much of a good thing, basically.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, absolutely. I want to touch on that actually a little bit because you know, I know as you said, there's no one picture of the quote-unquote healthy microbiome, but there's certainly a probably gradient. You could say of people who are suffering from consequences and people who are not, what percentage of people out there, according to the data you guys have collected, have some kind of problem or deficiency or imbalance in their microbiome or is there such a thing?

Jessica Richman: So what's interesting. So we have self-reported data about specific health conditions and we have of, you know, self-report data about health, right? And most of the people using our product have some kind of health condition, or they simply just don't feel healthy, you know, on a self-reported basis. I think we have a very skewed and biased sample.

Obviously, we have people who are interested in gut health. Like often people who don't have any concerns with gut health, like wouldn't be interested in using a product. I think that addresses gut ill, so I wouldn't, you know, extrapolate that to the population, but I would say that from statistics around irritable bowel syndrome, right.

Which is like the syndrome of problems that happen in the gut, you know, gas, bloating, diarrhea, over prolonged period of a time of unknown cause and of unknown cure that the number of people that have that, that is about 10% of the us population. So that's really high. Just that one thing. Right. And those are people diagnosed with IBS, not people who have intermittent gut issues and no one knows what they are.

And they think it's probably everyone to some degree, right? Like who among us has not had some kind of gut issue that, you know, went away. So we didn't really even go to a doctor for it necessarily, but we still have that problem. So I think it's pretty rampant. The thing is that the microbiome is very resilient though.

Right? So in most of us, you have a gut problem. Maybe you have food poisoning, maybe, you know, you eat something that doesn't agree with you, which is sort of a way of saying, you know, a microbiome disturbance, and for most of us that goes away, and then our microbiome bounces back because it's a rainforest, right?

It's a community of organisms that is very resilient to temporary problems, but in some of us, it doesn't, and trying to figure out how and walk by and what to do about that is really fascinating.

Jonathan Levi: You know, I'm tempted to ask the question, how can people in the audience know if they have a microbiome issue?

But then I realized that almost anything could be a microbiome issue. I mean, if you have like, gas issues. If you have nausea, if you have acne, all those things could be different issues in the different microbiomes in the body. What are some big ones though?

Jessica Richman: So I think there's sort of two categories in the way I think about this.

So one are things that everybody knows are microbiome issues, right? So things like acne, for example, right? But that's the bacterial infection, you know, things are thought of, as infection are basically microbiome issues that everybody knowledges are microbiome issues. So acne is a microbiome issue.

Dandruff is a microbiome issue. Food poisoning is a microbiome issue. If you want to think about it that way. Right. So things that sort of the involved pathogens are just sort of obviously microbiome issues. Then there are health conditions that as we're discovering more about the microbiome and its correlations may in fact be, and I don't know if I like the microbiome term, microbiome issue because it's so vague, you know, like you said, just that anything from me, microbiome issue.

We'll just run with that things that we previously did not think were infectious disease may turn out to be infectious disease. Meaning they may turn out to be some kind of disturbance in the microbiome. And you know, there's some research to suggest this there's nothing where we can say, we didn't know that autism or schizophrenia or depression or any of these things were microbiome issues.

And Oh my God, all of them are like, I wouldn't make that claim. But I would say that there's some really interesting studies in mice, for example, where anxious, mice. Can be made less anxious by giving them a fecal transplant from less anxious minds. This was sort of Jeff Gordon's work or mice can be made obese by giving them a fecal transplant from an obese human.

So that's super interesting, right? Because it may be that conditions that we thought were really far. It feels from anything having to do with bacteria can actually either be caused or cured by bacteria. And none of the studies that we have yet say, okay, here's how you cause depression in a human by giving them a microbiome that hasn't been done yet, or, you know, here's how you cure depression by giving them a microbiome.

But there's some really interesting research that kind of suggests that that may be true. In some people and that you might be able to do either detect problems or cure them. And I think that the real canonical example of this is obviously H pylori, stomach ulcers, which were thought to be caused by stress but are actually a bacterial infection.

And we now know that like, that is a scientific fact at this point. So I think it's real and all the trouble that, that a particular scientist had to go through to prove that. What is now sort of an obvious point that many things can be infectious that were previously not, is really, really shamed, but it's glad that we all sort of benefit from that.

Jonathan Levi: It's so fascinating and a little bit depressing, but so fascinating. I mean, I remember looking into candidiasis, which is really super common in Western diets. I mean, really, really common. And if anyone out there is wondering, like, stick your tongue out, if it's white, You have candidiasis. And that's a lot of people and you know, you look at the symptoms and there may be a link between ADD and candidiasis, depression, brain fog, Alzheimer's, and all these scary things that could just be caused by this imbalance of the microbiome in the mouth and in the gut.

Jessica Richman:  That's actually a really good example where we don't know at this point, if sugar causes both candidiases and depression, right. Through some mechanism of like low blood sugar changes or something like that, or if it's a self-reinforcing loop where sugar initially causes candidiasis, which then causes depression.

I'd always speak to causality cause we don't know the causality, but what's really interesting. I think in terms of the microbiome is that often you don't need to know causality. You just need to know that these two things frequently co-occur and that's enough often to say, okay, this might be caused by something that I don't know the cause, but it might be different than what I think it is.

And it might have something to do with the microbiome.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. I'm super excited to see this really hit the mainstream and become more researched because years ago, when I was looking into candidiasis and I had some whiteness on my tongue, basically, there's not a lot out there for how you can fix this stuff.

I mean, they're just not been done.

Jessica Richman: There's all this stuff. That's sort of viewed as very fringy by the mainstream medical system, like candidiasis or leaky gut or small intestine, bacterial overgrowth. But I mean, to me, anyways, it absolutely exists. Right? The question is, what does it cause? How do you treat it?

Like all these things are still questions, but whether or not it exists, I think is really not open to debate, especially. And this is one of my passions in this, is that through citizen science or the concerns of actual people, you know, you're concerned looking at your tongue being like this may be implicated in something that's wrong.

It can be brought into the healthcare system much more broadly and sort of, you can take concerns and questions of ordinary people who don't happen to have a Ph.D. and work in a research lab, but we don't happen to have an MD and turn them from anecdotes into data that then the healthcare system and the medical establishment can use.

That's just something I'm really passionate about because I feel like so much data is lost as you know, we all suffer privately with whatever it is. And we all generate interesting hypotheses about why. And then the data is just never gets into a scientific journal.

Jonathan Levi: Right. As another thing that I want to bring up actually is the power of, you know, private companies doing what you guys are doing as a service. I would venture to say, I mean, it's probably a given, but you guys are doing the largest ever collection of microbiome samples on the planet, which then can do the most touristically significant research against that. I mean, studies typically have a hundred to 500 people over, who knows how much time period. You guys probably have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of samples already. Is that something that you can speak to?

Jessica Richman: No. Absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up. This is really my passion doing this is that by gathering this data set, we can develop discoveries business.

Allows science to exist on a greater scale than would be possible in sort of the grant-funded system that we have. And there's sort of nothing, right? I mean, I'm happy that the government gives grants for science. It's one of the best things. In my opinion, the government pays for it's really valuable. I would never want that not to exist, but I think there's also a role for other, you know, faster actors, basically in the way that entrepreneurs are to develop scientific methods and to gather data on a really large scale.

That can then be used to develop scientific conclusions. That's exactly that. So this is the opportunity that we have, and this is why I'm doing this, right? Like this is not my field, you know, I didn't go to school to be a microbiologist, but I just saw this possibility of being able to take something that is, you know, add its infancy and make it grow up a lot faster, in a good way, I guess so that it could turn into something useful that people could use as fast as possible.

Jonathan Levi: Do people often make comparisons between uBiome and 23 and me, and if so, how do you feel about that?

Jessica Richman: Yeah, so we do get that a lot, and I think we're the same and we're different. So we're different obviously because what we're doing is staying the microbiome, which by its nature has different affordances, I guess.

So by its nature, it is you know, the changes over time, it's much more complex, is much newer in terms of our understanding of it. So it's different in that way. I think also from a business perspective, we've learned a lot from 23 and me, they were a pioneer in this space and, you know, we've taken a much more with the right phrases, but a much more sort of traditional approach in a lot of ways, we had an IRB right away, we're setting up clinical labs.

We can do things in a more clinical way. We're kind of more compliant with regulation would be one way, but again, in another way, we're putting his reserve learned from their mistakes and we want to make sure that we're doing things the right way.

So I think there's that. And I also think that society has changed really dramatically. If you think about when 23 and I first started this idea of, you know, the quantified self, there wasn't even a word for that. And all of these companies, not just us, but you know, every wearable and every. You know, tracking device and every app on your phone that lets you track your diet or your movement or whatever it is, is growing up in an environment where, where everybody knows what this is.

And at the beginning of 23, to me, that was not true. And so I think those are the primary differences, but I think in terms of philosophy and ethos, we're not exactly the same, but we're both the same in our desire to take data and make it useful to people as fast as possible about genomics. So you could say we definitely have that in common.

Jonathan Levi: And how big is uBiome today? If you're at liberty to discuss.

Jesse Lawler: Yeah. So in terms of, um, people measure this all different ways, you know, we've raised money for venture capital. At this point, we raised six and a half million dollars. We have 25 employees. We're kind of at that, you know, late seed, early series, any kind of stage for people who are in the know and that's Silicon Valley.

So I'm, we're poised for a lot of growth because like you said, you know, we have this large dataset. We have a lot of technology that we've patented. We filed over 65 patents at this point. And that's because we're the first in this phase and we're really moving quickly to consolidate our lead there and make sure that we can kind of be the company that does this piece of development on the microbiome.

There are many other ways to get knowledge of the microbiome and I, you know, from therapeutics to cosmetics to development of different kinds of foods. You know, there are a lot of things that we're not doing quite consciously because we are trying to sort of own our piece of this ecosystem, not to be too, not to belabor the metaphor too much, but kind of choosing this piece.

And there are a lot of other ways that the microbiome, which is this huge discovery right there, won't just be one company that does everything there is to do in the microbiome. There'll be a lot of ways that, you know, that comes into products that people can use.

Jonathan Levi: How do you think this goes from being a, as you said, a geeky niche kind of quantified self people thing to something that everyone does, like blood testing, or hopefully everyone does like blood testing.

Jessica Richman: Right. So I think it has to do with a few things. So one is sort of the science of the microbiome in terms of what we know that we can tell people. Another piece is sort of development of the industry. You know, we were one of the very first companies in this space and that was just three years ago. So if you think about other industries that are three years old, you know, completely new industries, there are three years old.

There's really, you know, it's very much at the beginning and this will be a very different landscape and 10 years from a product perspective, though, I would say it has to do with sort of gathering the data as we have that we need to take this into useful products and services. The average person can understand without wanting to know anything about bacteria.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. Right, right. And I think that's such an interesting point when that happens, where I just log in and it says, Hey, you need to eat more cruciferous greens and you really need to start taking a probiotic or eat more fermented foods.

Jessica Richman: Yeah, exactly. Right. Or what telling you what you don't need to do, right. Because we can all say, of course, you need to eat fermented foods, take prebiotics, take probiotics, and don't take any of my experience. Right? Like that's the general advice for everyone. And you could just put that and maybe everyone would be happy that limits what they need to know. But you want to make sure that not only do you say that, but you have something where you tell people something specific to them, which is kind of the interesting part.

Jonathan Levi: I actually want to take the opportunity while I have you on the line to ask you about probiotics and prebiotics and stuff like that because I know a lot of the stuff off the shelf, that's not refrigerated is kind of BS, as you said, it doesn't even make it past the stomach acid. So what products are out there that are really good?

I mean, have you seen samples where people use a specific brand and you say, wow, this person has a really diverse microbiome.

Jessica Richman: I wish I could just say, well, you know, everyone should take this one thing. We have a lot of research that we're doing in house on that. And I, I probably shouldn't comment on some of it because of publications, patents, and all that sort of stuff.

I mean, there's some very interesting things that you can find about which probiotics work in whom and why. But I would say very broadly that probiotics work very differently in different people. And I think this is something that, and I guess this is true for all supplements and all drugs, but it's easy for us to see with probiotics because we just see what's living in your gut.

So I guess I would say that. I couldn't say this is the one probiotic that works for everyone. And I think the best thing to do is to take what you think might be the best based on what you need for your gut, and then test and see. And obviously, I would say that because I run a microbiome, but I actually think that's the best thing to do because otherwise, how would, you know, if it worked or not, unless you could see what's going on in your microbiome and how it changes because it is different, the person, and this is kind of just an endorsement of personalized medicine.

Very generally. In that, I wish we could do this for all drugs that don't have anything to do with the microbiome. Like wouldn't you want to know if your blood pressure medication or whatever is working for you right now? There's no way. I mean, I guess with blood pressure, you can sort of check that your blood pressure has changed, but with many other things, it's sort of hard to tell if it's actually there and doing what's supposed to be doing.

Jonathan Levi: Sure. Although a lot of probiotics have kind of the same in four or five organisms. Can you speak a little bit to that? Like which ones are people typically needing to supplement?

Jessica Richman: So that's a really good question. So there's an interesting mismatch here where what's in probiotics is what is in certain foods not necessary, what humans need.

Right. So there are hundreds of genuses of bacteria in the gut. And there are only two genuses used in probiotics presently. So there's a lot of opportunity there for other probiotics that have currently not been developed. To be developed. Right. But I would say, yeah, so what's in probiotics are sort of lactobacillus and family sorts of microbiomes and what you may need may be different, but it may be that you know, of the available probiotics.

This is kind of the only one that. That's available for you to take for your gut. So, yeah, I wish there was a much greater breadth of probiotics for different kinds of microbiomes, but I think that's something that's doesn't exist yet, but will in the future.

Jonathan Levi: Pretty funny, you can go online today right now. And there are companies where you can customize your own nutrition bar or trail mix based on exactly what your needs are.

And yet you can't do that for something so important as probiotics. That's a great startup idea for someone in like, just customize your own and then hit a subscribe button. And every month you get a bottle full of, I would assume not pills because I've heard a lot of kind of negative things around probiotics that are not refrigerated.

Jessica Richman: Great. And maybe it's a supply chain issue that it's hard to do.

Jonathan Levi:  Or maybe it's a stomach acid issue where, you know, those are the three or four or the two genuses that actually make it through the digestive tract.

Jessica Richman: Right. Some people, are you doing it the other way though? This is, I mean, I learned something really interesting every day about what people do and there's all kinds of crazy and maybe not so crazy things that people do to try to improve their health.

So people are doing probiotics the other way.

Jonathan Levi: From the other side.

Jessica Richman:  From the other side, and they're kind of on the wild side of probiotics and they use them to bypass the stomach acid problem and also, you know, kind of the, the living cultures problem. They want to make sure that if what they get is alive when they get it, it stays alive until it gets to the right spot.

Jonathan Levi: Right. And, you know, I was shocked when I read about some of this stuff that is happening with fecal transplants. I mean, you talked about making skinny mice fat, but they've. Like cure depression and people with fecal transplants from happy people. I mean, mind-blowing.

Jessica Richman: Yeah. And what excites me and frustrates me is of course that's fascinating, right?

Like who wouldn't want that? Especially if it could be used sort of as needed for people who, you know, if you have a terrible event in your life that is going to depress you, you could prophylactically take. A fecal transplant to help. I mean, there's just so many interesting applications of this, right?

But the thing is that fecal transplants in the us at least are only approved for one health condition, which is Clostridium difficile infections that are not responsive to antibiotics. So you kind of can't do that broad experimentation except in a know, very controlled research setting, but this is the citizen science piece.

The citizen scientists can do whatever they want with their own poop. And they can find really interesting things that could be beneficial to the rest of us. So it's exciting. It's also frustrating because I'd love to see this research progress to turn into something that, you know, it's something that we all give away for free could turn out to be this fantastic help for very serious conditions.

Jonathan Levi: You know, what I love so much about this gig is how many people get to talk about poop with the CEO of a venture-backed startup doesn't happen. Like this is not..

Jessica Richman: They all get to talk to me about..

Jonathan Levi: Like, on the things in kindergarten when they were like, do you want to be an astronaut, a veterinarian? You're like, nah, I want to pitch investors about poop.

Jessica Richman: That's well, yeah, we have some really funny investor readings where some people are very squeamish and some people just like really get into it. So tell me more.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, exactly. Well, I think it's really, really cool and like, If we really want to make this progress, we got to get over the squeamishness. I mean, I'm writing a book right now on endocrine system optimization.

Just through the end equals one perspective. I mean, here are a hundred things that I've tried. Here's, what's worked. Here's what hasn't. And at some point, like I'm going to have to talk about masturbation. I'm going to have to talk about sex. I'm going to have to talk about multiple partners and how that plays in, and you kind of have to get over the squeamishness. If you want to get things done.

Jessica Richman: Right. That's right. That's right. And for other people to learn from what you're providing, I mean, this is kind of a pitcher that a podcast thing, but it would be really cool once you come out with that. If you have some interesting protocols to share them with people, so other people can try it and we can kind of track the experiments.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, precisely.

Jessica Richman: Citizen science approach. I think there's so much, you know, and if one experiments are of course limited and you know, wouldn't be respected to scientifically, but there are good starting points. Wait, that's a really good starting point for a hypothesis that then get tested. And then you have a group of people who follow along at home and then tell you what the results are.

Jonathan Levi: Exactly.

Jessica Richman: This is kind of what we wanted to do with uBiome. I think there are many other areas in which this could be valuable and people just aren't doing it yet. And I think they should be because the microbiome is not the only application of this. There are many ways to take a citizen science approach, come up with a good hypothesis and test it in a really large population.

Jonathan Levi: Exactly. And this is such important stuff, which is why I want to ask you actually tell us a little bit about the microbiome fund.

Jessica Richman: Oh, yeah. So this is an interesting thing. So we set up, we just get a lot of inbound interest from our existing investors and from prospective investors, she said, you know, I'd love to invest in something at the really early seed stage.

You know, we're kind of beyond that at this point, but you know, small amounts of money into brand new startups are doing interesting things. What do you think about this idea or that idea? And, you know, we really have a lot of expertise in this area. We'd really love to share it. And angel list, which has been fantastic to us in many ways, just makes it really easy to set up a fund.

So I've heard people ask. So what kind of legal documents did you have? Did you set up an office and hire people? We didn't do any of that. Basically. You go on Angel List, you set up a fund, which is like a web page. And then when people join on, they join on, they commit a certain amount of capital. And then when you want to invest, you send it to them.

If they're interested, they click a button, and then you have a fund. I mean, this is sort of off-topic of science and the microbiome and all that stuff. But Angel List has really made possible organizing, investing in a totally different way and it's made it so that people have expertise like us don't have to wait till the end of our careers to start running around, trying to gather millions of dollars of capital in order to then think about being able to use our knowledge to direct investment.

We can do it in a really short period of time. So the idea is as I have my day job, my co-founder has his day job. But the idea is that when we get interesting opportunities and when we get investors that are interested in those kinds of opportunities, we can just match make, and as uBiome, we can also be helpful to those companies and possibly partner with them.

Jonathan Levi: That's incredible. And as I look at it, you guys have already raised 82,000.

Jessica Richman: Yeah. Most of that came in on the first day. It was just as one of those things where kind of the magic of the internet means that we could have a dataset with tens of thousands and soon hundreds of thousands of people. And you can start a fund with $80,000 in it and all of this can happen super quickly.

And that's all for the good, I think there's a lot of friction in both of these systems that make it so that it's hard to do the things that are best for the world. Scientifically, and in the sense of, you know, directing investment in better ways than you could otherwise.

Jonathan Levi: Incredible.  Just transitioning kind of towards the end of the interview. Jessica, I want to ask you what is one question that I should have asked you that I didn't.

Jessica Richman: Oh, that's a good question.

Jonathan Levi: A really tough one. I know.

Jessica Richman: Yeah. So there's interesting stuff about the microbiome and there's interesting stuff about science and about entrepreneurship. I wish I had a pre-formed question for that one. What's the question you ask a lot of other people.

Jonathan Levi: Oh, we'll get to those. We'll get to those. I mean, what's one thing you would want the audience to know about the microbiome that didn't come up?

Jessica Richman: Well, so one thing is, I think that people's habits are trailing a bit behind where the science is at this point.

Like, it's pretty clear all the things that you mentioned, you know, About know, building microbiome, diversity, people who are kind of geeks about this, do those things. But I think the mainstream, it's not common for people to do them, but I think it should be. So I think the one thing would be, you know, to eat prebiotic fiber and tried not to take antibiotics as much as possible because sort of that chain of advice, there are many different ways that, you know, different doctors have different versions of this.

But I think that that's something that almost anyone can do and can be really beneficial.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. So that leads us nicely into the kind of questions that we ask everyone. The first of which is if you could assign to our audience, one piece of homework that they're going to do while they wait for next week's episode, what would that piece of homework be?

Whether it's maybe trying new food, taking a good, hard look at their poop, whatever it is.

Jessica Richman:  Well, I would never discourage anyone for taking a look at their poop. I mean, it could be very informative now. I mean, actually, there's a paper that I love that is not directly related to the microbiome, but everyone I share it with just loves this paper and it's about Weird People. WEIRD, which is Western-educated. It's sort of like all of us that are kind of unusual in the world that, in that we're, you know, Western-educated, rich, democratic, I forget what the eye is for, but so just Google, like weird people. And it's a sociology paper actually about how science. He focuses on the wrong people because most of us are not all of this.

Most humans are not all those things and everyone I share the paper with loves it. And I just think it really was part of the inspiration for uBiome in the sense that we started our campaign globally. You know, our initial Indiegogo campaign was global. And part of our mission here is to not just do this for rich Western-educated people who can afford to buy our kids, but also for a much broader population.

Jonathan Levi: That is awesome. And I think that's the reason I was so excited both to be a customer of you guys. And to have you guys sponsor an episode of the show. Cause I was like, man, these guys are doing something that's so much bigger than just the let's teach rich white programmers. What's wrong with them.

Jessica Richman: Right, exactly. When probably nothing's wrong with them. And they'll probably be fine either way. Exactly.

Jonathan Levi: So the next kind of a common question that we ask, what are some books that you've most recommended or given as gifts?

Jessica Richman: Ooh, that is such a good question. So I answered this question for Tim Ferriss and I think I answered it wrong. You know, I, I answered it as Ernest Hemingway, right. And the idea was that I love Hemingway. I've given him a reflex to a lot of people, but the number one book I've actually given and recommended the most people is a book called Limbo. It's written by a New York Times reporter whose father was a bricklayer and grew up really working class.

And it's about sort of that transition between social classes and how people who grew up in kind of a working-class background, which I did, but then find themselves in a very rarefied world. You know, whether that Stanford and Oxford, in my case, the reporting for the New York Times and the case of the author and what that means for people's lives.

And I I've talked to so many people who kind of find themselves lost, you know, lost as a road scholar. Who kind of needs this understanding that social class is so important, how that affects people and, you know, colors, all of our thinking. And it's sort of like a different language that people learn. So I recommend that to a lot of people.

And if anyone in the audience has had that experience of changing social classes, whether up or down or sideways and in a different country, for example, it's really valuable to know that that's the type of culture shock.

Jonathan Levi: That's fantastic. So we'll go ahead and put that one for sure. In the blog post, and hopefully, people will use our link.

We'll also put the Weird People article in the blog post.

Jessica Richman: Thank you. That was great.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, of course. And then the last thing I want to put in is where do we send people? I mean, would you want us to direct people to uBiome? Do you have a personal page with more info about you?

Jessica Richman: Please send them to uBiome. I mean, I'm like the least important part of this. I would love for people to go to uBiome. UBIOME.com. Check out what we have to offer. We often do studies where we give away free kits. So there's a studies page. You can click on for people who have specific health conditions who can get, or not always health conditions, but habits or health conditions or lifestyle factors where they can get free kids and people can of course buy kits there.

Jonathan Levi: Cool. And I want to give you guys a plug for anyone listening from outside the US. I had a very seamless experience. I mean, you might think it would be an issue to send a swab of poop around the world, but I had no issue, you know, the Israeli customs didn't seem to mind. So.

Jessica Richman: Yeah, we comply with all the IOTA Regulations.

This is something we made a lot of attention to at the beginning. Um, there are a lot of rules around what you can send internationally and we comply with all of them then it's yeah, it should be really seamless.

Jonathan Levi: Indeed. International poop matters too.

Jessica Richman: International. Now there's a book title, International Poop.

Jonathan Levi: Jessica, the last question of the day, one that we like to ask everyone is if people take away one lesson from this episode and they carry it with them for the rest of their lives, what would you like that to be?

Jessica Richman: I would like that message to be that bacteria are not our enemies. And it's by taking care of our microbiome, that we can improve our health. There's kind of this myth and a lot of medicine that everything's a war and we're doing battle and we're, you know, killing the bad guys and that's going to make us healthy.

But actually what makes us most healthy is sort of encouraging the ecosystem around us to be healthy. So if people could just take away one thing, it would be that. That the, you know, bacteria are not our enemies, they're our friends, and we should learn how to cultivate them and sort of build a better garden rather than, you know, carpet bombing them.

Jonathan Levi: That is a fantastic note to end on and also a fantastic metaphor for kind of any biome in any ecology that we tend to be at war with, and really should be preserving for our own benefit.

Jessica Richman: Yeah, absolutely.

Jonathan Levi:  Jessica, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you. I learned a ton. And I really do hope we keep in touch. Thank you so much for your time today.

Jessica Richman: Yeah, you too. Thanks so much for coming on. This is great. Have a good day.

Jonathan Levi: Take care.

All right, SuperFriends. That's it for this week's episode. We hope you really, really enjoyed it and learn a ton of applicable stuff that can help you go out there and overcome the impossible.

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