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The Wedge: Evolution, Consciousness, Stress, and the Key to Human Resilience

“The wedge” are activities and practices that separate us from natural environmental responses. The book details several “wedges”, such as cold plunges, fasting, sauna use, psychedelics, sensory depravation pools, certain exercises, etc that allow practitioners to expand their normal consciousness.

Interestingly, the chapter list looks nearly like my Woo post, so I was primed to like the book. Unfortunately, my guess is that most people with exposure to biohacking or similar practices would be well-aware of most practices that he details. The narrative seems to be written for people with minimal exposure to any of these, at times slowly trudging through inconsequential details. In fact, a few of the topics are ones that I happen to know quite a lot about, and the writing seems optimized for flow rather than rigor. Many of my examples of this are nits, but do impact the thesis being offered (example: for many people, raw potatoes observably do indeed significantly impart a high glucose load, so the idea that a short-term potato-only diet serves as a metabolic reset is strange). If you’re interested in these topics, such as Wim Hof-style cold exposure, and have minimal exposure, it may serve as a highly-accessible primer. Otherwise, I’d say skip — there’s not really anything new here.