First, I am really grateful for all the well-wishes and congratulations we received on the birth of my son. He’s doing great, and I’m over the moon.

I decided to record a podcast about the experience-- why my wife and I decided to have our first child here last year, as well as our second child this year, and tell you how great the experience was.

Naturally, though, we start with a historical perspective. Today’s episode begins in ancient India with one of the most famous figures in human history. It turns out that, in addition to being a spiritual icon, he was also an extreme biohacker.

We talk about the evolution of medicine, and how healthcare used to be a ‘patient-first’, science-driven field.

Individual healthcare practitioners today are still that way. Doctors, nurses, and medical researchers have answered a noble calling to help the sick.

But the healthcare industry itself is now ruled by insurance companies and political hacks who have managed to increase the cost of care, make it much more bureaucratic, and severely dilute the doctor-patient relationship.

I share a story of my step father, who died several weeks ago after being chewed up by a healthcare system that did not seem designed to help him.

This is one of the big reasons why we had our children in Mexico; it’s a much more liberated healthcare system.

In Mexico, we have a very close relationship with the physician, who is unconstrained by bureaucratic policies and idiotic regulations.

And if some stupid rule ever does come up? It’s Mexico. We ignore it.

The births of my children were both fantastic experiences. The hospital was great. The physicians and nurses were great. And the cost?

Imagine Nany Pelosi closing her thumb and index finger into a small circle saying, “It costs nothing.”

Frankly it’s almost embarrassing that the all-in cost of my child’s birth was about $1,750, including the ‘Presidential Suite’ at one of the best private hospitals in the country.

My children are both Mexican citizens (in addition to the four others that they receive from mom and dad). Plus parents AND grandparents are both entitled to permanent residency in Mexico.

This proved especially useful for my in-laws; my wife is from Ukraine, so we were able to get the family out of Kiev and relocate them here to Cancun-- because they now have permanent residency.

I tell you the whole story in today’s episode, which you can listen to here.



Open Podcast Transcription




[00:00:01.140]
Today we’re going to go back in time more than 2500 years ago to the mid 500 BC. To the Kingdom of Kashi on the Ganges River in northern India. Now you might not have heard of the Kingdom of Kashi, a lot of people haven’t, but it’s actually quite historically significant for a couple of reasons that we’re going to get into. At the time, in the mid 500s, there was a guy in his mid thirty s, a guy that some of you might know. This name Siddharta Gotama.
 
[00:00:27.520]
And if you don’t know his name, you will in a moment. But this is a person who was born into wealth and power and money and status and he renounced it all. As a young man he said, I’m not interested in the money. What I am interested in is spiritual enlightenment. And that might sound a little bit hokey today, but back then that was actually quite a popular social value.
 
[00:00:49.210]
A lot of people said, you know, I want to seek spiritual enlightenment and their culture and their civilization. That was a prized value. And he walked away from all of his worldly possessions and decided that the way he wanted to do that, he was going to hit the road. And he became essentially a wandering beggar. And during that time he experimented with some really extreme conditions.
 
[00:01:07.920]
At the time, in fact, there was a commonly held belief that if you starved yourself that eventually you would achieve spiritual enlightenment. And this seems crazy to us,