About
Steven
Steven Kotler is a New York Times–bestselling author, award-winning journalist, and Distinguished Research Fellow at the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University, where his work focuses on the neuroscience of flow, intuition, creativity, consciousness, and human performance. He is the founder and executive director of the Flow Research Collective, a research and training organization dedicated to advancing performance neuroscience for the future of brain health.
The author of seventeen books, including thirteen bestsellers, Kotler’s work has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations and been translated into more than 80 languages. His writing has appeared in over 120 publications, including scientific journals such as Nature and the Journal of Consciousness Studies and mainstream outlets like The Atlantic, Wired, TIME, and Harvard Business Review. His books—including The Rise of Superman, Stealing Fire, and The Art of Impossible—helped define the modern science and practice of peak performance. Stealing Fire was named Best Business Book of the Year by both CNBC and Strategy + Business and helped catalyze scientific and cultural interest in altered states and peak experience.
Recognized by The New York Times as “one of the world’s leading experts in ultimate human performance,” Kotler is the co-author of the Springer textbook Performance Neuroscience. His training programs have reached participants in 156 countries across 28 industries, including U.S. Navy SEALs, Olympic athletes, and executive teams at Google, Meta, Microsoft, Audi, and Accenture.
Kotler is also a serial entrepreneur who has founded or helped launch more than seventeen companies spanning media, technology, and performance. In 2021, Forbes named the Flow Research Collective one of the fastest-growing companies in America. He hosts Flow Radio, an award-winning science podcast about flow and the future of human potential, and lectures globally on peak performance, creativity and innovation, and the future of work.
Outside of his work in science and storytelling, Kotler co-runs Rancho de Chihuahua, a hospice sanctuary for senior and terminally ill dogs. Over the past twenty years, the sanctuary has helped more than 1,500 dogs through the final chapter of their lives.
Current Work
RESEARCH
As a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University, Kotler’s current work explores flow, intuition, creativity, consciousness, and human performance, alongside emerging questions surrounding neurotechnology, Human-AI symbiosis, and the future of cognition. Working at the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, and complexity science, his research investigates the frontier of mind, meaning, and potential.
FLOW RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
Through the nonprofit Flow Research Collective, Kotler and his collaborators investigate how the neuroscience of peak performance can be applied to some of society’s hardest problems. Current initiatives explore new interventions for PTSD, depression, addiction, neurological disorders, and “transition failure”—a military term that describes the inability to navigate life transitions, from returning home after combat to adapting to technological disruption and a changing workforce. The guiding idea is simple: study the brain at its best to develop treatments for when it is at its worst.
WRITING
Kotler continues to write both nonfiction and fiction exploring the edges of human performance, consciousness, and culture. His nonfiction investigates flow science, accelerating technology, and the frontiers of creativity, while his science fiction explores empathy, altered states, frontier technologies, and the strange forces shaping tomorrow—using story to ask similar questions from different perspective: What are humans becoming? What parts of ourselves should we protect?
Current projects include We Are As Gods: A Survival Guide for the Age of Abundance (Simon & Schuster, 2026), Performance Neuroscience (Springer, 2026), and The Intuition Chronicles: An Exploration of the Last Uncharted Wilderness of Human Performance (Portfolio, forthcoming, 2027).
Stuff at the bottom of Steven's resume
Steven flew a Russian MIG-17 fighter jet into G-LOC (gravity-induced loss of consciousness) to test a theory about the neuroscience of near-death experiences.
Steven makes a drawing every day (or most days). He doesn’t claim to be an artist. He just likes to draw for flow and fun. You can find examples on Instagram. @stevenkotler
Steven ran a strange experiment in peak performance aging—he taught himself how to park ski at age fifty-three. Then, Steven expanded the experiment, convincing eighteen adults (ages 29-68) to test his methods on the mountain. If you don’t know what park skiing is, or want to see a video of the experiment, both can be found here.
Steven has helped launch over sixteen companies. This includes two flow-based organizations, five national magazines, an environmental marketplace, an environment-focused events company, a publishing house, a video game company, two canine non-profits, a prestidigitation events company, one short-lived forest fire non-profit, and the now defunct Reporter’s Gym, which taught inner-city kids how to be sportswriters, and was cofounded in conjunction with the Los Angeles Lakers and Dave Eggar’s afterschool tutoring organization, 826 LA.
Steven covered music early in his career as a journalist. This is why his books contain references to bands, and his endnotes contain playlists. This is also why he teamed up with fashion designer and punk rocker, John Varvatos, to create A History of Punk: How The Kids Who No One Wanted Created The Future We’re All Living In. A Punk Rock Legacy. Stay tuned…
Steven has helped over a million people use flow to maximize performance.
Everything we thought we knew about aging is wrong
Everything we thought we knew about aging is wrong.
Before the 1970s, scientists thought of aging as a long, slow rot.
Everyone agreed: depression, loneliness, and cognitive decline were inevitable, and there was nothing we could do about these facts.
Not so fast...
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