Not a lot of writers can say they have broken just shy of 100 bones in their research for a story. When Playboy published my feature "Superhuman" in the February 2012 issue, I didn't realize I was still only at the beginning of my reporting. The story is about athletes using flow states to achieve unbelievable performance.

Forget editing genes. This guy wants to write brand-new ones.

The science of ultimate human performance has a bad name–literally...