#578: Tim Ferriss and Matt Mullenweg in Antarctica: Exploring Personal Fears, Bucket Lists, Facing Grief, Crafting Life Missions, and Tim’s Best Penguin Impressions

Brought to you by Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating, Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/tim automated investing, and Tonal http://tonal.com/ smart home gym. More on all three below. Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt https://twitter.com/photomatt) is a co-founder of the open-source publishing platform WordPress https://wordpress.com, which now powers more than one-third of all sites on the web. He is the founder and CEO of Automattic https://automattic.com/, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce https://woocommerce.com/, Tumblr https://www.tumblr.com/, WPVIP https://wpvip.com/, Day One https://dayoneapp.com/, and Pocket Casts https://www.pocketcasts.com/. Additionally, Matt runs Audrey Capital https://audrey.co/, an investment and research company. He has been recognized for his leadership by Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, Inc., TechCrunch, Fortune, Fast Company, Wired, Vanity Fair, and the University Philosophical Society. Matt is originally from Houston, Texas, where he attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and studied jazz saxophone. In his spare time, Matt is an avid photographer. He currently splits his time between Houston and Jackson Hole. For my first interview with Matt, way back in 2015, go to tim.blog/matt https://tim.blog/2015/02/09/matt-mullenweg/. Please enjoy! * This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep http://eightsleep.com/Tim! Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. And now, my dear listeners—that’s you—can get $250 off the Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim. Simply go to EightSleep.com/Tim http://eightsleep.com/Tim or use code TIM at checkout. * This episode is also brought to you by Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim! Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as ‘robo-advising,’ and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite http://wealthfront.com/Tim and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost. Smart investing should not feel like a rollercoaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you. Go to Wealthfront.com/Tim http://wealthfront.com/Tim and open a Wealthfront account today, and you’ll get your first $5,000 managed for free, for life http://wealthfront.com/Tim. Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim will automate your investments for the long term. Get started today at Wealthfront.com/Tim http://wealthfront.com/Tim. * This episode is also brought to you by Tonal http://tonal.com/! Tonal is the world’s most intelligent home gym and personal trainer. It is precision engineered and designed to be the most advanced strength studio on the market today. Tonal http://tonal.com/ uses breakthrough technology—like adaptive digital weights and AI learning—together with the best experts in resistance training so you get stronger, faster. Every program is personalized to your body using AI, and smart features check your form in real time, just like a personal trainer. Try Tonal http://tonal.com/, the world’s smartest home gym, for 30 days in your home, and if you don’t love it, you can return it for a full refund. Visit Tonal.com http://tonal.com/ for $100 off their smart accessories when you use promo code TIM100 at checkout. * In Antarctica, even your neatest scotch is served on the rocks — and you have to take it with you when you’re finished. [06:12] How we’re dealing with perpetual daylight and zero access to the internet. [08:26] For anyone who hasn’t caught his past appearances and mentions on this show, who is Matt Mullenweg, and what keeps him busy when he’s not camping on Antarctican sea ice? [11:12] What our morning immersed in the “patient” landscape of Antarctica has been like so far. [13:56] Why a total solar eclipse needs to be experienced firsthand to understand why it’s such a big deal. [17:15] Antarctican skin care and rollicking penguin imitations. [20:52] What’s happened in Matt’s world since the last time we talked on this podcast? How does he keep each day interesting? [24:30] What Matt has found most helpful for enduring the grieving process since his father passed away. [26:36] You probably have a smartphone. Here’s why you should use it to record some of the time you spend with loved ones when you have the chance, and what you might talk to them about. [32:25] Podcast tech spec updates since our last conversation that make recording possible at any temperature on Earth. [34:39] As Matt says, “You can’t spell ‘Tim’ without ‘TMI.’” That’s why I’m going to talk about the time I sampled my own urine. [40:04] We each answer the question posed by a card from the Holstee Reflection Deck: “What is one fear you would like to conquer?” [42:13] Strange comfort I derived from a recent existential revelation, and where I found it. [50:48] Next card: “If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about your life, the world, or anything else, what would you want to know?” [1:00:29] Another card: “If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, what would you change about the way you’re living now? Why?” [1:08:35] At the time of this conversation, what would I put on my billboard? [1:19:20] New card: “What are two things still on your bucket list?” [1:19:38] We need more billionaires exploring the oceans and the non-Western worlds of ritual and myth with the same exuberance as the ones currently exploring space. [1:26:39] Would I clone my dog Molly? Matt shares his own experience with getting to know a cloned animal after its genetically identical predecessor passed away. [1:38:49] More bucket list items. [1:43:12] Why Matt doesn’t curse, and what he does when he gets really angry. [1:43:42] The next card: “Do intentions matter more or less than actions?” [1:47:29] The last card: “What are you grateful for right now?” [1:52:07] Parting thoughts. [1:55:07] * For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Margaret Atwood https://tim.blog/2022/02/22/margaret-atwood/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, Balaji Srinivasan https://tim.blog/2021/11/15/balaji-srinivasan-2/, Sarah Silverman https://tim.blog/2022/01/12/sarah-silverman/, Dr. Andrew Huberman https://tim.blog/2021/07/06/andrew-huberman/, Dr. Michio Kaku https://tim.blog/2022/01/07/michio-kaku/, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. My God, am I in love with Eight Sleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. More than 30% of Americans struggle with sleep, and I'm a member of that sad group. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat has always been my nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, putting them back on, and repeating ad nauseam. But now, I am falling asleep in record time, faster than ever. Why? Because I'm using a simple device called the Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep. It's the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced, but most user-friendly solution on the market.

• 0:44Tim Ferriss?

  I polled all of you guys on social media about the best tools for sleep, enhancing sleep, and Eight Sleep was by far and away the crowd favorite. I mean, people were just raving fans of this. So, I used it, and here we are. Add the Pod Pro Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Fahrenheit or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. My girlfriend runs hot all the time. She doesn't need cooling. She loves the heat, and we can have our own bespoke temperatures on either side, which is exactly what we're doing. Now, for me, and for many people, the result: Eight Sleep users fall asleep up to 32% faster,

• 1:28Tim Ferriss?

  reduce sleep interruptions by up to 40%, and get more restful sleep overall. I can personally attest to this because I track it in all sorts of ways. It's the total solution for enhanced recovery, so you can take on the next day feeling refreshed. And now, my dear listeners, that's you guys, you can get $250 off of the Pod Pro Cover. That's a lot. Simply go to eightsleep.com/tim or use code TIM. That's eight, all spelled out, E-I-G-H-T, sleep.com/tim, or use coupon code TIM, T-I-M. Eightsleep.com/tim for $250 off your Pod Pro Cover.

• 2:11Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Tonal. Imagine having an entire gym's worth of equipment in a device smaller than a flatscreen TV. Something that could fit potentially even in a closet. Fits in my closet. By eliminating traditional weights, Tonal can deliver 200 pounds of resistance with a sleek design that can fit nearly anywhere. It's like having an entire gym and personal trainer right in your home. Tonal's patented digital weight system senses your strength and adjusts the weight automatically in real time so you can get the most out of every workout. I have a number of friends, including competitive athletes, who have doubled their strength in short order in a lot of exercises. And part of the reason that's possible is it uses a revolutionary system of dynamic resistance powered by electric motors for strength you can feel.

• 2:56Tim Ferriss?

  You can also do things like eccentrics. Over time, Tonal learns from your body and automatically increases the weight exactly when you can handle it. Tonal also uses 17 sensors to provide real-time feedback on your form and technique, allowing you to get the most effective workout every time. It's a strength training machine with adjustable arms that provides more than 170 exercises for a full-body workout. And that can include squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead pulls, bicep curls, and more. So, check it out. Try Tonal, the smartest home gym for 30 days in your home. Tonal is so confident that you'll love it, they offer a full money-back guarantee. You can now get Tonal for $63 per month at 0% interest over 48 months.

• 3:41Tim Ferriss?

  Visit www.tonal, that's T-O-N-A-L dot com, and for a limited time, get $100 off when you use promo code TIM100 at checkout. That's www.tonal.com promo code TIM100. T-I-M-1-0-0. Tonal, be your strongest.

• 4:03Matt Mullenweg?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half-mile before my hands start to shake.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Can I answer your personal question?

• 4:10Matt Mullenweg?

  Now I will see my perfect time.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 4:26Tim Ferriss?

  Well, hello, boys and girls, lemurs and squirrels. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers from all different disciplines, to tease out the lessons, habits, new tools, et cetera, that you can use. My guest today is one of my favorite guests and a good friend, Matt Mullenweg. Matt is a co-founder of the open-source publishing platform WordPress, which now powers more than one-third of all sites on the web. He is the founder and CEO of Automatic, M-A-T-T. See what he did there? Automatic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, WPVIP, Day1, and Pocket Casts. Additionally, Matt runs Audrey Capital. Can you guess who that's named after?

• 5:10Tim Ferriss?

  I'll give you three guesses. An investment and research company. He has been recognized for his leadership by Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, Inc., Tech Crunch, Fortune, Fast Company, Wired, it keeps going, Vanity Fair, and the University Philosophical Society. Matt is originally from Houston, Texas, where he attended the high school for the Performing and Visual Arts and studied jazz saxophone. In his spare time, Matt is an avid photographer. I encourage you to check out M-A-dot-T-T. He currently splits his time between Houston and Jackson Hole. For my first interview with Matt, way back in 2015, where he had very long hair, go to tim.blog/matt, there was some tequila involved.

• 5:52Tim Ferriss?

  As mentioned, you can find him online at M-A-dot-T-T. You can find him on Twitter, @PhotoMatt, that tells you just how many photos he's taken, and on Instagram, @PhotoMatt. Without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Matt Mullenweg. This is a new acoustic environment for me. So, Matt Mullenweg, we'll get to you in just a minute, but we're sitting here in a shell tent, which has surprisingly good acoustics, kind of like sitting inside a...

• 6:27Tim Ferriss?

  Spherical curtain, I guess, right? To deaden the noise or deaden the echoes. And we are on top of ice. Miles of it. Miles of ice. We have two layers in this shell tent. And inside, we have a little fold-out table on which we have Bluetooth speaker. We have some caffeine. You have some water. We have, how would you say this? Ah, Glenmorangie? Glenmorangie. Glenmorangie. Somebody's gonna correct us here. Help us out. G L E N M O R A N G I E Highland Single Malt Scotch.

• 7:09Tim Ferriss?

  Whiskey, Legends, the Cad Ball. I'll let somebody sort that out. And then we have a Nalgene bottle full of water. And then we have a Nalgene bottle that is colored. It is orange. And the reason that it's orange is it's currently full of 28 ounces of my urine. Straw open, Tim. Yeah. And does that need to be on the table? You know, this is a reminder that I need to dispose of it. So if you come to Antarctica, which is where we are right now, everything that is brought in needs to be carried out. And that includes all human waste, because if you pee in the snow here, it'll be here for hundreds of years or thousands of years.

• 7:51Tim Ferriss?

  And in such case, you need to, if you have to pee when you're outside or you're in your tent and you're freezing your ass off and don't want to walk to one of the bathrooms, you need to pee into a bottle. So that's why I have a differently colored bottle. So I don't mistakenly assume, as you might, because there are no bubbles here, that this is my water, which I guess it is in some sense. Slightly used. Slightly used. So last time we did a podcast, I guess we were doing some back of the napkin, is what, five or so years ago? Five years ago. And a lot has happened in the last five years. But before we get to that, cheers, sir. Cheers. So fun to spend time with you, as always. And thanks for coming to Antarctica.

• 8:33Tim Ferriss?

  Well, thank you for the invite. I'm so excited to finally come here. For a million reasons, the principle of which is just getting to spend more time together. Honestly.

• 8:43Matt Mullenweg?

  This is our fifth continent, so we got two more.

• 8:46Tim Ferriss?

  That's crazy.

• 8:47Matt Mullenweg?

  And Australia, and then we'll, we'll have the hat trick.

• 8:50Tim Ferriss?

  We'll have, we'll have the hat trick of all seven.

• 8:52Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, we're, we're day nine now in Antarctica.

• 8:55Tim Ferriss?

  Day nine.

• 8:56Matt Mullenweg?

  We've been off the internet for a while, which I'm a little shaky. It's like 98% of my brain.

• 9:01Tim Ferriss?

  Some withdrawal symptoms. Wait, you have to, you have to now, we're gonna get to the bio, don't worry folks, but so one of your coping mechanisms, like the methadone for the internet addict was downloading what? What did you download a lot of before you came here?

• 9:18Matt Mullenweg?

  Downloaded a good chunk of the Wikipedia.

• 9:23Tim Ferriss?

  The Wikipedia, like the Facebook.

• 9:25Matt Mullenweg?

  The Wikipedia, yes. And, uh, well, I remember last, I downloaded Scrabble dictionary too. I remember last time I was in Antarctica in 2014, it was really just looking stuff up that I missed the most. And, um, and I've used it a number of times here. And also like, I might have the fullest copy of the Wikipedia of our group, so that's like.

• 9:45Tim Ferriss?

  It came in handy. I wanted to look up a few factoids about Suriname and boom, there it was.

• 9:50Matt Mullenweg?

  There it was.

• 9:52Tim Ferriss?

  But then I found out that Ernesto Houst, who's one of my favorite kickboxers of all time, was born in Suriname. Uh, later won K1 a million times. People who know what that is will know, it is a long story to explain, but there were no accompanying photographs. Of course, I should say, just given the bandwidth limitations. So here we are, day nine. You, I guess, were ruminating on what day it might be, and I had no idea because it is daylight all the time.

• 10:23Matt Mullenweg?

  24 hours a day.

• 10:24Tim Ferriss?

  And it is so bright. I had experienced 24 hour twilight once above the Arctic Circle in Alaska, but this is totally different. I mean, this is like laying on your back in Santa Barbara with the sun beating down on you at, you know, 10 a.m. on a perfectly bluebird day. It's so bright all the time. So everything kind of blends together and you're not really sure when you should be tired or shouldn't be tired. You think it's 1 p.m. and we came back from an excursion today and it was already 6:45, something like that. It's really.

• 11:00Tim Ferriss?

  Strange. It's super strange to not have a circadian rhythm modulated by light change to synchronize to. Super weird.

• 11:12Matt Mullenweg?

  It's been, yeah, it feels very timeless when I've been here. And day of the week, everything has been kind of lost. We also had a very special morning.

• 11:19Tim Ferriss?

  We did. So before we get to the morning, Matt Mullenweg, for people who don't know, who are you?

• 11:24Matt Mullenweg?

  Ah, friend of Tim, but probably better known for co-founding open source software called WordPress, which is blogging, CMS, content management system, has over 50,000 plugins and themes, and I'm the CEO of a company, it was a lot smaller last time we talked, called Automatic. There's a Matt in there. That's kind of a little pun. And we make wordpress.com, easy place to get WordPress, WooCommerce, which is ecommerce built on top of WordPress, Tumblr, Jetpack, all sorts of, Day1, awesome journaling app, Simple Notes, Pocket Cast for podcasting, so check out Pocket Cast.

• 12:00Tim Ferriss?

  Great app.

• 12:00Matt Mullenweg?

  So we, basically, we try to make the open web, make the web more open.

• 12:04Tim Ferriss?

  And what percentage of the web uses one of those products or WordPress itself at this point?

• 12:12Matt Mullenweg?

  The W3 text WordPress is now up to 42%. It was probably like 10 last time we talked.

• 12:18Tim Ferriss?

  That's incredible.

• 12:19Matt Mullenweg?

  It's coming up.

• 12:21Tim Ferriss?

  And what would you guess, five years ago, roughly, size of the company then and now?

• 12:27Matt Mullenweg?

  Then we were a couple hundred, and now we're a couple thousand. We're coming up on 2,000 people, which has been really amazing.

• 12:33Tim Ferriss?

  Distributed before it was cool.

• 12:35Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah.

• 12:36Tim Ferriss?

  That's worth noting.

• 12:37Matt Mullenweg?

  That was kind of a funny thing as well, as I even started a podcast called Distributed, and I was like, okay, my goal for the 2020s, basically the next 10 years, was to get more remote work happening.

• 12:49Tim Ferriss?

  Boo.

• 12:50Matt Mullenweg?

  It happened. Sorry about the virus, guys.

• 12:55Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, so just woke up one day and, you know, of people who could, that numbers were incredible, how many people switched to Distributed to work. But yeah, we've been Distributed since the beginning. We're about 2,000 people, 92 countries. Majority of the company first language is not English, and we communicate primarily asynchronously through blogging.

• 13:13Tim Ferriss?

  Now, when you say blogging, you're referring to internal tools that resemble blogging?

• 13:17Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, we have this tool called P2, the letter P as in Penguin and the number 2. And it's basically an internal blog. We have no email in the company. The only email I get is HR stuff. And everything else happens.

• 13:31Tim Ferriss?

  I'm guessing not a good day.

• 13:34Matt Mullenweg?

  No, I work a lot with HR.

• 13:38Matt Mullenweg?

  So that'll happen privately, but everything else, instead of sending an email, we'll just kind of blog to each other. And so everything has a permalink, everything is archived, everything is searchable. And you can have rich embeds, like Figma embeds, YouTube embeds.

• 13:51Tim Ferriss?

  What was that first embed?

• 13:52Matt Mullenweg?

  Figma.

• 13:53Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know what that is.

• 13:55Matt Mullenweg?

  Figma is actually an awesome tool you should check out. Imagine a way to coordinate design online and in real time. So you and I could be working on the same wireframes or interaction design. And actually, it's the latest episode of the Distributed Podcast. And I didn't actually interview the founder, Dylan. Connie Yang did, mutual friend of ours, who's a designer.

• 14:16Tim Ferriss?

  We owe Connie credit for another prop we have on the table we may or may not use, which are the Holste, H O L S T E E, reflection cards. And there are a lot of decks of questions that I've seen out and about, and I've tried quite a few. My girlfriend loves these various decks. And there's the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I'd say mostly fairly mediocre. And this is a deck that is quite good. So we might get to some questions here. So Connie, you were saying, interviewed the founder of Figma on the Distributed.

• 14:48Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, latest episode. It's a cool tool. I think you might enjoy checking it out, actually.

• 14:53Tim Ferriss?

  I will. Figma, I'm on it. And let's see, what else? This is such a lazy question, but it kind of boggled my mind to think that it's been five years since we last did one of these.

• 15:06Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah.

• 15:07Tim Ferriss?

  Because you said what, the first episode we did was number 60 something?

• 15:11Matt Mullenweg?

  61.

• 15:12Tim Ferriss?

  61.

• 15:14Tim Ferriss?

  In the Bay Area at my kitchen table or dining room table, all the same in Glen Park, back when you had you had your golden locks. I think that was when you still had your golden.

• 15:26Matt Mullenweg?

  Pretty long hair. Yeah, I tried to change it up every year or two.

• 15:30Tim Ferriss?

  Every once in a while. And at the time, the nectar of choice was tequila. And so that that featured very heavily in more ways than one.

• 15:39Matt Mullenweg?

  The Dragoan is hoping. Yeah, that was, um, yeah, that's a go to.

• 15:43Tim Ferriss?

  That was good evening. That was a good evening. So this morning, if we switch from evening to morning, so we had a very interesting morning and it started, well, I didn't really ever end, I guess. I mean, it was continuous. Most people didn't sleep. But what what happened this morning?

• 15:57Matt Mullenweg?

  So part of the reason we're in Antarctica, besides the penguins, which I know you talked a lot about with Sue, check out that episode with Sue Flood, is the total solar eclipse that happened here in Antarctica. And it's the only one in the continent until 2039, I think, that's total solar eclipse. So you and I, at the wee hours of the morning.

• 16:19Tim Ferriss?

  Very wee, very wee.

• 16:20Matt Mullenweg?

  Got to see what was my first visible total solar eclipse.

• 16:25Tim Ferriss?

  Mine too.

• 16:26Matt Mullenweg?

  Incredible. The landscape in Antarctica is so dramatic.

• 16:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 16:30Matt Mullenweg?

  It's a it's a place that really makes you feel, it's a very patient landscape and it makes you feel like your size in the cosmos.

• 16:40Tim Ferriss?

  Interestingly, you'd use the word patient. Why do you use that adjective? I was anticipating you might say vast or majestic, vast even more so than majestic. But why, why patient?

• 16:51Matt Mullenweg?

  There's something to me about Antarctica that feels really timeless and also just unconcerned with.

• 16:57Tim Ferriss?

  Human welfare.

• 16:59Matt Mullenweg?

  Human welfare and time scales.

• 17:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 17:01Matt Mullenweg?

  You know, things here happen over huge time scales and it's so cool to see like mountains buried by glaciers, essentially, like they look like they're like have a blanket over them. And that was over how many tens or hundreds of thousands of years? It's pretty incredible.

• 17:15Tim Ferriss?

  It is. And we were, we were chatting with a gentleman yesterday. I don't know if he would want to be named, so I won't name him. But he had mentioned how deep an impact.

• 17:29Tim Ferriss?

  I guess his first full totality, as it's known, first total solar eclipse had affected him and how he had always on some intellectual level understood our relative insignificance from a cosmic perspective. But the first time that he viscerally felt that, which actually was deeply therapeutic for him, was seeing a totality with his daughter in his arms. And somebody behind him caught this amazing photograph of his daughter, tiny little daughter, pointing up at the totality as it's happening. I mean, you couldn't have scripted a better photograph. And then this morning, it still feels like it was two days ago. Everything blurs and blends together, which is We've lived lifetimes.

• 18:12Tim Ferriss?

  We've lived lifetimes. It was around, what, 4:44, I want to say? Mm-hmm. And leading up to it, in the days leading up to it, I was looking forward to it, but I wasn't jumping up and down with excitement. I just assumed, okay, it gets progressively darker, then it's dark, and then it gets progressively lighter. I'm not that blown away by this phenomenon. Cool story, bro. Yeah, yeah, cool story, bro. And had to be there, had to be there. And it turns out, you really do have to be there. And when it actually started creeping up and you're watching this happen, and you're observing the progression through these eclipse glasses, because otherwise you'll blow your eyes out, of course, especially if something's magnified

• 18:57Tim Ferriss?

  through equipment. And when it actually fully overlapped, and you're able to take off your glasses and look at it directly, it was Stunning. Stunning. And the effects on the horizon and on the visibility of stars, the things happening around it, the shadow bands, as people refer to them as, right? Traveling across the ground. Did you see the wavy ones from the corona? I did. That was so surreal. Yeah. And just everything about it almost hearkened back for me to prehistoric humanoid times. Like, it touched something very old, if that makes any sense. It felt like it

• 19:38Tim Ferriss?

  touched something in species or racial memory going back thousands of years, where you can imagine the impact that this would have on any sentient being who's observing it and really paying attention and watching it. Difficult to put into words. That was the most common Sentence, probably some variation of that that I heard afterwards. People were giddy. People were euphoric and the expression was, you just can't put it into words, or I can't put it into words.

• 20:11Matt Mullenweg?

  And I encourage people to look up the history of eclipses. There's been some cool historical moments where predicting eclipse or not predicting eclipse, or I think two kings died after seeing them. And then that was part of the creation of Europe.

• 20:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, King John, King John the Pius, you're saying, and then Europe was split up into

• 20:31Matt Mullenweg?

  What became France, what became Italy and what became Germany to his three sons.

• 20:35Tim Ferriss?

  So, yeah, eclipses seem to figure pretty strongly into the shaping of history and the shaping of national borders.

• 20:44Matt Mullenweg?

  What's more reliable than the sun?

• 20:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 20:47Matt Mullenweg?

  And for that to be blotted out for a moment is, uh, yeah, awe inspiring. Let's do it again.

• 20:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I don't say this lightly. I mean, and once it, once it happened though, I immediately turned to a few friends that they were with and I was, and I said, I get it. I see why people chase this because we have people here in this camp, because you have these shell tents arranged in rows of sorts. And then they have snow piled around them to brace against the wind. And it does get really, really fucking cold here. Surprise, surprise. It's Antarctica. It's also very, very dry and people get a lot of sun damage, even more so than.

• 21:25Matt Mullenweg?

  This is the driest desert in the world.

• 21:27Tim Ferriss?

  It is dry. It is dry. It's part of the reason you can dry the surface of, say, your steak by putting it in a freezer on an elevated rack for a short period of time. It's the driest place in your house is a good freezer.

• 21:37Matt Mullenweg?

  I know that.

• 21:38Tim Ferriss?

  So, and you just expand that a gazillion times. We're in a really good freezer. Over eons and here you are in Antarctica.

• 21:46Matt Mullenweg?

  It's also interesting that where we are on Union Glacier, there's no birds, no animals, no insects, literally nothing living except us.

• 21:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, I was gonna say disturbingly, but it's not disturbingly. It is oddly quiet when you go to certain parts of the camp, if you're not within sort of shouting distance or. Within hearing distance of the mess hall or something like that.

• 22:13Matt Mullenweg?

  And especially after we spent seven days with the penguins.

• 22:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 22:16Matt Mullenweg?

  Which have kind of a constant din.

• 22:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 22:18Matt Mullenweg?

  And it was really cute. They would walk into camp and just walk past your tent. The tents have no noise isolation.

• 22:23Tim Ferriss?

  Or right up to the tent.

• 22:24Matt Mullenweg?

  Right up to tent. Actually, you're better at the noises.

• 22:31Tim Ferriss?

  That's what he.

• 22:32Matt Mullenweg?

  That was, that was pretty good.

• 22:33Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you. You, although that is actually the paring call that you hear more at the colony, but they're just going.

• 22:42Matt Mullenweg?

  Tim's been practicing this.

• 22:43Tim Ferriss?

  I have been practicing. Much to the chagrin of my travel, traveling companions. I've been doing that like a hundred times a day.

• 22:51Matt Mullenweg?

  If you can cut in some of that field audio you took would be pretty cool.

• 22:54Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, we will. Oh, there will be magic in the editing room.

• 23:12Tim Ferriss?

  I have no idea if you'll be able to hear me or not, but those are the sounds of thousands of empire penguins. Adults in their business formal, black and white attire. The largest of the penguin species. So I would guess, I'm no biologist, but probably, let's just call it two and a half to maybe three and a half feet tall. Probably 25 to 45, maybe 25 to 50 pounds. And then there are chicks who have gray downy feathers or certainly appear to. The adults have, I think, roughly 15 feathers per square centimeter. You're hearing many different calls.

• 23:59Tim Ferriss?

  And I don't know the meaning, I assume there certainly are meanings of the different calls, but.

• 24:07Tim Ferriss?

  There's a

• 24:11Tim Ferriss?

  which they make when they point their beaks basically straight down flat against their chests. So I imagine that's straightening their trachea somehow, but it's the opposite of what you'd see a coyote or a wolf howling. And here I am. Holy shit, Antarctica. So Matt, where should we, where should we go next? What do you think? You want to, you want, should we pull out the deck? See what happens? Should we go somewhere else? Are there other things in the last five years? Maybe we'll roll into that. I mean, five years, it seems like so recently that we recorded our other episodes and it's not that recent. I mean, it's not, it's like, if you live 80, let's just say we live 80, 85 years, it's like five years is a meaningful percentage of that.

• 24:55Matt Mullenweg?

  It's true. Yeah. Makes me think of that essay, um, the great one from Tim Urban.

• 24:59Tim Ferriss?

  The Tail End.

• 25:00Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah.

• 25:00Tim Ferriss?

  Which you introduced me to and I have shared with so many people, put an edited, or I don't think it was highly edited, but like a slightly shortened version in, I think it was Tools of Titans, because it had such an impact on me. And that's all thanks to Mr. Mullerwick.

• 25:18Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, that was one of the big things since our last episode was my father passing.

• 25:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 25:22Matt Mullenweg?

  You were a great friend through all that. So thank you, but that taught me a lot about grief and the femorality of life and everything. So that was a big one. Yeah, pretty much everything in my life has changed a lot in the past five years. We hadn't even acquired WooCommerce when we last spoke. And this year it's gonna do, what's the number that we say, I think 21 billion of transactions. You know, we're hoping to do for e-commerce what we did for websites. And I think there's a chance and the web wants an open source thing out there for commerce. So I think what's been exciting for me is everything is always changing. I'm not good at staying still.

• 26:01Tim Ferriss?

  Everything is always changing, not in a macro world sense. So I guess that's true. You're saying for you personally.

• 26:06Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. You asked me the other day, do I have like a weekly routine where like Mondays are staff meetings, Tuesdays are.

• 26:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, if you have an infrastructure for your week, because people like Jack Dorsey have talked about this. I don't know if he, he, he does it any longer, but I, I did ask you and your answer was?

• 26:20Matt Mullenweg?

  Every day is different. And that's part of what keeps it super exciting for me because I feel like I'm always learning. I know nothing about podcasting software or journaling software or ecommerce software or anything, but I love making tools that people use. It's very, very satisfying.

• 26:36Tim Ferriss?

  If you don't mind, let's just come back for a second to your dad's passing. And I know that was an understandably extremely tough period. And I don't even know if it's something you've ever fully metabolized, if that's something you even view in the past tense, like something you went through, or if it's something that you continue to live with. But my question is, if there are any resources, tools, books, or just simply advice that you would give to someone who is experiencing grief or has lost someone, or maybe is on the cusp of losing someone.

• 27:11Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. The book that I found most helpful during that was co-authored by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who came up with the Kubler-Ross scale, I think that's the five stages, denial, anger, acceptance of the five stages of grief. The book was called, I think, Grief and Grieving.

• 27:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, On Grief and Grieving.

• 27:28Matt Mullenweg?

  On Grief and Grieving. That one was really powerful.

• 27:31Tim Ferriss?

  Might be just grief and grieving. I shouldn't be so definitive, but yeah, one of the two.

• 27:34Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. So that one was very, very helpful for me. But one of the things I learned was how personal the process is and how different it is. For example, for me and my sister, grieved completely differently. And I've seen other friends go through this since then. And so, or to say, one thing I really learned is just that everyone has their own way of processing, and it'll happen at different times. And it's very easy to get annoyed, or mad, or angry, or disappointed at how someone else is grieving, if it's different from yours. How did the book help you? What did it explain or help you to accept or clarify or otherwise? I had heard of those five stages, but I thought they happened serially, like you went in order. Well, that's what I would assume.

• 28:17Matt Mullenweg?

  And it turns out you you can have them out of order and multiple ones at the same time. And in the same day, in the same hour. And so that was really helpful. Pre grieving was something I learned a lot from the book. It's the idea that if you have a sense that someone's going to pass, there's actually a whole grieving process that happens before then. And my father was in the hospital for about five weeks. So that was one of the most intense periods of my life. And that pre grieving, I hadn't really understood. Those are some big ones. Yeah. And it's been helpful as well. I think especially in American culture, we don't talk about death. Yeah. We don't think about it and we like to pretend it doesn't happen.

• 29:00Matt Mullenweg?

  But it's the one thing that for certain is going to happen to every single one of us. And we're all going to lose someone we love and we'll all pass someday. And very much like the Stoics, I think that the more you think about it, the better you are able to handle it yourself and help others when they're going through it. I have an app for my phone. I think it's, what is it? Bhutanese? It's called My Croak or We Croak. We Croak. Yeah, I've used We Croak. And five times a day, it just sends you a notification. It's like, just a reminder, we're all gonna die. Gives you a quote. And then it gives you a quote that you can open the app. That one's been, yeah, I've kept that going. Yeah. I also, I think we might have talked about this before, but on my Chrome new tab, I sort

• 29:45Matt Mullenweg?

  of calculated the average number of days I'm probably going to live. So every time I open a new tab, it has a countdown. Is that something you did manually or is that something other people can do reasonably easily? Yeah, I use a tab thing called Momentum, which allows you to customize your new tab screen and it can do countdowns. And so I think the dates were something like 2060, 2000, January 11th, I picked my birthday. And then it just counts down. And so that's also really interesting. And I find also a good interrupt to remind me when I'm starting a new tab, which is usually the beginning of distraction or something. Yeah, totally. That that it just has Momentum Mori and the countdown. Do you find that you?

• 30:29Tim Ferriss?

  Begin to tune that out. So I've used momentum. I like it a lot, but do you end up at some point becoming immune to the reminder? You experience that or not so much? Is there anything you do to prevent that?

• 30:42Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, I've definitely developed like a selective blindness to it. I was actually just thinking today, like if I just used every app on my home screen regularly, my life would probably be much better. I've got Calm and Fitbot and all these sorts of things that I put on like smart mats, thoughtful mats.

• 30:58Tim Ferriss?

  Smart mats.

• 30:59Matt Mullenweg?

  Put that on the home screen.

• 31:00Tim Ferriss?

  Thinking of your future.

• 31:01Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah.

• 31:01Tim Ferriss?

  But I'll still scroll the four screens over to get to Twitter, Instagram or something.

• 31:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's hard to win that one outgunned as we are.

• 31:12Tim Ferriss?

  I actually deleted all apps from my phone. Excuse me, that would not make any sense. That would make my phone very hard to use. Deleted all social apps from my phone about a year and a half ago and haven't installed, haven't reinstalled any of them. And it's been liberating in some ways and also frustrating in others to see how addictive these tools are and how I will find workarounds by using.

• 31:41Matt Mullenweg?

  The browser.

• 31:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the browser, right? And it provides a hurdle, right? So it's like the candy isn't within reach. Like I have to like open a door and walk through to another room, metaphorically speaking, to get the candy, but still I end up, as you've seen on this trip with the chocolate covered almonds.

• 31:59Matt Mullenweg?

  It's amazing how much chocolate covered almonds Tim has consumed.

• 32:03Tim Ferriss?

  So horrifying, so horrifying.

• 32:06Matt Mullenweg?

  Well, it's a good reminder. We're all human, even like for our body, Tim Ferriss.

• 32:09Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely, even for us, especially for our bodies. Uh oh, once he goes off the rails, it's, it's very, very off the rails. Oh, man. So anything else that you'd like to add within the context of the last, last five years?

• 32:25Matt Mullenweg?

  And one more thing on the, on the parents is one thing I wish is that I had more recordings. My dad, just remembering his voice or even some video, though people are more self-conscious about video. So I think it's great if there's people you love. Do something like this. Have a conversation with them. Record it. I think it's something you'll both probably appreciate.

• 32:45Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you've been part of the, a big part of the impetus for me to. Set time aside and schedule time to do this with my parents. We had it scheduled and then there were some calendar and travel issues, of course, with COVID and everything else going on. But that is something that I'm planning on doing in the next few months. And I'm looking forward to it. I think there are at different points, I've had various reservations, but as I think more and more about kids, I think it becomes, it dawns on me more and more clearly how valuable or how treasured that could be at some point to have that.

• 33:24Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. And just what our parents or loved ones might remember about our life is so different from sometimes what we remember.

• 33:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 33:31Matt Mullenweg?

  And could be really enlightening sometimes.

• 33:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 33:33Matt Mullenweg?

  Because memory is so fallible, right?

• 33:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, super fallible.

• 33:36Matt Mullenweg?

  So it's interesting to see the different perspectives on it and triangulate maybe how we turned out the way we did, or things that might have been very influential on us.

• 33:43Tim Ferriss?

  So, question for you then, any recommendations for my conversations with my parents? Are there any particular types of questions that you would ask?

• 33:53Matt Mullenweg?

  Hmm.

• 33:53Tim Ferriss?

  Or angles of inquiry, or anything at all? No-fly zones? Anything that comes to mind?

• 34:02Matt Mullenweg?

  You know, this is where being offline is gonna get us. What's the project? It's like on NPR where they interview people. There's an app for it's.

• 34:11Tim Ferriss?

  StoryCorps.

• 34:11Matt Mullenweg?

  StoryCorps. Story and then C-O-R-P-S.

• 34:16Tim Ferriss?

  Alright.

• 34:17Matt Mullenweg?

  And I think they even have an app with questions. And part of what they do is try to get an oral history of Americans.

• 34:23Tim Ferriss?

  Oh.

• 34:23Matt Mullenweg?

  People around the country.

• 34:24Tim Ferriss?

  I knew it. I don't know anything about this.

• 34:26Matt Mullenweg?

  But people can record their own. And they have a really great set of questions that kind of walk people through.

• 34:31Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing.

• 34:32Matt Mullenweg?

  Their life history. So.

• 34:33Tim Ferriss?

  StoryCorps.

• 34:34Matt Mullenweg?

  Those would be the experts. And check it out. There might be some things that could be a good framework.

• 34:38Tim Ferriss?

  I will. And for what it's worth, since we're talking about recording, we can just mention briefly what I have right here in front of us, which is the sophisticated grand podcasting studio of Tim Ferriss Enterprises, which is very, very, very simple, it turns out. There've only been a few minor changes since our recording five years ago.

• 35:01Tim Ferriss?

  And the first recording being number 61 of the podcast. Now we have whatever it is close to 600 episodes. So you've got the Zoom H6 recorder in front of me. And then we have two XLR cables, one going to handheld mic for Matt, another going to handheld mic in my hand. One of the upgrades that I made is when I do in-person recording, I have two different colored, the default is going to be black cabling. I get colored cables. So for video, this would be horrible on the eyes, but practically for recording, it's great because it makes it very easy for me to see which levels I need to adjust. Oh, cool.

• 35:41Tim Ferriss?

  That's why the cables are different colors. So we have yellow and orange. And then I have rechargeable batteries, which are Panasonic rechargeable. BQCC 5.5 is going to probably take you to the proper make and model. And then we have an iPhone with a Shure MV88 microphone that attaches to the iPhones through a Lightning port and captures really good audio. So we have that running as backup. And then the handheld mics are also Shure.

• 36:21Tim Ferriss?

  And I usually use SM58 mics. These are slightly better for voice. And if I could just see yours for a second, this is the KSM8. And they're very nice. Work really, really well. And that's it. And this all fits into, as Matt can tell you, hey, well, there's a small bag, but it all fits into a Banya hat. I have a Russian sauna hat that is perfect padding and insulation for the recorder itself. Then everything else fits easily, easily, easily into a backpack. You could probably fit most of it into a big jacket. And you can record anywhere. You've now recorded to in Antarctica, which is amazing. It is kind of amazing. And so we've had

• 37:06Tim Ferriss?

  200 plus degrees Fahrenheit with Rick Rubin, the incredible music producer, although he does a lot more in his sauna because I was a condition for doing the interview. It was so hot and hilariously so because we ended up having to take breaks and do ice baths. And the mics got so hot. That was one thing we didn't budget for. I was so worried about the recorder being damaged or going non-functional that I didn't pay attention to the simple fact that when you have the mic at body height in the sauna, it's going to get ripping hot. Wow. So the equivalent was fine on the floor, but the mics got so hot, we had to wrap them in towels.

• 37:45Tim Ferriss?

  And do it that way. So we've done like plus 200 degrees and with wind chill probably at. I think they were saying it was negative 35. Negative, yeah. This morning. Yeah, negative 35, maybe even a little bit colder, but negative 35, maybe a little bit colder at Gold Bay with Sue because we were outside. Oh, yeah. We have a bit of shelter here, but there we had an open sided tent with wind ripping through and a table made of ice instead of this nice fold out table. Why didn't you close the door of the tent? It was a lounge that had been created by the staff and one was like up over the top. And I suppose we could have closed it, but we were all wrapped up and reasonably cozy. I took a picture of you. I'll have to share.

• 38:29Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. That's right. Yes, you have a good photo.

• 38:34Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Did you know if you missed 10 of the best performing days after the 2008 crisis, you would have missed out on 50%, 5-0% of your returns? Don't miss out on the best days in the market. Stay invested in a long-term automated investment portfolio. Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as robo-advising, and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. Wealthfront can help you diversify your portfolio, minimize fees and lower your taxes. Takes about three minutes to sign up and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and management. Manage it for you at an incredibly low cost.

• 39:18Tim Ferriss?

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• 40:04Tim Ferriss?

  Would you mind opening the non-pea bottle so I can have some of the water? I'm pleased that they have the color coding and I'm going to open this deck. Come a long way from Casa Dragonas.

• 40:19Tim Ferriss?

  Cheers, by the way. Yeah, cheers. Let me do that with the booze. How much would you give me to drink a swig of that urine right now? What would you trade? I like you too much, Tim. I wouldn't do that to you. I have actually, I have, I don't know how this came about, but I ended up, this is only for you, my fine listeners. No such thing as TMI. I remember at some point, I don't know what it was. Can't filter him without TMI. That was good. That was good. So let me take a break from the pea bottle. I'm going to come back to drinking my own urine story. Matt is the master of what is known in Japanese as oyaji gyaku. Oyaji gyaku. Oyaji gyaku. Okay.

• 41:01Tim Ferriss?

  So oyaji, oyaji is like pops. It's like saying dad, but in a really informal way. And then gyaku is gag.

• 41:11Tim Ferriss?

  And as it turns out, cross culturally dads love puns and wordplay. So like if a shitty pun comes up, and often did in my host family when I was 15 in Japan, then the host brother would be like, "Oy, oyaji, oyaji ga ga yamete ya." And that is the master. So yeah, you can't spell, you can't spell TMI without TMI. That is actually very, very good. That's very, very good. I did take in that same apartment in San Francisco, I remember at one point just deciding, you know what, I think I should sample my own urine. For what reason, I can't recall. And I did, and you've seen how much water I consume. So it was actually totally fine.

• 41:54Tim Ferriss?

  It was, it was totally fine. It wasn't over saturated with B vitamins or anything. That will affect the taste, I suspect. Not that I've had many samplings. But I will say, I don't make a regular practice of drinking my urine, nor do I recommend it. This is not medical advice. It's actually pretty stupid as a story to begin with.

• 42:12Matt Mullenweg?

  But you did it so others don't have to.

• 42:13Tim Ferriss?

  I did it so others don't have to. Yeah, it wasn't the most delicious thing I've ever had. All right. So let me, let me offer you, you want me to choose a card or you want to choose a card?

• 42:24Matt Mullenweg?

  All right, go for it.

• 42:25Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So let's see. And you can always refuse.

• 42:29Matt Mullenweg?

  And would you say your recordings in Antarctica have been intense?

• 42:33Tim Ferriss?

  Intense. Is that another pun? Oh, intense. Oh my God, that was so bad.

• 42:42Matt Mullenweg?

  Sorry.

• 42:42Tim Ferriss?

  That was good. That was good. That was good. You can't have had a thousand. Intense, you know? True fact, as my friend Kelly Starrett likes to say. True fact. True fact, Tim Ferriss. Uh, here's one. What is one fear you would like to conquer?

• 42:59Matt Mullenweg?

  Hmm. You're gonna answer the same one?

• 43:02Tim Ferriss?

  I can, or you could choose another one?

• 43:04Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. I think that'd be, it'd be fun if we both answered.

• 43:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 43:07Matt Mullenweg?

  Cause maybe we'll inspire a different way of thinking about it in each other.

• 43:10Tim Ferriss?

  Great.

• 43:11Matt Mullenweg?

  You know, I have a hang up around body issues.

• 43:16Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 43:17Matt Mullenweg?

  And exercise and stuff.

• 43:20Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 43:20Matt Mullenweg?

  And it kinda got bigger in like the past six months. And as I'm 37 now.

• 43:26Tim Ferriss?

  Ooh.

• 43:27Matt Mullenweg?

  Not there.

• 43:27Tim Ferriss?

  Old man.

• 43:28Matt Mullenweg?

  Young age.

• 43:29Tim Ferriss?

  Old man, mullenweg.

• 43:30Matt Mullenweg?

  And um, yeah, I think that's a fear I like to conquer, cause it's totally irrational.

• 43:35Tim Ferriss?

  What is the fear exactly?

• 43:38Matt Mullenweg?

  I don't know how to articulate it, but there's something where I don't know how to articulate it. Cause it's a fear. It's not rational. It's not something I can put into words.

• 43:47Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I mean, there are a lot of fears that are rational, right? So just because it's a fear, it doesn't automatically make it irrational.

• 43:53Matt Mullenweg?

  I think this is probably irrational.

• 43:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. All right.

• 43:55Matt Mullenweg?

  Um, yeah, there's something around.

• 43:58Tim Ferriss?

  It's like an insecurity. I'm not going to let you go. So is it an insecurity around appearance?

• 44:06Matt Mullenweg?

  I think it's something.

• 44:07Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm hmm hmm.

• 44:09Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, something about, I'm sorry. I don't know how to go deeper.

• 44:15Tim Ferriss?

  We can, this is, this is where I should do, do some heavy lifting or help do some heavy lifting. What would be an example of a time when it shows up for you?

• 44:23Matt Mullenweg?

  The resistance I feel around sort of exercise. That's been growing, I would say, where it's,

• 44:36Matt Mullenweg?

  it shows up like a fear in that I can think of so many excuses why, including like, I'm going to injure myself again, or I'm going to hurt my knee, or my wrists are bad right now, so I shouldn't be doing this, or like, things like that. But which really just add up to be a bunch of excuses.

• 44:54Tim Ferriss?

  What do you think that is protecting you from? Like if you did not have, cause it seems like, you're a smart guy. So there's probably some part of you not to like go too far into like I F S dixwords type stuff, but like your subconscious is trying to protect you from something, potentially. Now, what is it protecting you from?

• 45:13Matt Mullenweg?

  What do you think it is?

• 45:15Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know. I mean, it could be injury, right? It could be performing below your expectations, perhaps. Like if you exercise that you're not going to meet some standard you've set for yourself in your mind. I have no idea. So it sounds like it's a hesitancy. That you can't fully explain, therefore it's kind of falling into the category of fear for you?

• 45:37Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah.

• 45:38Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 45:38Matt Mullenweg?

  How about for you? What's a fear you would like to overcome?

• 45:42Tim Ferriss?

  Man, how much time do we have? I don't, I think that's a bit of an overstatement, but I, I mean, shit, if we're drinking, drinking our single malt and really going for it, I would say the fear that I am just hardwired and also just software coded through DNA to be depressed and unhappy. And that that is a baseline I cannot escape. Like there's the gravitational pull to out of the box settings is so strong that no matter what I do, no matter how many morning routines I tweak, no matter how much I exercise, no matter how much I program meticulously

• 46:26Tim Ferriss?

  different areas of my life, the regression to the mean is always going to be to a place of depression or, this is a strong word, but like self loathing, something that is not quite self loathing at a 10 out of 10 intensity, but like a discontent and disappointment with myself.

• 46:48Matt Mullenweg?

  That actually, that locked in something about mine, which is like a fear of being bigger.

• 46:54Tim Ferriss?

  Bigger.

• 46:55Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, my family's bigger.

• 46:56Tim Ferriss?

  Bigger, meaning like obese.

• 46:58Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, like I have some pre-built settings, the proclivity towards that.

• 47:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 47:03Matt Mullenweg?

  Hmm. Do you believe that? That you're, can you overcome that or?

• 47:09Tim Ferriss?

  Depends on the day, depends on whether I've had a good stretch or a bad stretch or an average stretch. I mean, even if it is deluding myself, I want to believe that it is something I can overcome. I don't see how the alternative plays out is terrifying to me. If I truly, truly believe that a hundred percent of the time, the consequences of that are like staggeringly scary. So I don't want to believe that, but if I were a scientist just looking at the data set, I'd be like, yeah, like if we're, if we're rating days like negative two, negative one, zero, plus one.

• 47:51Tim Ferriss?

  Plus two, somewhat like Jim Collins does. If people want more on that, you can just listen to the first conversation I had with him. But I would say I probably average out negative one. Just on emotional tone, the gestalt of the day being sort of positive energy. Not in that way.

• 48:14Matt Mullenweg?

  That'd be interesting to do.

• 48:15Tim Ferriss?

  Not in that way.

• 48:15Matt Mullenweg?

  Some data around it.

• 48:16Tim Ferriss?

  I should do it also because I do think, and my girlfriend has certainly pointed this out, and I recognize it is true, that I have a negative selection bias. I think a lot of humans have negative selection bias, because you get rewarded by overreacting to threats.

• 48:34Matt Mullenweg?

  What's it, what's the stat? You fill a dollar, you lose seven times more than a dollar you gain or keep?

• 48:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 48:39Matt Mullenweg?

  They've done studies around this.

• 48:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, like how hard would you work to make a hundred dollars versus how hard would you work to avoid having like a hundred dollars stolen or taken from you, right? Yeah, so that is one of my macro fears. Tied to that would be a fear, I don't know if people can hear that, because there's no, there are no birds, there's no insects, the footsteps on the snow are definitely loud. The foot traffic is so loud, which makes it even harder to sleep around here. Where was I going? Where was I?

• 49:13Matt Mullenweg?

  Macro fear. It's related.

• 49:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that is related is that I will never have enough energy. So, and I think some of that ties back to undiagnosed Lyme when I was a kid, which has been verified because I then later had confirmed Lyme. And I grew up on Long Island, where it's very, very, very common. And when I was properly diagnosed after very severe symptoms, the second time, which was, I don't know, 2012 or 13 or 14, when they did the ELISA, I think it's the ELISA blot test and other testing, they gave me my results. And the first thing they said was, well, you realize that you've had Lyme disease before, right?

• 49:52Matt Mullenweg?

  Wow.

• 49:52Tim Ferriss?

  Because I was showing, I guess, the long-term antibodies, like the serologic testing. I might, I might not be getting the details right, but suffice to say I'd already had Lyme, but it had gone undiagnosed, which meant it was untreated for a long, long time. So I don't know how much to attribute to that versus a family history of depression versus other things, but I've always struggled with energy levels. I was like the currency in which I am poorest. And it doesn't matter how much time you have, attention or otherwise. Like if you don't have just the battery to execute, you are SOL.

• 50:29Matt Mullenweg?

  Do you think people who listen to your podcasts would guess that about you?

• 50:33Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think so, because they're getting 1% of my time. Not 1%, but it's like, I don't spend all of my time recording conversations, right? So they get to hear me when I'm having fun usually, right? Like I enjoy the podcast. Like it is very deeply nourishing to me. And when it starts to feel anything other than that, I change something, right? Like I decrease the frequency. Like I could do it three times, four times, five times a week, but it would start to feel like a burden or a chore. And I don't want that to be the case. So I don't think most people would guess that.

• 51:11Matt Mullenweg?

  You know, you did share with me, I don't know if you're willing to share here or want to share here, that you got a lot of comfort from a revelation.

• 51:20Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, is this the existential piece?

• 51:22Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah.

• 51:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm willing to share. This is a weird one. So this is kind of ties into another fear, which is, I don't know if it's a fear, I mean, it's a belief, the consequences of which are really unpleasant. Although I've started to look at it in a slightly different way. And I'll back into it by saying like, I think meaninglessness can be terrifying, but in a way it can also be liberating because it frees you to kind of do whatever you choose to pursue. And

• 51:55Tim Ferriss?

  Over the last year, we've been talking about this on this trip.

• 52:01Tim Ferriss?

  We agree on a lot of things. The one not trivial, very non trivial thing that I think we have differing opinions on is just like inherent human nature. And I have a, I don't want to call it dystopian, but I tend to think we are closer to chimps than not, right? Like, like 1% of our DNA.

• 52:18Matt Mullenweg?

  More Hobbesian.

• 52:19Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 52:20Matt Mullenweg?

  Nasty, brutish, short.

• 52:21Tim Ferriss?

  Nasty, brutish, short, right? Hobbesian is the right way to put it.

• 52:25Matt Mullenweg?

  And I'm a little more pinker-esque, you know, better angels of our nature.

• 52:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. So, and as such, I have been involved in a bunch of things over the last handful of years, including psychedelic therapeutics, especially in the nonprofit research side. I haven't done any for-profit investments myself. And you've been a huge supporter of that world as well. So, thanks for that.

• 52:52Matt Mullenweg?

  Thank you.

• 52:52Tim Ferriss?

  It's a big deal. And then also with different conservation work in the Amazon and North America and so on.

• 53:02Tim Ferriss?

  Have just run into what I view as this kind of, I know, I know one could argue against it, but like almost for me, like an irrefutable truth, just based on overwhelming evidence that I've faced over and over again, that like humans cannot resist pissing in the pool. Like they can't help themselves. Like they're so competitive and driven by incentives, which of course all animals are. And it has been, for me, I have, I'll make it active, right? Like I have depressed myself and upset myself. So I'll make it transitive here, right?

• 53:40Tim Ferriss?

  So that I have some agency to repeatedly run into what I view as like unavoidable self-destructive tendencies, which on smaller scales aren't necessarily self-destructive, but at larger scales with billions and billions of people become just untenable. I was just like, what's the point? I found it very difficult to get up and muster any kind of enthusiasm or motivation to like knock out these email about various, just like bullshit items that might be very interesting, but I'm like, okay, I'm gonna like invest in some like whatever the fuck app that does something that really isn't. Making a dent and like, what's the point of all this? Cause like ultimately we're all like

• 54:25Tim Ferriss?

  just careening towards this incineration that I don't see as particularly avoidable. And then I was reading this book, which does punch the four hour work week in the balls a little bit, which I found kind of funny, honestly. So it does make a reference to the four hour work week and not in terribly kind way. Which is fine, because what do you expect if you title a book the four hour work week? But the book also has a four in the title, but it's called 4,000 weeks. That refers to the average lifespan of humans. And there's actually a lot of great exploration in this book, looking at the frailty and the fallacies of time management and productivity. And the kind of to do list obsession and optimization of different types.

• 55:09Tim Ferriss?

  And one of the chapters, I think is called something like cosmic insignificance therapy. Which I think this morning was a great example of. Where you actually find it liberating to realize how much it doesn't matter. So you end up finding it kind of inspiring and freeing instead of debilitating and crushing. Which is, I find hard to do because I tilt towards the darkness. And so the realization was like, well, okay, look, even if people are just hell bent on self destruction and we head that way, at the end of the day, our sun is going to red giant, white dwarf, kaplooey.

• 55:53Tim Ferriss?

  And then the earth is gone. Anyway, all life on earth is gone at that point, or certainly as far as I know, all life on earth. So even if like we kill our own species and all sorts of other species off on this planet. The life per se of earth is finite regardless. And I was like, oh, actually, that brings some peace to me. Sunshine Tim. Yeah, it's, yeah, I mean, God, this sounds so depressing, but like this is kind of a lot of the shit that I think about in part because and this is supposed to be me asking you questions. We're going to get to another question, but it's like, I don't know if you've experienced it. Cause like you didn't grow up rich. I didn't grow up rich.

• 56:35Tim Ferriss?

  And at least for me, in my group of friends and their families growing up, like lower middle class. It was like, if only we had money. Our problems would be solved. Like, here are these problems. If we just had money, it doesn't grow on trees. And like, oh, that rich person, wouldn't that be nice? Everything is smooth as gravy over there, I am sure. And then you pursue, you pursue, you pursue, and you can kind of push your issues to the side in pursuit of becoming, quote unquote, successful, because the assumption underlying it is, when I have X, or Y, or Z, whatever that amount is.

• 57:18Matt Mullenweg?

  Then I'll be happy.

• 57:18Tim Ferriss?

  Then I'll be happy. And then you like, then you like, run through one of those finish lines, and you're like, well, wait a fucking second. Like, this is a false bill of lading. That didn't work at all. And, uh, which, you know, by the way, when some people ask, like, what would you change or emphasize if you wrote The Four Hour Workweek again? It's the filling the void chapter, which is a chapter that people kind of skip over, because it's not this, like, hyper-practical, tactical, nuts and bolts chapter, but it's really important. So, yeah, that's my very, very, very long, rambling answer to the existential realization, which is like, oh, yeah, this planet's got a finite lifespan, anyway,

• 58:01Tim Ferriss?

  as far as, like, organic life goes. So.

• 58:05Matt Mullenweg?

  And that's something I always find interesting, is sometimes relief from what seems like existential problems come from the most unusual places.

• 58:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 58:14Matt Mullenweg?

  And so I was surprised that this came for you, that that was a comforting thought. But I do, I do believe in the cosmic insignificance. You know, it's very humbling to think, like, our time span, even all of human recorded history, is just a speck of dust of the universe's time span. And, um, one thing I really appreciate about you, Tim, is that you engage with work and thinkers that some people might assume are the opposite of you, or advocate for different things. But it's all part of your, your growth and your journey, and like, firming up things. So, I like that you went and read this book, and how cool that it provided this relief for you, you know?

• 58:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, thanks, man. It's a solid book. And, uh, the way that I parsed it online was I put it on.

• 59:06Tim Ferriss?

  I guess Twitter and I said, for people who have read this such and such book, you know, 4000 weeks, how much would you recommend it to a friend from 1 to 10, no 7 allowed? Which is something I learned from a person named Kyle Maynard, because it forces people to like, pick a barely passing or pretty strong recommendation at 8. And the vast majority of recommendations, or the vast majority of answers, and there could be a selection bias, obviously, right? People read the book in the first place. Yeah, exactly. Came back at like 9, 8, 9, 10, the vast majority, which was certainly enough to convince me to get it on Kindle and read a few chapters. And I ended up liking it a lot.

• 59:47Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, in, just because I can't, I can't resist just a little jab. The author does use a lot of like $10 words where a $10 word would work. So, I think I'm pretty well educated, but I still had to look some words up. It's okay. He apparently punched a 4 hour work week. He did. You can punch back a little bit. He did punch the 4 hour work week in the nuts, but that's okay, because, you know, get in line. So. How many years has it been since 4 hour work week? It's published in April of 2007, so 14 years. 14. It's, it's a teenager. It's a teenager. It's going to college, it's starting high school, it's going to college in a few years. Yeah, it's incredible. Let's try another card. Let's try another card.

• 1:00:31Tim Ferriss?

  All right, so. You want me to read this one first? God, it's more, no, no, that's a fierce one. Here, I'll let you choose. And let me just grab a few cards off the top. And again, for people interested, I don't even know if these are made anymore, because I recall them being sold out or discontinued at some point. Holste, H-O-L-S-T-E-E, reflection cards. I got these on Amazon. Dealer's choice. Dealer's choice. And what's the light and dark side mean? Is one a tougher question? Yes, the darker half of the card is intended to be a more difficult question. It's not always the case, but that's what it's intended to be. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about your life, the world, or anything else, what would you want to know?

• 1:01:14Tim Ferriss?

  I think you should answer that first, because I just finished a TED Talk.

• 1:01:19Matt Mullenweg?

  What I want to know, I want to know what is before life and afterlife.

• 1:01:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm, I have, I had the same answer.

• 1:01:27Matt Mullenweg?

  Really?

• 1:01:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's the same answer.

• 1:01:29Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, it's, it's one of those things I think is very difficult to truly know.

• 1:01:34Tim Ferriss?

  Very difficult, yeah.

• 1:01:36Matt Mullenweg?

  It's something humanity has grappled with in a million different ways for probably as long as we've been conscious. And um, yeah, curious about that.

• 1:01:46Tim Ferriss?

  I need more, Matt. You gotta do more than just whispered me about generalities.

• 1:01:51Matt Mullenweg?

  Wait, more about what's interesting about the afterlife or the prelife?

• 1:01:55Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, yeah, either, either both end. I would say what's, this is obviously a big one, but like, what do you? If you had to speculate, what do you think happens? I mean, if you want to go with prebirth, we could do that. That's definitely a unusual way to approach it, but.

• 1:02:13Matt Mullenweg?

  Well, it's one, I think why I thought of that is because I've done meditations before where they say like, feel what it was like before you were born. That's what it'll be like after you're, you're done. So like meditations on death. And so, yeah, in theory, there's something before, if there's something after, right?

• 1:02:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:30Matt Mullenweg?

  I'm going to plug two books here.

• 1:02:31Tim Ferriss?

  Plug what?

• 1:02:32Matt Mullenweg?

  Annika Harris, Consciousness.

• 1:02:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yep, this is after, after our conversations on this trip like that, it's absolutely on my to read list.

• 1:02:41Matt Mullenweg?

  Great book. And I think it kind of gets this question of prelife and afterlife as well because where does the consciousness come from? When does it start? Where does it go? How is it suspended? When we're.

• 1:02:54Tim Ferriss?

  Suspended, was it?

• 1:02:55Matt Mullenweg?

  Under.

• 1:02:55Tim Ferriss?

  Like under anesthesia?

• 1:02:56Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. It's such, it's such an interesting, what turns it on and off?

• 1:03:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00Matt Mullenweg?

  What does it even really mean? And this book is a fantastic kind of, and brief. Um, so very dense, uh, densely packed or very valuable, I'd say, not longer than it needs to be, a book. And then David Eagleman, who.

• 1:03:15Tim Ferriss?

  This is some?

• 1:03:16Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, so good. Have we talked about that?

• 1:03:20Matt Mullenweg?

  Was it?

• 1:03:20Tim Ferriss?

  I, maybe you recommended it to me?

• 1:03:22Matt Mullenweg?

  It might have been. I think I did one of your books I recommend thing.

• 1:03:25Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, yes.

• 1:03:27Matt Mullenweg?

  From Connie as well.

• 1:03:28Tim Ferriss?

  Books I've loved, yeah.

• 1:03:29Matt Mullenweg?

  And uh, Forty Tales of Afterlives. And each one starts basically at the moment of death and then it's a. It's kind of something that happens afterwards and they're hilarious and it's a great bedtime read.

• 1:03:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:41Matt Mullenweg?

  So I like to read.

• 1:03:42Tim Ferriss?

  Short chapters, like three to two to five pages.

• 1:03:44Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, and it's nice to break it up nightly. And some of them I've even read aloud to friends. When you're a burning man, I did that as a gift. I would read one of these short stories to people. Some of my favorites are The Scent of Species. It's really great and the opening one, Some, is actually pretty fun.

• 1:04:02Tim Ferriss?

  Can you give a teaser? So I think it'd be helpful to give people an example since each of these short chapters is a hypothetical manifestation of the afterlife. So what might one be?

• 1:04:16Matt Mullenweg?

  So the opener, Some, and I'll tell a little without giving away the amazing ending. You relive life, but serially. So all the things that you did at different points broken up in your life, you do all at the same time. So you shower for like eighty hours. You sleep for thirty years. You cut your nails for like, you know, you're trying to remember a word for like two days. You're standing in line for, you know, fourteen days. And so it kind of goes through this almost laundry list of it.

• 1:04:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Matt Mullenweg?

  And yeah, beautiful ending.

• 1:04:49Tim Ferriss?

  It is. It is a great book. It is an exceptional book. After plugging these two books, what do you think? What happens? Or it doesn't happen? Unplug computer, lights out, that's it?

• 1:05:02Matt Mullenweg?

  I'm looking forward to finding out someday, not too soon. But you said you had the same answer, so.

• 1:05:08Tim Ferriss?

  Wait, which answer? Oh, the crystal ball. Yeah, well, I just think it would help. I do think, and maybe I'd be open to a counter argument, but I do think it would just help you decide how to spend your time better in this particular iteration. If it's the one and only, thank you. Getting a little booze from a flask.

• 1:05:32Tim Ferriss?

  Classy, we're classy. And I mean, it would answer so many questions, right?

• 1:05:40Matt Mullenweg?

  I think the interesting thing is, would humans truly be different?

• 1:05:44Tim Ferriss?

  What do you mean by that?

• 1:05:45Matt Mullenweg?

  Would they, how would they act differently if we had a definitive answer? One, a lot of people think they do have a definitive answer. It's kind of the basis of many religions and things. So it's not unusual. And, you know, a lot of people, you could say that, how would Anthony de Mello put it? They're not truly living.

• 1:06:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Matt Mullenweg?

  Right? They need to wake up. They need to pay attention.

• 1:06:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:06Matt Mullenweg?

  And that's, even though they might think there's this happening in the afterlife or...

• 1:06:12Tim Ferriss?

  Well, if you knew for sure, though, I mean, let's just say it's like, all right, hellfire and brimstone. That's one thing, right? Sins and the whole nine yards.

• 1:06:21Matt Mullenweg?

  Purgatory.

• 1:06:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, like the Judeo-Christian model. But then if you had, say, karma and you're like reincarnated as a hamster or a porpoise or a demigod, depending on your behavior, then that would, that would certainly, well, you would think would affect some choices. Right? If you knew what happened afterwards definitively, it would also affect how you viewed things. This is gonna get dark, folks, sorry, but like things like suicide. Right? So the Stoics didn't have a particularly negative view of suicide. But then, once you get into the Judeo-Christian lens, it is most certainly negative. Right? And that is one of many different things that would be clarified.

• 1:07:07Tim Ferriss?

  If you knew, I mean, if you were just simply zeroing out of character, like Ready Player One.

• 1:07:11Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:12Tim Ferriss?

  That's one thing.

• 1:07:13Matt Mullenweg?

  Right. Insert coin.

• 1:07:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:07:16Matt Mullenweg?

  But would that make people less responsible, the lives they have right now?

• 1:07:19Tim Ferriss?

  Define responsible.

• 1:07:21Matt Mullenweg?

  Reckless, careless, because they thought they could just insert another coin and play again.

• 1:07:25Tim Ferriss?

  Well, if they knew they could, then it wouldn't be reckless.

• 1:07:27Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. I think, um, that's an interesting area of, of thought. And it also reminds me of something I think... Which I hope expands a lot in the coming years is ethical assisted euthanasia.

• 1:07:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Matt Mullenweg?

  People end of life with waiting periods and all these sorts of things. I know Hawaii is a place where you can do it and a few different countries. Yeah, going back to some seen people pass away.

• 1:07:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Matt Mullenweg?

  Past five years. I understand why some people might choose to do that if they had a terminal illness illness or something.

• 1:07:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Interesting. We had the same answer. And it's not altogether completely unsurprising. Oh, boy, that's a good one.

• 1:08:07Matt Mullenweg?

  Can I tell you what I'd like it to be?

• 1:08:09Tim Ferriss?

  What you would like your answer to be?

• 1:08:11Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:11Matt Mullenweg?

  The afterlife.

• 1:08:13Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, well, you'd like the afterlife to be. Okay.

• 1:08:15Matt Mullenweg?

  I think it'd be kind of cool if our brains are like antennas to some deeper consciousness. And we reconnected with it, sort of went back to that non dual nature of enlightenment.

• 1:08:27Tim Ferriss?

  You mean like a drop the ocean, returning to the ocean type of situation?

• 1:08:30Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. I I find that comforting.

• 1:08:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I do, too. All right, here's one. I got one for you. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are living now? Why? I'm going to modify that question. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, what would you change about the way you're living now? Why?

• 1:08:52Matt Mullenweg?

  Hmm, which is nicely related to our previous conversation. What I would change? Well, what I did change after that tail end essay was spending more time with loved ones.

• 1:09:06Matt Mullenweg?

  If I knew I had one year, gosh, I've got so much left to do.

• 1:09:12Matt Mullenweg?

  You know, what's funny is.

• 1:09:13Tim Ferriss?

  Let's assume it's perfect health for a year and then just lights up.

• 1:09:16Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. I think I would. This is kind of a funny answer. I wouldn't have thought of this before, but I'd write more.

• 1:09:23Tim Ferriss?

  You'd write more? I did not see that coming. Tell me more.

• 1:09:27Matt Mullenweg?

  It brings up for me like, what's the legacy? How do I pass on the things I care about, like democratizing, publishing and the web? To the generations that are going to carry the torch there. And how much of what motivates me towards that lifelong mission around open source? I don't know if I've written about particularly well or articulated well that in a way that might inspire others. And WordPress is open source, has tens of thousands of contributors. So there are a good number of people involved, but I like, you know, I feel like for open source to truly win, we need millions of contributors. We need most of the world working on it. Cause the alternative is proprietary, bad for humanity things.

• 1:10:08Matt Mullenweg?

  So yeah, I think I'd write and really try to write something that, or write as much as possible, things to bring more people contributing to open source.

• 1:10:18Tim Ferriss?

  Tell me more. What else? If anything else?

• 1:10:21Matt Mullenweg?

  I think that's really, because that's my life mission. It really is. And so if my life was ending, I think, how do I keep that mission going?

• 1:10:29Tim Ferriss?

  I'm so envious of you. That is so clear. I don't think most people could sit here, I can't, and say, X is my life mission. That's pretty fucking amazing. I mean.

• 1:10:43Matt Mullenweg?

  Thank you.

• 1:10:43Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I, I mean, it is, it just seems so.

• 1:10:47Matt Mullenweg?

  I feel very lucky in that.

• 1:10:48Tim Ferriss?

  Liberating to have that defined, that can, I want to say constraint, but not in a bad way, right? Like you've kind of defined the target and the bullseye in such a way that makes, I would think it makes decision making, like your decision fatigue must be less, if that's clear.

• 1:11:07Matt Mullenweg?

  Does really help, really helps clarify things. You know, that and the memento mori?

• 1:11:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:13Matt Mullenweg?

  I do feel like I have.

• 1:11:14Tim Ferriss?

  Memento mori being meditating on death and the finite nature of life.

• 1:11:19Matt Mullenweg?

  I've got about 14,000 days, give or take a couple hundred, left to try to move this, you know, mission forward as much as possible.

• 1:11:27Tim Ferriss?

  And that's to death, right? That's not necessarily firing on all cylinders.

• 1:11:32Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, I feel like I'm going to keep working until I croak.

• 1:11:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah?

• 1:11:37Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. It also, you know, sometimes it's really hard. And there's days and weeks and months where the job, WordPress, Automattic, everything could be very, very challenging. And also helps keep it going. But I would say that it probably, I think you do have that, actually.

• 1:11:54Tim Ferriss?

  Me?

• 1:11:54Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:55Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, please pray tell, please fill me in.

• 1:11:59Matt Mullenweg?

  Well, how do you spend your time?

• 1:12:02Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my God.

• 1:12:03Matt Mullenweg?

  Doing things like this?

• 1:12:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:05Matt Mullenweg?

  And why do you do it? Why do you share it? Why don't you keep all this amazing information for yourself?

• 1:12:12Tim Ferriss?

  Because it's too, I mean, it sounds so self-aggrandizing. I mean, I just, I think that's, it's too humanizing and valuable to keep private if it's so easy to make public. Like, it's nourishing to me, number one. And I know how much conversations like this. I mean, if you and I were sitting here with no mics, bullshitting and drinking

• 1:12:39Matt Mullenweg?

  Glimmer range.

• 1:12:40Tim Ferriss?

  Single malt Scotch whiskey. We'd be having a similar conversation anyway. You know what I mean?

• 1:12:46Matt Mullenweg?

  We've had lots of these.

• 1:12:46Tim Ferriss?

  We've had lots of these. And the reason I started the podcast is because I'd be having these conversations with friends. They would end and I'd be like, God, what a waste. Like, it would be so, that conversation was so helpful to me. I have to imagine it would be helpful to other people.

• 1:13:04Matt Mullenweg?

  I think that's drive to share, to learn and share, which I've seen the entire 10 plus years I've known you. It is a life mission. I can't imagine you ever stopping that.

• 1:13:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I can't either.

• 1:13:17Matt Mullenweg?

  Like, you're going to be in an old person's home and be like, I figured out this new way to like move the wheelchair. Like, look what I can do. Like, this is like just something that, so I think you do have that. And I think you should play with that to maybe, you know, find what's words resonate for you. And describing that around that learning and sharing. Because I do think, do you think you'll do this the rest of your life? Some form of this? Maybe not a podcast, but like?

• 1:13:40Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, some form of this. I mean, I just, when people ask me like, how long do you think you'll do the podcast? I'm like, I can't, it's the first thing I've done this consistently over an extended period of time. And I can't think of a compelling reason for why I would stop, right? Which is another reason why, even though I've had a bunch of conversations, I haven't. Seriously considered, I mean, you'll obviously support this, I think, doing anything that would put me in a walled garden because it's so kind of antithetical. If I were to sacrifice a large part of my reach or distribution, it just doesn't make sense.

• 1:14:24Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Like to have shackles on in any form or fashion would suck the soul out of what I'm doing, which is not to say there couldn't be interesting collaborations with large platforms or companies, but to make any sacrifice on the creative side or the editorial freedom side or anything like that, it just wouldn't make any sense. So.

• 1:14:48Matt Mullenweg?

  And you would do it even if you made no money.

• 1:14:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:51Matt Mullenweg?

  You would pay to do it. You do pay to do it.

• 1:14:52Tim Ferriss?

  I do pay to do it.

• 1:14:53Matt Mullenweg?

  So this is something, something around that I think be interesting for you to find out because I can't imagine ever growing, stopping learning and then not sharing it to whoever will listen.

• 1:15:06Matt Mullenweg?

  So you do that, all democratize publishing and the web and commerce. And I think that'll be fun.

• 1:15:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. One year, one year is real short. It's a short period of time, you know? You think about the last year, interminably long and also unbelievably short at the same time.

• 1:15:24Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:25Tim Ferriss?

  And I think for me, I don't know if she'd be game for this, but probably having kids with my girlfriend. Like just to at least, I mean, God, it's depressing to think about, but also incredible to think about, like just being there for the birth, like for a few months and then

• 1:15:44Tim Ferriss?

  adios amigo, off I go. But to have that experience, I think that would be core to the next, to the remaining year. I remember, I don't know if he'd want his name mentioned, but a very famous scientist and I were chatting at one point and he mentioned having a kid pretty late in life and his brother, the first thing his brother said to him was, congratulations and welcome to the human race. He was like, you're just, and you know, we chatted about that quite a bit, but it just seems. So on some level, I'm not saying it's required, but like fundamental to a lot of obviously human existence, right? There are programming pointed towards procreation.

• 1:16:26Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, it's incredible how strong that drive is.

• 1:16:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And it's like you talk to people who like they, they have the most incredibly sophisticated rationalizations. And at the end of the day, it's like, you're just doing what you're programmed to do. And maybe there's a beauty in that. Maybe there's a real beauty in kind of just fulfilling that. Like, yeah, you're a cutter ant, you carry fucking leaves around and you build shit and you're gigantic, you know, hand calling in like, that's just what you do. And I have to imagine like, it feels good to them to do that, or at least it would feel bad for them not to do that.

• 1:17:01Matt Mullenweg?

  It's interesting you bring that up because that's something that changed for me in the past five years.

• 1:17:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Okay. Wow. If we're willing to go there, let's, let's go there.

• 1:17:10Matt Mullenweg?

  After my father passed, I really decided, I went down the path of like, okay, have a kid.

• 1:17:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:17Matt Mullenweg?

  And I think part of that was just thinking, oh, I wish he had known a grandchildren, a grandchild or something. And part of that process was later deciding that that's not going to be how I leave an impact on the world. And so I decided to not have kids.

• 1:17:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:36Matt Mullenweg?

  And made that a very explicit communication and everything like that, because WordPress and this other work I'm doing, I want to be the thing that I, I leave. And I don't feel like there's anything particularly good about my genetics that needs to be passed on, or that I would be a world unique parent. But I do think I'm, I'm one of the people in the world that does have a chance to shape the future of the web. And I just want to focus all of my energy into that.

• 1:18:06Tim Ferriss?

  Where would you put, if you were a betting man, which of course you are, we're all betting people. We're all placing bets. Like everything's probability, except for death and taxes, I guess. Maybe a few other things. Where would you put the likelihood that that changes?

• 1:18:24Matt Mullenweg?

  I think you had an answer in mind when you asked me that.

• 1:18:28Tim Ferriss?

  I know, this is, this is not a leading question. I'm just curious.

• 1:18:31Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. And as a guy, we do have some more optionality.

• 1:18:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 1:18:37Matt Mullenweg?

  Uh, around these things, you know, never say never.

• 1:18:42Matt Mullenweg?

  But that is, that is my working sort of software infirmary right now.

• 1:18:48Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so let's say.

• 1:18:50Matt Mullenweg?

  I'll say 20% chance, 20%.

• 1:18:52Tim Ferriss?

  20% chance.

• 1:18:53Matt Mullenweg?

  Maybe less, maybe less than, I'd say 8% chance.

• 1:18:56Tim Ferriss?

  Eight, oh wow, that's very precise. I like that. 8%. So next five years, child being born, 8%.

• 1:19:04Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:05Tim Ferriss?

  I fucking love that. 8%, that's gonna be, that's gonna be the headline of this podcast episode.

• 1:19:15Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wow. You wanna try another one? Do you wanna?

• 1:19:17Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, let's see.

• 1:19:18Tim Ferriss?

  Give it a go?

• 1:19:20Matt Mullenweg?

  Wow, this is actually a question you ask all the time, which is kind of funny. We won't do that one.

• 1:19:24Tim Ferriss?

  Nah, that's funny. What message would you put on a billboard for thousands of people to see every day? I did not get it from this deck, but yes, that is a question that I do ask. Don't drink your piss, because I said it on a podcast. That's what I would put on my billboard.

• 1:19:38Matt Mullenweg?

  Okay, here we go. What are two things?

• 1:19:41Tim Ferriss?

  Oh.

• 1:19:42Matt Mullenweg?

  Still on your bucket list?

• 1:19:43Tim Ferriss?

  God, you know, part of me, we've had enough whisk guests, want to mention all these

• 1:19:49Tim Ferriss?

  like ridiculous sexual fantasies, but we're not gonna get there.

• 1:19:55Tim Ferriss?

  We need, uh, it's just, just you and me and our few million of my best friends listening. Let's see, two on the bucket list. I'm not gonna count the kid, because that's, we already discussed it. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna put that out of bounds. I might need some time to think about that, which is actually disturbing to me that I need time to think about it. Does anything immediately come to mind for you?

• 1:20:20Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, you know what once comes to mind?

• 1:20:22Tim Ferriss?

  What's that?

• 1:20:22Matt Mullenweg?

  That could be a fun trip for us to do, actually, is the Aurora Borealis.

• 1:20:26Tim Ferriss?

  So, actually, this comes full circle. You will like this, and I think I've told you this, but, man, I'm sorry that it was, of course, catalyzed by the passing of your father, but you recommend the tail end to me. And I'm with you during this, I mean, not with you, but we're in contact during this entire process. I read the tail end, I go, holy fucking shit. And by the way, everybody, just look up the tail end, Tim Urban, and read it. Do yourself a favor. And so I made a commitment to take my family on a trip once a year. And we haven't done it in the last two years. But the, I think it was the first trip, my mom had always wanted to see the Aurora Borealis.

• 1:21:06Tim Ferriss?

  I took my whole family to Iceland and went to the middle of nowhere, in the middle of winter. It's dark all the time, so it's the opposite of what we're experiencing right now. And we had the best luck ever. And we just saw the most incredible displays of the Aurora Borealis. And I have to say, much like what we experienced this morning, you cannot currently capture it at all on video or camera. It just, it doesn't bear any resemblance to the feeling and the experience of doing it in person. So I would definitely do that again.

• 1:21:46Matt Mullenweg?

  I was actually looking for it this morning, because while the totality is happening, you can actually see stars.

• 1:21:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:51Matt Mullenweg?

  When the sun's totally covered by the moon. And there's a different word for the southern Borealis, I think, or southern auror. But, um, yeah, there's a chance we could have seen it.

• 1:22:01Tim Ferriss?

  I wonder what that's called, the Aurora Borealis, the Austral Borealis? I'm making up words now.

• 1:22:07Matt Mullenweg?

  This is, we don't have the internet.

• 1:22:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, we don't have the internet. We're hobbled.

• 1:22:10Matt Mullenweg?

  Does that be one thing on the bucket list? Does that remind you of anything on your bucket list?

• 1:22:15Tim Ferriss?

  There's so many things I would like to do. I would really like to, for instance, this isn't a discreet item on a bucket list, but get back into scuba diving. Oh, yeah. Scuba diving is one of my great loves. I haven't done it in so long and it is really, truly, if you get to the point where you're reasonably comfortable and you can do wall dives and really kind of hover using your buoyancy. What's a wall dive? Uh, or like a cliff dive. So you, where you, let's say you're swimming over coral, that's, I'm just making this up, 30 feet below the surface. Colors are still really vibrant at that depth. And then there's just a cliff and you drop off of this cliff and you just

• 1:23:00Tim Ferriss?

  go down this wall. So you're looking at, let's just call it a coral reef, but it's vertical instead of horizontal. And you look down and it's just into the abyss. And so you swim along a wall and you can drop down, go up and down, looking at everything there is to see. And I often use scuba diving, and it doesn't work for everyone, of course, but as a metaphor for psychedelic experiences, because in the beginning, like the first time you dive, the first one, two or three times you dive, you're just getting used to the equipment. You don't know necessarily reflexively how to grab your like octopus

• 1:23:43Tim Ferriss?

  or if you lose your respirator, how to deal with that. You're constantly checking your gauge, you're screwing with your BCD, I think it's BCD, buoyancy control device, yeah, BCD, where you're over inflating your vest and then letting the air out. So you really don't have much control and you're discombobulated, but you, you might only notice a really large fish or a turtle or a shark or seeing your peripheral vision, a school of fish, but you're, you're really not seeing very much. And then as you get more comfortable, you see more and more, you notice more and more. And then you get to a point where, let's just say on a wall dive, it doesn't have to be a wall dive, but where you can control your buoyancy, you're just less at risk of smashing stuff with your feet, obviously,

• 1:24:28Tim Ferriss?

  because you're looking down and it might be hundreds of thousands of feet. And you can just hover and look at like a square meter, right? Like three by three.

• 1:24:39Matt Mullenweg?

  Hang out there.

• 1:24:40Tim Ferriss?

  And it is an entire universe of life and activity. And you could spend an hour just looking at that tiny patch. That wonder, this is something I thought about this morning. I was like, I think it's really hard to go wrong. If you chase, chase might be too strong a word, but like pursue wonder and awe. You can probably overdo it and dull your senses and your appreciation of that. But I think there's a wonder deficiency in most lives. Not that you should have it three times a week.

• 1:25:18Matt Mullenweg?

  What's the line about a universe and a grain of sand or something?

• 1:25:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:22Matt Mullenweg?

  And so I think part of that is what is there to wonder? It's all around us all the time.

• 1:25:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:27Matt Mullenweg?

  In your backyard, on a tree, unlike.

• 1:25:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:31Matt Mullenweg?

  It's one of those things that we sometimes get reminded of.

• 1:25:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:33Matt Mullenweg?

  And I always, it always feels like the most obvious trait thing, but also the most profound and meaningful.

• 1:25:39Tim Ferriss?

  And the, the scuba diving for me reinvigorates my powers of fixed attention. Like my attention to detail. So when I, and I haven't gone scuba diving in quite a long time, but when you're underwater and you're really noticing all the details, if you try to maintain that as you come out of the water, you still notice more. There's a transfer.

• 1:26:07Matt Mullenweg?

  I just love that floating. So for me, the buoyancy, I actually got certified with another one of your guests, Adam Vazali.

• 1:26:13Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, really?

• 1:26:13Matt Mullenweg?

  And, um.

• 1:26:14Tim Ferriss?

  Adam.

• 1:26:15Matt Mullenweg?

  That point when if you breathe in, you float up a little bit.

• 1:26:17Tim Ferriss?

  Six pack PhD. You disgust me, Adam.

• 1:26:20Matt Mullenweg?

  And a new father.

• 1:26:21Tim Ferriss?

  I know. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful fellow. I'm just jealous of his P bar workouts. And incredible, you know, really engaged dad too. It's been so fun to see how much he's gotten out of that and given, obviously, but it's, anyway, not to interrupt. So you got certified with Adam?

• 1:26:39Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. When you breathe in and you float up a little bit and you breathe out and you go down a little bit, when you can kind of control your buoyancy with like the air in your lungs. That's so meditative.

• 1:26:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:47Matt Mullenweg?

  And I've actually like gone to that space sometimes while meditating or sometimes in dreams. And I really, really appreciate it. But it also reminds me like, I wish we had like Elon Musk of the ocean. Like some like crazy awesome billionaire who was like exploring the ocean as much as Bezos and Musk are going to space.

• 1:27:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you know who's, I mean, the first name that comes to mind, controversial guy, but he's really good at getting shit done. It's James Cameron.

• 1:27:14Matt Mullenweg?

  I was gonna say, but that's, that's all we got.

• 1:27:15Tim Ferriss?

  That's, that's what we.

• 1:27:17Matt Mullenweg?

  We need two billionaires fighting.

• 1:27:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:18Matt Mullenweg?

  Competing. And then that will, uh, we'll finally map the oceans and understand things.

• 1:27:23Tim Ferriss?

  I wonder who else is out there. There's gotta be somebody else out there. Well, we'll do, we'll do some recon and put it in the show notes.

• 1:27:28Matt Mullenweg?

  Hopefully one of your listeners can, two of your listeners can start competing for conquering the ocean.

• 1:27:32Tim Ferriss?

  I know there are a few of you billionaires out there listening to this right now, so please take a look at our oceans. I would like to spend more time with, especially after doing work with the Amazon Conservation Team, which you've also contributed to, co-founded by Mark Plotkin, famous ethnobotanist, one of the proteges of Richard Evan Schultes out of Harvard. I would like to spend some more time, because I have spent some, but I would like to spend much more time with some of the indigenous groups. In this case, in South America, it wouldn't have to be in South America, but because I have access before those ways die out.

• 1:28:16Tim Ferriss?

  And I think it's somewhat, and again, this is maybe where you and I differ, but I think it's kind of inevitable. Like I do think the march of so-called progress and the introduction of Western goods and consumerism and so on, you know, once you have sat phones and wifi and big screen TVs and so on, there's a tremendous amount of erosion that takes place. And I'm not implying or saying that I idolize the old ways. I mean, there's, there's a lot of writing around the, you know, it's like the so-called noble savage and like, oh, if we could all just revert to like living in communities of, of 50 with the bare essentials, like everything would be wonderful. And I don't agree with that.

• 1:29:00Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think that's true, but there is a lot of medical knowledge and also knowledge of how to treat the whole person instead of just suppress symptoms.

• 1:29:14Tim Ferriss?

  Especially not despite, but especially including what we would consider placebo effect. It's like harnessing the power of ritual and myth. The power of the mind, really. And narrative belief. Exactly. To basically co-opt the power of the patient to help them heal themselves is dramatically underexplored by Western scientists in those communities. Not to say that would be my job because I'm not a Western scientist, I'm not a scientist, but certainly on my bucket list would be spending time with with some of those groups. Because I do think, and this gets into some pretty strange territory, but there are other ways of knowing. Tell me more.

• 1:29:58Tim Ferriss?

  Well. You're gonna give me a hard time, I'm gonna turn it around. Yeah, yeah. I'm not gonna let you get away with that. Yeah, yeah, there are, I do think there are other ways of knowing outside of things that are easy to put into a cube of a laboratory and test with placebo-controlled randomized trials. And it's, I think it's easy to become dogmatic with scientism with like a capital S, in the same way that it is easy to become dogmatic with religion, without truly having even a basic literacy or understanding of what we're talking about when one discusses

• 1:30:43Tim Ferriss?

  science, which is a scientific method, a structured way of testing a hypothesis. That's all it is. It's a journey, not a endpoint. Yeah, exactly. So, so for instance, I mean, the scientific method itself is not good at generating hypotheses. It's good at testing hypotheses. And it's a framework for doing our best not to fool ourselves, in a sense. But there are, then, observable phenomena. I'm just fingering this pile of ginger chews here. I might have a ginger chew. This is gonna, it's gonna be terrible for audio. So don't take this as an indication of podcasting professionalism, but I am gonna have a ginger chew because I love ginger. I'll have this after I ask my next question instead of while I'm talking. But there is

• 1:31:27Tim Ferriss?

  a book, I think it is actually called Another Way of Knowing. That just discusses, it's a discussion, it's basically anthropological exploration of a handful of tribes, I believe in Malaysia, so certainly not in South America in this instance, and phenomena that were repeatedly observed that seemed to be very odd. For instance, when this particular anthropologist would head towards this village to visit, and he would be going by boat and then trail and so on and so forth, that there would

• 1:32:09Tim Ferriss?

  always be someone waiting at a trailhead to meet him, as if they were expecting him, but they had no prior notification that he was on his way. So, what's happening here? Right? Is it repeated coincidence? Sure, it could be, right? And like the self avowed hyper rationalists would be like, well, come on now, right? And then, and that would be the default. But I think it's perhaps helpful to ask, like, what might other possibilities be, right? Like, let's generate a bunch of different hypotheses before we edit. Like, what are a bunch of other, I don't even want to say plausible, it could be outrageous,

• 1:32:51Tim Ferriss?

  but like, what are some other hypotheses, theories for how this might happen? And in these tight knit groups, let's just call them tribes for simplicity, you see a lot of these behaviors that mimic some phenomena you see in the natural world of other species. So if you read, say, Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez, he talks about wolves being tracked, like by scientists, that head off in a specific direction, traveling in a straight line, and they intersect with a herd of caribou that started like 300 miles away, and they perfectly intersect at a given point where they're known to hunt. And it's like, okay.

• 1:33:36Matt Mullenweg?

  That's cool.

• 1:33:37Tim Ferriss?

  What's happening? Like, is it coincidence? Maybe, sure, you can't rule that out. It could be. And, you know, I think about, as I say this, I have some trepidation in saying it because there are people listening who'll be like, oh, my God, that's so ridiculous. Or they might even say, that's so unscientific. And what they mean by that is I can't provide definitive proof or some like framework that provides perfect explanatory power. But as I was thinking about this morning, if you have, say, an eclipse, I was just thinking about thousands of years before this morning, eclipses were still happening. Humanoids have been around for a long time, right?

• 1:34:20Tim Ferriss?

  If the crossing of the Bering Strait supposedly was whatever it was, 20, 30, 40,000 years ago, I don't really know. You know, humanoids, even just in North and South American continents, have been around for a long time and prior to that even longer. So they've been looking up and seeing these things. How would they have explained them thousands and thousands of years ago? Certainly not the way that we explain them today. Nonetheless, the eclipses were happening.

• 1:34:44Matt Mullenweg?

  It was kind of cool. We saw a little presentation from one of the people here on different cultures. And, you know, I think in China it was a dragon eating the sun. In Vietnam, it was a frog. There was like different sort of myths and like every culture had a version of it.

• 1:34:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:00Matt Mullenweg?

  Which was pretty cool.

• 1:35:00Tim Ferriss?

  And I'll give another example during.

• 1:35:03Matt Mullenweg?

  But how's that connected?

• 1:35:05Tim Ferriss?

  No, I'm going to connect it. So, so what I mean is, I think you can observe and record phenomena. And even in the absence of perfect explanatory power, some theory that holds up to modern scrutiny, just the fact that someone can't explain how something works doesn't mean it doesn't exist. That's what I'm trying to say. So for instance, while we were in lockdown during COVID, there was this video that went kind of viral of a coyote and a badger.

• 1:35:35Tim Ferriss?

  Going out on a hunt together. And like the coyote would like trail out in front. Cause it wasn't trailing, it was leading in front. And then like stop and like wag its tail and looked like a dog playing with another dog. And then pull the badger along. And that from a naturalist or field biological perspective, at least according to some people shouldn't happen. Right. Like that, that was always a myth. And in some of the native northern Native American traditions, they talked about the coyote and badger hunting together is talked about. Right. But it was considered a myth. And then boom, now you have some video footage and it's like, ah, look at that. Okay.

• 1:36:14Tim Ferriss?

  So I do think that just because cultures have superstitions and beliefs that are not founded on hard evidence. And let's not fool ourselves. We, we still have a lot of that. Even the most technologically advanced among us have plenty of those. That somehow a phenomenon can't exist. Right. If, if you don't have perfect explanatory power, that's just kind of ridiculous. Like if you study the history of scientific discovery, you observe a lot of things far before you can.

• 1:36:41Matt Mullenweg?

  Radio waves, germs.

• 1:36:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, radio waves, germs.

• 1:36:44Matt Mullenweg?

  I mean, like so many invisible things happening all around us all the time.

• 1:36:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, we look back like 20 years from whatever point in time. Or let's say 50 years, just to make it a little easier. 50 years before whatever point in time the discussion is taking place is like the dark ages. Right. Like, oh my God, I can't believe we didn't know this. Oh my God, look how ridiculous that is in hindsight. This is neglecting all the while, the fact that of course, if we were to be looking back at today, 50 years from now. As some doctors say, like half of what we know is wrong, we just don't know which half.

• 1:37:16Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, that's why I think it's so important to make space for people to update their views. I think it's so silly when we like get mad at someone, something I said 30 years ago. It's like, yeah.

• 1:37:25Tim Ferriss?

  You're waffling. No, like when I get new information, I change my mind. What do you do?

• 1:37:29Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. And that'll be, I'm sure this things on your early podcast, maybe our last podcast that I no longer agree with. That one of us said, and that's beautiful. Like in programming, we talk about like, if you're not embarrassed by your old code, you're not learning. You should feel bad when you look at your old code. If you think it's better than you could do now, or great, that means you haven't grown as a developer. So I think it's really important to, to always be evolving in that way. But what you brought up does make me think about how much communication is happening all around us all the time.

• 1:38:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:00Matt Mullenweg?

  That we don't understand.

• 1:38:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:01Matt Mullenweg?

  Whether that's bird calls or what we heard with the penguins.

• 1:38:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:05Matt Mullenweg?

  How they're able to connect with each other and identify each other. I just saw the documentary Fantastic Fungi.

• 1:38:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, great film. Yeah, super fun. Yeah, Louis, Schwartzberg.

• 1:38:15Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, and the mycelium networks. Like, there's so much communication that's happening all around us. And that's another thing that I think is so interesting to explore.

• 1:38:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:25Matt Mullenweg?

  How are we ever gonna understand aliens if we can't understand dogs? Although I heard there's a startup around this that's trying to do like machine learning around dog barks.

• 1:38:33Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God, machine learning. Machine, is it machine learning or deep learning?

• 1:38:37Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:37Tim Ferriss?

  There are all these terms. Slap it on.

• 1:38:39Matt Mullenweg?

  When I have AI, you can raise more money.

• 1:38:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, AI, although, you know, hey, if someone can help me.

• 1:38:45Matt Mullenweg?

  I'll send my second bucket list and then we'll do it. Want to do another question?

• 1:38:47Tim Ferriss?

  Better communicate with Molly. I'm into it. So what else would be on my bucket list? I want, you know, it's such a simple thing. I want to get another dog.

• 1:38:54Matt Mullenweg?

  Oh.

• 1:38:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, to accompany Molly. And also to have some overlap so that I, I think if Molly passes away, it'll be very hard for me to get another dog.

• 1:39:05Matt Mullenweg?

  Would you clone Molly?

• 1:39:06Tim Ferriss?

  No. You want to share anything about cloning?

• 1:39:11Matt Mullenweg?

  I might know something about cloning. You can clone cats, dogs, and horses now. In America.

• 1:39:18Tim Ferriss?

  Well, let's get more specific.

• 1:39:20Matt Mullenweg?

  I think the company's called Viogen. And, uh, and yeah, you can pay and they will, they take a skin sample from the living animal. And they make an embryo from it and embed it in a surrogate. And.

• 1:39:34Tim Ferriss?

  Do you know anything about this?

• 1:39:36Matt Mullenweg?

  No comment.

• 1:39:39Tim Ferriss?

  No comment. All right, well, I'll let the audience draw from that what they may. I would not clone Molly. I think the uncanny valley. I I don't think I would do that for myself. No, I wouldn't try to do like Molly 2.0. I think I'd feel very ethically conflicted about that. It's like emotionally conflicted too. So I don't think I would do that. But I would get a like mini me to play with Molly. Who then carries on the torch. I would definitely do that.

• 1:40:11Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. It was at the I was party to this, but the person who who wanted to do the cloning. I was very, very surprised.

• 1:40:20Tim Ferriss?

  You were surprised?

• 1:40:21Matt Mullenweg?

  I was incredibly surprised that this person wanted to do it.

• 1:40:25Tim Ferriss?

  Why were you surprised?

• 1:40:26Matt Mullenweg?

  Religious backgrounds. She's Catholic.

• 1:40:29Tim Ferriss?

  Are Catholics against cloning?

• 1:40:30Matt Mullenweg?

  You know, I don't know for sure, but it seems like it should be on that list.

• 1:40:37Matt Mullenweg?

  I don't know.

• 1:40:39Tim Ferriss?

  I guess if it's skin, it's okay, huh?

• 1:40:41Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. And I was surprised, but it's been I now have met this clone. The first of the clones.

• 1:40:49Tim Ferriss?

  Like a congressional hearing. I love your wording.

• 1:40:53Matt Mullenweg?

  And.

• 1:40:54Tim Ferriss?

  I've met said clone. Said Mr. Sender.

• 1:40:57Matt Mullenweg?

  A beautiful thing about it is that the previous dog who's passed had had some was a rescue and had had like a difficult early life. And so even though I knew this dog for, you know, 15 years, she would always be pretty skittish with me or any man in the room. Which is just so heartbreaking to think like what happened to her when she was younger. And this new dog with the same genetic material, the genetic twin is so excited to see me.

• 1:41:22Matt Mullenweg?

  It's like a Six Sigma excitement event when I when I return, when I walk through the door and it's kind of amazing. So.

• 1:41:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:32Matt Mullenweg?

  But but completely different. So I would say that it's not it's just like a twin, a genetic twin. Coloring will be different, personality is totally different. I think really shows you nature versus nurture as well.

• 1:41:42Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's for sure.

• 1:41:43Matt Mullenweg?

  Which I think for dogs can be huge, although you know way more about dogs than I do.

• 1:41:46Tim Ferriss?

  I've spent so much time training Molly. And another reason I would like to have another dog is that she'll help train the other dog.

• 1:41:53Matt Mullenweg?

  Hmm. Yeah, they'll pass on good and bad behavior, right?

• 1:41:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And she doesn't have too many bad behaviors. She has a few, but not too many. And for people who want to look at the communication side, you can Google, I think there's a Radiolab episode on the the wood wide web, as they call it, which talks about inter, I think it's inter. I always mix up inter and intra, but inter tree communication.

• 1:42:17Matt Mullenweg?

  Oh, yeah. And trees will privilege ones that are closely related to.

• 1:42:22Tim Ferriss?

  Progeny. Yeah. And as they're going to die, they'll basically like drop their resources into the root system and distribute to direct descendants.

• 1:42:30Matt Mullenweg?

  Pretty cool.

• 1:42:31Tim Ferriss?

  It's so wild. And the reciprocal relationship with the fungal networks is just, just incredible. So you could look at that. Let's not forget also, it wasn't that long ago, I don't know the exact dates, but I think it's within the last hundred years that doctors or surgeons would operate on infants without anesthesia.

• 1:42:55Matt Mullenweg?

  Wow.

• 1:42:55Tim Ferriss?

  It's not that long ago. I might be getting it slightly off, but our assumptions about consciousness and communication and perception have been so consistently

• 1:43:09Tim Ferriss?

  off that I think it's fair to assume that we're still pretty off.

• 1:43:13Matt Mullenweg?

  A lot to learn.

• 1:43:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:14Matt Mullenweg?

  I think my second bucket, I mean, honestly, this trip has been a bucket list, Adam. The emperor penguins, we were gonna hopefully see the totality over them, but it was too cloudy. So that's why we came to this Union Glacier camp, seeing the totality. And so I'll put a travel thing as the second one, which is I'd love to go to Egypt with my sister.

• 1:43:31Tim Ferriss?

  Why Egypt?

• 1:43:32Matt Mullenweg?

  She wants to go. And I think it'd be pretty incredible. So.

• 1:43:38Tim Ferriss?

  Here's a bucket list for me, is taking a bunch of my closest friends to Japan. That's a huge snow cap in the background.

• 1:43:46Matt Mullenweg?

  Is it showing up on the levels?

• 1:43:47Tim Ferriss?

  It showed up on the levels, so that it would be the Tucker 5, which the staff used to refer to because it was the largest Tucker snow cap that had ever been custom-built. And they would refer to it as the, on radio, they would refer to it as the Mother Tucker. But then that got, that was not PC apparently, so it got vetoed at some point. Now it's the Tucker 5, how boring. I prefer the Mother Tucker. That might be part of this podcast episode title as well.

• 1:44:17Matt Mullenweg?

  Which is funny because you always make fun of me for not cursing.

• 1:44:20Tim Ferriss?

  I do, I do. Yeah, Matt does not curse. Why don't you curse? Don't give me that "I have so many vices, I need to get rid of one" nonsense. You always use that.

• 1:44:30Matt Mullenweg?

  You know, we don't have the internet, so I can't remember. But I think the English language has more words than any other language.

• 1:44:35Tim Ferriss?

  Has a lot of words.

• 1:44:37Matt Mullenweg?

  And I just love finding that really great word to match things.

• 1:44:42Tim Ferriss?

  Except for curse words.

• 1:44:43Matt Mullenweg?

  Except for curse words.

• 1:44:44Tim Ferriss?

  Why not? Is that a religious thing?

• 1:44:47Matt Mullenweg?

  I actually, I had a, um, one of the first WordPress blogs actually was a private blog. Myself and four friends had at a high school. And I was looking back at an entry from like 99 or something, and it had a curse word in it.

• 1:45:02Tim Ferriss?

  From you?

• 1:45:03Matt Mullenweg?

  From me!

• 1:45:03Tim Ferriss?

  Ooh, what curse word?

• 1:45:04Matt Mullenweg?

  I don't remember which one.

• 1:45:05Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, such horseshit. Horseshit!

• 1:45:09Matt Mullenweg?

  But I was so shocked because...

• 1:45:12Tim Ferriss?

  I was hoping that would get you there.

• 1:45:13Matt Mullenweg?

  I think I've forgotten when I stopped. But I think it was influenced by reading someone or something around, um, just expressiveness of the English language, finding the right word for things. And other ways, I don't exclaim much.

• 1:45:28Tim Ferriss?

  You don't have a very ejaculatory style to your speaking? What do you mean you don't exclaim much? What does that even mean?

• 1:45:35Matt Mullenweg?

  Gosh darn it, or you know...

• 1:45:37Tim Ferriss?

  Ooh, ooh, those fighting words.

• 1:45:41Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't exclaim much.

• 1:45:43Tim Ferriss?

  We have someone else on the trip who exclaims a lot, not me.

• 1:45:47Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah, like an exclamation would be like if I stubbed my toe or something, like I'm not gonna...

• 1:45:52Tim Ferriss?

  So what do you say when you stub your toe? You just bite your, you just grin, like bite your tongue and...

• 1:45:57Matt Mullenweg?

  I'd probably just make a noise like a yelp.

• 1:46:01Tim Ferriss?

  So if someone like cuts you off in traffic, I guess, I mean, you may be so zen that you just don't get annoyed, but if you get annoyed, do you say anything?

• 1:46:09Matt Mullenweg?

  I like to tell myself that they are doing something urgent, or have something in their life that like, you know, they really need to get that spot.

• 1:46:20Tim Ferriss?

  When does Matt get upset? What are some Matt triggers?

• 1:46:22Matt Mullenweg?

  Ah, Matt triggers.

• 1:46:24Tim Ferriss?

  Besides people spelling WordPress with Lyric as P.

• 1:46:26Matt Mullenweg?

  You know where I'm not zen at all is I get upset on behalf of others.

• 1:46:30Tim Ferriss?

  Oh yeah, I've seen this.

• 1:46:31Matt Mullenweg?

  You've seen it, yeah.

• 1:46:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:33Matt Mullenweg?

  And so I'm more likely to be probably to like a fault, like overly protective sometimes, or a person themselves might not be mad, but I'll like get mad on their behalf. Injustice really bugs me.

• 1:46:46Tim Ferriss?

  So what's your response then? So most people are like, god fucking damn it. They, most people would curse to let some steam out. What do you do?

• 1:46:53Matt Mullenweg?

  I'll get even.

• 1:46:58Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, this soft spoken weapon of incredible menace. You gotta be careful with the Mullenweg, or the Mullenberg, is what the staff here referred to him as. When we did our drone test earlier.

• 1:47:11Matt Mullenweg?

  It's better than mullet wig, which I used to get in school.

• 1:47:16Tim Ferriss?

  Mullet wig, or Adam Gazzoli calls you mullie legs.

• 1:47:20Matt Mullenweg?

  Mullie legs, yeah.

• 1:47:21Tim Ferriss?

  It's another good one.

• 1:47:22Matt Mullenweg?

  Sometimes I get mullen web, which I actually kinda like.

• 1:47:24Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's good.

• 1:47:25Matt Mullenweg?

  Get some web in there.

• 1:47:25Tim Ferriss?

  Mullen web? I like that.

• 1:47:29Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, we'll come back to the get even part another time. Let's see, this is just the one that I pulled out. Say we do maybe one more, because my bladder's about to explode, but my fucking pee bottle is full. That's like, I got nowhere to put it.

• 1:47:43Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I guess I could try to pee into the Scotch whiskey bottle that we've now, sorry, Glen Moranji. I know, my god, that's like the worst yank pronunciation of that ever. But if I have to pee in your bottle, I apologize in advance. Do intentions matter more or less than actions?

• 1:48:00Matt Mullenweg?

  Hmm, yeah, what's the legal word for this? Means ray or something?

• 1:48:05Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I don't know.

• 1:48:07Matt Mullenweg?

  Yes, I think they do. Intentions matter more.

• 1:48:11Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, all right. Tell me more, Matt Mullenweg.

• 1:48:16Matt Mullenweg?

  Do intentions matter more? What I like about intentions is the intentionality. It's a choosing. It's the deliberateness of a decision.

• 1:48:26Tim Ferriss?

  Done.

• 1:48:26Matt Mullenweg?

  To do something. And I think that's super important for us to do. Maybe that sounded a little abstract. What you choose to do.

• 1:48:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:36Matt Mullenweg?

  I think is more important than what necessarily happens along the way, which you have less control over. You have complete control over your choice. So I'm going to say intentions matter more than actions.

• 1:48:46Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 1:48:48Matt Mullenweg?

  But I'm defining actions in a certain way.

• 1:48:50Tim Ferriss?

  How are you defining actions?

• 1:48:51Matt Mullenweg?

  Things that happen.

• 1:48:53Tim Ferriss?

  What the fuck are we talking about?

• 1:48:56Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. Actions are things that happen.

• 1:48:59Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. So, for example, you intend to give me a present, but your action on the way is you stumble and on my step on my foot.

• 1:49:11Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:49:12Matt Mullenweg?

  And your intention to me matters more than the fact you stepped on my foot and broke a toe.

• 1:49:15Tim Ferriss?

  So let's say there's a someone who decides I want to give back and do the right thing, but they have no money, no resources, no network, no leverage. And then there's, so they have this pure intention, but they don't end up being effective in impact, let's just say. And I know that's kind of a broad, broad statement. And then there's some person who just cold-blooded capitalist killer, like takes no prisoners, racks up incredible wealth, and then says, I'm going to give to a bunch of charities because that's the right social move. And getting all these boards, create really good optics, have a conversation at these dinner parties, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:49:58Tim Ferriss?

  So it's not coming from virtuous intention per se, but.

• 1:50:03Tim Ferriss?

  Has an outsized impact just because of the sheer resources behind it.

• 1:50:07Matt Mullenweg?

  I'll take it.

• 1:50:08Tim Ferriss?

  You'll take it. You'll take the second one.

• 1:50:11Matt Mullenweg?

  I think doing the right thing for the wrong reason is still the right thing, which I guess takes us more to actions than intention.

• 1:50:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:19Matt Mullenweg?

  What's your answer to that one?

• 1:50:21Tim Ferriss?

  I think actions count more.

• 1:50:22Matt Mullenweg?

  Yeah. So it's the right thing for the wrong reason would still be the right thing and that matters more. Yeah.

• 1:50:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for me, which isn't to say I would like people to do the right thing for the wrong reason. But, you know, I was chatting with, uh, I can't remember who it was I was chatting with, but they were saying, might have been when I got, I got a tour of Bethlehem from an Arab Christian, which is definitely a minority. And I don't know if it was him, it might've been someone else who was saying, you know, Jews and and Muslims should really get along on some level because they care more about actions than they do what's in your heart, what you believe. Whereas Christians care about like what you believe. Like you can do all of these atrocious things, but then

• 1:51:07Tim Ferriss?

  truly believe and repent and be saved. And I thought about how much all of that has likely shaped cultures and empires and civilizations, right? Just that different lens on things. If it's like, we don't care what you believe. It's all about what you do. Like follow these rituals, do these things. Don't eat this thing on this date. A, B, C, D, E versus like the belief slash maybe intention is what matters. Even if you fuck up and make these terrible mistakes, that's okay. Of course, I'm going to offend like pretty much everybody on the planet by what I just said.

• 1:51:46Matt Mullenweg?

  I think you missed a few.

• 1:51:47Tim Ferriss?

  I am dramatically oversimplifying and sorry if, if, uh, if I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but I do think this question though, that I threw out from this deck of cards is an interesting one, right? Intention versus action.

• 1:52:02Matt Mullenweg?

  I'm glad that we disagreed on it too. I find the points where we disagree to be interesting things to mine.

• 1:52:07Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Last question, because my bladder is about to explode and the, uh, the neck of this, uh, Scotch whiskey bottle is way too narrow. For any attempt at reasonable accuracy.

• 1:52:21Matt Mullenweg?

  Tim is sharing again.

• 1:52:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's not, it's not a claim to any like, you know, Coke can like girth, who are we kidding? We're in Antarctica, but.

• 1:52:33Tim Ferriss?

  He were wanna, somebody with us was like, let's say, let's all take a naked shot together. And we're like, no, no, no, not the most flattering shot we could do right now. What are you grateful for right now?

• 1:52:44Matt Mullenweg?

  Hmm. Give you an easy answer and a harder answer. I mean, I'm so grateful for the time we spent together.

• 1:52:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, me too, me too.

• 1:52:54Matt Mullenweg?

  The bigger and hard answer, I would say, is I'm so astounded at, um, the creation and rollout of the vaccines.

• 1:53:05Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 1:53:06Matt Mullenweg?

  And like, it gives me hope for maybe humanity solving other big problems if we can all kind of focus on the same thing at the same time. And, uh, yeah, so everyone who worked on COVID, we're grateful for.

• 1:53:19Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm, I'm also really grateful for the time that we've been able to spend on this trip. It's been a while since we've done one of these and.

• 1:53:29Matt Mullenweg?

  We've been disconnected, which has been.

• 1:53:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:32Matt Mullenweg?

  Twitchy for me. I tried to download and scroll half the internet before we went offline.

• 1:53:36Tim Ferriss?

  Through Wikipedia. Let me just read about US Postal Service.

• 1:53:43Tim Ferriss?

  I am grateful for this trip. It's been a great trip. I've had a lot of people ask me why I came to Antarctica. Like, why am I interested in Antarctica? And I am interested in Antarctica, but the main reason is just to spend time with you. We've had so many great trips before and included in now this one, adding it to the list. So super grateful for that. Super grateful for my girlfriend, honestly. She's, uh, incredible, puts up with a lot of nonsense.

• 1:54:12Tim Ferriss?

  I'm, I don't think I'm the hardest person to be with, but I certainly don't think I'm the easiest person to. And, uh, she's just, she's just been such a wonderful compliment. And I think we are so different, yet our values are so similar that it allows us to really stretch.

• 1:54:34Tim Ferriss?

  In ways that.

• 1:54:35Matt Mullenweg?

  It's a good thing to look for in a partner, I would say, is like where you are different in many ways, but then exactly the same on a few key values, goals, fighting style, communication.

• 1:54:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, she is the cleanest fighter. I would say the cleanest fighter I've ever been with.

• 1:54:51Matt Mullenweg?

  Good influence on you, too.

• 1:54:53Tim Ferriss?

  I would say that. Yeah, I would say so. You know, hopefully she would say the same about me. I think so. And so I'm very, very grateful for that. And I'm grateful for having the bladder capacity of a camel.

• 1:55:08Tim Ferriss?

  So I don't even know what time it is. God, what time is it? It's probably like 10 or 11 or God knows.

• 1:55:13Matt Mullenweg?

  Goodness, it is now, yeah, almost 11. So probably a good time for the camp.

• 1:55:17Tim Ferriss?

  It is 11 PM and it is bright as high noon as we speak.

• 1:55:22Matt Mullenweg?

  Hey, also, thank you. You know, we both shared a lot of personal stuff on this one.

• 1:55:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, we did.

• 1:55:26Matt Mullenweg?

  Thanks for that vulnerability.

• 1:55:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, thank you too, man. Yeah, really great to do this. And let's not wait another five years.

• 1:55:33Matt Mullenweg?

  All righty.

• 1:55:34Tim Ferriss?

  All right, man. Love you, bud. And to everybody who is listening, you can find links to anything we've talked about, books and so on. I don't know what else. We'll find a bunch of random links and put them in the show notes for you to peruse at tim.blog. Thanks for that also. Recommendation from Mr. Mullenweg, tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, be just ever so slightly kinder than you think necessary. And that includes to yourself. And thanks for tuning in. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?

• 1:56:19Tim Ferriss?

  Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps. Gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you

• 1:57:03Tim Ferriss?

  head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Tonal. Imagine having an entire gym's worth of equipment in a device smaller than a flat screen TV, something that could fit potentially even in a closet. Fits in my closet. By eliminating traditional weights, Tonal can deliver 200 pounds of resistance with a sleek design that can fit nearly anywhere. It's like having an entire gym and personal trainer right in your home. Tonal's patented digital weight system senses your strength and adjusts the weight automatically in real time so you can get the most out of every workout.

• 1:57:47Tim Ferriss?

  I have a number of friends, including competitive athletes, who have doubled their strength in short order in a lot of exercises. And part of the reason that's possible is it uses a revolutionary system of dynamic resistance powered by electric motors for strength you can feel. You can also do things like eccentrics. Over time, Tonal learns from your body and automatically increases the weight exactly when you can handle it. Tonal also uses 17 sensors to provide real time feedback on your form and technique, allowing you to get the most effective workout every time. It's a strength training machine with adjustable arms that provides more than 170 exercises for a full body workout. And that can include squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead pulls, bicep curls, and more. So check it out.

• 1:58:32Tim Ferriss?

  Try Tonal, the smartest home gym for 30 days in your home. Tonal is so confident that you'll love it, they offer a full money back guarantee. You can now get Tonal from $63 per month at 0% interest over 48 months. Visit www.tonal.com and for a limited time, get $100 off when you use promo code TIM100 at checkout. That's www.tonal.com promo code TIM100. T-I-M-1-0-0. Tonal, be your strongest. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. My god, am I in love with Eight Sleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer.

• 1:59:16Tim Ferriss?

  More than 30% of Americans struggle with sleep, and I'm a member of that sad group. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat has always been my nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, putting them back on, and repeating ad nauseam. But now, I am falling asleep in record time, faster than ever. Why? Because I'm using a simple device called the Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep. It's the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced, but most user-friendly, solution on the market. I polled all of you guys on social media about best tools for sleep, enhancing sleep,

• 2:00:00Tim Ferriss?

  and Eight Sleep was by far and away the crowd favorite. I mean, people were just raving fans of this. So, I used it, and here we are. Add the Pod Pro Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Fahrenheit or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It also splits your bed in half so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. My girlfriend runs hot all the time. She doesn't need cooling. She loves the heat. And we can have our own bespoke temperatures on either side, which is exactly what we're doing. Now, for me, and for many people, the result: Eight Sleep users fall asleep up to 32% faster, reduce sleep interruptions by up to 40%, and get more restful sleep overall. I can personally attest to this because I track it in all sorts of ways.

• 2:00:44Tim Ferriss?

  It's the total solution for enhanced recovery so you can take on the next day feeling refreshed. And now, my dear listeners, that's you guys, you can get $250 off of the Pod Pro Cover. That's a lot. Simply go to eightsleep.com/tim or use code TIM. That's eight, all spelled out, E-I-G-H-T, sleep.com/tim or use coupon code TIM. T-I-M. Eightsleep.com/tim for $250 off your Pod Pro Cover.